Deliverance

April 20, 2003

"Sing to the Lord, for he has
     triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into
     the sea."

-Exodus 15:21, "The Song of Miriam"

O Spirit of Life and Renewal, we have wintered enough, mourned enough, oppressed ourselves enough. Our souls are too long cold and buried, our dreams all but forgotten, our hopes unheard. We are waiting to rise from the dead.

For the Jews, Passover is the holiday which recalls the miraculous deliverance of the Israelite people from their bondage in Egypt during the Exodus. The memory of that event is captured in its most ancient, and possibly eye-witness, report, the so-called "Song of Miriam" in the biblical book of Exodus, one of the oldest passages in the entire Hebrew Bible:

Sing to the Lord, for he has
     triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into
     the sea.

The Passover festival . . . has two basic messages for modern man. The first is that deliverance from the scourge of bondage and the night of ignorance lies as much in his own hands as in God's. If it is true that God delivered Israel from Egypt "not by the hand of an angel, nor by the hand of a seraph, nor by the hand of any one man sent, but by His own glory and His own self," it is equally true that in the world of men it is by the hands of men that His glory and His being can alone be revealed.

The second message of Passover is that deliverance is continual. "The festival is celebrated," says the Haggadah, in its answer to the "wise son," "because of that which the Lord did for me, when I came forth out of Egypt." And the wise son understands. [from Festivals of the Jewish Year]

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee,; there you will see him, just as he told you." So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. [Mark 16: 5-8]

Whatever happened on that first, long-ago Easter, it is clear that for the followers of Jesus his death was not an ending, but a beginning. It is clear also that his death delivered those followers, if not from their literal deaths, than at least from their bondage to the fear of death. For in spite of their original fear in the face of that awful mystery and emptiness, the disciples went on to spread the message of their master in the world, to keep his words and his memory alive for all time to come.

Indeed, Passover and Easter celebrate deliverance from every kind of bondage. It is no mistake that these two holidays fall at the time of the return of spring, the vernal equinox. Both holidays built on the pagan myths which preceded them, which attempted to explain the rebirth of life in the spring after the long, cold, and deathly bondage of winter.

In both holidays, deliverance from bondage to fear is central. Not only bondage in slavery, and not only the bondage to death, are what is meant, but the fear of our own feelings, the fear of our deepest selves, the fear of sickness, the fear of unpopular ideas, the fear of what others may think of us, the fear of the wonderful and terrible world in which we live and move and have our being, the fear of the Other and of the stranger who dwells among us.

This deliverance, as Theodor Gaster reminds us, is not just once for all time, but continual. The promise of liberation, the promise of resurrection, is for each of us and always. And this deliverance is not just God's responsibility, but our own. It is up to us. God may have given some assistance, but remember that it was the man Moses who led the people out of their cruel bondage in Egypt and up to the threshold of that Promised Land flowing with milk and honey.

We are the masters of our own deliverance. And to what do we wish to be delivered? Well, obviously, to freedom: freedom from oppression, freedom from want, freedom from ignorance, freedom from those fears I have already mentioned. And just as obviously, we seek deliverance to peace, to health, to acceptance of ourselves and others and of our lot in life. We seek deliverance to new life.

Whatever the resurrection was, it is for each and every one of us. God knows that after the long, hard winter we have just passed, and the terrible and anxious times in which we are living, we all could use some resurrecting. We all could use some comfort and assurance, some rest and renewal, and some new life.

For myself, I long for deliverance from my need for perfection, and to be able to accept myself, in the words of that old hymn, "just as I am." I long for deliverance from my own weakness and from my own lack of conviction, from my own skepticism and indecision, and from my own despair.

In a world which has grown increasingly noisy, confusing, and chaotic, we seek to be delivered to a place of quiet and silence. It is one of the reasons we come to this special place, to be delivered from the world and all its demands, at least for a brief time. We come to catch our collective breath, to listen for the still small voice within, to discover God, to get in touch with our own, best selves, to set our priorities straight, to remind ourselves where our true treasure lies, and to give thanks for the life that is ours and for the lives of those we love.

We seek to be delivered from fear to hope, from sickness to health, from hate to love, from doubt to faith, that is, to "trust"--from death to life. We seek to be delivered from all that holds us back from being the people we long to be: the parents we wish to be, the partners we know we can be, the children we want to be, the friends we hope to be.

One of the great pleasures in my life was getting to know the late Unitarian Universalist minister Tracy Pullman shortly before his death in the early 1980's. He once wrote,

No matter how encrusted our lives may become, no matter how beaten into conventional moulds and practices, no matter how indifferent to the spiritual demands of life at its best, yet within each one, we have faith to believe, there dwells the spirit and the power to lay hold on new energies, to define new visions, and to exhibit greater strength.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock