First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Shalom! and welcome to our commemoration of Passover, jumping the gun by one day. Although eating and drinking are a big part of a Jewish observance of this important holiday, we will not be serving any food here today, but our Seder Service, led by Greater New Orleans UU Ministerial Intern Charlie Dieterich, will be held here on Thursday, April 1, with traditional Passover foods served, and an adapted Haggadah followed. We hope that you will join us for this revival of an old First Church tradition that lies within the even older context of the Jewish High Holy Days. For those of you whose Hebrew is rusty, Haggadah means “the book containing the prayers and responses” for a Passover supper, and seder is a Hebrew word meaning “order of service.”
The title of this morning’s sermon comes from a traditional part of the Seder. After recounting the 10 plagues visited on Egypt by God in the Exodus story, the song “Dayenu” is sung. “Dayenu” literally means “it would have been sufficient” or “it would have been enough.” It is a song of thanksgiving to God for all the saving gifts to the formerly-enslaved Hebrew people. The song retells, step by step, the Exodus story, repeating, “that alone would have been enough:” Enough just to escape from Egypt, but then to walk through the Red Sea. Enough to walk through the Red Sea, but then for the pursuing soldiers to be drowned. Sufficient to make it to the desert, but there to be tended by God and fed with manna! Sufficient to be fed, but then to be given the Sabbath -- for what could be more holy to former slaves than a day of rest? One of those things would have sufficed, but the blessing is, there was always more.
When Jews celebrate Passover in the ritual outlined in the Haggadah, a moment comes when the youngest child present asks the so-called “4 Questions.” (“So-called” because in reality, there are many more questions -- most Haggadah contain about a dozen.) The first question is “Why is this night different from all other nights?” and serves as the prelude to the Exodus story. When it is finished, the child then asks, “Why do we say ‘we’ were in Egypt and God set ‘us’ free?”
This is a very important moment; indeed, it might be said to be the crux of the Seder. The Haggadah do not say, “We remember this day how our ancestors over 3,000 years ago were freed from slavery.” They say instead, “We remember this day how we were freed from bondage in Egypt.” Not “they” but “we,” always keeping the story in the present tense, alive and personal. The Haggadah make it explicit that no generation after the escape from Egypt is ever to think of that time as “in the past;” they are to personalize it, make it part of themselves. We were once slaves, and with God's help, we got away. A Haggadah for children, published in 1973, puts it this way:
We are…wise children who make ourselves part of our people and include ourselves in our people's story….Therefore we say that Pharaoh promised to let us go, and that God set us free.
The song “Dayenu” also tells the story of Exodus right down to the present, gratefully acknowledging both the gift of prophetic human beings whose words and deeds confront and inspire, and the gift of human responsibility. One way of defining “responsibility” might be "capable of responding." Human responsibility can truly be termed a divine “gift,” since without it we would be reduced to mere automatons, robots, mechanized flesh puppets. It is indeed a gift simply to be alive -- it would be sufficient -- but it is the addition of human free choice that gives birth to morality and ethics, justice and freedom. Human responsibility is the greatest of all gifts -- and the most expensive.
Our shared reading for many voices by Alla Bozarth is a modern twist on the Passover story and is also told in an urgent present tense" "take nothing...eat standing up." And "God Takes Sides," the excerpt from Robert McAfee Brown, makes it powerfully clear that what is remembered and celebrated during Passover is a message of hope for the oppressed and challenge for the privileged. Brown emphasizes how that message is political and social as well as theological. God was and is on the side of the underdog -- no matter how bad things look or how long history goes against an oppressed people. (After all, the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt for generations.) As religious liberals, we should remember how God was on the side of an oppressed minority, and keep that in the present tense. It would also do us good to keep in mind that work for justice and freedom can take many years to accomplish.
Now, I realize that the term “God” can be a problem for some religious liberals. But it would be difficult -- if not impossible -- to do a service about Passover without mentioning God. And anyway, one does not have to believe in the Hebrew God, or any God for that matter, to thrill to the elements of the Exodus story -- the inexperienced, stuttering young hero, the high drama of Pharaoh's many refusals, the mounting urgency of the plagues, the heart-rending loss of the first-borns on Passover night, the daring last-minute escape into the desert wilderness, the dramatic parting of the Red Sea. If it wasn't so familiar, and hadn't already been done a million times, it would have made a terrific Spielberg movie.
