Passover
By Rev. Ricky Hoyt
April 20, 2008
The story of Passover is one of the most sustained narratives in the entire Bible. Beginning with the Jewish people living as slaves in Egypt. Moses appears as a reluctant savior. He shows the Pharoah the power of God through a series of plagues ending with the gruesome killing of the first born child of every Egyptian family. The Israelites flee their slavery with the Egyptian army chasing after them, The story ends with the parting of the Red Sea. The Israelites escape. The Egyptians drown.
It’s a good story. It’s also horrible in a good campfire story way. There’s death and violence. But because one of the main characters is God, and the fact that this particular story comes in the second chapter of the Bible and not the second edition of a comic book or the second installment of a movie serial, this story takes on a whole new dimension. This is a religious story. And then we’re tempted to ask, “This is a religious story?”
This is a story where through the power of God one nation is saved while a second nation is destroyed. This is a story where God is not the god of all people but the god of one group against another. This is a god who manipulates natural events with the intention of causing harm. Through the series of plagues crops and animals are killed who have no part in the conflict. And then in the final plague, scores of innocent children are slaughtered. It’s a good story because there is a natural satisfaction in seeing enemies overcome and the bad guy getting what he deserves, but is it a “good” story? Is that how our religion works?
Liberal religious folks, Jews and Christians, deal with the story in three common ways. One is to focus theologically on the abstract principles it contains. We can talk about the abuse of power and the divine movement toward equality and freedom. A second strategy is to internalize the story, so that the characters are all seen as personal aspects of our own spiritual lives. We can talk about the psychological need to move from narrow closed up lives, into the healthy life where we can express our own essential natures. And a third strategy is to read it as a moral lesson. Instead of gloating at the destruction of the Egyptians we can read it as a warning not to use our power to oppress other people in any way.
All three of these interpretations are included in the traditional Jewish Haggadah that tells this story and pulls out the meanings. But the Haggadah also simply tells the story. And perhaps the story is there not just because it’s a good story, and not just because it entertains the kids. Our temptation is to make the story reflect the theology and psychology and ethics we already prefer. But over the centuries our theology, psychology and ethics have changed while the story has hung on. It’s a good story not only because it’s exciting, but because in its rich portrayal of common human issues and concerns it challenges us to keep asking old questions and keep finding new answers.
The beginning of the story shows the Egyptian Pharoah coping with a dilemma. The Hebrew people he relies on for slave labor are growing too large to control. He orders his midwives to kill any Hebrew boy as soon as he’s born. They can’t do it and when Pharoah asks why, they lie. They say because the Hebrew women are so strong and healthy they give birth before the midwives even arrive.
So then the Pharoah simply commands that every Hebrew baby boy be thrown into the Nile. Moses’ mother saves him by placing him in a basket at the bank of the river where he’s discovered by the Pharoah’s own daughter who takes pity on the baby. The Pharoah’s daughter actually hires Moses’ own mother to be a nurse to the baby and pays her wages.
So Moses grows up. And although he’s raised as the daughter of the Pharoah, he’s raised by his Hebrew mother and identifies with the Hebrew people. One day he comes across an Egyptian master abusing his Hebrew slave. Angered he kills the Egyptian and then afraid that he might have been seen flees runs away to the desert.
Time passes and while the Hebrew people continue to suffer we’re told that God hears their suffering and is reminded of the long ago promises God made to these people, first to Abraham and then Issaac and Jacob, the covenant that if these poor, homeless people would ally themselves to this God, that God would reward them with a land of their own, and a nation-ful of descendents.
God, in a vision Moses has while out with his flock on the sides of Mt. Horeb, chooses Moses to go back to Egypt and free the Hebrew people from slavery. Moses isn’t interested. He doubts his ability. God answers every excuse. I’ll be with you. I’ll make you strong. I’ll tell you what to do. God even says that God will send Moses’ brother Aaron to go with him and do the talking.
So Moses returns to Egypt, meeting Aaron along the way. They go to Pharaoh and state their demand. Now listen to the words of the demand from Exodus, the first words Moses and Aaron speak to Pharoah. "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.'" But Pharaoh said, "Who is the LORD, that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and I will not let Israel go." 3Then they said, "The God of the Hebrews has revealed himself to us; let us go a three days' journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the LORD our God, or he will fall upon us with pestilence or sword." (Exodus 5:1 – 3).
The Exodus story that began with the lie of the midwives now continues with Moses lying. He doesn’t say “Let my people go so that we will no longer be slaves but can live as a free people in our own land.” He says, “Let my people go so we can celebrate a festival and then we’ll come back and be your slaves again.” Moses doesn’t say, “The divine spirit of the universe wants all creation to be free to live their own lives and uncover their own essential natures.” He doesn’t even say, “Slavery is wrong.” And actually the Israelites will have their own slaves once they get their own nation. And notice also that the end of Moses’ argument is that if we don’t go and have the religious festival our own God will punish us, “with pestilence and sword.” Not that God will kill the Egyptians but God will kill the Hebrews.
