(RNS) — One of my closest friends is a recently retired Episcopal priest. Together, we have shared some of the best moments of my life, and some of the hardest. We have celebrated together, mourned together and, perhaps most important, we’ve learned together — sharing our moments of faith and doubt and talking about the texts and observances that moved us.

Over the past few years, he and I have developed an Easter and Passover ritual. 

I say to him: “May Christ rise for you.”

And he responds: “And may you get out of Egypt.”

Some may think that as a rabbi, I have crossed some theological line. But when I say to my friend, “May Christ rise for you,” I am not speaking literally about a first-century Jewish teacher emerging from a grave outside of Jerusalem. Neither am I saying that I believe it.

I am speaking about what the Easter story means to him, and to Christians around the world. By extension, I am speaking about one of Judaism’s most precious inventions: the idea of hope — the stubborn, defiant belief that tomorrow will be better than today and that, ultimately, death is not the final word.

That should sound familiar to anyone who recently attended the Passover Seder. At the end of the meal, we sing the song, “Had Gadya,” or “One Kid.” It sounds like a children’s song, a Jewish version of “This Is the House That Jack Built.” A father buys a little goat. A cat eats the goat. A dog bites the cat. A stick beats the dog. Fire burns the stick. Water quenches the fire. An ox drinks the water. A kosher slaughterer, or shochet, kills the ox. The Angel of Death kills the slaughterer.

And at the very end, God enters and destroys the Angel of Death.

The song is an allegory about how each empire destroys the one that comes before it. The little kid is the nation of Israel — devoured, first by Assyria. But, then Babylon conquers Assyria, and thus begins the long sequence of conquests and kingdoms that rise and fall: Persia, Greece, Rome.

Death swallows them all up, but even death is not ultimate. At the end of history, we will see that God rules — that hope transcends death itself, that at the end, life wins.

For this Jewish leader and teacher, the meaning of the resurrection is not only the revival of Jesus of Nazareth. It is also something much larger than that — the yearning that the broken can become whole, that what is lost can be restored and that life can emerge even from the shadow of death.

And when my friend says to me, “May you get out of Egypt,” he is communicating something equally profound. He is recognizing that the Exodus is not just something that happened to “them,” long ago. It is something that is meant to happen to me — to us — again and again.

The Torah demands that we must not merely remember that our ancestors left Egypt, but we are commanded to see ourselves as if we personally came out of Egypt.

Several years ago, I heard a definition of Jewish identity that has stayed with me. Who is a Jew? Someone who hears the story of the Exodus and takes it personally.

It is a test, and a challenge. It is one thing to retell the Passover story at the Seder table, surrounded by family, with the ritual foods and familiar melodies. It is another thing entirely to ask, where is my Egypt? What holds me captive? What diminishes me? What keeps me from becoming who I am meant to be?       

The Israeli poet Amnon Ribak wrote that every person needs an Egypt — something from which they must struggle to free themselves, sometimes with great strength, sometimes with clenched teeth. Every person needs to walk into the unknown, to step into the waters and trust that they will part.

When my friend and I exchange those greetings, what we are are saying is that you matter to me, and because you matter to me, your story matters to me. We are saying that I am willing to listen deeply enough to hear what gives you hope, and I trust you enough to let your story challenge mine. And, I invite you to let mine challenge yours.

It is not about erasing differences. Differences matter. Beliefs matter. Truth matters. But relationships also matter. And if we are paying attention, we will notice something remarkable.

The Passover story is filled with moments when people outside our tradition step in and make redemption possible. Without Shifra and Puah, the Egyptian midwives who refused to kill Israelite newborns, Moses could not have been born. Without Pharaoh’s daughter who pulls an infant out of a basket in the Nile, Moses could not have survived.

Without acts of courage that cross moral, social and political boundaries, the story stalls. Redemption, it turns out, is rarely a solo performance. It is a collaboration.

Perhaps, my friend and I are reminding each other that hope is not the property of any one tradition; that liberation is not a one-time event; and that faith, at its best, does not close us off from others — it opens us up.

At the end of the Seder, we proclaim: “Next year in Jerusalem.” It is a statement of longing, aspiration and unfinished business. For Jews and others, it means, “Next year in a Jerusalem without the chains of anxiety and trauma, in which the first worry is the direction to the safe room.”

My friend is still waiting for resurrection. I am still trying to leave Egypt. Both of us are reaching toward a world in which suffering does not have the final word. A world in which chains — whether historical or personal — can be broken. A world in which God is not absent from the story and enters it not just at the end, but if we are willing, right now.