It had been an adventurous weekend, part of a long adventurous journey. I had been in Poland at the start of the week, a quarter century ago and about this time of year, but the pope being Polish at the time, I had concern about the availability of basic services during Holy Week, so I headed south, to what seemed a safer bet, the newly independent Slovak Republic. But Bratislava had its own issues, and a certain exuberance, and by the time Easter Monday arrived, I’d been involved in a Slovak wedding reception and attended a match by the local football team, SK Bratislava, though don’t ask me for details, for they got lost somewhere at that wedding reception.
But Easter was quiet, a time for recovery, and by Monday my South African traveling companion and I were prepared to get back to what sightseeing could be done with most institutions and businesses closed. And so it was that we caught sight of a strange Eastern European tradition, one I have mentioned before, though seeing is not understanding.
There were almost no women on the streets, but tons of boys and young men walking around with what looked like woven rods bedecked with ribbons. It turns out that on Easter Monday, young women are drenched with cold water, struck with these willow whips, which get a new ribbon for every victim, and in return must offer things like coins and colored eggs to those who assault them. The rationale is that this whole ritualized abuse makes women stronger before spring, as if they were cattle being prepared for calving. What it actually does is make girls and women hate Easter, as noted in a 2015 Guardian article by Jana Kasperkevic, who grew up in Slovakia but now lives in New York, safe from this toxic tradition.
Of course, eight days from now, women will still be drenched and whipped in the Slovak Republic, because it is tradition, even if it does nothing to contribute to human thriving, even if it is demeaning and meaningless.
But sometimes things do change. The week after I mentioned in a sermon that the scene in the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean rides in which women are being auctioned off might not be appropriate in the age of Boko Haram and ISIS and actual human trafficking, Disney announced that it would be making changes. This was met with immediate fury by those who love tradition more than they love love, more than they love other people, those who throw around politically correct as an insult, with the composer of the classic “Yo, ho, ho, ho†theme declaring that it is not “Boy Scouts of the Caribbean.†This week, Disney unveiled the new scene, with the infamous red head recast as a female pirate, the plundered goods of the townies being auctioned off. The ride still glamorizes theft, but it is an improvement. Traditions can change, especially when there is profit involved, and if by politically correct you mean tolerant and kind, count me in.
Figuring out which traditions to keep and which to jettison is not easy, is part of the constant dialogue in every form of community, from the choice of hymns to the arrival of a Dollar Store. We can use the measure by which constructive theologians measure systems of belief, their contribution to overall human thriving, but all too often, folks are unable to see beyond themselves, each the center of their own private universe, so that in a world of “me, me, me,†overall thriving is lost. Rarely do we move beyond the self and look at the bigger picture, the common good.
Still at other times, we throw off tradition in meaningless ways, out of spite. The Protestant Reformation is guilty of this, abandoning both traditions and rites that did not contribute to overall thriving, and some that very much did. Among the things we seem to have lost is the overarching thread of salvation history, the retelling of the big story of our faith. This has only become worse in recent decades as we have willingly secularized Mainline Protestantism, the movement to which we belong, to such an extent that rather than the “religionless Christianity†St. Dietrich Bonhoeffer mentions in his prison letters, we have a “Christianity-less religion,†more a collection of civic-minded do-gooders than demanding way of life. But it turns out that an easy feel-good faith doesn’t have enough power to shape our lives, so that it becomes the first tradition that is cast off.
In the more liturgical Christian traditions, even among Protestants like Episcopalians and Lutherans, the church year is marked by two great vigils, the late night services of Christmas Eve and the Saturday night vigil before the Easter dawn. And so, late this Saturday evening, our sisters and brothers at St. Francis will gather and hear the story that starts in Genesis, takes in the Exodus, that formative moment in the creation of the Hebrew faith, and ends with the risen Christ.
On the deeply religious island of Malta, this weaving of the singular acts of Holy Week into the deeper Hebrew story starts on Good Friday, with processions all over the country. The cover of your Order of Service is a photograph from one such procession. It features, or is supposed to feature, Moses in the papyrus basket. It looks to me more like Moses in the laundry basket, and there is no way that thing would float, but Moses himself is plastic, so all is well.
It is worth remembering that before Moses was in the bullrushes, Exodus tells of an act of resistance by Shiphrah and Puah. But let’s rewind, because the Hebrews are in Egypt because Jacob favored Joseph, leading his jealous brothers to contemplate fratricide before agreeing to simply sell him to human traffickers. Strange and miraculous things follow, as is always the case in good and powerful story, and Joseph ends up an official in the Pharaoh’s court, positioned to take in the Hebrew refugees when famine strikes Palestine, for our faith is first and always a tale of refugees and immigrants.
As the years go by, the Egyptians forget that story, forget about Joseph, wise and wonderful counselor who saved not only his own people, but all of Egypt, from famine. A new pharaoh comes to power, a racist who fears that these outsiders from across the border will soon outnumber the Egyptians. Among the cruelties he inflicts is an order that the male children of the Hebrews should be killed, which brings us to Shiphrah and Puah. They are the Hebrew midwives. They are the ones charged with executing the Pharaoh’s orders by executing male infants. The authors of the gospel traditionally attributed to Matthew will take up this theme and weave it into their Nativity narrative as well, working to connect one story to another.
