A Sermon offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church
Lafayette, Indiana
April 8, 2001
by Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Readings

From the Song of Solomon

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For now the winter is past, the rains are over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing has come,
and the song of the dove is heard in our land;

LET THE RIVER RUN (The New Jerusalem) by Carly Simon:

Silver cities rise,
the morning lights
the streets that meet them,
and sirens call them on
with a song.
It's asking for the taking.
Trembling, shaking.
Oh, my heart is aching.
We're coming to the edge,
running on the water,
coming through the fog,
your sons and daughters.
We the great and small
stand on a star
and blaze a trail of desire
through the dark'ning dawn.
It's asking for the taking.
Come run with me now,
the sky is the color of blue
you've never even seen
in the eyes of your lover.
Let the river run,
let all the dreamers
wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem.

And from Psalm 126:

When god restores the exiles to Zion, it will seem like a dream. Our mouths will fill with laughter and our tongues with joyous song. Then those who go forth weeping, carrying bags of seeds, shall come home with shouts of joy, bearing their sheaves.

Last week I talked about the feast we may have here in this church – a feast for the whole person – body, soul, mind, and heart. Often we, Unitarian Universalists are people who seek this place because we’re hungering for that feast and don’t want to settle for tasteless morsels. I keep struggling with nourishment as a religious topic – about what we seek here and what we share here. What are our deepest hungers – the ones which when fed will satisfy and transform?

I was a vegan caterer for a couple of years many years ago. Before that I had worked in a macrobiotic restaurant. So I have long asked -- what is truly both nourishing and delicious? What has just enough complexity of flavor to awaken the senses without overpowering? And, most importantly, what nourishment is it that will energize our beings? What nourishment is it that will give us what we need to live full and deeply?

It is a terrible thing that we live in a culture that creates hungers that cannot be sated – cannot be sated because they are illusions.

This is keenly on my mind right now because this is the first day of Passover and this holiday – so centered on food and the hunger for it – has been an active part of most of my life since early childhood. This year was, for many reasons, not the year for us all to share a Seder, though I would have loved to. It’s true that Sunday morning and Passover seem like they may be odd partners. But let this morning be my invitation that we share a Seder at sundown together next year at this time. This year let me share with you some of the nourishment that is there for us as Unitarian Universalists in this ancient and mindful celebration.

Passover is a feast and a ritual. The food is cooked and served rich with meaning.

It’s is a time to spend with family and friends – it is a ritual of great sharing. It is a time to be mindful of connection and of belonging and to remember that the deepest of life’s lessons are learned in the midst of living – of eating, of singing. It is a celebration held in the home, although it is often shared by congregations together. And it’s centered around children – the seder is a time to continue teaching the children the value of community, to teach the depth of history, to teach the right to ask questions, and above all to teach the difference between imaginary hungers and real ones.

When you gather at the table there is a powerful feeling of connectedness with everyone who is gathering around the world at the same time – or during the same cycle of days. It is an extended sense of community, of remembering who you are because you are connected– it’s not a solitary ritual – it must be shared to be meaningful. Someone once said that a solitary Jew is a contradiction in terms – I think that the same could be said of Unitarian Universalists – we are people of dialogue – we respond to one another.

The Heart of the Seder is remembering – not only remembering an ancient story but remembering and finding connections across miles as well as years, across differences as well as across blood kinship. Connection is the first nourishment on Passover.

As I’m sure that you know, at the Seder table the Haggadah is opened and the Story of the Exodus is told. And you may, also, know that there isn’t one Haggadah – it’s told from many perspectives by many people – I’ve attended vegan Seders where we are mindful of the suffering of animals. I’ve attended lesbian and gay Seders where we’re mindful of those who are oppressed because of their love. I’ve attended feminist Seders where the reminder is not only of the oppression of women but of the leadership of women that has been unsung in the past. Every Seder seems to call forth as much history as it can – the holocaust, stonewall, the silent spring.

The Haggadah – which means narrative – is centered around one of the most powerful stories of all time – one which has sustained oppressed people and inspired freedom movements. It is a story in which generations of people have heard their own freedom calling. So the story is told, and those who are gathered listen to hear their own story in that story and then to write their story into the ongoing narrative of history. The short version, as it is told around the table is this: once we were slaves, but now we are free. But that’s the short version – the long version is considerably more controversial. For it is the story of an angry God who punishes innocents and grants freedom for a blood price. The Hebrew Bible is like any other book – filled with the richness of human experience and open to inquiry. And this is another place where Judaism and Unitarian Universalism meet again and again – for we always have the right and, in fact the responsibility to question and wrestle with the story, to use it as a warning and not as a unexamined celebration. This story is too brutal to celebrate – that God too vengeful and cruel. But we don’t have to honor those acts – we are called to ask questions – to ask ourselves to wrestle, yet again, with good and evil and to see them often and horribly, in the same sweep of action. We are called to ask ourselves how we would do better: there was deliverance and we sit today enjoying the fruits of that deliverance – to ask ourselves how we will do better.