The Pharaoh, annoyed by the request, refuses. The Hebrew god is nothing to the Pharoah who is a god himself to the Egyptians. Instead he makes the slaves work harder. And the Hebrew people, who had earlier believed that Moses really was an agent of God sent to free them, quickly blame Moses and his meddling for the extra work.
Then begins a long series of Moses’ increasingly dramatic attempts to convince Pharoah and his own people, that the Hebrew God is stronger than Pharoah, and the Pharoah’s protracted stubbornness in resisting. It’s one of the key theological problems with the story that a God who supposedly can control natural events directly ought also to be able to simply change Pharoah’s mind directly. But that wouldn’t be a good story. The drama of the story comes in seeing how drastic the demonstrations of God’s power become, and the question of how long the Pharoah can hold out before he caves in. But it is sad that Pharoah must be persuaded by the horribleness of natural destruction rather than by the principle of justice itself. Never in the story does Moses even try to persuade the Pharoah by evoking the principle of justice. And never, not even at the very end does Moses ever ask that Pharoah free his people from slavery. He only ever says, “so that my people can go and worship” always implying that they will come back afterward. This is not a story of high ideals and eloquent speaking. It’s a story of demands disguised by lies and then divinely caused violence until Pharoah submits to a greater power.
So we have a series of plagues, demonstrations of God’s power. First Moses turns the Nile and all the water in Egypt into blood. But the Pharoah’s magicians do the same trick and the Pharoah is unimpressed. And after seven days the water is restored, naturally it seems (Exodus 7:25).
Then comes a plague of frogs. Now there’s a shift in the Pharoah’s position. He tells Moses, "Pray to the LORD to take away the frogs from me and my people, and I will let the people go to sacrifice to the LORD." (Exodus 8:8). Moses prays, the frogs die, and then, with the problem solved the Pharoah changes his mind and takes back his promise.
Next comes gnats. And now for the first time the court magicians can’t duplicate the trick and they begin to think this really may be an act of God. But the Pharoah is unconvinced.
Next come flies. And the scheme develops further. For the first three plagues all of the land was affected and everybody suffered. But for the flies and from now own God arranges it that the plagues only come where the Egyptians live.
Pharoah now proposes a bargain. He says, “I’ll let you have your festival but you have to have it here in Egypt.” He distrusts that the people would come back again once they’ve left Egypt. Moses rationalizes his lie. Moses says, “We can’t have our festival in Egypt because we know that our religious practices are offensive to you Egyptians and if any Egyptian saw what we were doing they might be so upset that they would harm us.” The Pharoah agrees that if Moses takes away the flies he can lead the people out of the land “provided you do not go very far away.” he says (Exodus 8:28). Moses prays but as before once the problem is solved the Pharoah changes his mind.
Then comes a disease that kills all the livestock of the Egyptians, but spares the livestock of the Hebrews. Then a plague of festering boils. Then a plague of “the heaviest hail that has ever fallen in Egypt from the day it was founded until now” (Exodus 9:18). Imagine the destruction. Blood and frogs and gnats and flies. Then a livestock killing disease. Then a skin disease. Then a hail that kills animals in the field not already dead of disease and destroys the crops as well. And that’s only plague number seven.
Moses threatens that next he will send a plague of locusts. And now the court officials plead with Pharoah. They say, "How long shall this fellow be a snare to us? Let the people go, so that they may worship the LORD their God; do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” (Exodus 10:7). Pharoah brings Moses back and their bargaining goes to the next step. Pharoah asks, “If I let you go for this festival, who needs to go?” And Moses, says “Everybody, young and old and our livestock, too.” Pharoah who understands that there would be no need for women and children to go to a religious festival answers, “Plainly, you have some evil purpose in mind.” (Exodus 10:10). He’s now willing to grant permission for the Hebrew men to go but not everyone else. Of course, that’s not good enough for Moses so he brings on the locusts.
Any crops not killed by the hail, and any plants that have come up since then are eaten by the locusts. And then when the locusts leave and the Pharoah still refuses Moses brings a plague of darkness covering the land, but not where the Hebrew live, for three entire days.
The Pharoah is willing to concede one final point. “You can go and you can take your women and children with you, but you can’t take your livestock.” By now he realizes that his slaves won’t be coming back from their “festival” but he thinks at least he’ll get to keep their animals. But Moses has an answer that still fits his lie, “Our livestock also must go with us; not a hoof shall be left behind, for we must choose some of them for the worship of the LORD our God, and we will not know what to use to worship the LORD until we arrive there” (Exodus 10:26).
