For YOU or for Them?

"I do this because of what the Lord did for me..." Exodus 13:8

For YOU or for Them?
By Rev. William Dohle

I am a learner.  I love it.  When my kids complain about school, I just smile at them.  I love to learn new things.  It's why I love what I do.  As a pastor I am constantly learning, constantly trying to understand my world.

I study with a group of Methodists down the street to learn more about how they see the world.  I hope to one day study with a rabbi and others of different faiths to understand the world from their point of view.  I love to learn!

But despite all my learning I know... there are some things I will never understand.

I will never understand how it is to go hungry day after day.  I have enough to eat.
I will never understand what it's like to see my baby starve to death.  Or watch a relative die from AIDS.
I will never understand the work it took to recover from Katrina.  Or from the earthquake in Haiti.
I will never understand living in a house as big as my garage with my entire family surrounding me.
I will never understand gathering firewood each day and praying its enough to keep warm.

Despite how much I learn, the one thing I you can't learn through a book is empathy.  You can learn sympathy, that is learning to feel sorry for the situation someone else is in.  But to learn empathy requires something more.

Maybe that is why God, as Moses is leading his people out of Egypt, says this:

"In days to come, when your son asks you 'What does this mean?' say to him, 'With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  When Pharaoh refused to let us go, the Lord killed every firstborn in Egypt, both man and animal.  This is why I sacrifice to the Lord the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons.  And it will be like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead that the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his mighty hand." (Ex. 13:14-16)

These words, spoken by Moses, were not just spoken to the people leaving Egypt.  They were spoken and written for people who had long left.  They were spoken that they might have empathy for others.  These things happened to THEM!  Not just to their ancestors.  But to THEM.

That is the reason, Moses says, that we sacrifice the first-born and why we redeem our first-born sons.  Because God spared our firstborns at Passover, we redeem our firstborns even today.

Empathic understanding, the ability to understand what someone else is going through, comes only by experience.  When you go through what others went through, you gain empathy.  You understand and can relate to their experience.  In commanding his people to tell these things happened to them, God is commanding them to be empathic.  He's commanding them to remember that is was FOR THEM that all of this happened.
In Christian churches today, we celebrate this empathy.  At communion we hear, "Body of Christ, given FOR YOU."  Those two words "FOR YOU" mean that you (and I) are a part of this meal.  We sit with the disciples that night each and every time we eat and drink at the Lord's table.  We are the reason for Christ's suffering.  That your sin and pain(and mine) put Christ on the cross just as much as anyone else's.  It wasn't the disciples' failure...it was ours!

And because this meal is given FOR YOU...because Jews remember that God brought THEM out of slavery in Egypt and not just their ancestors, now we can have empathy, even for those we don't understand.  We can understand because our ancestors have gone through what they've gone through and we know how it feels.

We can say...
"We might not know what it means to go hungry day after day...but we know emptiness just the same and we can help fill that emptiness."
"We may not know what it means to have our home taken away, but we know the feeling of being homeless and we can find you a new home."
"We may not know your pain...but we know the one who bears all pain.  And his death was for you...as it was for me."

May you grow in empathy for one another as you experience anew the grace God has continued to give his people from the very beginning to today.

You instruct us, Lord, to internalize your actions to others and see ourselves through their eyes.  Give me empathy that I might love others as you love me.  Amen.

To Remember...

"When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony.  And when your children ask you, 'What does this ceremony mean to you?' then tell them, 'It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.'"
Exodus 12:26

To Remember...
By Rev. William Dohle

The year was 1994.  I had traveled to India for a semester to study community development.  On one of our breaks up north we went to that monument of monmments...the Taj Mahal!  Standing before it felt like a dream.  It looked like someone had moved a giant picture of the Taj Mahal in our way, like they do at theme parks.

But then I got to touch it.  Walking on the Taj Mahal, you have to take off your shoes before you step onto it.  So...I slipped off my sandals and let my bare feet touch the marble monument.  Then, while walking around it and talking pictures, I reached out my hands and touched it.  I closed my eyes.  "This is what the Taj Mahal feels like," I thought.  "You will never forget this moment!"

