TELLING THE STORY

A Sermon by
James Ishmael Ford

8 April 2001

When I was a child the story of Passover and the Exodus, of which Passover is a part, had a large place in our spiritual lives. We were poor people. And while the women and children and somewhat fewer men who attended our church were well aware of the evils of alcohol that wracked and tore apart our families; we also believed there were other forces that controlled our lives, and crushed us. Mainly that meant the rich people.

In our small churches I cannot say how many times I heard the line "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven." This saying is recorded in both Mark and Luke, and I count it as one of the authentic logia or sayings of Jesus.

Over the years there has been a lot of thought given to this saying. I’ve heard some scholars suggest, that perhaps there was a low gate in Jerusalem called the "eye of the needle." And that just as a camel needed to kneel in order to pass through this gate, the rich need to humble themselves should they ever hope for salvation. Of course in my childhood religion we didn’t buy such liberal notions.

Fortunately there was something more important than that logia, which in many ways simply provided a cold comfort to our suffering. That more was found in the Exodus story. It said we actually had a chance in this world. This story that there was a journey from oppression to liberation, from slavery to freedom was one I learned from my grandmother’s knee. It was what inspired me, and told me I didn’t have to follow my father’s path of drunkenness and dead-end work. I knew I could move from the squalor of poverty that was my inheritance to something better.

The theme of Exodus was, for us as poor white Baptists, the theme of a journey away from oppression. A journey from the heel of the wealthy and the bankers and the liquor store and bar owners and the landlords and all those who denied us dignity and hope; toward the kingdom of God, toward heaven, toward possibility and dream. As has been, actually, the theme of this story since it was first told.

Whether there really was a time that the Jewish people were held in captivity by Egypt or whether these were strains of stories put together during the more unambiguously historical Babylonian captivity and told to give coherence to the Jewish longing for home at that time, doesn’t really matter.

Every time people find themselves struggling with oppression, the story of the Exodus, of those who leave slavery and go toward liberation, is vastly more than cold comfort. It is a telling of how we can stand up, how we can shake off chains, and how we can, with the help of the divine, of a goodness beyond our own making, move to that place of a greater good, to a promised land.

Beyond our own situation as poor whites, my first appreciation of Passover and Exodus as a universal message was when I saw how it informed the African American experience. I was profoundly impressed to see how Passover and Exodus sustained people during the times of slavery. And still does; ongoing through the turbulent decades of the second half of the twentieth century, and into this one, as well. That road is still being traveled, toward freedom and dignity.

It wasn’t until adulthood that I understood how we poor white Christians and we poor black Christians inherited this from our Jewish teachers. I can be a little slow. This story, Passover and Exodus is, of course, the central theme of Judaism. That ancient and venerable religion is in some ways a constant playing out of the themes of this tale of passage. Judaism is in many ways a constant exploration of the meaning to be found in that covenant between a people and God, and how that becomes a journey from slavery to freedom.

While wandering around the worldwide web I stumbled upon Jewish.com. There, Irving Greenberg put the whole thing into perspective, for me. He wrote "The vast majority of human beings who have ever lived have lived in poverty and oppression, their lives punctuated by sickness and suffering. Inescapable tragedies are built into human existence, and even the lives of the wealthy and powerful are marked by vulnerability and failure, separation and loss of loved ones, untimely life and untimely death.

"The oppressed and the poor accept the status quo as their destined fate; the powerful and successful accept it as their due. It appears that the world will forever remain unredeemed, and power rather than justice will always rule.

"The ultimate logic of power is the kind of slavery that the Jews experienced in Egypt. The slave there knew (she or) he was worth only what the master said (she or) he was worth, and the master was an overwhelming immovable force. In the case of Pharaoh, this earthly reign was reinforced by his acknowledged divine power and control of access to afterlife. Thus, there was no appeal from slavery."

This does seem the case to me. I believe an objective consideration of our world and how it works tends one to a pessimistic view. We are so often simply slaves to circumstances, our spirits beaten down, our hopes diminished.

A central feature of human nature seems to be grasping. And so those who get, try hard to hold onto it. And, maybe even worse, there is some kind of psychological shift that occurs in this process of holding on. To have is to be better than everyone else. I’ve seen this process in a hundred, maybe a thousand lives.

To have is to possess virtue and grace and the good. For the rest, for those who do not have: well, too bad. You didn’t deserve it. And by the simplest extension those on the out are worthless. The catch is we all at some point will find ourselves on the out. Everything passes. Everything. And with that passing we often feel our hopelessness and worthlessness.

So, Greenberg tells us. "The worthlessness of the human was carried to its extreme end in the Egyptian policy of genocide, which began with the drowning of Hebrew male babies. The failure by the slaves to revolt only proves to us that they accepted as given and proper the situation in which they existed as passive objects of arbitrary power exercised by others."

Within ordinary logic, this becomes the end. There is no hope. The cycle repeats forever, the chain remains unbroken. But Greenberg points to the core of the story. He tells us "this reality was contradicted and overthrown by the Exodus--yetzlat mitzraim--the going out of Egypt." Here we find the song of liberation, the birth of hope into the world, a tale of miraculous possibility.

Here I think of Denise Levertov, who sang "And the secret names/of all we meet who lead us deeper/into our labyrinth/of valleys and mountains, twisting valleys/and steeper mountains--/their hidden names are always,/like Proverb, promises:/Rune, Omen, Fable, Parable,/those we meet for only/one crucial moment, gaze to gaze,/or for years know and don’t recognize "but of whom later a word/sings back to us/as if from high among leaves/still near but beyond sight/drawing us from tree to tree/towards the time and the unknown place/where we shall know/what it is to arrive."

