HomeThere are times in the year when certain things converge on the calendar; this is one of those times.
Tomorrow evening is the beginning of the Passover festival, the Jewish commemoration of coming out of bondage in Egypt.
Today is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week in the Christian Tradition when Jesus entered Jerusalem on his way to the cross and to resurrection.
And today is April first, or April Fool’s day, the Pagan recognition of the emergent power of the spring season and the emergent power of the “stranger” to act as the Fool, that is, as the wise one in disguise.
(I recognize also that this is a sacred day for another group of people, as it is opening day of the baseball season.)
The Fool is the one, usually the outsider come to visit, who asks the awkward question: “Why do you do it that way?”. The Fool is usually an outsider because the outsider comes along and sees how things are done and, not having been raised with things done in a particular way in this particular place, asks why. It could be someone local, so to speak, who becomes the stranger and asks the strange questions, but it is less likely to be.
The Fool comes along and asks the question, “Why do remain in bondage in Egypt when you could just leave?”.
The Fool rides into Jerusalem to claim his crown, the crown of the kingdom, but with no army. And he asks, “Why do you push aside the leper and the possessed; why do you fail to heed the cries of the poor and the hungry; why do you follow the form of religion but not heed the call to love of that same religion?”.
These are human questions; they are questions for us today. Why do we still do these things? The Fool asks questions that challenge and point to a better reality. And usually, people don’t like the questions and don’t like the people who ask them. They’re Fools, their idealists, they’re unrealistic. And sometimes they are dangerous, and we must do something about them.
And when the Fool does succeed, they are required to keep succeeding until they fail, and then that proves that they were a Fool all along.
That is something of the dynamic that Moses faced in going back into Egypt after years of living in exile. He comes into Egypt and performs miracles to get the people of Israel released from bondage. If you read the story carefully, he first had to show miracles to the Children of Israel to get them to believe him. He asks God how he is going to get people to pay attention to him, and God has him first turn his staff into a snake and then turn his hand first leprous and then clean, and then has him turn water into blood. Moses taught these to Aaron who turned his staff into a snake which ate the staffs turned into snakes of the Pharaoh’s magicians.
Aaron, acting for Moses who was acting for God, later, called down upon Egypt the ten plagues, which were really nasty and which in a different context would be called Black Magic.
So now, if you have been counting, we are up to fourteen miracles.
There were more; There was a pillar of smoke by day and fire by night that led the people, a dark cloud came between Pharaoh’s army and the Children of Israel, the Red Sea parted, the red sea poured back in on Pharaoh’s army, bitter waters were sweetened with a wooden stick, the Glory of the Lord appeared before the people in a cloud, quails lay on the ground for them to pick up, manna lay on the ground for them to pick up, they defeated the army of Amalek when Moses raised his arms.
That brings us up to more than twenty miracles.
All of that and freedom too.
And were the people happy? No. They grumbled. They grumbled after every miracle. Why did you bring us out here, why did we ever leave Egypt, why did you do this to us?
Moses gave them more than twenty miracles and gave them their freedom, and they responded with the equivalent of the line in the old joke, “Yeah, but what have you done for us lately?”.
Not once in the story do they ever say, “If you had only performed one miracle, it would have been enough”. Not once do they say, “You sweetened the waters? That is enough!” Instead, they carp and complain.
How do you think Moses felt when that happened?
How do you think God felt?
How would you feel?
I know how I would feel. What an ungrateful wretched group of people. Why do I bother?
How often do we do that to someone? How often do we grumble and complain when they have performed miracles?
(Oh, I don’t. Me? Never!)
What Moses got over and over again was, “Okay, so you did that, so you performed a miracle and got us food, so you performed a miracle and got us water, now here’s this other problem you haven’t yet solved, so you really are failing”.
How often do we treat our leaders that way, leaders of towns or villages or of organizations?
How often do we treat our loved ones that way? Here is someone, a parent or sibling, a life partner or a child, and if we are honest with ourselves don’t we sometimes, even just in our thoughts, think similar things about them? Okay, so you brought the miracle of love into my life, but you haven’t done this, or you haven’t done that?
How often do we treat life that way? Use whatever name you want, say God or the Goddess or the Cosmos or whatever for you is the creative power that brought you into being, that gave you life and emotions, that gave you the ability to see this beautiful day and to feel the sun or the rain on your skin, or to taste the sweetness of an orange, or to sense the power of creativity or love. How often do you or I say, “Thank you, what you have given me is enough”?
Following their exodus from Egypt the people wandered in the desert for forty years. That was a terrible time. They had much to complain about.
That rootlessness, whether the rootlessness of having no physical place to call home or the rootlessness of having no sense of home inside ourselves in our feelings or in our faith, that is a terrible place to be, and most of us have been there at some point in our lives and most of us are there in some way right now.
And it is easy to grumble or to feel the pain of that place. And that makes it easy to forget the miracles that got us out of an intolerable place and into the desert; that got us into the place of wandering, which is also the place of discovery.
It is the place where we find out who we are.
It is the place where the Children of Israel became a people, where they created or were given their laws, where they entered into covenant with their God, where they forged a nation that was separate and distinct.
The wilderness, the place of uncertainty and disruption, is the place where any nation, including ours, finds out what kind of people it is; in that difficult place, in that hurtful and scary place; that is where we find out who we really are and what we really believe.
And the wilderness is the place where we find out individually what kind of person we are.
Miracles brought us into being. Miracles got us to where we are today, externally and internally. And miracles will keep happening. And because all of the characters in this story are us, because we each sometimes act as Moses or Aaron and sometimes act as the followers of Moses and Aaron, miracles will keep happening for us and we will keep performing miracles for other people.
When you are the one who is being Moses, wouldn’t it be nice, every once in a while, to hear the words, “Thank you, and Dayenu”; and to know that the person who said it really meant it.
For all of us, when we are wandering in the desert not sure where we are going, wouldn’t it be nice, every once in a while, to turn to the people who are leading us and say, “Thank you, and Dayenu”.
Wouldn’t it be nice every once in while, to say to God or to the Goddess or to the Cosmos or to Life, “Thank you, and Dayenu!”?
Wouldn’t it be nice to open ourselves not just to saying that, but to genuinely feeling it and meaning it?
On this day of spring, as the world awakes again, as a sense of community fills this room, as I ponder the many gifts given to me by life and buy those who share my life or love me, can I be open to a vision of all that has been given to me? Can I be open to humble gratitude for these gifts? Can I say, if only for a moment, “If this is all there is, if this is the most life gives to me, if I receive nothing more than what I already have, it is sufficient, it is more than that; it is more than enough”.
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