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Next Year in a Just World1 Israel Buffardi, Intern Minister 9 April 2017 Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church

We light our chalice, symbol of our Unitarian Universalist values.

But this morning we kindle more than one flame, for our tradition acknowledges that the light of truth and wisdom comes from many sources, and there is always room for more light. In the Jewish tradition, candles like these are lit on Holy days as well as on the sabbath.

The candles are a reminder of the divine spark present in our coming together.

CHALICE LIGHTING by Arthur Waskow

We are the generations that stand between the fires. Behind us is the flame and smoke that rose from Auschwitz and from Hiroshima, from the burning of our Towers in jet fuel lit by rage.

From the torching of our rainforests forests for the sake of hoarded gold.

Before us is the nightmare of a Flood of Fire. The scorching of our planet from a flood of greenhouse gases, or the blazing of our cities in thermonuclear fire, or the glare of gun fire exploding in our children.

It is our task to make from fire not an all-consuming blaze, but the light in which we see each other.

Each of us different, yet all of us connected

We light this fire to see more clearly that the earth, the human race, are not for burning.

We light this fire to see more clearly the rainbow in our many-colored faces.

1 Copyright 2017 by Israel Buffardi. Permission must be requested to reprint for other than personal use. Page 2

OPENING WORDS

Tomorrow at Sundown, the Jewish feast of begins, Passover is often called the festival of liberation, for it tells the story of the deliverance of the Jews from bondage in the narrow place. But this message of freedom is so universally important that it is told and retold every year around the world—for in the words of Rabbi Morris Joseph,

"Passover affirms the great truth that liberty is the inalienable right of every human being."

PRAYER By Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

"So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon their shoulders." Exodus 12:34

You’ll need to travel light. Take what you can carry: a book, a poem, a battered tin cup, your child strapped to your chest, clutching your necklace

So the dough isn’t ready. So your heart isn't ready.

You haven’t said goodbye to the places where you hid as a child, to the friends who aren’t interested in the journey, to the graves you’ve tended.

But if you wait until you feel fully ready you may never take the leap at all and Infinity is calling you forth out of this birth canal and into the future’s wide expanse.

Learn to improvise flat cakes without yeast. Learn to read new alphabets. Wear Hope & Love like a cloak and stride forth with confidence.

You won’t know where you’re going but you have the words of our sages, the songs of our mothers, the inspiration wrapped in your kneading bowl. Page 3

Trust that what you carry will sustain you and take the first step out the door. SERMON

50 years ago this week the Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. spoke these words from the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York:

"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.”

Dr King was talking about the war in Vietnam, but these words ring eerily true this morning. Fifty years later they have lost neither their salience nor their urgency.

“I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.”

You could easily replace Vietnam with Afghanistan or Iraq, and now Syria—-but for that matter, you could just as easily replace it with , or Standing Rock, or Flint. The insanity of constant warfare abroad while constantly ignoring the human needs of those most vulnerable at home cannot be ignored.

In the same speech, MLK condemned militarism, racism, and materialism as the triple threat plaguing American society. Three plagues instead of 10 plaguing us because of the arrogance, and the greed, and the obtuseness of the Pharaoh.

But this morning, I say to you, In every generation a Pharaoh In every generation LIBERATION!

Haggadah, literally means “telling,” and it is essentially the script that is used during the Passover meal, called a seder. In every , there is a line that says

“In each generation, each person is obligated to see herself or himself as though she or he personally came forth from the narrow place, from .”

Passover is the festival of liberation, but it is also a festival of remembrance. But the call in the Haggadah is not simply to remember the story of Exodus (of the Jews escape from bondage), but to fully feel and experience empathy and solidarity with the enslaved. Page 4

It is a reminder that liberation is a collective action, liberation requires us to see and be moved by our dependence on and connection with one another, person to person, nation to nation, generation to generation. By retelling the story every year, it is a reminder that societal transformation is a constant process building upon itself, and that we must be constantly rededicating ourselves to. So while the Passover story reminds us that New Pharaohs arise in every generation, it also reminds us that new movements of liberation do also.

