Passover as a Spiritual Journey

Derek Leman

Passover. Redemption. Freedom. Exodus.

Experience the first Passover night.

An angel of death. Holy terror.

Blood on the door.

Wailing mothers and dead sons.

Wailing mothers whose sons were saved.

Deadly silence across the land.

Egyptian neighbors come to the door.

“Here, take these gold things,

Go and worship your God,

he has taken our sons.”

Jewish mothers hold their sons.

And they cry.

“Who cried for our sons

enslaved and mistreated?

Cruelty has begotten cruelty,

sin has precipitated death.”

And from this dreadful night

Israel fled.

Witless and afraid.

Would Pharaoh cut them down?

Carts and oxen.

Burdens and animals.

Children and elderly.

A hard journey ahead.

Passover. Redemption. Freedom. Exodus.

Journey.

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The Bible is a book very realistic about life.

When we read the stories, sometimes we sugarcoat them.

Passover is about freedom and redemption.

But there is a lot of pain in it too.

If we are very blessed, and so far we have been, we will not endure suffering like the Israelites or Egyptians did.

But Passover is like life.

It is a journey that goes through pain and mistreatment.

It is a journey that hopes against hope.

Passover is a spiritual journey.

Even Israel’s physical travels suggest a spiritual journey.

Beginning in slavery and despair, the people cry out and find God’s redemption.

Redemption begins with an act of mighty power and God rescuing from death.

Redemption continues with a journey.

It is a hard journey.

It goes through a body of impassable water.

Water to the ancients represented two things: cleansing and the power of death.

The waters were wild, untamable.

Floods could destroy and the ocean was even more to be feared that a river or lake.

For Egypt, the Red Sea was death.

For Israel, the Red Sea was a cleansing.

Israel passed through the waters in the first baptism.

The Torah would later legislate immersion in water as cleansing ritual.

Israel endured a terrifying baptism.

And the horses and chariots of Pharaoh were drowned in the very same water.

And the hardships of the journey were not over after redemption and baptism.

Israel’s journey continued to be hard.

The goal was the Promised Land.

The place God had promised long ago to the Patriarchs.

Israel could see it, could long for it, could taste the milk and honey.

But along the way, the usual happened.

People failed to trust.

People complained of hardship.

People rebelled against authority.

People preferred former comforts in the land of slavery.

People lost sight of the Promised Land.

Their journey was a lot like ours.

Passover is a spiritual journey.

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All of us are on a spiritual journey, even if we don’t want to be.

Even if we think we have arrived, the truth is we’ve only begun.

Finding Yeshua was the beginning.

Following him is the journey.

We have our redemption.

We have our baptism.

But we are not yet in the Promised Land.

Along the way, the usual will happen.

We will fail to trust.

We will complain.

We will hurt.

We will prefer the former comforts of our spiritual slavery.

This year, as we celebrate Passover, I encourage all of us to think of our spiritual journey.

In the Haggadah we read that each generation should think as though God personally led us out of Egypt.

Let me read you a story from one of the Hasidim.

It is a story in which a part of the Haggadah is taken very seriously.

Instead of just reading the Haggadah, in this story you will someone who has personalized it.

You will see someone reflecting deeply on its meaning...

Whenever Rabbi Levi Yitzhak came to that passage in the Haggadah that deals with the four sons, and in it read about the fourth son, about him “who knows not how to ask,” he said, “‘The one who knows not how to ask,’ that is myself, Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev. I do not know how to ask you, Lord of the World, and even if I did know I could not bear to do it. How could I venture to ask you why everything happens as it does, why we are driven from one exile into another, why our foes are allowed to torment us so. But in the Haggadah, the father of him ‘who knows not how to ask’ is told: ‘It is for you to disclose it to him.’ And the Haggadah refers to the scriptures, where it is written: ‘And thou shalt tell thy son.’ And, Lord of the World, am I not your son? I do not beg you to reveal to me the secret of your ways -- I could not bear it! But show me one thing. Show it to me more clearly and more deeply: show me what this, which is happening at this very moment, what it means to me, what it demands of me, what you, Lord of the World, are telling me by way of it. Ah, it is not why I suffer that I wish to know, but only whether I suffer for your sake.”

[From Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim, excerpted in Schocken Passover Haggadah, (New York: Schocken Books, 1996 edition), pg. xx]

If you know the Haggadah’s story of the Four Sons, you know there is a Wise Son, a Simple Son, a Wicked Son, and a Son Who Does Not Know to Ask.

We’d all like to think we are the Wise Son.

And sometimes maybe we are.

