Passover Lessons: Celebrating Freedom From and Freedom For

Did any of you ever try to run away from home when you were a kid? I mean the kind of unserious attempts we make when we mostly have stable home lives but are mad about being grounded or not being able to eat a second cookie and are generally learning how to navigate this tricky business of being thinking, feeling individuals. We pack barbies and hot wheels and some mismatched socks into a school backpack and walk down to the end of the driveway trying to escape the confines of childhood.

Often, when these attempts at childhood rebellion are discovered, an adult will ask, “where were you planning on going anyway?” Some kids may have elaborate plans in mind, but often that part is an afterthought. Our child brains and tender child hearts are mostly focused on what we want to get away from—chores and rules and curfews.

Our early attempts at something like liberation are often about freedom from. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s an important step, but then we’re left standing, literally or metaphorically, at the end of the driveway or cul de sac, wondering which direction to turn next.

This coming Wednesday marks the beginning of Passover, the Jewish observance that celebrates the Israelites liberation from slavery in Egypt. What I love about this story from the Hebrew Bible is that it reminds us that freedom from is only one step on the road to true liberation. The book of Exodus doesn’t end with the miraculous and climactic parting of the Red Sea, like some blockbuster movie. It asks us to grapple with the difficult, messy questions of what comes after. Where are the Israelites going, how do they get there, and how do they stay faithful during the journey?

The story tells us the Jewish people aren’t doing a particularly good job of answering these questions, at least at first. They are worshipping idols and treating one another poorly and struggling to figure out how to navigate this newfound freedom. That’s when God gives them the Ten Commandments—not as a punishment but as a gift. The Ten Commandments are a covenant, a shared expression of how the Israelites want to behave in order to be faithful to their God and to one another. Because it turns out true freedom is actually pretty hard in practice. Maintaining freedom and flourishing for all, not just for some, requires an ethic of communal care; and an ethic of communal care requires some ground rules about how to treat one another and some mechanism of accountability when we fall short. The book of exodus reminds us that none of us are free until all of us are free, and that’s not possible as long as we’re harming and killing and coveting.

The Exodus story isn’t only a story of freedom from, but also freedom for—freedom for relationships, freedom for community, freedom for mutual flourishing. True liberation requires attention to both.

During our own era of economic inequality, war, and oppression, I know it can be difficult to imagine that next step. But if we don’t, if we stay focused only on freedom from, we run the risk of turning around at the end of the driveway and sulking back to our rooms with our backpacks. We run the risk of not actually experiencing liberation at all. We need to know what it is we’re running towards, not just what we’re running away from. So my invitation this Passover, is to ask what comes next after the Exodus. What is possible when we break free from barriers, from unjust social structures, from harmful ways of thinking or constraints placed on our hearts and imaginations? What do you want to be free to do? How do you want to be free to be? Who do you want there alongside you? What work needs to happen to make that a reality? What covenants and accountability structures need to be in place to help us all get there together?

May part of our liberatory work involve formulating an answer to that gently chastising, parental question “where exactly were you planning on going anyway?”

Chag Sameach to all of the Jewish members of our community celebrating this coming week!

In faith,
Rev. Danielle