In April of 1968, MLK was planning on joining in a with the family of Rabbi , a prominent Jewish theologian and civil rights activist who marched with King in Selma. King never made it to the seder. Exactly 1 year after MLK gave his Beyond Vietnam speech, he was shot and killed on April 4th, 1968, while in Tennessee supporting a sanitation worker’s strike.

As perhaps many of you recall, MLK’s death resulted in a great black uprising across the country. By sundown on the first night of Passover, the United States army was occupying, in full force, several inner city communities, across the country including one particular neighborhood in Washington DC. Reform Jewish Rabbi, civil rights and anti- war activist, Arthur Waskow was living there at the time.

While he was walking home on the first night of passover he passed by an army unit, he looked up and saw a great machine gun pointed at his block, Rabbi Waskow described his reaction to the guns, he said, “My kishkes, my guts, began to say, this is Pharaoh’s army!”

Rabbi Waskow also said “That experience renewed and transformed my own understanding of the Seder. I felt myself called to write a Freedom Seder that would celebrate the freedom struggles of Black America and of other peoples alongside the Jewish tale of liberation.”

So Waskow wrote a new Passover Haggadah, entitled, the Freedom Seder, it incorporated elements of a traditional Haggadah with passages from Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Allen Ginsberg, Nat Turner, and Henry David Thoreau to name a few. It was likely the first Haggadah that overtly celebrated the collective liberation of not just the Israelites from slavery but all oppressed peoples, in particular .

One year later during Passover, on April 4, 1969, the first anniversary of King’s death, the first freedom seder was held in the basement of Lincoln Congregational Temple, the oldest African American Congregational Church in Washington DC. Approximately 800 people participated including Blacks, Jews, and white Christians.

Rabbi Waskow’s Freedom seder has inspired a whole new generation of Haggadot (plural of Haggadah) that address many forms and intersections of oppression, including movements for women's rights, gay rights, environmental justice, Palestinian rights, as well as black empowerment. In the updated introduction to his freedom seder, Rabbi Waskow has this to say about the ongoing process of liberation today: “ Page 5

“For millennia, from year to year to year to year, the Seder has renewed the lives of families and friends, has welcomed the newborn and accompanied the dying.

Now it is we who renew the Seder, rebirthing the Telling of freedom itself as the Telling rebirths us.”

So in these early days of springtime, as the Earth begins to rebirth itself even amongst the muddy chaos, I thought that I would share a few of the practices from these new generations of freedom seders with you so that we as a community can re-dedicate and renew ourselves to the process of our mission to empower ourselves to share our gifts to build a world of compassion, equality and freedom.

Matzah is eaten on Passover in remembrance of the urgency with which the Israelites fled Egypt, Pharaoh’s army right on their tail. They did not have time to wait for their bread dough to rise, so they took it with them and baked flat cakes in the hot desert sun.

Lift up the Matzah

This is the pressed-down bread of the oppressed that was eaten in the narrow place where the Israelites were enslaved. Let all who are hungry eat, and all who are in need come and celebrate the Passover.

Lift up a piece of Matzah and break it in two. Set a piece aside.

Why do we break this bread in two? Because if we hold on to the whole loaf for ourselves, it remains the bread of oppression. If we break it in order to share it, it becomes the bread of freedom.

In the world today, there are still some who are so pressed-down that they have not even this bread of oppression to eat. There are so many who are hungry that they cannot all come and eat with us today. Therefore we say to them, we set aside this bread as a reminder that we owe you justice and a share of the earth’s fruitfulness, and that we will work to make the sharing real. This year we share in a world of greed and war, but we pledge to work during this coming year so that we can share and celebrate in a world at peace.

Wine is also an important part of the seder meal. It is the fruit of the vine, the fruit of the earth. A reminder to give thanks for the fruits we gather in our lives, but also a call to share those fruits with the world. At a seder four cups of wine are poured to honor four stages on the path of liberation, a reminder that liberation is an ongoing process.

The first cup we pour is the cup of awakening. Page 6

Pour the first cup & Hold it Up

Today we gather around this symbolic seder table to recount the ancient Israelites’ miraculous transformation from slavery to freedom. This story of transformation started with an awakening. When Moses saw the burning bush and accepted that he was called to liberate his people from the narrow place of oppression. Liberation also, begins with an awakening: May this first cup of wine awaken each of us to the injustice that persists in our world today.

