A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church
March 28, 2010
One of the many things to love about Passover is that Jews adapt the re-telling of their liberation story to the oppressions of the times in which they are living. In this way, it becomes more than just a reenactment of an ancient ritual. It becomes a contemporary meaning-making event for those gathered around the Seder table.
Some Jews take time each year to re-write the script for the Seder, which is called the Haggadah, so that it speaks to the freedom issues of the moment, whether personal or public, whether the issues are for Jews alone, for another oppressed community, or for society at large.
For example, my first Seder, in the early 1970’s, was held the weekend of a national demonstration in Washington against the war in Vietnam and the Haggadah related the Passover story to the peace movement. Many Passovers later, some of the Seders held by my congregation in Canton, MA and led by a young member who grew up Jewish and his wife who did not, were focused on the freedom struggle of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people.
And, just last year, I attended a Seder in Boston that brought together Cape Verdean immigrants and Jews, in recognition of the intertwining of their histories. It’s not well known that in the 15th and 16th centuries, some Portuguese Jews fled to the Cape Verde Islands while others were exiled there by the King, and then again between 1850 and 1890, Moroccan Jews escaped their oppressive situation by fleeing to Cape Verde. According to the introduction to Haggadah for the Third Annual Cape Verdean – Jewish Seder, “both waves of Jewish immigrants eventually intermarried with other Cape Verdeans and ceased to exist as separate groups,” but there are Stars of David on old gravestones in Cape Verdean cemeteries and many people there are proud of their Jewish ancestry. Today, in Boston, the Cape Verdean community struggles with lack of opportunity for and violence among their young people, so freedom from these oppressions was featured in the Haggadah.
A Passover Haggadah can also easily be adapted to more personal liberation struggles. As we heard in this morning’s Chalice Dedication, and as most of us have experienced for ourselves in varying degrees, depression is an oppressive state from which we struggle to be liberated. Lingering effects of childhood abuse, combat experiences, rape and other traumas; addictions; as well as internalized racism and homophobia – these are also personal oppressions from which we struggle to be free.
Like the plagues befalling the Hebrew people, it’s never as simple as wishing them away; but there is something liberating in the ritual of dipping your pinkie finger into a glass of wine or grape juice and then flicking the droplet onto the plate as hard as you can. It helps you to keep on moving on, to believe in your heart of hearts, yeah, a change is going to come.
That’s exactly what we heard in Sam Cooke’s 1963 song about his condition as a Black man in America, “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Cooke gave voice to his experience of segregation still all too well known to African Americans at that time, nearly one hundred years after the right to vote was extended beyond just white men to black men too, via the 15th Amendment to the Constitution. It was ratified 140 years ago as of Tuesday. The right to vote had not made segregation go away. His song became a hit among Black people and an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s.
I was born by the river in a little tent
And just like the river, I've been running ever since
It's been a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come
It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die
I don't know what's up there beyond the sky
It's been a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come
I go to the movie, and I go downtown
Somebody keep telling me "Don't hang around"
It's been a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come
Then I go to my brother and I say, "Brother, help me please"
But he winds up knocking me back down on my knees
There've been times that I've thought I couldn't last for long
But now I think I'm able to carry on
It's been a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come
In 2004 when Rolling Stone magazine listed its Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, “A Change Is Gonna Come” was Number 12. They published the story of the song at that time.
“In 1963, Sam Cooke — America’s first great soul singer and one of the most successful pop acts in the nation, with eighteen Top Thirty hits since 1957 — heard a song that profoundly inspired and disturbed him: Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ What struck Cooke was the challenge implicit in Dylan’s anthem. ‘Jeez,’ Cooke mused at the time, ‘a white boy writing a song like that?’
Cooke’s response, ‘A Change Is Gonna Come,’ recorded on January 30th, 1964… was more personal: in its first-person language and the experiences that preceded its creation. On October 8th, 1963, while on tour in the South, Cooke and members of his entourage were arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana, for disturbing the peace after they tried to register at a white motel where they had made a reservation– an incident reflected in the song’s third verse [“he winds up knocking me down on my knees.”] And Cooke’s mourning for his eighteen-month-old son, Vincent, who died that June in a drowning accident, resonates in the final verse: ‘There have been times that I thought/I couldn’t last for long.’”
Rolling Stone continues, “On December 11th, 1964, nearly a year after he recorded the song, Cooke was fatally shot at a Los Angeles motel. Two weeks later, ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ was released as a single — Cooke’s farewell address and final hit.”
