Exodus 12:1 The LORD said to
Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2
"This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your
year. 3 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. 4
If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their
nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You
are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person
will eat. 5 The animals you
choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the
sheep or the goats. 6 Take care
of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the
community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides
and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the
meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without
yeast. 9 Do not eat the meat raw
or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire--with the head, legs and internal
organs. 10 Do not leave any of
it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11 This is how you are to eat it: with
your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in
your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD's Passover. 12 "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike
down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on
all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. 13
The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see
the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I
strike Egypt. 14 "This day
shall be to you one of remembrance; for the generations to come you shall
celebrate it as a festival to the LORD--a lasting ordinance.
This week we continue
our journey in the Old Testament along The Way of Deliverance--and, as usual,
we're confronted with several questions concerning the reading offered up by
the lectionary. When last we saw Moses, God had appeared to him in the burning
bush out in the wastelands of the Mt. Horeb region. Moses had been in Midian
for 40 years; now, finally, God was ready to use him. But in the story, it was
very evident that Moses wasn't exactly ready to answer the call. And so, last
week we spent some time looking at the idea of finding grace in our times of
reluctance.
The main 'problem' with
this week's story is that in a certain sense, nothing is happening. It's the
institution of Passover. Great. So what? Why pause here? Why aren't we reading
about some of those big-screen extravaganza plagues? Or, for that matter, why
not even take a close look at the last of all plagues, the slaying of the
first-born, which eventually convinces Pharaoh to listen to Moses? What I'm
saying is that on the surface, this
week's selection either seems like a poor choice in a narrative flow sense, or
it seems to be a 'sidetrack' into the ancient liturgy/ritual of the Passover
institution which, of course, doesn't have anything to do with us as
Christians.
Ah, but wait. Scholars
like to debate whether or not the Lord's Supper was an actual seder meal, but it seems clear that the
upper room gathering as reported in the synoptic Gospels (Mt 26:18; Mk 14:14;
Lk 22:13) is all about The Passover. John's Gospel makes the history/chronology
difficult to determine, but theologically
there is no getting around the fact that at the institution of the Lord's
Supper, Jesus took the inherited tradition of the Passover meal and made it
about HIMSELF. This is precisely the sort of thing we would expect him to do when we read the words: Do not think that I have come to abolish
the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them
(Mt 5:17). In that sense, having some understanding of the Passover's
institution and 'liturgy' will give the Christian a clearer understanding about
just how Jesus FULFILLS all that the Passover was about.
There are almost too
many things to mention. First, at its institution Passover is a
"drama" that is enacted before
the events it symbolizes actually happen. That's the whole point of vs 11 This is how you are to eat it: with your
cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your
hand. Eat it in haste; BE READY TO GO is the message; be ready to RECEIVE
the liberation the Lord is giving you. It's a drama, but it's not playacting; the Lord is truly doing something.... and the
drama/liturgy encapsulates the Lord's action.
Second, this drama is
re-enacted in community. 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, vs 3. Each individual must ponder what God's liberation
means for them personally, but such pondering does not happen alone; it happens
in community around the Passover
meal.
Third, this drama is to
be a lasting remembrance: "This day shall be to you one of
remembrance; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to
the LORD--a lasting ordinance v14. Biblically/theologically, a remembrance is about far more than
simply not forgetting something. A
remembrance is all about making the past action of grace a present reality in
one's life. To complete the circle, this is why the drama is necessary. Anyone can remember past facts: Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. But
in entering into the drama of an
event, over and over again, one continually finds one's self in the grace of
that action; continually makes the grace of the past action a present reality;
and continually embraces and moves forward in that grace. THAT'S REMEMBRANCE in
the biblical sense.
And so, back to Christ
who came not to destroy the things of the past but to fulfill them, this
passage in Exodus which amounts to the central act of Jewish worship points us
to the central act of Christian worship, the Lord's Supper. Technically
speaking, it is not a Passover, Jesus
himself is (1Cor 5:7). But the Lord's Supper is a drama instituted even before the events it points to occur. It is a
drama of LIBERATION; God is acting in a decisive way to free the world from
Satan's bondage. And while we may not be instructed to "eat it in
haste," we are instructed to be prepared; to be ready to receive the
liberation it points to.
Like the Passover, the
Lord's Supper is a drama re-enacted in
community. Each person must ponder what this liberation means for
him/herself, but we ponder this together. A major difference for Christians is
that the communal meal isn't a biological family gathering (per se), but rather
a family of faith gathering. When Jesus chose to observe his final Passover
with his disciples rather than his physical kin, he was echoing a sentiment
already stated earlier (Mt 12:49).
And of course, like the
Passover, the Lord's Supper is a drama meant to be a lasting remembrance. Each new generation of Christians is to make
the events of the Lord's sacrifice their
own. In the Eucharistic prayer God's mighty acts of grace are recounted
leading up to "the night in which
he was betrayed," but they are never done so in a strictly
'historical' manner. The language of the prayer is always the language of
"WE"... present and gathered in the here & now.
The decisive act of
human history is the death of Jesus on the cross for the sins of the world.
It's where THE LAMB OF GOD was slain; it is the ultimate Passover. In that
ultimate act of love and sacrifice made by Jesus, God declares an end to all
debts owed to His righteous justice. And while all of this is true, it is also
true to say that the decisive act of human history is not confined to history. In the central act of worship, in the
sacred drama of the Lord's Supper, that history, that liberation, that ultimate
act of grace, crashes into our lives... embracing us, claiming us, and
energizing us. Unlike the instructions in the Exodus reading, you needn't eat
it in haste, but you do need to be READY TO RECEIVE this liberation. Are you?
Cheers,
T.M.
No comments:
Post a Comment