Kirkepiscatoid

Well, after I finished my "Journey backwards through the Psalms" that started last summer, my next "assignment" was the last third of the book of Isaiah. Many of you know last Lent I worked my way through "The suffering servant" portions of Isaiah. This week I am on chapter 62 and today, verse 8 stuck out for me..."The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies, and foreigners shall not drink the wine for which you have labored;"

I am figuring this verse speaks to when the Jews were slaves in Egypt. So the promise seems to be to me that God will not take away from us that which we need to “eat.”

It begs the question, “What still keeps us in bondage?”

One of the things I miss when my retired pathologist friend M.J., in the days before his dementia started, was he would always have a Passover seder at his house. It would be mostly medical students and residents who were stuck in Columbia to work over Passover and could not go home, and a few of us “goyim” who he thought would understand the meaning of Passover. Of course, I always got stuck being the cook, b/c M.J. couldn’t cook worth a damn. So it was this "barely kosher" passover, cooked by a shiksa. I also liked to have one item on the menu that was "Missouri wild game," so I had to figure out things like if venison was kosher. (It is, and I figured since I always slit the throat when I field dressed it, it was "close enough" for this crowd for a "barely legal Passover.")

But there is a part of the seder where the narrative talked about the Jews being in bondage in the Exodus days. After that reading is supposed to be a time of reflection. Rather than do a silent reflection, M.J., in his usual "I'm a high level liberal and I want you all to think about social justice" mode, made everyone go around the table and talk about “someplace in the world today where people are in bondage.” He would get a lot of very thoughtful answers from his guests. You would get the usual places in the world where there was genocide or other forms of oppression, but you would get some interesting answers sometimes like “homeless people,” or “battered spouses” or whatnot, too. Of course, I could be counted on for the one funny, flip answer before my serious answer, like "I'm in bondage b/c I have to cook for your friggin' seder every year!"

One year, right around Passover, my longtime friend JML left her crazy husband in SC with the kids under cover of darkness, taking literally nothing except all the clothes and stuff that she could jam in the car and her relatives could stick in a horse trailer. There had literally been weeks of planning by her family of the wheres, whens, hows, and whys. Those of us in the know felt like we were on a spy mission. There were things to say, things not to say, appearances to keep.

But when I think back of those days when we would have the Passover seders at MJ's, I can’t help but think of the time that JML called me at M.J.'s, in the middle of his seder, to tell me they had made it safely to her parents' house with the kids. It was truly “a Passover miracle.” I remember at the time I had pulled M.J. away from the table to tell him. He came back to the table, literally BEAMING, and we both sat down and he said, “You know, a little while ago, we did the Four Questions, and the first one translates as “Why is this night different from all other nights?” Well, tonight, right here at this table it is different from all other nights because a family has been brought out of bondage. A friend of ours and her children fled her abusive husband and just now—JUST NOW—arrived safely home in Missouri. I’m not sure I really believe in miracles, but I believe in this one.”

You also have to remember this was in my “lone wolf Christian” days, and God still seemed pretty darn unapproachable and distant to me in a lot of ways. But I definitely believed this was no accident that we got that phone call in the middle of the seder. Sometimes I still think about that night and think, "Why this night...over all other nights."

When I think about the things in my heart that keep me in “bondage” sometimes...my attitudes, my anger, my frustration, my despair...I sometimes think of that night that truly was “different than all other nights” and remind myself that I have seen an Exodus miracle in my own life, and no Exodus is too big for God.