So, the Passover Seder can be like that song, it helps you believe that change is possible, we just have to keep on keeping on.
Even when family and friends around the Seder table use the same Haggadah every year, if they are to do justice to the Passover tradition, they pause during the re-telling to ask themselves, “How does this relate – or does it? – to me, to us, to Israel today, to oppressed people in our country or other places in the world, this year?”
True to the tradition, the conversation can be rich with many views and opinions expressed. At its best, Passover becomes a time to re-commit to liberation, whether one’s own personal liberation, that of one’s people, or of other communities. It’s an opportunity to re-commit to helping to make the change that’s gonna come.
A story by the American Jewish writer Noah ben Shea, whose books are in the same genre as Jack Canfield’s Chicken Soup for the Soul, has Jacob the baker in a conversation that has a Passover theme. Now Jacob is a pious, modest, self-effacing baker who writes pithy aphorisms on scraps of paper. By chance, one of his maxims becomes baked inside a loaf of bread and is found by the woman who bought the loaf; she finds wisdom and solace in his words. So, is asked to write more, and soon is known far and wide as a man of spiritual insight.
“Look carefully… and you will see inside each of us is the Pharaoh. And inside every Pharaoh is a slave. And inside every slave is a Moses. We must lead ourselves out of the enslavements we have constructed and called Pharaoh. We must be the Moses in our Egypt. We must be the mountain in our desert. And… we are the border we must cross over to enter the Promised Land.”
Also, Jacob tells his friend Sam, “Don’t be afraid to learn from fear. It teaches us what we are frightened of.”
But I say we can learn more from fear than the rather obvious “what we are frightened of.” Fear can also teach us what we value. Feeling fearful is a reaction to the potential violation of something we value. At a physical level, we value our safety. And at other levels of our awareness, we value other things.
The recent Supreme Court decision that gave to corporations more of the rights of free speech we enjoy as individual people made me fearful, so I had to look at more closely. What exactly did I fear could be the outcomes of that decision? What did my fear teach me about what I value?
Of course, many of you may not have had a fearful reaction to that decision.
But, for me, I feared that the decision would pave the way for our democracy to become less a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” And more a government elected by and for corporations, because now they are allowed to directly contribute to election campaigns, now allowed to pay for advertisements directly endorsing or opposing specific candidates by name, now allowed to do everything but run for office.
Except that now there is a corporation, the Murray Hill Corporation, that IS running for office, in the 8th Congressional District in Maryland. I heard about it on NPR and heard it’s spokesman, it’s “designated human,” speak at the rally organized by our own Jessica Sharp a month or so ago. It’s for real. They’ve registered, and are accepting campaign donations. They are sardonically testing the extent to which corporations have the rights of persons.
A press release on Murray Hill’s website satirically notes, ” Until now corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence peddling to achieve their goals in Washington. But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle man and run for office ourselves.” The Supreme Court decision reminded me that I value the role of individuals in the democratic process. The liberation of corporations had never, ever been a struggle around which I would have thought to write a Passover Hagaddah!
This year, on what freedom struggle would you focus your Passover Hagaddah? If we were to be having a Passover Seder here this week (I hope we will have one next year) how might we adapt the retelling of the ancient Hebrew liberation story to the oppressions of the times in which we are living? We could focus Passover this year on the vitriol in our nation’s public discourse. This isn’t a new oppression for us; it has erupted from time to time in the past. It’s a product of our freedom of speech, which few of us would want to give up. Maybe the vitriol is worse now than in the past, amplified more quickly and more loudly in our electronic media that is concentrated in fewer and fewer outlets. But, wouldn’t liberation from this oppression be a great relief??! Without it, we could actually have a reasonable conversation about matters important to achieving the great promises of our country such as “equality and justice for all.” Without it, we could figure out how to provide quality health care, housing, education, and job opportunity for all.
You know, the last meal of the Rabbi we know as Jesus was a Passover meal, a Seder re-telling the same Exodus story that will be re-told in Jewish homes around the world this week. What did Jesus say about public discourse? Jesus said to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. And who did he say to look out for? Quoting the prophet Isaiah, it was the poor and oppressed.
This year’s Passover, like each one before it, will re-convey a message of hope and recommit the people to making change possible, as with the song:
There’ve been times that I’ve thought I couldn’t last for long
But now I think I’m able to carry on
It’s been a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come.
So may it be. Amen.