But it is not simply as a heroic spectacle with great special effects that we should keep alive the Exodus story, but because its message is vital to us today. The slaves in Egypt were not, as we know all too well, history's last victims. There is on-going violence against oppressed people all over the world, as well as in our own free country. Today, wherever we look, there are people deprived of basic human rights, people tortured for political or religious beliefs, people penalized because of their color, their heritage, their gender, or the gender of the person they love.
Here in our own city, a "tribe" of people are oppressed and victimized, their labor stolen from them without pay, thus turning them into modern-day slaves. The Latino construction workers who flocked to the city after Katrina have been invaluable to the city's recovery, bringing their skills and talents in the building trades as well as their work ethic. But many contractors and homeowners have withheld pay after work is completed, reasoning that no one will care if they refuse to pay illegal or undocumented workers. Even when Latino workers have had the courage to call the police, the responding officers often side with the offending homeowner or contractor, demanding to know if the complaining worker is in the country legally. (Is it really OK to victimize an illegal alien?) The Congress of Day Laborers has successfully lobbied the City Council to draft an ordinance criminalizing wage theft (currently it is only a civil matter), which come before the council for a vote very soon. It is not only Latino day laborers who affected -- housekeepers and restaurant workers face many of the same challenges. This is an instance of modern-day "slavery in Egypt" right here in New Orleans, and it would not be sufficient to simply say that we want justice for them. We must contact our council members and demand that the ordinance be passed and strictly enforced.
Just as there are still in our world people whose rights are denied, people for whom the necessities of life are expensive luxuries, people whose lives are passed in the depths of despair and degradation -- there is still in our world a force for justice. Some may call that force God, but it might also be called “human responsibility.” And the force of human responsibility is not limited to individuals, but to groups. Last week, we remembered the words of Martin Luther King Jr. calling the entire country to stand for justice in Alabama, saying, “No American is without responsibility." Working for justice for oppressed people is OUR responsibility.
The enslaved people of the Passover narrative were not saved one by one, as single individuals, but collectively, as a loose tribe, as a newly-formed community. The story of freedom contained in the powerful, dramatic verses of Exodus is a story of corporate liberation and community responsibility. At one point, Pharaoh offers to Moses the possibility that he and the other menfolk can go, leaving the rest of the Israelites behind. It is significant that Moses refuses. “We will all go, young and old, with our wives and our sons and daughters, our flocks and herds…” All must go free, or none. It is one of the earliest truly universalist notes in the Hebrew Scriptures. All of us or none of us. It is also the brave statement of our Universalist ancestors.
And here is why we religious liberals, Unitarian Universalists in the 21st century, should celebrate and honor this ancient ceremonial story: Because we know we cannot avoid responsibility for the evils of our world. Because we know it is not sufficient if only we ourselves or our immediate families are comfortable. Because we know that individual action, however noble, is not enough. Because we know we never have enough community. Because we know we are part of the inter-dependent web of all existence, and we are responsible for all we don't do as well as what we do.
A Unitarian Universalist Haggadah written by my colleague Dave Weisbard in Rockford, Illinois, contains a rendering of the song “Dayenu,” celebrating what is enough and more than enough, but it also includes a litany for religious liberals of what is not enough:
As we have sung of the blessings we have experienced, we must also recognize that there are insufficiencies in the world for which we must accept…responsibility.
…If we were to end a single genocide, but not stop all wars…it would not be sufficient.
If we were to stop all wars, but not disarm the nations, it would not be sufficient.
If we were to disarm the nations, but not prevent people from starving…it would not be sufficient.
If we were to make sure that no one starved, but not free…poets from…jails, it would not be sufficient.
If we were to free…poets from…jails, but not train our minds to understand the poets, it would not be sufficient.
If we were to educate all people…but did not teach…[all] to share in the human family as one, it would not be sufficient.
The freedom we seek is a freedom from bloodshed as well as freedom from tyrants.…[We should] not only…remember in tears the evildoing of the tyrants and the [lives] of the prophets and martyrs, but to end [forever] the letting of…humanity's blood.
So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE.
