Later this month around Passover Seder tables, the story of the liberation of the Hebrew people will once again be told. It is a familiar story—and one that deserves retelling. For it reminds us that freedom and liberation are almost never easy.
First there’s Moses, chosen to lead. He doesn’t want to lead his people out of slavery, but he really can’t ignore the burning bush. He tries to convince Pharaoh to let his people go, but Pharaoh doesn’t listen. And it is going to take a while before he does. There’s one plague, and then another and then another. The Nile turning to blood, the frogs, the vermin, the wild beasts, hail, locusts, total darkness. Still no freedom. Finally, during the tenth and final plague, when God passes over the homes of the Hebrews and spares their sons, Pharaoh sets them free. But he tells Moses and his people they have to leave immediately. There was no time to prepare. To be reminded of this the unleavened bread is an important part of the Seder remembrance.
But the story doesn’t end there. Anything but. Now the Hebrews find themselves in the wilderness. They are free, but they are in a strange land, tired, hungry and thirsty. All of a sudden, captivity doesn’t look so bad. At least in captivity they knew what each day would bring. In captivity they had few conveniences, but even those weren’t around now. Captivity, they come to learn, has its benefits.
There’s a reason why this story is told every year at Passover. That’s because we need reminding that liberation can be complicated and may not always be as great as it first appears. With liberation comes risk, probably danger, and most of all the unknown.
As I have reflected on that story this year I couldn’t help pay attention to the plague part in a way that I haven’t noticed it before. It feels as if we have been—and perhaps continue to be—in our own kind of contemporary plague. And perhaps given the phase of this pandemic that we are in currently, the wandering in the wilderness part of the story also has stayed with me. Even as we hopefully are emerging from the pandemic, it will take time for some perspective to emerge. This has been a time when our lives have been disrupted in so many ways—some for the good, perhaps, but in so many ways not.
This has been a time when all kinds of things we took for granted maybe we have learned we can’t take for granted. Like going to the grocery store. Like gathering with loved ones without much effort. Or of our kids being with other kids in a classroom learning in person. And speaking of in person, the routine of going to church on Sundays and seeing our friends in social hour after the service.
And underneath all of that is something more existential. Is it safe to go to this place or that? Is it safe to be around people? What is the risk in gathering in a large group? Might that next person I meet-maybe even someone I know—be the source of illness and maybe even death? There has been and continues to be a dimension of fear that has come to play a particular role in our lives during the pandemic. And it will take time before that goes away—if it ever does.
Now I don’t want to want to lose sight of the learnings that have also come in these times, like the awareness, for good or for ill, of just how interdependent our lives are. And perhaps especially for those of us in places of privilege, perhaps a little more aware of that privilege.
That may mean recognizing some painful truths sometime. That means recognizing ways that we have gained from the systemic injustices so inherent in our systems of power and privilege. That we need to break out of our own places of comfort and complacency. That with privilege comes responsibility.
There can be a particular kind of gift that can come when we are shaken out of our routines. Sometimes disruption can bring its own rewards.
In the telling of that Passover story, and in the Seder ritual, we are reminded that the liberation was not just something that happened way back in history to the Hebrews. The Passover story is told every year because every year it is a matter of not only remembering the release from slavery in Egypt but remembering that every generation has ways that it is still enslaved. Each one of us needs to ask how we are free, and also how we are held captive.
That captivity comes in many forms. As a people we are held captive by the violence, in our world and in our community. We are held captive by racism and by poverty—when the opportunities of some people come at the expense of opportunity for all. As individuals it may be captivity in the form of addiction or mental illness. And throughout are those threads of fear that are so very present around us. How does that fear keep us from living fully?
In this complex time of pandemic it has been as if we are asked to look at so many things in a wholly new light. Amid the disruption has come awareness, or at least that is my hope. The question might be just what will come out of this time.
One of the blessings as I see it has been some new-found awareness of our interdependence. The world in some ways feels smaller than it did a couple years ago. Just the awareness of the shared air we breathe feels very much different. How we all have a stake in a world that is safe for everyone, that is sustainable for everyone, that recognizes how those most on the margins need to be the first to receive that invitation to be at the welcome table. That that is the only way we are all going to survive and be free.
But there is danger too. The danger is that we would retreat to what is most familiar. That in the midst of so much disruption and chaos that we would mostly retreat to our places of comfort and privilege, that we would see not a world of abundance but a world of scarcity. That what we have need, by necessity, come at the expense of others. That trajectory would on have us ending up more and more isolated from others. It would have us building more and more walls. It would have us seeing others as just that—the other. And we don’t need to look very far to see all too many examples of that in our current discourse.
But I hope part of the message of these times would be that we really can’t live like that. That we really can’t live in isolation. That our lives really are interconnected. That we all breathe the same air. That none of us can be free until all of us can be free.
There is a kind of paradox in these times. In some ways it feels as if something has been broken open, that we have been invited to see things more clearly. And at the same time a desire to turn back and to not pay attention. That there’s just too much to remain in our place of comfort.
