This is the sermon that I will be giving on Rosh Hashanah morning.

---

Rosh Hashanah is a time to look back at the brokenness of our lives, at the relationships that have become tattered. And it’s a time to long for wholeness, to look inside our selves, to look for a way to mend the brokenness.

The Chassidic masters would begin this day by helping their communities to open up, by helping their communities to find hope. And often, they would begin by telling a story.

It’s a story about a king who sent his son to far off kingdom. Years went by, and the king realized how much he missed his son. So he sent his son a letter, “Come home,” said the letter, “I miss you.”

And his son wrote back. “I miss you, too,” said the son. “I would love to come home. But I am so far away, and I don’t remember the way home.”

“It’s okay,” said the king, “Just go as far as you can – even if it’s just one small step. And wherever you are, I will find you, and I will help you come home.”

On this day, God calls out to us, asking us to come home. “Just take one small step,” God tells us. And wherever you are, I will find you, and I will help you come home.”

All of have a home that we remember, a time before life wore us down. We remember a time – or a dream perhaps – when the world seemed fill with love, when the world seemed fillled with kindness, when the world seemed filled with justice.

For some of us perhaps, that time really existed, only to be shattered – by loss, by rifts in our families, through the maelstrom of every day life.

And for others it was only a fantasy – a dream of what life could be like if only… if only our parents loved us, if only we were able to please them.

We come from different families, from different experiences. But the wish to go home – the wish to return to something loving and peaceful – is universal.  Since the time of Adam and Eve, people have been hurting each other. And since the day when Adam and Eve made their first mistake, people have been longing to go home.

We look back on our lives, and all to often, we see the pain that we have left behind us – the times when we were short tempered, the times when we ignored people, the times when we didn’t really listen.

At times, we’re tempted to give up hope, to say to ourselves, “I’ve lost my way. I don’t know how to go home again.”

But today, God s here to help us. “Look inside yourself,” says God. “Admit that your life is broken. Admit that you have hurt others, and that others have hurt you. Find one small thing that you can change, and I will do the rest.”

Making mistakes is part of being human, and that’s what connects us.

Each of us is the one who hurt someone else, and each of us is also the one who struggled through pain, who struggled to rise above it, and who brought good into the world.

We all make mistakes. But today, we can grow. Today, we can forgive each other. And today, we can find holiness.

“Before God created the heavens and the earth,” taught one Chassidic master, God had angels and seraphim to serve Him. But God wanted to dwell down below, in a place where people struggled with their worst impulses, and still found ways to server him – a place where people would struggle with the challenges of every day life and still find holiness.”

This is what it means to be human. We struggle with our impulses, with the pain and the brokenness of being human, and in the midst of it all, we try to find holiness. 

We come here today, each with our own gifts, each with our own pain. And we imagine what it would be like to grow, to heal each other’s pain, to create a better world. 

And on this day God calls out to us, asking us to take one small step. And God reaches out to us, helping us to heal.

May we all return home. Not perhaps, to some beautiful world that we once imagined, but to a world we build together, to a world filled with love, a world filled with community, and a world filled with caring.

Shannah Tovah