Tonight is the first night of Passover, Jewish holy days remembering liberation from slavery. Families and larger communities gather nightly for the Seder. The Seder (order) recalls through story, prayer, questions, food, and song, the preparation for and the trials of escaping slavery. Many Haggadot (the specific books people use and often create to share in the Seder) include prayers of solidarity with people who are suffering oppression today, for one of the great reasons for Passover, as is also true for keeping the Sabbath, is to remember once we were slaves and strangers (for example: Deuteronomy 5:15-15:5).
There is a history of evil during this last week of Lent, what many Christians call Holy Week, and that history was supported by literal, non-contextualized readings of Christian Scriptures for this week. Holy Week is a week historically of Jewish persecution, of blood libel plays, and of continued uncritical reading and pageantry that supports anti-Semitism. I have to stretch my heart and imagination to think of less holy things than when religion is used to persecute, enslave, and violate others.
Therefore, one of the practices I encourage people who are on the Lenten sojourn to do is to really study and appreciate Passover, to know the terrible history as well as the good of Holy Week, and to attend at least one Seder. Many Jewish community centers and many interfaith associations will be hosting public Seders (Sedarim) over the next eight nights. If you’ve never been, take up the invitation and go, risk yourself faithfully to meet your neighbor. If you’re like me, a lover of the Seder from outside Judaism, invite someone who’s never been to one of these community events.
Every religious community retells the story of how it came into being. These are the foundational myths – the stories that hold a truth deep in spirit, even if one cannot prove fact, stories that breathe freshly with every generation. We cannot afford in our world today to permit our foundational myths to be reason to persecute another people. That way lies oppression and greater suffering. We need to find ways to retell and to claim the beautiful differences and diversity of our faiths and stories and cultures, while seeking to appreciate and understand the cultures, stories, and faiths of others. The liturgies (worthy work of the people) during Holy Week, this last week of Lent, are ones where we’re telling the beginning story, a story, too, of freedom and mercy and wonder. If that story is to have any real-life application, we’re the ones through which it will be embodied today; we are the ones who will create the interpretation, the context, the practices.
When we separate ourselves from the responsibilities of history, we separate ourselves from the past and from the future, and we have no means of comprehending the present. It might feel easier to not wrestle with difficult histories and difficult stories; but if we are to live faithfully into that calling for justice, mercy, peace, eco-restoration, and love beyond imagination, we must. We must learn the humility of history, and then do our part to co-create a better history for future generations. Once, we too, were slaves and strangers, for when one of us is bound, none of us are free.
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