As we left and took pictures again from a distance, I looked at the monument which again looked like a cardboard cutout.  "I was there," I thought.  "I touched it's marble.  It's real!"

This rememberance is exactly what God is instructing his people on as they are leaving Egypt.  "Take a good look around," God says.  "You were here.  Here you were slaves.  Here I freed you from Egypt and claimed you as my own.  Remember!"

That remembrance was hard even for the generation that left.  Moses had to keep reminding them, over and over again, "Remember you were slaves in Egypt before God rescued you."

But to generations and generations to come, who knew nothing of slavery in Egypt nor of God's redemption, they needed some way to remember, to put themselves back in Egypt at least in their mind and remember that it was all for real.

That's what God's commandments concerning Passover provide.  A way to remember.

Listen as God instructs his people HOW to remember this event...

Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household...Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door frames of the houses where they eat the lambs...For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast.  On the first day remove the yeast from your houses...Do no work at all on these days except to prepare food for everyone to eat...Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.  (Ex.12)


Even today, these commandments are followed as Jews everywhere celebrate and remember passover in the Sedar meal.

Christians too have ways to remember and place ourselves back at the time of redemption.  For Christians, that rememberance comes at communion when we hear Jesus say, "Do this in remembrance of me."  These words might not seem much, but they are just as much a command as the words God spoke to his people back in Egypt.  "Here is how you remember.  Here is where you return."

We return there and remember because these events are real.  They really happened...and they continue to happen.  In the sedar meal Jews remember that they were slaves in Egypt.  Not just their ancestors...but THEY were.  At Communion, we remember how the blood was shed for US...and how in Christ's blood WE are saved, just as his original disciples were.  In both cases, the remembrance we have brings us into the moment when God redeems us.

May we return to the altars of our lives to remember.  May we find ways to bring ourselves to this present moment, where God meets us.  And may we be transformed, for in remembering we are once again at the moment of salvation!

Help me remember, God, what you have done for me.  Give me ways to spark my memory that I may know that your love for me is real.  Amen.

Pharaoh's Lament

Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his officials and all the Egyptians; and there was a loud cry in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. Exodus 12:30

Pharaoh's Lament
By Rev. William Dohle

I sat there in shock, by the waters of the Nile,
With my little boy in my arms.
And the cries of the others through the city flying on the breeze.
And one word coming to my mind...
Why?

Why did I not listen when they came to me?
It would have been so easy to.
My adopted brother and his blood brother, with his accursed staff.
My brother's whispers in his ear and their constant cry.

"Let them go!"

"Let the people go... to worship in the hills, to sacrifice to their god, to...something!
"Let them go out of my power!  Let them go out of my land!
"Let them go...and let their God have control!"

"Tomorrow I said.  Tomorrow I asked.
Not today.  Not today!"

Even when the plagues came.  The frogs and the gnats, the flies and the pestilence, the boils and the darkness.
Even when the natural world rebelled around me, I would not let it go.  I would not release my power.
I could not.
What would it say of me!?  What would it say of the god, Pharaoh?
What would my legacy be if I blindly let them go?
They would not understand.  They could not understand.
I could not let them go.  Not for their God...or anyone.

And then tragedy.  The final straw.  Last night, after nine other plagues, they came again
With word of death on the wind.

Your son, Aaron said pointing to me, and every other firstborn in the land will die.
I laughed in his face.  I actually laughed.
My adopted brother actually looked sad as he turned away to walk from the palace.

Did he see the fate of his nephew?
Could he not have stopped this tragedy?

And then in the night the deathly cries.  One home after another.
It was as if Egypt erupted in sorrow.
And the sorrow fell too on my own home.

And so I told them to leave.  "Be gone!"
"Go and worship your God as you wish!  And pray a blessing upon me too!"

The God of Israel, a God of nature and of death itself
A God of fierce wrath has consumed Egypt.
So great was his love for his people.

I shudder to think of this god.  I shudder to think of what he will do...
What he still will do
To protect his precious people.

And yet something within me stirs.
Is it pride?  Or anger?

But even as I see them go I will not relent.
I must pursue them.
What was I doing letting them out of my service?
These people, and all they have, are mine!

What else is a man to do with a hardened heart like mine?