When given the order to commit infanticide, Shiphrah springs into the air with gazelle-like grace, delivering a roundhouse kick that takes out the closest guards, while Puah disarms another, throwing his sword, gleaming death spinning through the air to decapitate the Pharaoh. Or at least that is the Quentin Tarantino version of the story.
In the less dramatic scripture version, the two women nod their heads, pretend to agree, and then go off and disobey.
Because sometimes you have to do what you can where you are. Sometimes revolution starts with refusing to smother babies, with refusing to sit in the back of the bus, with refusing to accept that Tiberius is your real king. Sometimes revolution is small and local, and your part is waving palms and shouting Hosanna as a man filled with courage and love rides into town on a donkey while the forces of Tiberius ride in from another direction.
You don’t have to be the guy on the donkey, the man that will show so much courage, the man who will be broken, the man who will triumph over death itself. In fact, you can’t be that man. You’re not called to be that man. You’re called to be you, to follow that man’s teaching and way of life to the best of your ability, and to change the world starting where you are. The revolution does not start with drop kicking the pharaoh or taking down the mighty Caesar. It starts where you are with what you can do, and then stretching yourself just a bit more every day.
Maybe it is enough for now to wave palm branches or poster board on a little bridge in a small town in Maine. Maybe it is enough for now to say that you don’t follow a deranged despot in some far away city. But our faith does involve something, some growth, some action, some commitment to the Way of the Lord which is the way of the Hebrew prophets which says it matters what you worship and how you act and who you follow. In an age that worships money and race and power and nation and bullies, it matters what you worship. It is our faith that only the Divine Mystery we name as God is truly worthy of worship.
But God is not some transcendent egotist that needs your affirmations. God is love in action and demands action, starting where you are now today. This faith of ours is a journey not a destination, and while we may rest and may slow down as we age, until you see the eternal face of love, there is more to do, faith to deepen, the sick and soul-weary who need to hear the good news, and a world that cries out for justice and decency.
It is not enough to simply avoid doing harm. It is not enough. And it is not our tradition.
I don’t care if you keep every single on of the Ten Commandments, if you carve them in stone and place them in front of every courthouse. The Ten Commandments aren’t enough. They are not enough for the Way of Jesus. They aren’t even enough for the Way of Moses, a way that required pro-active justice for workers, for immigrants, that required care for the most vulnerable. It is not enough to not steal. It matters that you give.
We have to move from what is proscribed to what is prescribed, and that is love, and love starts where you are and moves out and it does not stop.
It is Micah 6:8 in reverse. First you walk humbly. That should be the most natural thing of all, to embrace our vulnerability, our created-ness, yet humility seems to be in short supply. To jettison the mountain of self is to make room for the other, the loving kindness of the prophet. It is to move from right relationship with the divine to right relationship with other creatures. But it is not enough to simply be kind.
He could have been kind in Capernaum. He could have been kind in Galilee. It was justice and love that drove him to Jerusalem, a man struck down before his time by senseless violence.
It wasn’t just kindness that drove Martin to Memphis, or thousands upon thousands to DC and gatherings around the country yesterday. It isn’t kindness that motivates our brother from the Disciples of Christ, the Rev. Dr. William Barber, to the streets and to pulpits and to the halls of power proclaiming a new Poor People’s Campaign, an Amos for our time.
Our story, our tradition, is big and long and complicated, and sometimes it is palm branches in the air, and we start where we are, sandy feet and four fishermen who are open to something new, and we spiral out from there, not spiraling out of control but spiraling out into love and justice. The center does hold if it is a story as powerful as this week’s story, a story of triumphant love.
Love that triumphs over cynicism and weariness and fear. And we are so weary, and we have lost some of our trust and some of our ability to believe. But the Spirit sustains.
So in the words of young people gathered across the nation yesterday, young people still naive enough to believe that loves wins, enough. Enough of the abuse of women in Bratislava and theme park rides and on movie sets and in frat houses and in the office down the street. Enough with children being slaughtered with weapons of war in Florida, or for that matter, in Syria. Enough wringing our hands. Enough with wrapping fear in tradition and forgetting that imagination is a gift from God too. Enough!
So you can’t drop kick the Pharaoh. Neither can I. I can’t even get my leg that high. But I can start where I am, deepening my faith, learning to trust in the Spirit, and moving out in a spiral of love, a reverse Micah in a world where it is not my power that changes anything, but the power of love, Our love and the creative love of the one who called the whole show into being.
What is our tradition? Believers who went out into a dangerous and sometimes hostile world. Pilgrims who got on a boat. Pastors and parishioners arrested on the front lines of civil rights. And a man who enters into Jerusalem on a donkey while palm branches wave in the air, a small resistance.
Start where you are. Just don’t stop there.