At the Seder four questions are asked by the youngest child who can read, because the Seder is about teaching the children to ask questions. It is less important what the questions are but it is vital that there are questions. Chaim Stern in the Gates of Freedom Haggadah says: "Asking leads to liberation and the right to ask is the primary means to the liberation of mind and soul. The ability to question is a precious gift: this parents must nurture in their children." I like that because I believe that wisdom and critical thinking only grow in the presence of questions. From the questions grow insight. Abraham Heschel said it this way that "two sources of religious thinking are given us: memory and personal insight. We must rely on our memory and we must strive for fresh insight." Passover is equally about these two.

Just so, the flourishing of the community requires a balance of memory and fresh insight. Both are sources of deep power and strength, both can sources of great error and weakness. In our religious education program here we recognize this – for it is the goal of our program not to turn out fresh minds who think alike but to encourage fresh minds who like to think. Coming of age in our tradition is to reach that time when you can ask the tough questions, when you can join the church because you decide to, when you can contribute to the community with your own fresh insight. The fostering of memory and insight are two further nourishments of the Seder. They make the rest of the story one of hope and new life rather than of slavish wandering.

For the ancient children of Israel were given their freedom but found it lying useless in their hands. Freedom is an easy word to use – as Unitarian Universalists – members of a free church and of a free faith -- we use it often and we claim it proudly. However, this word carries so many different possible meanings –

Freedom to choose

Freedom to think

Freedom to love

Freedom to do anything I want

Freedom to buy anything I want

Freedom to breathe

Freedom from harm

From oppression

From coercion

Freedom to choose my work

Freedom to choose my spouse

Freedom to raise a child in safety and health

Freedom

So many different possible uses that all of them – or any but the easiest – can be blurred and lost.

Last week I talked about the freedom that comes to those who are willing to venture forth and to risk. But I also said that the willingness to venture forth is nothing without vision. So it was that for forty years the children of Israel wandered, lost and complaining, in the desert. First they were hungry -- and they cried out against Moses: "Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." Then when they were given food, manna, they alternated hoarded it and then wasted it. They ate manna until they were tired of it. They were free but freedom was a tasteless ration to them. They lacked vision -- they are wandering free in the desert free after generations of crushing oppression and they are whining about the accommodations and the service: no one lives with a story like that because they aspire to wander whining in the desert – but because it is what life does – Desmond Tutu wrote:

Liberation is costly, Even after the lord had delivered the Israelites from Egypt they had to bear the responsibilities and difficulties of freedom. There was starvation and thirst and they kept complaining. They complained that their diet was monotonous. Many of them preferred the days of bondage and the fleshpots of Egypt."

They had lived so long as slaves that the exercise of freedom was too new and unaccustomed. A new generation had to be born that knew freedom. The exercise of freedom can’t be developed rapidly under pressure – like any huge shift it must be cultivated over time. To be nourished by freedom you must understand that it is a meal you make yourself everyday.

Freedom takes practice as well as vision. And the Seder is about the responsible practice of freedom. It’s a hard and long won treasure and we have our own Unitarian Universalist Exodus story, which I retell and celebrate each year with my Seder. The short version is: we have endured oppression but have remained strong.

In the mid sixteenth century the area called Transylvania, which we now call Romania, was home to a great flowering of reformed thought. In 1568 an edict of religious toleration was established there, sponsored by the King, John Sigismund – the only Unitarian King in History. A movement of Unitarians formed and they were able for a short time, to declare that they believed in the wonder of the life of Jesus who was man and not God. Sigismund also ruled Poland for a short time. Unitarianism thrived on both sides. But when Sigismund died and power switched hands in Poland it became harder for the Unitarians. As the Catholic church reasserted itself the Unitarian churches were outlawed. Initially they were offered the deal that by 1660 they could convert to Catholicism, leave the country, or die. For a while the Unitarians attempted to engage the Catholic church in discussion to reach some sort of accord. Somehow that went nowhere. So, some Unitarians did convert and it is said that a few died in conflicts and jails. Around 300 Unitarians headed out of Poland on foot in 1660. The winter journey was harsh. Of all those three hundred only about thirty survived to settle in Transylvania. These were tough and determined people. Although they didn’t emerge into a land of milk and honey they were able to survive hundreds of years of struggle and oppression and the Unitarian Churches endure still in Romania. No mighty hand of God, only the intent will of human being. No miracles or dreams of utopia but a real and faithful passage into a land where the work of freedom could continue down through the ages. Freedom is not the end-product of a single dramatic struggle.

