Sermon

         If you are a new or infrequent visitor here today, perhaps you wonder why a seemingly Protestant church is addressing the topic of Passover, a Jewish experience. One reason is that in some ways the experience of liberation is the experience of all people at sometime in their development whether as a nation, a community, or even as an individual. It is a major part of our tradition to examine compelling religious concepts and stories in life and religion so that we can come to a greater understanding of ourselves, our religion, and other religions.

         This evening will be the second evening of Passover when Jews all over the world will sit down to a family Seder dinner. Although the Passover Seder meal is in memory of their escape from slavery in ancient Egypt, the story is also the saga of Moses and his people.

         The entire story comes to us from four of the first five books of the Bible, also called the Torah, which means the “Teachings.” The five books are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Because the story of Exodus is also the story of the formation of a people’s identity perhaps we should remind ourselves of it. The most famous biblical images come from the Book of Exodus and these have been popularized in the last century by the movie “The Ten Commandments” with Charlton Heston.

         The story begins with an unnamed pharaoh expressing anxiety that the Hebrews are so fertile that their numbers might outstrip the Egyptian population so he enslaved them. When they continued growing in numbers, in spite of all the hard work, he ordered that all the male children be thrown into the River Nile. In Exodus, we read that one day a Levite man married a woman and they had a son. The mother gave the child to her daughter to hide him amongst the reeds of the river in a tiny boat that was in the shape of an ark. The daughter of pharaoh found the baby and raised him as her own and named him Moses, an Egyptian name.

         Later in life, Moses finds out about his Hebrew origins and kills an Egyptian task master who was abusing Hebrew slaves. He flees to the nearby country of Midian and becomes a shepherd. While out on Mount Hebron, he sees a bush burning without harming the wood of the bush. A voice calls to him to come near and take off his sandals for he is on holy ground. The voice commands Moses to go back to Egypt and demand of pharaoh to let the Hebrews go. Moses is reluctant and asks the name of the one who calls to him. The voice says he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he is YHWH, which translates to the verb “to be” or “I am that I am.” Other Middle Eastern deities have names. This one is mysterious and intriguing. Moses finds that Pharaoh is not willing to let the Hebrews go, in spite of the demonstration of his YHWH’s power by sending nine plagues of blood, frogs, vermin, cattle disease, boils, hail, locusts, and darkness. The final plague is the one the Passover celebr ation is about for it marks the Hebrews as a “chosen” people. God tells Moses to have the Hebrews to each slaughter a lamb and to smear its blood on the outer door of each home so that he will know to “pass over” the marked houses and to take the lives of all the eldest born male children and beasts of each Egyptian household. Finally, pharaoh lets them go.

         Moses tells the people that God instructs them to take only unleavened bread and other specific things and leave Egypt. They are to cross the Sea of Reeds (not the Red Sea) and they likely do this at low tide for it was probably a marsh. Pharoah changes his mind about letting them go and comes after them with his army. He tries to cross the Sea of Reeds, probably at high tide, and much of his army is lost.

         On the Internet, there are just dozens of Passover jokes. One father said to his son, “What did you learn about the story of Moses.” His son said, “Well, finally Pharaoh let the people go. So Moses built a pontoon bridge across the Red Sea and the people escaped into the desert.”

         “Did the Rabbi really tell you that?” said the father.

         “No,” said his son, “but you wouldn’t believe what he did say!”

         The Hebrews trek through the desert until they come to Mt. Sinai where God tells the Hebrews, through Moses, that they are his “treasured people” and he gives Moses the 10 Commandments. This is what we call The Second Covenant, the first one having been with Abraham. In the days and years that follow, God communicates to Moses the rest of the laws for them to follow.

         These laws make the Hebrews into a far more civilized people than the surrounding tribes and nations. There were no other laws like these laws. Most other Middle Eastern peoples had long lists of the laws that were very cruel and had harsh punishment for low class people. The Hebrew laws were just and were to be applied without regard to rank. Also, the laws specified that the rich were to help the poor. The laws dictated how animals are to be killed with the least amount of suffering, what food should be eaten and in what combination, what clothing the people should wear--particularly modest attire for women, what punishment should be given for specific offenses, and how a person who does wrong can atone.

         The Hebrews regard all of these laws as The Covenant. (Let us also acknowledge that many of the laws are considered extreme or unjust today. For example, stoning a child to death for disobedience to parents is obviously extreme and unjust. Laws about the treatment of slaves who are Jewish and non Jewish are not, fortunately, applicable. And laws about homosexuality indicate an ancient people’s concern that land should be passed on through the family, so producing children would be very important.)

         The story of Exodus and God’s communication of all the laws goes on for 150 pages in the Bible. It many ways, it is also a plausible story of Moses being overwhelmed with the burdens of leadership and his father-in-law urging him to delegate responsibility. The story tells us that the Hebrews lived separate from all other people for forty years in the desert of Sinai, one of the most barren areas in the entire Middle East. Forty years would have been a whole generation, time to create a certain psychology and strong identity as a people; a time of purification and a time to be clear on their chosenness.