Writer Ruth MacKenzie shares a story from Mark Nepo about the hatching of a baby chick from the chick’s perspective. The story isn’t as warm and fuzzy as it might be for us watching it from the outside.
She writes: “In the moments before birth the small hatchling has eaten all its food, and its growing body presses against every contour and curve of the shell. There is no more room. There is no more food. The chick hatches because its body is painfully cramped inside the world of the egg, and it is starving.
“There is so much discomfort that the chick is driven to peck its way into whatever is on the other side of the world, whatever is on the other side of safety, because there is nothing else to do and still survive. The world literally breaks apart. The chick eats bits of its own shell, and its body squeezes through the emerging cracks.
“Hatching in not graceful. There is wrestling and rolling around. There is crying and prying. There is exhaustion, and power naps. There is stumbling and trying to hold the head up while getting feet underneath the body. Hatching is not graceful.”
She then quotes Mark Nepo: “Once everything it has relied on falls away, the chick is born. It doesn’t die, but falls into the world.”[1]
What an image to hold when we think of how difficult it can be to come into our own freedom. How difficult it can be to go on even when fear can hold us in its grip. And to recognize that place when we don’t feel we have a choice.
What is it in these times that may be—should be—calling us forth? Might these times actually be offering us an invitation to break through our own shells? Are there times when we find ourselves demanding the food we need to live? What is it that calls us to life? What is it that calls us into our own freedom? And in our own liberation recognize how it is tied to everyone else’s liberation?
When it comes to our own breaking through, when it comes to finding our own release from captivity, we may not always greet it with open arms. Sometimes even when we know what we need, when we feel that pull towards the place where we need to be we still need to find the courage to get there. It may be a lot more comfortable in that place of what’s known, maybe that place of privilege, we find ourselves in alone.
In our reading today, the writer adrienne marre brown says the work of liberation comes out of relationships, out of a grounding in love. That if we are able to move out of that place then the odds are increased that liberation can happen on some much larger scale.
Her words: “If love were the central practice …. it would have a massive impact… If the goal was to increase the love, rather than winning or dominating a constant opponent, I think we could actually imagine liberation from constant oppression. We would suddenly be seeing everything we do, everyone we meet, not through the tactical eyes of war, but through eyes of love.
We would see that there’s no such thing as a blank canvas, an empty land or a new idea — but everywhere there is complex, ancient, fertile ground full of potential….
We would understand that the strength of our movement is in the strength of our relationships, which could only be measured by their depth. Scaling up would mean going deeper, being more vulnerable and more empathetic….”[2]
I want to talk about the church for a moment this morning, on this momentous morning as the candidate to be the next senior minister is named. This is a place, a community, that brings us all together, that helps each of us and all of us find our way. In this fellowship we recognize how our liberation really is all bound together. And we come together in covenant knowing that none of us has all the answers. We come together recognizing our own limits as well as our own possibility.
Words of Rosemary Bray NcNatt: “By no means are we [Unitarian Universalists] perfect; we often fail as much as we succeed. Yet even when “we have broken our vows a thousand times,”* we return to this essential work of justice and liberation for all. We do the work best when we remember what church is and what it is not. Church is not a place to hide. It is not the place to get away from the world. It is not a place where we get to pretend that the lives we live and our particular situations are not terribly complex, often confusing, and sometimes depressing. Church is the place where we stand with one another, look the world in the eye, attempt to see clearly, and gather strength to face what we see with courage, and yes, with joy.”[3]
So it looks like we all have our share of work to do.
Every day we are asked to place ourselves in the path of liberation—to break through those shells of despair, those shells of cynicism, those shells of fear. To trust what will be on the other side of that shell. No matter how it is we might be breaking through, may we trust that we’ll find our footing, and that we’ll all land on solid ground.
In the telling and retelling of the Passover story we are reminded that our lives are not constant and that we are all works in progress. That it sometimes takes telling a retelling, maybe over and over.
In this season of Passover, in these days when the world is so troubled. May we recognize our own goodness, may we recognize our own possibility, may we move ever more fully into our own freedom, and may we recognize how our liberation is very much interconnected with all of life. Through it all may we be grounded in love. And may that love take us to places that we have not even been able to imagine. Amen.
Prayer
Great spirit, hold us in all of our days. Amid pandemic and plague, amid war and disruption, amid revelation and learning, through all our troubles and our blessings, remind us that we are not alone. Help us to give thanks for all the blessings, and even for so much that would trouble. Help us to remember that we are part of your magnificent and fragile creation. Help us to be guided in the spirit, having faith that we will all, in finally, find our way home. Amen.
Benediction
Every day of your life, as you find your way from one side of the shell to the other, may we live into your own liberation and into the liberation of us all. May we get there, together. And through it all, may we never forget we are held in love.
[1] The Necessity of Discomfort, by Ruth MacKenzie, Quest, January 2015. cluuf.org.
[2] https://www.uua.org/worship/words/reading/humans-core-function-love
[3] https://www.uua.org/worship/words/affirmation/essential-work-justice-and-liberation-all
Topics: Liberation