I
preached this message March 28, 2010.
Texts:
Exodus 1-15; Hans Christian Andersen, “The Nightingale”
One
of the reasons I like routines is that they allow me to dwell in the illusion
that I know what the day will bring. That illusion in turn furthers the
illusion that I’m in control of my life. There are things we can control, and
there’s far more we can’t. Royalty of our lives, we may expect the birds to
sing when we arrive in the garden.[1]
We might expect that the economy will take notice of our inherent worth and
provide us with a meaningful and decent job. We may even expect social approval
and recognition for how hard we work, how flawless we appear, how much we give
from ourselves. After all, the king and queen are present. We’re in control.
Because if we’re not in control, then what are we? Who are we? Where are we?
Passover
invites us to remember how much of our lives are not within our control. We are
players in a larger society. We are members of families, friendship networks,
workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities. We are limited in our capacities to
predict, control, and defend ourselves from plagues, from hard-heartedness,
from suffering. We find fear and anger and grief showing up – big signs that we
are most definitely not in control. Fear and anger and grief are experiences of
being caught in mitzrayim, in the narrow place.
The
Passover story guides us through this experience of recognizing that, for so
much of our lives, we’re not in control.[2]
We begin, working very hard, enslaved to the myth that if we work hard enough,
we will be seen and rewarded for our meritorious labor. It happens every once
in a while, right? There was Joseph, lifted by Pharaoh out of prison so Joseph
could interpret dreams.[3]
That business with was several generations ago, but that just means we need to
work harder, be more meritorious.
Meanwhile,
Pharaoh is worrying about staying in power. Control is a difficult thing. His
sister’s son, Moses, killed an Egyptian on behalf of the Jewish slaves.[4]
That was showing unsteadiness in Pharaoh’s control. He reached out to try and exert more control, demanding more
work with fewer resources, as the slaves tried to make bricks without straw.[5]
What
are your worries? Where are you trying to stay in control in your life? How are
you trying to make bricks with no straw? ( )
Both
Pharaoh and the Hebrew people are confused. Wasn’t Pharaoh king? Shouldn’t
people just be grateful for the way they were allowed to scrape by? Weren’t the
Hebrew people the most industrious of slaves already? Shouldn’t Pharaoh be
noticing how hard they worked? When our illusion that that we are each and all
of us entirely in control of our lives is shaken, one of the first responses in
the midst of confusion is to try and exert more control. But a more elaborate
cage does not free the nightingales.
There
comes a time when the illusion of being in control is shattered, when the kings
and queens are aware of the bonds and bounds of their rule, when we can endure
no more. Ten plagues were required to take Pharaoh to bottom, to recognize that
he wasn’t in control, and it was time for him to enter the unknown.[6]
Ten plagues were needed to bring the slaves to the place where the fearful
unknown looked better than trying to stick it out in Egypt. To recognize the
cage both Pharaoh and the Hebrew people were living inside, they faced thirst
(blood), being squeezed out of their place (frogs), becoming the food for
parasites (lice), hounded by tiny nips and insults (flies), lost in the stench
and decay of abundance (livestock plague), disease (boils), beatings (hail),
hunger (locusts), isolation (darkness), and loss of love (death). These ten
plagues are with us still and are still what draw people out of the illusion of
control and into a willingness to venture into the unknown. Being thirsty,
being squeezed, being eaten alive, suffering tiny bites and insults,
overwhelmed by the abundance of lives, experience disease, taking beatings,
hunger, isolation, and the loss of love show us over and over that we are not
truly in control of much of our lives.
