The Messy Liberation

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost, September 6, 2020 by Daniela Lee, Postulant for Holy Orders.

The sun was getting lower in the horizon, the day was close to ending. All the animal sounds present in the atmosphere for the last four days had now disappeared. The men were coming out of their homes and painting their doors red. With blood. Then the smell of roasted meat was rising in the air. This was the day before the promised liberation of the people of Israel from their slavery in the land of Egypt. But it was also a time of anticipated horror, because Moses and possibly all the rest of the people of Israel knew that that night, God and the angel of death would come down and take away all the first borns of their oppressors. How would it be to have endured slavery and hard labour and to know that finally it was going to end? That freedom was close. How would it be to know that freedom would still come at the expense of every firstborn child and animal in the land? That the night that could have been one of celebration and anticipation is also the night that the angel of death is roaming the streets, watching for the doors that do not have the sacrificial blood? How would it be the next day to walk amid the devastation and grief towards freedom?

We all know how the story goes: the freedom march out of Egypt does not have a Disney fairy tale ending. The pharaoh wants his revenge, he lost too much, personally and financially. One can not build an empire without exploiting people, and who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to blame others for when things go wrong? We know from the text that it was God that hardened the Pharaoh's heart, but we also know from history that no one has given up their slaves and the benefits of free labour without a fight. But he loses even more in the sea while chasing Moses and the people. And yet, there's no happily ever after for the people of Israel. Forty years they wander through the desert, and it's far from idyllic. There's many low moments in those years, but they also receive the Torah, the great instruction, one of the great founding documents even for us.

Somehow it all starts here, in the story of the first Passover, when God starts giving them instructions on how to ritualize. The very beginning of organized religion. Out of the darkness and suffering of slavery and bondage comes this instruction on how to share a meal with your family in anticipation of God's justice. It is very possible that this was exactly the ritual meal that Jesus shared with the apostles on the night before he was killed. Freedom would be the result of both those events, although perhaps not in the shape we would expect. The people of Israel did not have a triumphant exit followed by an easy and convenient relocation to a place of milk and honey. Jesus also didn't not bring about the political revolution some of his disciples were geared for, with a quick overthrow of government and an instant realization of the kingdom of God here on earth. The meaning of Jesus' sacrifice is more akin to wandering through the desert for forty years. Although many Christian denominations speak of instant conversion once we surrender our lives to Jesus, psychology tells us that real change comes with a practice of habits and it can only come over time. Maybe we don't need forty years, but to know God and to know Jesus we need to search. We need to wander the landscape of the Bible and learn about what God is telling us each time.

My Bible professor talks about reading the Bible as tilling soil. She says: "turn it over and over, everything is in it". We need to take our time to search for meaning and we can only do that with hard work and dedication. David Bentley Hart talks about the difference between knowing about God and knowing God. Knowing about God is being able to make positive affirmations about God. It means knowing what the Scriptures and other sources say about God. But knowing God personally is different. He explains that “the intimacy of knowledge defeats conception” And his example for this is quite simple. When you first meet your spouse and you speak to your friends about them, you are able to tell your friends everything about them, all of their attributes. Once you have spent twenty years with your spouse, it is much harder to find a descriptor for them because you know too much. The time and the experiences shared have painted such a complex picture that it is impossible to reduce them to a few descriptive sentences. It is similar with God. The time we spend wandering the landscape of the Scriptures and the time we spend in prayer give us an intimate knowledge of God that we could never transmit to someone else. It is only for us to have and rejoice in. Any relationship, especially a good relationship, takes hard work. Mass media shows us romantic movies where people just meet and instantly click and then effortlessly ease into a life together where they only argue about how to squeeze toothpaste out of the tube. But for us, who live real lives we know that is not a realistic depiction of life together with other people. Whether it is a close friendship, a romantic relationship or even parenting, for a relationship to be good and fulfilling, you need to work at it. You need to spend time and to intentionally search for the other, for who that person is beneath the trappings of societal requirements.

I believe it is the same with God. As the Bible was written by people but inspired by God, we still need to search for God beneath the trappings of the human minds that facilitate that knowledge of God. We also need to make space for God to talk to us directly now. For that we need to give God our full attention, even if it is for a few minutes every day. We read the Bible and we need to make space and time for those ideas to be internalized, for them to be filtered through who we are as people.

Nine plagues had passed without freedom coming to them and all of a sudden God comes with these weird instructions on how to eat an animal. These people knew how to cook, they knew how to eat. And yet, when they were instructed how to proceed, even if the instruction came by means of the Egyptian raised stranger that was acting as their leader, they did it. They did the weird thing, they painted their doors with blood, they ate while holding a staff, although they most likely would not have been able to imagine what the ritual was for and what it would serve. And as any ritual, it is not something we must do for God, it is something we do for ourselves. We participate in the ritual because that is how we remember. God was giving them a way to remember. The Jewish people even today sit down at their Seder meals for Passover and they remember how they were liberated. How their bondage ended.

Similarly, we come to the altar to receive the broken bread and to share the cup of wine because we also remember a different ending of bondage, a different liberation. These rituals also serve to remind us who we are. Only the Jewish people received the instruction to paint their doors and every single one of them did it. Even Aaron. Even Moses. No one relied on the fact that God would know who they are so they didn't need to do it. No, everyone painted their doors red. Similarly, as Christians, we participate in our rituals to remember who we are and who we belong to. We hold out our hands to receive the body and the blood and we remember again and again who we are, who we choose to be by participating in this rite. And it is a choice that we make. We choose to be Christians, we choose to be Episcopalians and to remember every week that we were liberated, and that liberation might inevitably come amidst death.

We live today in times of different liberation. The Black community is once again trying to find liberation from the oppressive shackles of a society that was built on their exploitation. There has been so much death and so many cries of lament for a world that refuses their freedom. It is difficult to see clearly when we are in the middle of the storm. Perhaps many Egyptians felt righteous in condemning the people of Israel that had borrowed all of their silver and gold and then made their way out of the country with all those possessions. Perhaps many Egyptians felt they were right in chasing after them after losing not only their silver and gold, but also their first born child and animal. The liberation of the people of Israel was a messy affair followed by an even messier affair in the desert. That we ask today that the transition to the full liberation of our black siblings is a neat and simple affair is not humanly possible. It is possible for us to choose a different way than the Egyptians and later the Romans. It is possible for us to choose right this time.

"If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." 1 John 3:17-18