Sermon April 8, 2001

SERMONS

Passover

Rev. Mary Katherine Morn
April 8, 2001

He saw the burning bush. He heard the voice of God. But when God told him to go and set the Hebrew people free, Moses still argued. They won’t believe me. I’m not eloquent. Send someone else. Moses’ words angered God, but like a parent at the end of a long day, God gave in and negotiated. Okay, here, take your staff, I’ll make it do magical things. Okay, call your brother, Aaron, he can do the talking. Just go. And Moses went.

First there was the snake. It came from Aaron’s staff when he threw it on the ground. Pharaoh seemed impressed, but immediately called in his own magicians. They were able to replicate the trick of a staff becoming a serpent. Even when Aaron’s staff-serpent ate theirs, the Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened. Then the staff was used to turn the Nile and all of the water in Egypt into blood. All the fish died. The magicians copied this trick too. Then God directed Moses to wave his staff over the land and frogs appeared everywhere, even in the bowls used for making bread. When the magicians waved their staffs over the land frogs came up from the earth.

It was the gnats that stumped the court magicians. “This is the work of God,” they told their ruler. But his heart remained hard. Through flies and livestock pestilence, boils, hail, locust, and darkness—Pharaoh’s heart remained hard. And each time the scripture reminds us that his heart was hardened by God. In fact, several times before we even make it into Egypt with Moses God explains that this will be the outcome of their efforts. That God will harden Pharaoh’s heart. Even after the first born is taken.

It’s an odd part of the story to me. God acknowledging this. Clearly it’s a story about faith. Faith in spite of Pharaoh’s hard heart. Courage in spite of the odds. A willingness to take the first step into freedom, in spite of the surprising comfort of familiar bondage. It doesn’t come quickly. It never does, I guess. Maybe that’s why God has to harden Pharaoh’s heart again and again. As a reminder about how rotten the odds are.

The people get that message. The odds are not good. They do not want to go. And God just keeps repeating the same old thing. Tell them I will lead them to freedom. To the land of milk and honey. Out of bondage. Tell them. It feels like some relentless torture. The more Moses asks, the harsher the treatment the Hebrew slaves receive. Pharaoh gets bolder and bolder about pretending that he will let the slaves go free. It is not until the most horrible slaughter of the first born that he gives in. Sometimes rulers are surprisingly reluctant to acknowledge a mistake.

Finally, though, Moses and the Hebrew people find their way to the journey that awaits them. They turn around, let go of the door, shedding familiar walls, familiar pain, familiar slavery. Finally they answer the call to live their lives. Their own lives. Lives of their own making.

This is what Passover celebrates. The resounding and enthusiastic “yes” to the journey of freedom. This is nothing to take for granted. Nothing to take lightly. We cannot take our commitment to our liberal religious path of freedom lightly when there is so much that is broken in our world. We cannot take our commitment lightly when so many suffer under the burden of oppression. We cannot take our commitment lightly when we ourselves have so much yet to forgive and be forgiven for.

That puts our “yes” back into perspective. It isn’t easy to answer “yes.” When we look around us at all of the violence in our world we are tempted to step back, to imagine that we can isolate ourselves. When we allow ourselves to feel the grief and the fear that persists within us, the shape of “no” forms on our lips. It isn’t easy to answer “yes.”

Reminds me of something I read in a little book called If Yes is the Answer, What is the Question? by George Kimmich Beach. He’s writing about community, and he says, “Why be committed to anyone or anything, when disappointment, disillusionment, or betrayal may be the bitter result? To answer these questions requires of us a certain faith, insight, or passion—something that carries us over the chasm of pain and dread. How this happens remains difficult to explain.”

In the ancient story of the Exodus we are reminded how difficult it is to be committed to something. How difficult it is to answer “yes.” Moses was resistant to God’s call again and again. Yet Moses found the strength. He answered God’s call and went back to Egypt to liberate the Hebrew people from slavery. The story is filled with miracles, of course. But we shouldn’t forget that Moses’ commitment to the work of liberation was a miracle in itself. We shouldn’t forget the miracle of the people stepping into the dry path in the midst of the Red Sea, taking the first, long step toward freedom.

This is the kind of miracle that happens in religious community. If we persist in sharing the journey, we will find the miraculous strength to take the first step toward freedom. And even to imagine a dream of something more. It is difficult to understand how this happens. It takes courage, of course. Because any time we face what is difficult to face, fear is lurking nearby. If our fear is of our own inability to be what is needed, we may find strength in others—in their own struggles and in their confidence in us. If our fear is the relentless suffering laid upon this earth and her people, we find strength in a vision. Of justice and mercy, the fullness of life.

Rebecca Parker, who is President of our Unitarian Universalist seminary, Starr King School for the Ministry, speaks of the beginning we have made on this journey in an address she gave entitled, “Rising to the Challenge of Our Times.” Our times ask something of us. . . . We are living in a time when the best that is asked of us is far beyond what we have thought we are capable of or would need to do.

She also reminds us that we should not take for granted this commitment to religious community. This commitment to ministry. We will be faced with disappointments, disillusionments, betrayals. Our calling is ridiculously beyond us. How we will face the fear, the pain and the dread is difficult to imagine. One would need a great deal of faith (it would seem) to take even the next step.

Do you remember the story about the tiger and the strawberry? Buddha tells this parable. A man was traveling across a field and encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger as waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted.

Now there’s a vivid picture of the chasm of pain and dread. This little zen story describes the human condition. Above us is death. Below us is death. This is where we live. But the story reminds us that we have a choice. That there is something more. We can either pluck the strawberry, or not. We can either take a chance and experience the sweetness, or not.

This, I believe, is the most basic question of faith. It’s not a question of what you believe. Of what you are willing to accept. With or without questioning it. I’m not even sure it’s about what we can and cannot see. The faith expressed in this story is the simple faith of someone who makes a decision to embrace the possibility right in front of them.

Parker articulates this faith. In her address, she said, I believe that, in rising to the occasion of what is asked of us, we will discover a depth of strength and a richness of love and courage we did not know could be claimed or achieved. She does not deny the chasm of pain and dread that must be faced. She does not belittle the ugly acts of violence that we witness and even collaborate with. “Yes,” she writes, “we are enraged by the destruction of life, but our sustained action is impelled by our experience of life’s sweetness.” Of the sweet gift of giving and receiving. Of the sweetness of a companion’s struggle. Of the power of coming together to challenge structures that oppress. Of the beauty of an infant’s eyes and a bud in the spring.

Her explanation for the power that is possible is that once we have begun, we cannot turn back from the journey. Once we have witnessed the beauty, the possibility of life’s sweetness, we cannot turn back.

Beauty confronts us with the requirement that we place ourselves among the saviors, the redeemers, the leaders in the protection of life. Once you have seen the bush on fire, you are not going to get out of the assignment unless you close your eyes to the beauty. But if you have seen, if you have taken off your shoes, tasted the blackberries, and felt the tenderness of love, if you have seen how the full force of soul is in each child that comes into this world, you either have to close your eyes or go back to Egypt and set the people free.

Have you seen the burning bush? Have you heard God’s voice? Have you walked in companionship with someone who is dying? Have you laughed in joy with these good friends? Have you experienced the beauty of giving love? Have you felt the embrace of the universe at sunset? Have you seen the light in a newborn’s eyes? Have you watched, as new life graces the earth with color and fragrance and hope?