DO THE RIGHT THING
A Passover Reflection
James Ishmael Ford
20 April 2008
First Unitarian Society
West Newton, Massachusetts
Text
Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the back side of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.
Exodus 3:1-6
As our time together winds down I find myself thinking a lot about the awesome responsibility that came when you entrusted me with this pulpit. Soon I will return it to you as you begin your search for the next person whom you’ll entrust with this difficult honor. The charge I was given when you elected me your minister, as is at the heart of our tradition’s understanding of the preaching ministry, was to speak as honestly as I possibly could to the issues that touch upon our spiritual lives. The expectation was that I should look deep, reflect long, and then speak. This tradition is called “freedom of the pulpit.”
I feel a frightening responsibility to share the best of what I’ve found within the many things that bring us all to this moment. I’ve come to know you as a community and many of you personally. Your stories and the story of this congregation inform my reflections, and give me focus. Of course there’s also my own history, my upbringing, my formal and informal education, my commitment to spiritual disciplines. Each of these elements comes together at this special moment, informing what comes out of my mouth.
I’m painfully aware how I bring so many shortcomings and foolishnesses into this moment. I can’t help but think of that line in the Zen tradition of how walking such a spiritual way is “one continuous mistake.” Boy, I know what that means. And it is why I take such comfort in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s observation how a sermon might be foolishly preached and wisely heard.
And that points to the second half to this equation. We call that “freedom of the pew.” Our covenant here is not that you believe what I say, fortunately for us all. Only, that you’re willing to listen. Beyond that the responsibility that comes with our freedom is for you, each of you, to weigh, to measure, to reflect. And then to make your own best decision about how what I’ve offered may or may not be useful. In this spirit, it would seem we’re all joined in that one continuous mistake.
It is a journey. What we are engaged in as a spiritual people is a pilgrimage, a sacred journey. The big question, it seems to me, is to where are we going? Last night the seven days of Passover began. Now there’s the story of a sacred journey. I think there’s little in our culture more important than the larger Exodus story, which Passover celebrates. Today, I want to draw your attention to just two aspects of that story, the question of deepest authority, and what we do with it. I suggest doing that may well open us to a sense of what our destination really is.
If you’re feeling your attention is short today, let me telegraph my principal points. I’m going to say that authority is found both within each of us as well as among us. And, that a healthy encounter with this dual insight will give us a moral compass that can inform all our actions. It’s an old theme, I know. But, it is the most important thing I believe I bring to you, my dear, dear friends. And, one more thing. Within this, I suggest, we find our destination. Our journey to the promised land is what we’re about. We are the journey.
I’m confident most all of us are familiar with the Passover story, but just to remind you, let me briefly rehearse its broadest outline. Essentially it is about people moving from bondage to freedom. The Israelite people are held captive in Egypt. From among them a prophet rises up who calls on the pharaoh to let them go and to the people themselves a call to move on to their true destiny, to a promised land.
Now, this story, perhaps, probably, actually almost certainly is not historical. But, you know, that doesn’t matter one bit. The Exodus speaks a profound truth of the human path from bondage, from slavery to freedom, to authentic wisdom. People have been inspired by this story thousands of times. And, I love how it has spiritual meaning and it has political meaning.
I find it fascinating that our spiritual fellow traveler Ben Franklin wanted an image of Israel’s crossing the reed sea on their way to freedom to be stamped on the reverse of the great seal of the United States. Would have worked for me. I’m deeply aware of how this Exodus story has inspired so many people over so many ages, me, included. And how nearly all of us can see something about our own lives within it.
I like how the Biblical story is very humanistic. Moses, stuttering, at turns courageous and foolish, faltering as he was; when the time came stepped up to the plate and did what needed doing. But, there is something more here. He had direction. He wasn’t in fact wandering blind. His constant inspiration was God. God. Everything that follows today is a consideration of what that might mean for us, for you and for me.
Of course for many here the idea of God is at best complicated. A few of us find any reference to deity more than a waste of time. Rather more of us are unsettled as to what God might possibly be. And, I find interesting, and telling about those who find themselves in liberal religious communities; just about all of us chaff at the thought of surrendering our will to some outside authority.
One of the great spiritual movements of the twentieth century is, in my opinion, Alcoholics Anonymous. This movement has transformed many lives, including the lives of many people in this sanctuary. They have twelve steps on their path of recovery. The first, second and third taken together offer a view I feel important to hold up today. The whole of the Exodus story relies upon it. I suggest by analogy the whole of our spiritual lives do, as well.