Another nourishment of the Seder is learning and participating in the practice of freedom. True freedom fills the soul – and leaves little room for false hungers.

But the Seder also makes use of hunger. I remember so many Seders when I’d sit hungrily eyeing the eggs on the platter. Even the parsley. What I wouldn’t have given for an extra egg to carry me through – but the hunger itself is part of the learning of the Seder – part of the communion. It is hard as child not to get the message – if they endured slavery can I not endure hunger for a couple of hours? The hunger is shared as much as the food. Perhaps more – for it is said at every Seder – let all who are hungry come and eat, let all who thirst come and drink. The door is left open for the prophet Elijah, who is said to be the herald of redemption and reconciliation, and in these days also there is often a cup for Miriam who lead the people singing into freedom. The seder is a time to celebrate comfort and freedom while remaining aware of all who hunger and are oppressed -- of all who thirst and yearn for freedom. The nourishment of community is expanded to include those who cannot sit down at the table. The Seder is a meal to be shared just as freedom is a gift to be extended.

Finally, after a night of singing and storytelling, after fasting and feasting, after memory and insight everyone says "Next Year in Jerusalem." But what is this place, this place that is claimed to be holy that such violence is embedded into its history?

What is this Jerusalem? I’ve never visited there. I’m sure that some of you have – that you have seen the holy places, have seen the soldiers. What is this Jerusalem?

Today is also Palm Sunday – the day that Jesus is said to have ridden into Jerusalem on an ass to fulfill a prophecy. The people greeted him along the roadsides waving palm leaves. Jerusalem was his prize, too – the city he circled and desired and dreaded. Whether the story is true to the life of Jesus, what is true is that the city has been a prize for generations. Is it the land of milk and honey? Is it the city of freedom? Of earthly power? Carly Simon wrote:

let all the dreamers wake the nation.. Come, the New Jerusalem – it has kindled desires and fed dreams – but it has also sparked nightmares. It has generation after generation cost so much life – it has too often asked for the first born – as it does today.

And so I ask is this a flaw in the Seder? How can we reverence a place over the people working and struggling to live in it? How can we not see our own faces in every others face? It must be false hunger that generates violence over holy ground. The hunger of Passover and the story that is told over and over must serve the purpose of teaching and enlightening and that can only happen when the Seder is fresh and alive – vigorous and rigorous – when the questions run deeper and tougher, when we open the door to the prophet of redemption and reconciliation and see that he is us and no other.

The New Jerusalem can’t be a bone of contention – it can’t be a place on the map with streets and stores – or if it is any place on the map it must be every place -- every sacred inch of earth.

Growing up I believed the Seder to be an open invitation – after all, the story is in our western roots. And I still believe the Seder is and should be an open invitation – may all who are hungry come and eat, may all who thirst come and drink, may all who yearn for freedom find those who will stand with them for freedom. The New Jerusalem can only come to pass when the celebrations of freedom are both nourishing and demanding – when they offer us sustenance and strength and challenge us to use that strength for all.

Unitarian Universalism is the ground we stand together upon – we are diverse – Unitarian Universalist but also Christian, Jewish, Hindu, humanist, Muslim, Buddhist, pagan… many visions and many origins meeting in this place. The Passover that we would share says that the New Jerusalem is a place in each of us and all of us. It is the place where all of our traditions meet, where they find agreement and mutual affirmation, where we find allies for the journey and helpmeets for the labor. That is true holy ground where we seek freedom, peace, and true nourishment for all. Perhaps our Sunday and Passover are not such odd partners…

There are hungers of the body and hungers of the spirit – hunger because people live in suffering and isolation – hunger because people live without vision and healing. We live with hungers of many kinds – and in part it is a hunger inside each of us that calls us here. So let this morning’s open invitation be a prayer also – that you each that we each heed our wise and real hungers and are not tricked by false ones. Let us together prepare the Seder that will mark this as the place where people are truly preparing and feasting on the most profound nourishment and renewal.

Therefore let our hope be that Next Year the New Jerusalem will be here and every place on earth.