The final plague is the plague of Passover itself. The plagues have ruined Egypt, first the water, then, the animals, then the crops, and now the people. God kills the firstborn child of every Egyptian family, including the Pharoah’s own son while sparing the children of the Israelites who have been warned to mark their doors with the blood of a lamb. “Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his officials and all the Egyptians; and there was a loud cry in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. 31Then he summoned Moses and Aaron in the night, and said, "Rise up, go away from my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD, as you said. 32Take your flocks and your herds, as you said, and be gone.” (Exodus 12:30-32).
The Israelites flee, fearing that Pharoah will change his mind. They can’t even wait for the bread to rise that they take with them. And the Pharoah does change his mind, or rather, in the words of the text, God himself hardens Pharoah’s heart, in order that God can perform an even greater spectacle of power and prove God’s supreme divinity over every other god. The Israelites walk with their old and young and babes in arms and driving their livestock and carrying their possessions. The Eygptian army with chariots and horses charges after them. The Israelites are driven against the Sea. They turn back to face the approaching Egyptians and scream to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (Exodus 14:11). Moses waits to see what God will do. And God performs the signal miracle of the Jewish story referred to again and again in the Hebrew scriptures as the premiere example of what God will do on behalf of God’s people. The sea opens, creating dry ground with walls of water on either side. The Israelites make their escape, and once safe on the opposite shore God closes up the sea again over the heads of the advancing Egyptian army and every horse and rider is drowned.
The story ends with these words, “Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.”
I spoke earlier about three ways that contemporary liberal religious folks interpret this story: through a theological lens of justice and liberation; through a psychological lens of self-abasement and the urge to authentic living; or morally as a cautionary tale of how people who have known slavery should not become oppressors themselves. I should say that a fourth way to read the story is to read it as a literal history and find ways to explain the miracles as natural occurrences. But the lasting power in the story is not in what actually happened or didn’t happen, but in the questions the story makes us wonder about: the nature of God, if God exists at all, the plight of oppressed people, the call to justice, what action is required to wrest justice from an unwilling tyrant, the ways we hold ourselves back from our best selves, the ways we hold others down.
It’s interesting to see how far we have come in our liberal spirituality from the worldview pictured in this story. How at the level of literalness we question every instance of miracle. How at the level of culture we cringe at the idea of slaves and masters, and religious festivals that require animal sacrifices and only the participation of men. How at the level of ethics we wonder about the tactics of lying in negotiations, and the unacceptability of the suffering of innocents even for a greater good. How at the level of theology we reject as abhorrent the notion of a God happily destroying life only to prove his own divinity.
And yet much has not changed. For many people every one of those statements I just made are still firmly held and preached from pulpits. And even for those of us for whom those aspects of the story are strange and long distant, there is still much in the story that amuses us not because of how different the people are but because how like us they are. It’s a good story because we still deal with the same issues and conflicts that these people dealt with. The quickness to doubt that better times are possible. Our preference for an oppressive status quo rather than the risk of something new. The endless number of excuses we can give in our attempt to avoid a divine call to greatness. The love of parents for children. The struggle to make a living from a capricious natural environment. The hardships of labor. The inequality of power and privilege. The mistrust and fear between different groups. The passionate reaction to injustice and the temptation either to act too rashly, or to put off acting too long. The ease with which promises are made and then revoked. The tenancity with which we hold on to good things and bad when they threaten to leave us. Our lust for revenge. Our tentative grasp on happiness and the constant struggle to slip backward into doubt and fear.
As Unitarian Universalists we’ve learned that the important spiritual concern is not how you deal spiritually with those human conflicts and issues but that you deal spiritually with those human conflicts and issues. If you reject the spiritual worldview that the ancient Israelites imagined in order to make sense of their world, and many of us do, you’ve rejected only their answer not the essential spiritual questions. The power of the story is not in telling us what to believe, but in starckly and richly laying out the human experience and asking the question, how do you live in this world? How do you spiritually account for the kinds of experiences these representative people lived through, and your own particular experiences. What does this story teach you, not by giving you answers but by asking the questions you need to answer for yourself?
As you gather this evening or sometime this Passover week for a meal with your friends and family. Take a moment to remind yourself of the holiday. Say something of the story to each other. What scenes do you remember? What parts strike you as affirming or troubling? Place a copy of the Bible on the table and take the time to look up a difficult passage and see what it really says. Then let your discussion go where it will, wherever the story provokes or inspires you, even if the conversation quickly turns, seemingly far away from the story. This is not the kind of story that ever really leaves us. The Passover injunction is to tell the story to our children but practically our culture has made it almost impossible not to. We cannot not have Passover. And you can’t do it wrong. If there were one right way to celebrate Passover we would have mastered it long ago, grown bored with it and given it up. That we still tell and talk about a story from 5000 years ago says the story is bigger than any thinking about it can sum up. The goal is not to learn what it says but what it says to you. And not what it has said for 5000 years but what it says for you now. |