The first step is an admission how in the most important matters of our lives it turns out we just can’t do it alone. In the twelve steps the word “powerless” is held up. The next two steps assert the need to surrender this burden we all have to something greater than our selves. In language that could make a Unitarian Universalist proud if we think about it, one is called to surrender “to the care of God, as we understood him.” I know most of us would modify that him to include her and it. I would.
We, as a religious people, are fearless upholders of the individual. The first principal of our current attempt to describe what is commonly believed among us is a description of the preciousness of the individual. And that assertion is supported by implicit and explicit assertions about the power of the individual intellect and our ability to work our own way through the most important questions.
Of course, there’s a conundrum here. Even as we uphold the preciousness of the individual, it seems without some sense of some larger, the individual is lost. Lost, as one ancient text would have it, “wandering from dark path to dark path.” Here’s one of the hard lessons I’ve learned in my life, and which I feel compelled to share with you. We seem only to find our compass with a surrender of some sort. As precious as we all are, we can’t do it alone. But surrender to what? And, surrender to what degree? This is one of the burning questions for us as religious liberals. Which brings us back to that passage about the voice calling out from within a burning bush. Who is speaking from within that bush? To whom or what are we being called to surrender?
Actually, in the story, Moses asks that question, himself. Specifically in Exodus 3:13 he wants to know when asked by the Israelites who sent me, what name should I give? And we’re given God’s response in the next verse. In my childhood King James translation it is, “And God said unto Moses, I am that I am: and he said, thus shall thou say until the children of Israel I am hath sent me unto you.”
“I am that I am.” “I am who I am.” The phrase is Ehyeh asher ehyeh, literally “I-shall-be that I-shall-be.” The term Ehyeh, “I am,” or “I will be” or “I shall be” is found forty-three times in the scriptures. And you may notice it’s a bit slippery, the tense shifts. Taken one way it is the fierce reality of now. Taken another it is all about what will be. I would add it is also about what can be. Personally, I’m quite taken with the dynamic quality one can find here. And, I feel, it speaks to a different kind of surrender than mere submission to something bigger and more dangerous than little me.
In this last century a Hindu named Maruti Shivrampant Kambli wrote of his spiritual discipline, given to him by his teacher. When I stumbled upon it, I was really taken aback. “My Guru,” he wrote, “ordered me to attend to the sense ‘I am’ and to give attention to nothing else… I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense ‘I am’.” Following this discipline of constantly contemplating “I am” the young man had a series of spiritual epiphanies, growing ever deeper in wisdom.
Eventually confirmed by his guru, Maruti was given the teaching name, Sri Nisargadatta. And he would spend the rest of his life explicating this experience of I am. He’s also the person who gave that astonishing, at least to me, summation of spiritual insight, “Wisdom says I am nothing. Love says I am everything. Between the two, my life flows.” I first heard that line at our former intern Chris Bell’s installation as minister of our congregation in Santa Rosa. I found it deeply moving and I cited it in a sermon a few months later. Let me repeat it, the wisdom Sri Nisargadatta found in surrendering to the great I am, explicating, I believe, what I am is. Wisdom says I am nothing. Love says I am everything. Between these two, my life flows.
Here, perhaps is the dynamic I am. I think so. Our lives flowing constantly, now wise, now loving, now just one thing after another, foolishness, hurt, longing, joy, now passionately in love with it all. And it’s here, I believe, as we surrender to the dynamic reality that includes each of us as we are, but also calls us to something greater, a larger sense of that I am, that gives us the compass we need to make our way through life.
I’ve never seen a rule-book for human life that wasn’t terribly flawed. But, of them, the best one I’ve found so far is the one written on our human hearts, found in a deep body-knowing of what that “I am” really is, including both our individuality and our complete interconnectedness with each other, in fact, with everything that is.
We seem only to be able to describe this with metaphors. This dynamic experience including each of us taken together is like a gyroscope, the spinning brings us balance, and like a compass, it shows us our way. But most of all it is like a journey from bondage to freedom, a pillar of fire by night and a towering cloud by day, always, always leading us on a journey to freedom.
And that, that all by itself, is the promised land. This I believe, this I confess before you. And, this I leave with you to consider, to weigh, to judge, and if you find it worthy, to help inform your own path.
Amen.
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