A Rant for Passover

This weekend, in the midst of Passover and Easter, I've been thinking a lot about authority. Both of these holidays pivot around a moment of disobedience. Of denial of the laws and leaders that wield power to hurt and oppress. Jesus was a criminal, hiding from the authorities for his crime of blasphemy. A crime which, to the followers of Christianity, was unjust and wrong. Shifrah, Puah, and Yocheved all resist the will of the Pharaoh, saving the lives of Jewish baby boys in direct defiance of the law. A decision that ultimately brings salvation to the Israelites. We applaud these acts, we celebrate them. But there is some fundamental lack of awareness in many, because they look at these stories and think that the injustice is in the past. That laws and decrees that exist to oppress, to destroy, and to disenfranchise are something that happenED, but not something that happenS. Or, if it does happen, it happens somewhere else. It was right, good, just for the heroes in our stories to defy the government, the police, even the majority. But to do so now is wrong, disgraceful, pathetic. There is something in these stories that I hope that people can see. That the evil was not in individual men. Pharaoh was not some empty evil husk, whose only goal was to see the Jews bleed and weep. Pontius Pilate was not some hand-wringing misanthrope who vilified the savior because he hated God and sought to deny Him. The villains of these stories are not men, they are the structures of power that enable these men to commit atrocity, they are authority that exists beyond question, beyond reproach, and beyond consequence. Passover and Easter tell us that authority is not, in and of itself, just. There is no morality inherent to power. In fact, there is often (if not always) the opposite. They teach us that a law that is unjust MUST not be followed. That authority that acts against us must be questioned and dismantled. That the path to God is to live by compassion and resistance, even unto death. Not just then, but now. I love you. Happy Easter. Chag Pesach sameach. Take care of yourselves and each other, because those who wield power will not.