Sermon

Whichever, central to the historic odyssey of the Jews is the event of Passover, which we celebrate on this Sunday preceding its beginning this coming Wednesday evening and then proceeding for the following week. Though its details are rooted in myth, its primary message is powerful. It’s been appropriated and retold in many ways and fashions since. It goes like this:

To start by saying, “Once upon a time,” is a way of acknowledging that the Passover Story is not based in fact, rather, it’s based in truth. And that’s a very important distinction. It’s an “I know that I know that I know that I know” kind of story.

Once upon a time, let’s say about 3,500 years ago, the ancestors of the Jews lived in the land of Egypt. They were called Hebrews then, later Israelites, and only much later, known as Jews. But to say that the Hebrew people “lived” in Egypt is a distortion, since they were slaves and forced to provide free labor for the powerful ruler of Egypt known as Pharaoh.

As I told the kids in the Word for All Ages, a man named Moses became the one who would lead the Hebrew children from slavery to freedom. To help us better understand what kind of person he was, we can say that Moses was like Martin Luther King, Jr., who led the fight to do away with legalized racism against African Americans in the past century. Moses was like Gandhi who led the people of India against their oppressor, the British Empire. Moses was Nelson Mandela who led the fight against apartheid in S. Africa.

And as the story of Passover goes, it took a lot of magic and miraculously bad things, for Moses to convince Pharaoh that it was in his best interests and the interests of the nation of Egypt to let the people of Israel leave Egypt and go to the land which God had promised them.

The last miraculously bad thing that Moses and God brought upon Egypt was a one-night plague in which the death angel flew over Egypt. He murdered every oldest male child in every Egyptian home. The only exceptions were the homes of the Hebrew slaves, and they were saved only if their house had the blood of a lamb splattered over the door top.

That sounds rather gruesome, but gruesome is a part of religious history, even though we want things to be sanitized so that they don’t offend our sensibilities. It’s why American television networks choose not to show us what is really happening in Iraq when bombs blow people apart, or young American soldiers are blasted to bits. We had much rather see a nice coffin with an American flag draped over it, and taps being played on a horn. That way death seems more, what shall we say – patriotic! That the young man was only 19 doesn’t infringe on our consciousness…it’s just another courageous hero, dying for our president’s mistaken war. So let’s sing another verse of the Star Spangled Banner.

But gruesome is a part of life and religion. And this final plague pushed Pharaoh over the top and he told Moses the Israelites were free to leave. There was no time to dawdle, to prepare food adequately for the journey. That meant their bread didn’t even have time to rise. So they began their march to freedom’s land.

Now that’s the story of the Passover, rooted in myth and faith. But what does it say to us about life and living? What handholds does it offer us to grab on to as life races by…as we face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?

Faith is always about the capacity to look at the negative actions of the past from the perspective of today, and utilize them for benefit tomorrow.

One of the givens of life is that we will all experience heartache, disappointment, reversal, death, sickness, maybe divorce, and betrayal. What is so difficult about it is that many times it has nothing to do with how we live, how we treat others, or our religious faith. Stuff happens…sometimes, bad stuff.

But what faith does is not remove us from the oncoming disaster; rather, it enables us to retell that terrible and awful thing that happened in the past. Not only to retell it in the present, but also to change our lives in the future so as to benefit from it, even though it was an awful thing. We move from blaming everyone else to accepting responsibility for our own mistakes and moving on with the living of our lives.

That’s the task of faith. That’s the story of Passover: A story of deliverance and freedom.

My whole life has been about the search for understanding faith, especially what it means to believe in God. I’ve been all over the map. Whatever you believe, I’ve probably believed. Whatever you don’t believe, I’ve probably not believed either.

One of the differences though was that the outcome – whichever way it came out – had a serious impact on my profession as a minister. Specifically, in the Christian evangelical churches in which I was raised, there was just something that wouldn’t work about saying, “I don’t believe this, but I’m going to preach it to you as though I do.” No converts there. No souls saved then. No new members gained.

I still remember the night when I lay upon my hide-a-bed in the graduate dorm at Southern Methodist University. It was in the middle of the night, and I lay awake unable to sleep. I had come to SMU desperately seeking answers to my doubts…surely, there was a book somewhere that I had missed…a theologian there who could explain how things really were, so that I wouldn’t have to give up the faith of my fathers…the faith of my mother and grandmothers…my faith!

But as I lay there, I started going through the creeds I had recited in services so many times: “I believe….” Nope, I didn’t believe that. “I believe….” Uh-huh, that just didn’t work. “I believe….” No way. And by the time I had finished my one-time affirmations of faith, about all that was left was “I believe…almost nothing.”

2. An affirmation of faith in God is not about belief in a fact, a force or power; rather, it is an acknowledgement about the awesome mystery of life before which we all stand. And mystery, as the Tao continues to remind us, can never be name. And if it is named, then it no longer is a mystery.