What do we find upon arrival? There is hope. There is love. There is miraculous agency in the world. Indeed, here we are, at a moment in time around which all of the cosmos circles. Passover. Here we come to a dark place, the black hole of spirit, where everything we think is true collapses into something so irresistible, and at the same time so unimaginable, that we can only stand in awe, uncover our heads, and gape. Exodus.

I think of the suffering of all lives, whatever our economic situation. I think of the pain of loss, of cancer, of depression, of fickle disease and death. We all live within this vulnerable realm and we all need that glimmer of hope, that possibility of the journey away from a mechanistic world of inevitable loss, of un-reconcilable suffering.

Again, I find Greenberg’s analysis particularly helpful. "Out of the Exodus event and reflection afterward came certain Jewish conceptions as to the primary meanings of (that) Exodus." I think, we here in this special meeting room, our precious First Unitarian Society in Newton can hear something echoing for us, as well, in a reflection on the Exodus.

Greenberg tells us how "The freeing of the slaves testifies that human beings are meant to be free. History will not be redeemed until all are free. Exodus morality means treating people on the basis of freedom, value and love rather than by power, manipulation and distrust--the usual standards of behavior. In time, the event became universalized and was applied to ever-widening circles of humanity and human experience. Thus the Messianic age is the Exodus applied to the whole world."

This is something beautiful. We find that there is something universal, something that does extend out into the cosmos, and back, filling our human hearts. This is something that allows us all to touch a sweeter reality than we can ever assume is true on our own. Today we are given the opportunity to reflect upon the power of love, and how it can overcome that other power of manipulation and distrust, hate and clinging.

Here we find a message that tells us redemption means taking everyone along. We all are saved, or none of us is. This is a difficult and mysterious saying. This is a story that confounds the intellect, that denies apparent realities, and leaves us, I think, I hope, hungering.

But, hungering after what? My own life has moved far from the poverty of my youth. I am now, if only by a handful of paychecks, well into the middle classes of our society. And that, of course, means by world standards, I am wealthy beyond most dreams. Today I have. Today I have become one of the haves. Today the story of the camel is a story about me. And, do I need to add, for nearly everyone in this room, about us?

So many questions tumble out of this situation. Are we Pharaoh? You and I? If so, whom are we oppressing? And if not Pharaoh, then in the story who are we? If it is unclear, then why does this story still seem to continue to have meaning? Why is this story continuing to be told? We need to ask what message are we hearing today, here, in this place, when we speak of Passover and Exodus? What does it mean for us?

Well, again, I think Greenberg can help. "There is a problem," he says. "The more humans know the human value and love which Exodus affirms, the greater is the pain of experiencing the exploitation and devaluation which is routine in human existence."

Therefore Greenberg suggests how "Exodus must be recreated and re-experienced continually if Jews are not to surrender its norms--the Jewish dream--to the sheer weight of present reality." Or, if any of us hope for redemption, for the great healing of our hurt and suffering, for the finding of our longing: we need to constantly recreate and re-experience the liberating power of love in our lives.

How do we recreate this story in a meaningful way? Well, one way to start I suggest, is to simply repeat it. Tell the story. Then, as is the case for so many true stories we need to see how we play many parts. Perhaps one part of our lives is indeed Pharaoh. We need to see that.

And another part, at the very same time, I am sure, is how each of us is one with those slaves longing to be free. So many parts, all played out on the stage of human existence. Every time we retell the tale, and give it the special attention due to wisdom stories, we get to see a new aspect of our own lives.

We find so many lessons for us when we’re willing to learn. I think maybe those contemporary scholars are right about that gate, whether it ever actually existed, the one called the eye of the needle. We, who have, have much need to learn a little humility. When we remember that while we may well have worked hard to achieve what we possess, mostly it comes to us because of things beyond our making. The world is vast, the intricacies of relationship are mysterious, and only the foolish claim virtue behind their accomplishments. Perhaps one or two of us in this room have been a little foolish in this regard?

This is Passover. Let us remember the story. We need to remember our own hurt and fragility. And from that place we need to remember to reach out our hand and to help others. Astonishingly, here in such a moment God is revealed. In that act hope births. In our doing a small action of good, a little blessing for the world becomes the seed of possibility.

The great journey from slavery to freedom is open to us all. But, we must be willing to take the journey. And we need to be ready, to not even wait for bread to rise. We need to abandon our ideas of our personal goodness and virtue, and to remember there is something greater beyond our egos, just waiting beyond the horizon.

So then, when we take on the journey, what do we find? As we move beyond our own ego needs, what do we find? For one thing we discover a tightly woven web of relationships. We find our precious individuality is in fact supported, sustained, indeed created out of that web. Indeed, at that precious moment we begin to see the greater that the ancients named God, our beginning and our end.

At least that is what I think when I reflect on the message in this old old story. Our second collection this Sunday is for the Lionheart Foundation. With their special work to help prepare prisoners to live in the world, a collection to help in their work seems particularly appropriate for today. And, as always, this collection speaks to us of our better nature, of our deep understanding of those connections, and how God constantly is revealed in the world through us. Here we find the ancient truth of hope and possibility: the Passover promise: the Exodus story.

May it be told and retold forever and ever.

Amen.