Long ago many nations came together after years of brutal tariff and military wars. A lot of people had suffered and died. So the leaders of these nations decided to create a new way for their countries to be friends. Instead of trying to get the best deal possible for themselves, they made a plan based on ancient wisdom that what’s good for us is also good for our friends and neighbors. We will not automatically be better off if our neighbors are worse off.
The plan these nations made was not perfect; borders were drawn that proved to be unfair, greed and racism and xenophobia still led to violent conflict and suffering. But huge portions of the world did not go to war with one another again in the horrific ways they had before. And this relative peace allowed the countries that entered into relationship with one another to rebuild, and many of their people to prosper. This prosperity led to incredible advances in science and medicine, infrastructure and education, creativity and the arts.
Generations later, a new ruler came into power in the United States who did not understand friendship or know the old wisdom. He believed that if neighboring countries were doing well, it must mean they were cheating us. And though people had migrated to the United States and helped build prosperity for generations, he feared they’d threaten the power of people with white skin and money like his own. So he commanded his ICE agents to hunt down migrants without certain papers and enslave them in for-profit detention centers. And then he broke the agreement made by leaders all those years ago and began a tariff war with countries I’m no longer sure think of us as friends.
The story of the Exodus may be thousands of years old, but in some ways it’s as relevant as if it had been written yesterday. The rich still risk the lives and well-being of others for the sake of growing yet more rich. Too many parents today must take excruciating risks to try and keep their children alive, just like Jochebed. The well-being of entire nations of people can be undone by the fear and greed of people with too much power. And like the people who wandered in the wilderness after fleeing Egypt, freedom requires commitment, and a willingness to risk the unknown and be changed along the way.
This is a time rich in holidays and holy days in our world. Passover began last night, and today our Christian friends and neighbors celebrate Palm Sunday. It’s the day in the Christian calendar that congregations remember Jesus’s entrance into the city of Jerusalem. It, too, is a day about risk and change.
Palm Sunday was the beginning of the end for Jesus. He’d left carpentry, the trade of his father, to become a preacher, giving hope to the poor and oppressed whom Rome exploited. His ministry led him to ask dangerous questions of people with power who saw him and his followers as political threats. And like so many people today who resonate deeply with the teachings of Jesus but don’t trust institutional religion, Jesus couldn’t accept the ways some Temple leaders had their hands in Rome’s pockets, enriching themselves while ignoring the plight of the poor.
The ritual of the Seder dinner hadn’t even been invented yet, so like most other Jews back then Jesus traveled to Jerusalem so he could be near the Temple for Passover. Meanwhile, the governor of Judea also entered Jerusalem right before Passover, to remind the Jews that though their god may have delivered them from bondage in Egypt generations ago, it was Rome who ruled them now. The embodiment of the pax Romana, the peace of Rome, the governor rode in on horseback accompanied by soldiers to the forced cheers of those at the city’s west gate.
So when Jesus entered the city on a measly donkey, when the people cheered him waving palm leaves, the symbolism was crystal clear. He was offering his people a different kind of peace, an anti-imperial kind of leadership. Jesus was committed to the fair and just world that prophets in the Jewish tradition had called the people to build in every age. This commitment led him to risk drawing the ire of the Empire. In the end he didn’t change course, he didn’t back down, even to the point of death.
I’ve heard these stories many times, been to Seders and Holy week services where they’ve been told and retold. They’re powerful stories of the kind of risk and change that comes with freedom and commitment. But what do these stories mean for us, some of us Jewish, some of us Christian, some of us neither?
Part of the power of these stories is the way they help us notice the sacred stories all around us, stories of people facing their own Pharaohs, challenging their own Empires. Stories of people whose lives are just as holy as those in any sacred text. People whose lives bring about change, freedom, and justice in the here and the now.
I think of the federal workers unions who are fighting tooth and nail in the courts to try and undo the damage done by DOGE. I think of the people providing temporary living space to trans and non-binary folx fleeing red states in search of more safety and freedom in blue states like Maryland. I think of the immigration lawyers who continue to represent clients targeted by ICE even after receiving threats from the government. I think of the teachers and principals who refuse to allow ICE to enter their school’s property in order to protect undocumented children inside.
And I think of people like acclaimed author and professor, Jason Stanley. Earlier this month, Dr. Stanley announced he will be leaving the United States and his position at Yale to live and teach in Toronto. An expert on fascism, Dr. Stanley’s decision to go was spurred by what he describes as the deteriorating political situation in this country. He’s moving out of the US to protect his children from the threat of growing up in an authoritarian state, but he also sees his move as one into Canada where the Musk school is building a program to oppose what he calls the “international struggle against democracy.” “I don’t see it as fleeing at all” Dr. Stanley told the Guardian. “I see it as joining Canada, which is a target of Trump, just as Yale is a target of Trump.”
So many people are suffering in this country and around the world right now. So many are crying out for deliverance, for someone somewhere to set them free. I believe deeply in the power of prayer, but not in the way many people do. I am moved by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s teaching that “Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.”
Similarly, I’m moved by my colleague, the Rev. Nancy MacDonald Ladd, who wrote a book a few years ago called After the Good News about moving beyond mere optimistic religion as people of liberal faith. She writes:
A universalist God for a tragic era is not a gauzy, hymn-singing force of personal devotion that draws us endlessly toward itself, but a fierce and compelling power that grips us by the collar amid our rebellious descent and calls us to choose the will to mutuality all over again, even when that choice is so risky that it could utterly remake us.
The will to mutuality, also known as the ancient wisdom that what’s good for us is also good for our friends and neighbors.
My prayer for all of us today is that we find the strength to choose that wisdom,
That we be willing to be shaped by the values that shape us,
That we continue to insist on love and justice over and against greed and tyranny.
Even when it’s risky, even when it might cost us everything.
My prayer is that we all find the courage to stand our ground and not back down, even when facing a king with an army at his back and all we have in our hand is a shepherd’s staff.
As new life and new beauty grow up all around us this spring,
I pray that our commitment to freedom, truth, and justice will continue to grow within and among us.
May it be so. Amen.