3. Which means, thirdly, that the language of faith is always poetic…an attempt by the part to describe the whole…an effort by the created to describe the creator.

Knowing means that we can join in to celebrate the truth of Mystery as set forth in the poetry of faith. The mighty acts of faith – the Passover, the death of Jesus, the nirvana of the Buddha under the bodi tree, the revelation of the Qur’an received by the prophet Muhammad, the lessons of the Tao, and the teachings of Confucius – those claims on life and living, enable us to face the prospect of tomorrow with hope and inspiration.

We appropriate the wisdom of the ages and face the prospect of tomorrow with a psychic sense of faith in our souls and hope in our heart. We are marching to Zion…from the brickyards of Egypt to the lake like waters of Galilee…from the sting of the overseer’s whip to the redemptive claim of freedom. We thought our spiritual lives were deficit filled and we were facing bankruptcy. Faith says refigure. The Israelites are leaving Egypt’s land. Get on board, children.

So your life may seem like it’s down the toilet. You may have made mistakes and miscalculations. Join the human race. It happens all the time.

What doesn’t happen many times is when in our down cycle, we don’t realize that it’s a cycle. There is an upside coming. We will be back on our game. We will be in the money. We are going to be done forever with Egypt’s travesty and misfortune. So heed the call of faith and opportunity. All of which means:

Don’t ever let anybody put you down. We are made of the stuff of the stars. We are part of the incredible evolutionary process of this planet, so much so that it boggles the mind to try and understand it. What a gift to be a human being.

Have you ever reflected on how amazing your body is? I had a heart attack a couple of years ago, and they did a triple bypass. The nurse told me after the surgery, they couldn’t get my heart to start working again so they got out the paddles and whacked me a few times. And soon it was working again. Ever now and then, I put my hand on my heart, and say, “Way to go. Keep on truckin’.” Wow! What a world!

Every week I sit down at the computer knowing that I have to come up with something to say to you on Sunday morning. You’re so bright, and know so much, and have such a vast background of information and training, along with such gifts of comprehension. For reasons I can’t explain, I always look forward to this moment of preaching.

But equally important I enjoy the sheer challenge of spending the time in reading and writing and rewriting. Somehow it always happens. And when it’s done, I have to say thanks, for whatever it is that enables me to do what it is that I do. It’s not braggadocio, or false faith. It’s simply the confidence that whatever path we take in life, there is that which will enable us and strengthen us on the journey. Faith calls it God. Faith calls it the Spirit of God. Faith calls it divine help. And whatever it is we call it, know that the Universe is tilted in support of the good. So any time we are about doing good…anytime we are about helping others: Know that God is there with us. She will lead us out of the dark days of failure and misfortune, disappointment and misunderstanding, into the bright sunshine of tomorrow.

When Dr. Martin Luther King was preaching in Memphis, he evidently had a premonition the night before he was murdered. In his last sermon he talked about the civil rights struggle, which he epitomized for so many downtrodden Black Americans. He then turned to the story of the Passover, and of Israel’s flight from the bondage of Pharaoh’s oppression. They left Egypt with Moses at the helm. He was leading them to the Promised Land.

But as every student of the Bible knows, Moses brought them only so far. He wasn’t going to be able to lead them to the Promised Land. So God takes Moses up on the mountaintop. And he says, “Moses, look over there. See that land that’s flowing with milk and honey. See that land where the great Mediterranean Sea laps its waves on the shoreline. That’s the Promised Land. Somebody else will have to lead the Children of Israel there. I’m sorry, but it can’t be you, Moses, despite all you’ve done.”

That’s the way life is sometimes. Sometimes life’s not fair. We have to remember: We’re not unique. It happens to everybody…to Moses, to Jesus, to Dr. King.

And in that last sermon, which he gave at Mason’s Temple in Memphis, the headquarters of the Black Pentecostal group, the Church of God in Christ, he said these final words:

I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane – there were six of us – the pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to talk about the threats that were out there…what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers.

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

The next day he was murdered with a rifle shot as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. But thanks in large part to Dr. King, legalized racism is no longer allowed in America. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, for which he worked, not only returned long lost rights to African Americans, but it also designated women as a protected category.

We celebrate a Jewish event today. Jews themselves are a miracle story. Pharaoh enslaved them, Rome oppressed them, Christianity persecuted them, Hitler gassed them, and the Ku Klux lynched them, and yet one reality remains: Jews survived. From the Mediterranean shores of tiny Israel in the Middle East, to the great centers of commerce in London, Rome, Paris and New York…from the primitive peoples of Ethiopia to some of the world’s most advanced centers of learning, Jews continue to present an incredible anomaly.

I think one secret is their understanding of freedom, which is the story of Passover. It’s not the freedom to do as you please but rather, the freedom to do as you ought! To be free, means to be free for a purpose. Amen and blessed be.

[1] Given on April 0, 2006, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting in the Foulds Theater at the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

“PASSOVER: Its Meaning for Today!”[1]