Exodus 12:1-14
Perhaps the most surprising feature of today’s worship is
that we hear the Story about the institution of the Passover Seder from the Old
Testament that normally we hear half a year away in Holy Week on Maundy
Thursday. Isn’t it about time for Rosh
Hashanah and Yom Kippur? Why Passover
now? The reason is that we are in the
process of systematically reading through the books of Genesis and Exodus and
it just happens to be the week when we come to the story about the Passover and
the Crossing of the Sea. They are the
combination of worship event and liberation event that are the foundation of
Israel’s identity.
Let me assure you that what you see hanging in front of you
this morning is indeed a cross, and that I have not forgotten that this is a
church, not a synagogue. But what many
folk here and in other churches might not realize is that more than a little of
Christian identity is wrapped up in this story of Passover. The way we have the story is not necessarily
the way things actually happened. For
example, people are not accustomed to invent religious rituals while they are
on the run trying to get out from under the thumb of oppression. Indeed, a part of the story has to do with
one of the components of Passover, namely the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It makes sense that when people have less
than a few hours to flee a war zone, in effect, they don't have time to wait
around for loaves of bread to rise. But
the Passover part—the killing and roasting of a whole lamb—is different. It takes awhile to roast a lamb, even if you
prefer it rare. And the fact is that the instructions for roasting the paschal
lamb are inserted into the story at a much later stage in its development. So there are these two things—unleavened
bread and lamb—that form the basis of the Passover meal commemorating the way
the angel of death passed over the homes of the Israelites while slaying the
firstborn in all Egyptian families. All
of this comes to have great meaning for Christians. The Passover has its Christian counterpart in
the Holy Eucharist. Everything we are
doing this morning has its roots in this old Exodus story.
The main point of connection between the two meals, Passover
and Eucharist, is that both are tied to the seminal event of liberation. The Passover celebrates deliverance from
Pharaoh. The Eucharist celebrates
deliverance from death. The Passover is
a festival about how Israelites were spared death. The Eucharist is a festival about how in
Christ we are delivered from the death of sin and raised to newness of
life. The Passover celebrates the
passage of our forefathers and foremothers from the bondage of slavery through
the sea into the ultimate freedom of the Promised Land. The Eucharist marks the passage of Jesus’
community from the bondage of sin and death through the water of baptism into
the freedom of resurrection and ultimately to our Native Land where we are
united with God through the power of Jesus Christ. The Passover leads to the covenant of God and
God’s people first articulated in the Ten Commandments. The Eucharist celebrates the New Covenant of
God and God’s people which is summed up in the New Commandment that Christ
gives to his community: “Love one
another as I have loved you.” The
Passover meal celebrates the making of a nation. The Eucharist celebrates the opening up of
that nation to include all nations, races, sexes who populate the New Israel,
the Church. The modern Passover meal
ends with the hope, “Next year in Jerusalem!”
The Eucharist nourishes the vision of a New Jerusalem as a new age, a
peaceable kingdom in which the lion lies down with the lamb, and the wolf and
the bear eat straw like the ox, and the child and the adder are not enemies,
and no one hurts or destroys anyone else on the holy mountain of God.
I am sometimes amazed at how many of us make so few
connections between various stories and experiences within our faith
tradition. And sometimes the connections
we make are not at all what is intended.
I remember one Easter many years ago when the State of Israel and the
government of Anwar Sadat’s Egypt were struggling to reach what ultimately
became the Camp David Accords, brokered by President Carter. That year at the Great Vigil of Easter, after
we had sung the Song of Moses celebrating the Passover of Israel from Egypt and
the drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, two parishioners jumped on me
for keeping the old enmity between Israel and her neighbors going. I was stunned. I naively thought that people made
distinctions between ancient Israel and modern Israel, between ancient Egypt
and modern Egypt. So I imagine that
there are some here today who can’t quite shake loose from awareness of the
dynamics that embroil Israel and Palestinians in ongoing war. I am deeply concerned about the situation in
the Middle East. I hope you are. It is complex and emotion-laden. Suffice it to say that the meaning of
Passover does not neatly line up with support for the State of Israel in its
present pursuits, nor is participating in the Eucharist simply a political
affair. As far as I am concerned, the
theology of Passover is as much about Palestinian, Ukrainian, Salvadoran,
Chinese, Tibetan, and Greek liberation as it is about Israeli liberation. And the Eucharist is the meal of a community
that is international, inter-racial, multi-ethnic, and egalitarian, not one
that belongs only to a segment of the world.
The formative event for Christians is the resurrection of
Christ. He is our Paschal, or Passover,
Lamb. He is our Risen Bread, given for
the life of the world. Eucharist, like
Passover, is not just a commemoration of something that happened “way back
when,” but a reality in which we are invited to participate. In every age, say some Passover Haggadahs or
liturgies, there arises a new threat to freedom that must be dealt with as was
Pharaoh. And in every age there are
forces, within us and without, that militate against living the life of the
resurrection. One of the most virulent
enemies of the resurrection is the persistent notion that resurrection is about
going to heaven when we die. It is not
about that. It is about following Christ
by sharing the radical vision of a new community that actually exists to embody
and practice the sacrificial love of the crucified and risen Jesus. Loving one another as he loves us is what
ultimately will be not just our own Passover experience, but the passing over
from death to life of this world he died to save.
© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2014