The
release from mitzrayim, from being caught in the narrow place, is openness. It
is a place of not knowing. Who here is more comfortable when they know what’s
happening or to be expected? One of the ways Unitarian Universalists know
ourselves is that we value knowing very, very highly. Knowing and that need to
be in the know is like leavening – it can be exciting, it can puff us up. But
have you ever had one of those days where you can’t take in one more piece of
knowing, you’re just full up to your eyeballs with information? And then not
knowing becomes relief? And then there are those times when the unexpected and
unknown is exciting, delightful, wonderful! Think about seeing a movie or a
play you’re surprised to love, or trying cooking a new dish and thinking “this
is the best thing I’ve ever tasted!” or meeting someone you didn’t know and
really hitting it off so that you’re just yearning for the next time you can
see them. Making space for the unknown can be making space for the wonderful.
It isn’t always bad, this not knowing, this not being in control. Pursuing a
ritual time of not knowing invites us to clean out all the sense of possibility
that has become full of the leaven of knowing. We change the Haggadah – the way
we retell the Passover story at the special meals, the Seder -- every year and
leave the door open to Elijah and Miriam and change so that even in the midst
of these rituals, the unknown may enter, rejoice, and come in. We travel from
mitzrayim (narrowness) to openness (unknowing).
The
ten plagues are just a ritual number, something to remind us all that we need
both hands full of evidence that we our illusion of control is just that, an
illusion, before we surrender to the unknown. Then there’s the moment of
surrender, and true to how we have lived, Pharaoh reconsiders and tries to
re-exert control, pursuing the Hebrew people.[7]
His failure to stop resulted in his death. The Hebrew people reached the great
sea and hesitated to cross, to enter the true unknown, but caught between a
re-exertion of control and the unknown, remembering what they had endured, they
crossed the sea.
When
we’re in the midst of going into the unknown, our conditioning can be that we
have to try and re-exert control. The cage door is the most constricted point
in the cage. Coming through that door is the narrowest place of all, the time
of greatest fear, anger, and grief. Is the unknown really worth it? What does
freedom really mean to us when we’re nearly caught, pressed in from all sides,
by this grief, anger, and fear? We all have different spiritual practices or
stories or ways of coping with passing through the cage door, but one of my
favorites is a Taoist teaching story I encountered via the teachings of Alan
Watts, who retells a tale of Chaung-tzu.
There’s
this seeker of wisdom traveling out and about in the world, and finds herself
near white water rapids on the river. At the top of the rapids, she sees an old
man roll off the bank into the river, and she’s very afraid, very worried for
this old man. She races down the bank of the river to help fish the old man
out. But before the seeker can reach him, he jumps out of the river and hustles
back up the riverbank. When she reaches him, she exclaims in amazement at how
he survived the rapids and the rushing river and the rocks. How did he do it,
she asks. He shrugs his shoulders and says, “There wasn’t any trick. I just
went in with a swirl and out with a whirl, becoming like the water.”[8]
When
we’re too full of the illusion of control and too full of the leaven of
knowing, our hearts harden, the way becomes narrower, as we encounter again and
again the limitations to our control, the limitations to our knowing. When we
throw ourselves with a swirl and whirl in and out of the waters of life, we
throw our whole selves into the unknown, and we accept as sufficient, as
dayeinu, where we are carried, what there is in the day. The Hebrew people
threw themselves out of the known and into the unknown. They opened the gilded
cage and released the nightingales to sing.
And
sing the people do, on the other shore.[9]
They don’t know how long they’ll be in the wilderness. They don’t know how they
will live. They don’t know how they will die. They don’t know. But in that
moment, they know that something’s changed, that the cage door is open. In that
moment, Miriam raises her tambourine and starts to beat a rhythm. In that
moment, Miriam sings her gratitude for that moment. And the people join her.
Tomorrow is unknown. Yesterday is behind them. Today, they are and that is
enough, that is dayeinu, sufficient. May it be so for us. Amen.
[1] Hans Christian Andersen (1844) “The Nightingale” http://hca.gilead.org.il/nighting.html
[2] The Passover story covers Exodus 1-15.
[8] “A Teaching Story from Taoism: Way Beyond Seeking by Alan Watts” Spirituality & Practice. http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/excerpts.php?id=13337
