HomeReading
Was it for this that you came to us, Moses? Was it for this that you filled our heads with hope and dreams?
You told us yours was the voice of God, and that you were his emissary come to lead us to freedom.
You promised us milk and honey, but have given us only meandering hardship.
You promised us freedom, but we know only fear and wandering that goes on forever.
You said you would lead us to the Promised Land, but we have followed you only in limitless plodding.
Was it for this that you took us from our homes?
Was it to wander in the wilderness with no hope of rest or comfort?
Was it for this you came to us, Jesus?
We thought you the Messiah. We stood outside the walls of the city, cheering as you rode in upon your colt.
In front of the Roman legionaries, we laid palm fronds in your path,
hailing you as our king come to bring us our own nation.
The Romans kill rebels, but we stood and waved and welcomed you.
And you, you rode through the city gate, made you way to the Temple and entered to claim the royal crown of David, to bring us our new nation.
And then, after looking around, you left. You left the Temple, left the sacred precinct, left the city.
Did we misunderstand?
Did we risk our lives for nothing?
Was it for this that you came: to bring danger to us and our children?
Did we misunderstand? Or did you mislead?
Was it for this, God, that you sent these men? To fill our heads with hopes and dreams of things that we would never live to see? Was it to trick us, to fool us, to get us to risk our lives for your greater glory?
Was it for this?
Sermon
Good Morning!
Today is Palm Sunday, the Christian celebration commemorating the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. And later this week is Passover, the Jewish festival celebrating the exodus from Egypt. [I hope that if you have not yet signed up for the Seder that will take place here on Friday evening, you will consider doing so.]
Each of these is a story of waiting, of hoping, of belief and joy, and then of disappointment and even anger. All of these emotions focus on the leadership of Moses and of Jesus.
In the Passover story, there is the great suffering of living under the conditions of slavery. I suspect that those of us who have never experienced this institution can never really know the level of indignity, of fear, of suffering that this really entails.
{…}
Then a man named Moses comes along and he has the audacity to say to the Pharaoh of Egypt, one of the most powerful people of that day, that he, Pharaoh, must grant freedom to the Israelites. Moses performs miracles, including the death of the first born as the angel of death passes over the homes of the children of Israel. He achieves their freedom for them; he leads them out of Egypt, performing more miracles along the way. They cross over into freedom and almost immediately begin to complain and begin to say that slavery was better than the desert.
Think about that; they went from hopelessness to distant hope, to real hope, to miracle upon miracle, to freedom, and then to complaining. This is not enough. In a reverse of the words of the Haggadah, it is not dayenu.
Moses does more miracles. Manna from heaven, birds to be picked up for food, he hits a rock and brings forth water; and they are thrilled—and then complain. It is not enough.
After this, because they do not trust in their God and their leaders, they do not enter into the Promised Land when they arrive. As a result, they wander in the desert for forty years. By the time they enter into the Promised Land, all but one of the original emigrants was gone.
I had an interesting reaction to that fact this year. When this congregation purchased this site and moved out of Yonkers, the original plan called for a separate meeting room out back. That was never built because the funding simply did not exist. Here we are thirty-eight years later, and the Sanctuary may be moving towards reality. That is close enough to forty years for us to call it that. And we are not there yet. So in a very minor and mild way, we have known the wandering in the wilderness. How many of the people who were part of the Exodus from Yonkers are still here to see that new Sanctuary?
Thirteen and a half years ago, during my Candidating week, I sat in this room and stated that it was my goal to have that Sanctuary built within ten years. We are a bit behind schedule, but I still have the goal of seeing that Sanctuary in place.
One more comment, this congregation has not had the money to put up the Sanctuary during all of these years. But because of the ongoing generosity of the people who were here, the congregation stayed alive and functioned and served its members well. My dream for this congregation is not just of a Sanctuary; it is of a congregation that can provide ever more services for its members, which can provide ever more service to the broader community. To do that, we must meet our goal for funding our annual budget. This, your pledge, is the manna that keeps us going during the year. Your pledge is the water from the rock that keeps us alive. And I want you to know that neither I nor the leaders of the congregation will be ungrateful for your efforts.
In the Christian story of Palm Sunday, leading to Good Friday and Easter, it is hundreds of years later and now the Jewish people are suffering under the military domination of the Roman Empire. They, too, live in a time of hopes that seem unlikely of fulfillment. They are waiting for someone to come and free them and reestablish the glory of the old kingdom of David and Solomon.
Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey with a crowd of people laying palm fronds in front of him. They call him Messiah. Five days later they call for his death.
The message of the Christian story is that Jesus has come to claim his throne as the Messiah, but not as the Messiah that people were expecting. He is bringing a spiritual, not a national freedom and renewal. This was not enough, and they turned against him.
In each case, the story speaks of the suffering of the people, miracles by God, and disappointment.
What? Is this all there is, just these miracles?
In Trinitarian theology, Jesus is God incarnate. In the Abrahamic faith traditions, God is perfect. God is not just perfect, God is perfection itself, and defines perfection. And so in the Trinitarian view, God himself enters Jerusalem, and even this is not enough.
In both the Passover and Palm Sunday to Good Friday stories, the people saw in someone their salvation. They saw that in Moses and in Jesus. Then, when that person did not perform enough miracles, or did not perform them in the right way, then the people murmured against them, turned against them and then blamed them for everything. These are not just stories about the past; these are stories about human beings in everyday life. These are stories that say something about us, about the fact that though we may be pleased within a particular moment, most of us are never fully satisfied.
Let me say here that in a some ways this unwillingness to be satisfied is a good thing. It has lead people to work for a better world that the one existing in their time. And so it has brought improvements; though it has also wrought terrible damage as people have destroyed what was good or have not seen the consequences that their so called improvements would actually create.
But beyond the creative power of being dissatisfied with what is, there is the question of happiness in life.
What do we demand, you and I, before we are willing to be happy?
What do we demand in our personal relationships?
Think here about parents, about life partners, about children, about friends; what do we demand of them before we are willing to be happy in those relationships? What level of perfection must they achieve before we are satisfied that they have done enough?
What do we demand of our political leaders, of our social leaders, of our business leaders? Gandhi was killed by one of the people whom he had just lead to freedom. Martin Luther King, who was assassinated thirty eight years ago this month, was reviled in his later years by former followers who felt he had become passé, outmoded, irrelevant. How many miracles must our leaders perform each week in order to keep our loyalty or respect, in order to keep us from turning against them and denouncing them? How easy is it for us to cheer people on and then turn on them and become part of the crowd, to blame them for all of our ills, to join in calling for their punishment, even their death?
And if we cannot cope with imperfect people, how then do we cope with imperfect reality?
What do we demand from God, from life, from the Cosmos before we will say, Dayenu, it is enough?
Life itself? The very fact of my life, can I for this say, Dayenu?
Air to breathe?
Food to eat?
Clean water, clothing, shelter? Can I say “Had you only given me these, it would have been sufficient”?
Beauty and art?
Butterflies and hummingbirds and ants and flowers and trees?
How many miracles must life provide us with in order for us to say, it is sufficient?
Of today, for once, and maybe only for this moment, let me say, “Dayenu”; if you had only given me this, just this, it would have been enough.
May our restless spirits ever lead us onward to greater love, greater compassion, greater inclusion and a world, finally, of peace and plenty for all people. But in that process, may we always find that our personal lives are filled with joy and wonder, gratitude and thanksgiving.
Return to
Home
Return to Sermons Index