May this first cup serve as a reminder to stay informed and to stay vigilant and not turn a blind eye to the injustices happening right in front of us everyday.

What injustices are we awakening to this year—either in our own community or around the world?

The second we pour, is the cup of solidarity.

Pour the Second Cup & Hold it Up

Solidarity is a reminder that liberation is as much about relationships as it is about resistance. We cannot seek liberation alone, and those of us who experience the privilege of the dominant class, certainly cannot strive for liberation without the leadership of the oppressed. Solidarity is a reminder to listen more than we talk, to show up not just as allies, but as co-conspirators. In the words of BLM co-founder Alicia Garva:

“Co-conspiracy is about what we do in action, not just in language. It is about moving through guilt and shame and taking responsibility. Taking responsibility for the power that we hold to transform our conditions.”

With whom would we like to grow in solidarity this year? How can we deepen those relationships?

The third cup we pour is the cup of Action.

Pour the Third Cup & Hold it Up

With the cup of action, we commit to standing up, speaking out and protesting acts of hate. We commit to our belief that change is possible. We commit to keep showing up, knowing that each victory, no matter how small it may seem to us, is a worthy victory. This idea is best expressed in the concept of Dayenu. Dayenu means it would be enough. In relation to the passover story it gives thanks for each step along the process of the liberation of the Israelites. From the departure from Egypt, to the parting of the Red Sea, the sustenance of manna in the desert, to the promised land. Page 7

It calls each step enough, yet at the same time, it calls each step not enough, for it keeps going. Each step in the path towards liberation reveals the next step, the next struggle, and it calls us to action. Dayenu means we celebrate each step toward freedom as if it were enough, then to start out on the next step. Dayenu means we sing each verse as if it were the whole song and then sing the next verse! Even though the work of liberation is never complete, we set aside the time for joy and thanksgiving through the process. Together, we celebrate the struggle.

Before we pour our final cup, let us sing Dayenu together.

Singing Ilu Hotzi-anu Mi-mitzra-yim Da-yeinu

The final cup we will pour today is the cup of freedom.

Pour the Fourth Cup & Hold it Up

When we talk of the passover story, we talk of freedom, of reaching the promised land, Caanan. But we have to rememberer that this was not a short trip down the road to Caanan. In the story Yaweh takes Moses up to the top of the mountain and shows him the promised land, but tells him that he will never get there himself.

On April 3, 1968, MLK referenced this passage from scripture, when he spoke these words:

I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

These were the last words he would ever speak in public. MLK was shot and killed the next day. Like Moses, MLK spent the greater part of his life wandering in the desert trying to get to the promised land, and he predicted that he would never get there. But this morning, I say to you, Dr. King was wrong. Dr King was living the promised land all along.

With every step of every march, arms inked in solidarity, every note of every song, sung in boisterous chorus, every moment of courage spent sitting in or standing up in nonviolent protest, and every impassioned word delivered in heartening speech, MLK and the whole were the living breathing promised land becoming itself. So is it true for us today.

Like MLK, none of us may live to see the end of the racism, materialism, militarism, sexism, or any of the other injustices we face.

But by awakening to the injustice Page 8

By co-conspiring in partnership and solidarity By committing to and celebrating each step in the process By believing in the possibilities of change and liberation

We are building a community that not only transforms lives, but transforms itself into the living breath of the promised land.

The tradition on Passover is to end by saying next year in Jerusalem, next year in the promised land. The promised land is what we are creating through our ongoing commitment to the path of freedom, and justice, and love.

So in the spirit of Passover, the sprit of that commitment I say to you:

In every generation a Pharaoh In every generation LIBERATION!

Next year in a world of freedom! Next Year in a just world!

CLOSING WORDS

The tradition on Passover is to open wide the door for the prophet Elijah who will enter and announce the coming of the messiah, the savior.

Today we open wide our doors to symbolically welcome in those who are excluded, oppressed, and enslaved as an acknowledgement that salvation does not come from one person, but rather salvation in the here and now comes from recognizing the need for collective liberation, that we are not free until we are all free.

We also open our doors as a reminder that instead of waiting for an external prophet to come in, we rather go out into the world, bringing our message of love.

We do not wait for someone or something to come in and save us.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Go out into the world and make it so.