         It is interesting that YHWH chose a little known tribe held in low regard by other Middle Eastern peoples. Many societies all around had thriving cultures and art forms but the Hebrews were nothing special and even called “People of the Dust” because they had been primarily nomads. It is likely that they were also illiterate. Only Moses perhaps would have been able to write at least in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Scholars think that the stories were mostly oral tradition for hundreds of years.

         Though God promised Moses and his people all of the land of Canaan as the Promised Land, he showed the land to Moses from Mount Nebo but told Moses that he would never go there. Moses died and YHWH buried him in the land of Moab but we read in Deuteronomy that “no man knows the place of his burial to this day.” (Deut. 34: 6)

         YHWH directed the Jews to pass the story of their escape from slavery on to their sons in all the generations. The Passover, or Pesach, week begins with two nights of a family celebration dinner for two nights called a Seder. The dinner includes certain foods and symbols. In the center of the table are five glasses of wine. For are for freedom, deliverance, redemption, and release. Each person is expected, playfully, to drink all four. The fifth one is for Elijah if he should come when the door is opened for him, which is part of the game for children. There is a special plate on the table: it contains Haroset, a mixture of chopped apples and walnuts and sweet wine, a symbol of the bricks the slaves were made to make; parsley dipped in salt, symbolic of the tears of suffering and yet also of hope; an egg, a symbol of hope for the future; a shank bone, a symbol of the sacrificial lamb that saved them from the angel of Death; bitter herbs, horseradish to symbolize the bitterne ss of slavery.

         The Passover story is revealed using these symbols in an enjoyable way of story, many songs, hymns of praise, and questions in a book called the Haggadah. It contains also four questions for the children also answered in song (very long repetitive ones, which adults also enjoy very much. These are the questions:

1. Why is this night different from all others?
2. Why on this night do we eat only unleavened bread?
3. Why on this night do we eat bitter herbs?
4. Why on this night do we eat Haroset (chopped apples and nuts)?

         In modern times, there is a women’s Haggadah. The questions are:

1. How can we enrich our experience of the Exodus by retelling the story of slavery and redemption from a woman’s perspective?
2. What does it mean to be free Jewish women and not simply free?
3. What still enslaves us as Jewish women and who are our Pharaohs?
4. How can we be sensitized to the plagues we face today and how can we participation in the healing of the world? (from www.ritualwell.org)

         The Jewish women are continuing the tradition of Midrash, interpreting and extending of scripture to enrich their lives.

         You have perhaps noticed that the word for Jews in the Bible is Hebrews or Israel. “Israel” means “they who struggle with things divine.” The term “Jews” came much later from the people who lived in Judah. (It was the Romans who renamed the provinces of Judah and Israel to Palestina, the land of the Philistines who were their old trading partners.)

         The Jewish story tells us of a people dedicated to a higher purpose, that of serving God, living a righteous life, and bringing justice to the world. They are to study the Torah and penetrate the surface of life to find a deeper meaning. Jews take all of this very seriously. During the Civil Rights Movement, they contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to help the black people be free. They had a very strong identity with the black experience in America. And hundreds of young Jewish attorneys worked in the Deep South during this time. Jews contribute a great deal of money and time to charity and their ideal is to work for justice in the world.

         Unitarian Universalists have often been described as being a religion between Judaism and Christianity. We certainly have strong roots in both religions and I like to think that we take the best from both. There is a UU book written by two famous ministers, John Buehrens and Forrester Church, called Our Chosen Faith. The title is, of course, related to the idea of the Chosen People. But instead, ours is a faith that we freely choose. Freedom to think for ourselves and freedom to believe what is true for each one of us and freedom to express our views is extremely important to UUs. But like all freedom, it must be tempered with responsibility; for us, we bear the responsibility to be respectful of the beliefs of other UUs, particularly because of our wide diversity of belief and also respectful of the beliefs of other religions.

         For me, I am the most intrigued by the idea of covenant, sacred promise. Today, we UUs are beginning to reclaim the meaning of covenant that we inherited from our Puritan forebears. But the most attractive aspect of all in Judaism is the valuing of the life that is lived in the here and now. A life lived righteously is one that has its rewards in personal happiness and the well being of others. I believe that Bill Elliott has some Passover food for us to have with our coffee today. So let us enjoy this time and be thankful that the Jews have given the world such a fabulous story and a path of justice to follow. Let us sing our final hymn 220.

References

The following has inspired and informed this sermon:

Ariel, David S. What Do Jews Believe? The Spiritual Foundations of Judaism, New York: Schocken Books, 1995.

Cahill, Thomas. The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, New York: Doubleday, 1998.