Into the Unknown

Several years ago, a friend of mine took her two children on vacation. Her husband was in the military and deployed on active duty. So, it was just the three of them. Knowing that they were going without their dad, they struggled with choosing a destination. So, they decided not to decide. Instead, they decided they would take a road trip without a known destination. They would take a spinner with them and spin to see what direction they would head. The only rule was that they could not return back the way they had come the day before. Once they knew their direction, they would see what lay in their path and plan their day. It sounded like great fun –when they came home. But, they almost didn’t go. Times were hard. Spirits were weary. Their car was old. My friend worried about driving the whole trip as the only driver. Would it be worth the money? Would it be safe? Would going make things worse instead of better?

The Israelites wondered, too. They had never seen plagues like this before…they only affected the Egyptians. Rumor had it that a man named Moses had come and had done many signs before Pharoah, demanding that the Israelite people be freed. Could it be that the Holy One had sent him? Could it be that after all these years, God had heard their cry?

If Pharoah let them go, who was this Moses? He had shown their leaders signs when he came, and they believed. But, surely the conversations between the workers as they made bricks focused on “Really, who IS he and where did he come from? Where will he lead us? What if Pharaoh blames us and punishes us for these plagues? What will a new normal look like? Is it worth the journey?”

Every time we find ourselves in a liminal time, a threshold time, when we are leaving what we are accustomed to as normal and begin the journey of preparation toward a new normal, we struggle with these kinds of questions. Anxiety, confusion, and resistance are part of the process of grieving the disorientation we have experienced and reorienting. And in these moments, it becomes critical to remember what doesn’t change: who we are and whose we are.

Julian of Norwich lived in the Middle Ages in England. She devoted her life to prayer and in her writings, she journaled her prayer experiences. In Revelations of Divine Love she recorded one of my favorite images of who we are and whose we are, “… he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”

This is who we are, and whose we are, even in the midst of disruption and struggle.

After Moses went to Pharaoh, he ordered the Egyptian overseers to be more cruel – he ordered that the Israelites had to find their own straw for the bricks they were to make, but they were still ordered to make the same number of bricks. Then came the plagues, nine of them. Pharaoh was not going to budge. And then the warning came that there would be a plague of the firstborn. Just as Pharaoh had killed the sons born to the Israelites, the firstborn son of every Egyptian woman and of their cattle would die in the night.

In preparation, these were the instructions to the Israelites: prepare a sacrifice, a lamb or goat, and slaughter them at twilight, roast them over the fire and eat the meat, along with a bitter herb like horseradish to represent the bitterness of their time as slaves in Egypt and bread made without yeast to represent their need to leave quickly when Pharaoh commanded them to go. Dress for a journey before you eat, tuck your cloak hitched up into your belt, put on your sandals, and hold your staff in your hand. In coming years, you will celebrate this night with a commemorative feast.

That feast is known as the Passover. It is the feast that Jesus and his disciples were celebrating the night that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper and was arrested to be crucified for us.

One instruction I left out of my description: when they slaughtered the lamb or the goat, they were to smear the blood on the sides and tops of the doorframe to the house. Scripture says, “This will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.” The blood is not for God so much as it is for the Israelites. God knows where they live…God has passed over them with all the other plagues. As I have studied the Passover, I have come to understand the importance of marking their threshold at this threshold. It is a declaration of identity, and a declaration of relationship. Every year on the Passover, the declaration is made, “We were slaves. God brought us forth, or we would still be slaves.” Every year, as they celebrate the Passover, they remember.

The pandemic created disruption, and whenever there is societal disruption, we enter a liminal space, we find ourselves at a threshold, leaving what was and preparing to go toward a new normal. First, remember who you are and whose you are. God made you. God loves you. God keeps you. Then, with the Israelites, when God calls us to escape what enslaves us, we are called to mark our thresholds. It is scary to leave what is known behind and go forward into the unknown. We must prepare the threshold by confessing what has held us back from being who God made us to be. The Israelite people marked their doorposts: “We are slaves.” What would you mark your threshold with? What enslaves you? What enslaves us as a society? addictions, abusive relationships, disparities in access to healthcare or education or fresh foods, anxiety, racism, systemic poverty, social stratification, corruption …now is the time to mark our thresholds, and prepare to leave what has enslaved us behind and to go into the unknown, knowing that God goes with us and will bring us forth. Amen.