REsources for Living
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The Passover story is a story of freedom. And it’s inspired a lot of people who were seeking freedom, including slaves in the American South. But I wonder if the Passover story is not just a story about how the Jews found their way from slavery to freedom as they escaped across the Red Sea. Maybe it’s also a very personal story about one man, Moses, finding his way to freedom.
Moses, after all, had a very confusing life. He was born to a Jewish mother, who had to abandon him to save his life. But his mother managed to weasel her way in to care for him after Pharaoh’s daughter found him in a basket. So Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s palace as a member of the royal family, but he was also raised by a Jewish woman who was not only a slave, but also his biological mother. Anyone in that situation might feel pretty mixed up about who they are and where their loyalty belongs.
Which is where the moment of liberation comes in. One day the grown Moses saw an overseer beating a slave, and something snapped. In trying to defend the slave, Moses accidentally killed the overseer, and then fled for the hills. He was probably filled with guilt at having taken a life, and terror that he would be punished as a murderer, and grief at leaving his family behind, and fear about what it would be like to live without all the comforts and privileges of life as part of the royal family.
But I’m betting he felt other emotions as well, like pride at having stood up for someone in danger, and relief at having chosen where his loyalty belonged. That, I think is a great moment of freedom—when you discover that you can stand up for what you think is right, even if it costs you a great deal to do so.
Moses lost the privileges of belonging to the royal family—not only the comfort-able bed and delicious food and the ease of having his every need tended to, but also the ability to assume that people would listen to him just because of who he was rather than what he had to say. He lost the ability to just ignore the price that the slaves—his biological family—were paying so that he could live in luxury.
What he got in exchange doesn’t look like such a great deal. He got a job herding sheep and, yes, a wife and the family that came along with her. But he also got something more. He got a calling from God. A burning bush told him to go back to the palace and demand that Pharaoh let his people—God’s people—go.
Which also doesn’t sound like such a great deal, given that returning to the palace could mean being executed for murder. And Moses didn’t really think of himself as a leader. He didn’t want to be in charge, didn’t want to be the one faced with the seemingly impossible task of leading people from slavery to freedom. But freedom and comfort don’t really have much in common. Moses, facing that burning bush, became free to grow into his biggest self. Having lost the power to control others from a position at the top, Moses was free to find the power that was inside him—the power to stand up bravely for what he knew was right.
Before he could lead his people into freedom, Moses had to find the freedom within himself to choose who his people were and what principles he would be loyal to. In the Passover story, Moses never does make it into the Promised Land. But he moves into a land of freedom when he is no longer captive to the corrupt forms of power and privilege that belong to the house of Pharaoh.
The Passover Seder, the celebration of this story of freedom, asks that we tell the story as if it happened to us personally: This is what God did for me when I was captive as a slave in Egypt. What happens if we take seriously the notion that Moses’ story is our story, that we are each called to set aside the benefits that come with living in the house of the oppressor and claim a new freedom? Who would you claim as your people? What things, small or large, might you do to lead folks in the direction of freedom? Which way would you start walking if you were headed toward the Promised Land?
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