Leviticus 23.23-32 (CEB):
The Lord said to Moses: Say to the Israelites: On the first day of the seventh month, you will have a special rest, a holy occasion marked by a trumpet signal. You must not do any job-related work, and you must offer a food gift to the Lord. 

The Lord said to Moses: Note that the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Reconciliation. It will be a holy occasion for you. You must deny yourselves and offer a food gift to the Lord. You must not do any work that day because it is a Day of Reconciliation to make reconciliation for you before the Lord your God. Anyone who does not deny themselves on that day will be cut off from their people.

Moreover, I will destroy from their people anyone who does any work on that day. You must not do any work! This is a permanent rule throughout your future generations wherever you live. This is a Sabbath of special rest for you, and you must deny yourselves. You will observe your Sabbath on the ninth day of the month from evening to the following evening.

Leviticus 19.30
You must keep my sabbaths and treat my sanctuary with respect; I am the Lord.

Happy New Year, everyone, shana tovah! May your year be good and sweet.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, began at sundown Friday. Welcome to 5781, everybody! 

I believe it is important to remember and participate in the Jewish rituals of Jesus and the disciples. If we ignore Jewish holidays—especially foundational holidays such as Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, we risk misunderstanding Jesus and his teaching. By learning about his Jewish life and participating in the holidays he celebrated, we are drawn ever closer to Jesus. Through that intimacy, we tune into his conscious awareness of God in all.

Rosh Hashanah is both a celebration of God’s creation of everything out of nothing (ex nihilo) and a call to deep personal introspection and transformation. More than the beginning of a fiscal year or an academic season, and more significant than the start of a calendar year, Rosh Hashanah celebrates the glory of God’s creative work. 

This holiday is an opportunity for us to stop our busy lives for a day (or two, or ten, in some traditions) and focus on thanking and honoring God. 

The biblical authors instruct us during this time to read the Psalms and spend a lot of time repenting for our transgressions. Yet, we’re not to despair, remembering God’s merciful nature by eating sweet foods in the hope of a sweet year to follow. 

Overall, this is a celebratory, joyous holyday intended to help us get back on track with our God relationship by letting go of the baggage disconnecting us from God—and each other.

Rosh Hashanah is also considered a “day of judgment” in which God inscribes the fate of the righteous, the not-so-righteous, and the downright wicked in one of three books. The righteous are immediately sealed in the book of life. The intermediate are given ten days to atone for and reflect upon their transgressions (this time leads up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, next week), and the wicked—well, the Talmud says “the wicked are blotted out of the book of the living forever.”

It seems the rabbinical authors thought most of us were clearly in the intermediate category. 

I think that might be generous. 

At any rate, they understood we all need to work on our behavior and attitudes. Rituals for the ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur are designed to help us focus inward in a way that affects lasting changes in the nature of our being. We are to use this time to “clean up our act,” but we’re also not to be too hard on ourselves in the process. We are humans, after all. Our existence would be pointless if we weren’t accident-prone.

Understanding imperfection as our perfect nature and not a character flaw is essential to our transformative process. Our task this lifetime (any lifetime) is not to berate ourselves and others when we mess up, but to keep trying. To continually do better, even a little bit. 

Imagine a world where instead of tearing one another down, we support everyone’s particular, peculiar gifts. 

Imagine encouraging neighbors and strangers in their learning, to experience differently, to live their dreams. 

Imagine creating a system that provides the basic necessities everyone needs to have the space to do those things, and live into their divine nature.

Even at that, many of us would make mistakes, do and say things we regret, and just generally be messy human beings. So again, as the new year dawns, God asks us to remember, it’s okay to mess up. Just keep trying to do better. God encourages us to be our best, to strive to do good, to act with mercy, justice, and compassion, to be firm in our convictions, and to fight for the truth. We will not always find success, but it is the effort to become our most divinely-connected, inspired selves, not the achievement, that matters. 

The great Hasidic rabbi Zusha once said, “In the world to come, they will not ask me, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me, ‘Why were you not Zusha?’”

Whoever we are, God asks nothing more from us than to be the best “whoever” we are. It sounds simple, but in truth, it requires continual, difficult self-reflection and transformation. It is healthy for us to consider taking a yearly spiritual inventory of not what we’ve done right and wrong, but what we think we’ve done right and wrong. Spiritual inventory asks us to look deeply within our souls and confront what we’ve perhaps swept under the rug the past year. Or longer.

Rosh Hashanah calls people of faith to stop and inventory the way we’ve spent our year. Have we acted in accord with God’s command to love one another, including our enemies? Have we honored God in our thoughts, words, and actions by honoring others as ourselves? Do we live in peace with our brothers and sisters of all races and religions? Where have we done well? Where have we fallen short? What can we improve?

In which category do we want our names written in the Book of Life?

God asks us to be brutally honest with ourselves and understand that, no matter how badly we think we might have behaved, we’re forgiven. It’s okay. Remember the past, so we don’t repeat mistakes, but move forward renewed, rejoicing in God’s grace. Forgive yourself, and everyone else, as readily as God forgives you. Move on. God forgives you immediately, by the way, in case anyone is wondering. We’re forgiven as soon as we say, and mean, “I’m so sorry.”

I want to mention again that during this holy time, we are asked to read the Psalms. As I take my spiritual inventory, I keep coming back to Psalm 23. Partially, this is because Trudy and I have been reworking one of our songs based on that Psalm, but also, I’ve run across another interpretation that’s inspired me to think differently. 

We all know the famous first verse, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. In the oldest available versions of Psalm 23, though, the words used mean, “I do not lack completeness.” That last word, “completeness” is almost universally dropped from English translations, which is unfortunate. “Completeness” has much more profound spiritual implications. Because the period from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur is for reflection and repentance, I have found the idea of completeness in God comforting as I confront my flaws and make amends for my transgressions.

We tend to see ourselves as incomplete creatures who lack resources, self-worth, health, wealth, intellect, beauty, even God. But we do not lack anything. God knows us as holy and whole. So much, that God guides us through even the gloomiest, darkest warehouses of the soul. To me, that’s sweet news.

Shana Tovah, everyone. May the coming year be sweet to us all.

Question: What inspires and comforts you as you take your spiritual inventory?