But I like how Rabbi Levi Yitzhak identifies with the Son Who Does Not Know to Ask.

Aren’t we all like that son?

What questions are you asking God in your life experience?

What lessons are you learning?

The story is told of some Jews in the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.

Passover came and they had no Matzah.

They had only regular bread.

Jewish law is clear: you do not die to keep one commandment when by living you can keep all the rest of them.

So they had to break the law against leaven.

They had to eat bread.

And they prayed, “Our Father in heaven, behold it is evident and known to thee that is our desire to do thy will and to celebrate the festival of Passover by eating matzah and observing the prohibition of leavened food. But our heart is pained that the enslavement prevents us and we are in danger of our lives. . . . We pray to thee that thou mayest keep us alive and preserve us and redeem us speedily that we may observe thy statutes and do thy will and serve thee with a perfect heart.”

The truth is, we should not expect our lives to be better than theirs.

Following Yeshua does not mean we will have it easy.

Following Yeshua is following the Crucified One.

Tonight is the Eve of his death.

He was crucified in the early afternoon on Passover day, the day after the Seder.

We face a different danger than the Israelites in Egypt or the Jews in Hitler’s camps.

While pain is not absent from our experience, our greater problem is comfort.

There is so much milk and honey, we feel entitled.

We forget too easily about Messiah and the World to Come.

The leeks and onions of Egypt have seduced us too thoroughly.

We could actually imagine for a moment that this is as good as it gets!!

We could be satisfied with entertainment and riches.

We could think that things are not so bad.

Who needs an Exodus?

But that is a temptation too.

That is a kind of suffering.

We have become comfortably numb.

Let me read you a story about slavery and how to pray to God.

This story also comes from WWII.

It is also a story from the concentration camp.

This is about some Jews who struggled to pray, “Thank you God, for not making me a slave.”

In the Kovno ghetto in the early 1940’s an extraordinary scene took place one morning in the makeshift synagogue. The Jews in the ghetto had begun to realize the fate that lay in store for them. They knew that none of them would escape, that the work camps to which they would be transported were in fact factories of death. And at the morning service, the leader of prayer, an old and pious Jew, could finally say the words no longer. He had come to the blessing in which we thank God for not having made us slaves. He turned to the congregation and said: “I cannot say this prayer. How can I thank God for my freedom when I am a prisoner facing death? Only a madman would say this prayer now.”

     Some members of the congregation turned to the rabbi for advice. Could a Jew in the Kovno ghetto pronounce the blessing thanking God for not making him a slave? The rabbi replied very simply: “Heaven forbid that we should abolish the blessing now. Our enemies wish to make us their slaves. But though they control our bodies they do not own our souls. By making this blessing we show that even here we still see ourselves as free men, temporarily in captivity, awaiting God’s redemption.”

[From Jonathan Sacks, Faith in the Future, excerpted in Schocken Passover Haggadah, pg. xxv]

Are we in captivity -- maybe to comfort?

Let’s wake up this Passover and see.

Messiah and the World to Come await us.

We have a journey to take.

And we follow Yeshua all the way there.

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Passover is about a spiritual journey.

Think for a moment about yours.

Where are you on the journey?

What traps have you been caught in?

How do you need God’s rescue?

Do you see how God has been preparing you?

Does God have your attention most of the time?

Do you see life with God’s eyes?

Or does life make you sometimes blind to God?

What about the Promised Land?
What about Messiah?
What about the World to Come?

Do you long for milk and honey?

Are you making the journey?

A poem for Passover by Primo Levi...

Tell me: how is this night different

From all other nights?

How, tell me, is this Passover

Different from all other Passovers?

Light the lamp, open the door wide

So the pilgrim can come in,

Gentile or Jew;

Under the rags perhaps the prophet is concealed.

Let him enter and sit down with us;

Let him listen, drink, sing and celebrate Passover;

Let him consume the bread of affliction,

The Paschal Lamb, sweet mortar and bitter herbs.

This is the night of differences

In which you lean your elbow on the table,

Since the forbidden becomes prescribed,

Evil is translated into good.

We will spend the night recounting

Far-off events full of wonder,

And because of all the wine

The mountains will skip like rams.

Tonight they exchange questions:

The wise, the godless, the simple-minded and the child.

And time reverses its course,

Today flowing back into yesterday.

Like a river enclosed at its mouth.

Each of us has been a slave in Egypt,

Soaked straw and clay with sweat,

And crossed the sea dry-footed.

You too, stranger.

This year in fear and shame,

Next year in virtue and justice.

[Schocken Passover Haggadah, pg. xxviii, “Passover,” by Primo Levi, 1982]