“Passover”
Exodus 12:1-14
12:1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt:
12:2 This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you.
12:3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household.
12:4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it.
12:5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
12:6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight.
12:7 They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.
12:8 They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
12:9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs.
12:10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn.
12:11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the LORD.
12:12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD.
12:13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
12:14 This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.
Depending on whose Gospel version you read, the meal that Jesus shared with his disciples was most probably the Jewish Passover meal. Modern Jews celebrate the beginning of Passover with a meal called the Seder, a Hebrew word meaning “order.” The Seder, as the manifestation of the Passover meal and remembrance that comes directly for the Exodus narrative above, probably began sometime after the destruction of the second Temple of Judaism in 70 C.E. The “order” of the Seder meal has been celebrated by Jews since then, and is the most widely recognized feast of the Jewish faith. The modern Seder or “order” has specific elements, including the symbolic foods that are consumed, as well as ritualistic traditions that include involvement of children and the essential retelling of the great story, known in Hebrew as the Haggadah, of how God led the Jewish people out of bondage in Egypt and into freedom, eventually in the Promised Land of Canaan. If you don’t know the Haggadah from Exodus, you most certainly know it from Cecil B. DeMille’s famous film, The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston as Moses!
The meal Jesus shared with his disciples that Christians have come to know as The Last Supper was most assuredly a Passover meal. However, since the current form of this meal and remembrance we call the Seder most likely didn’t evolve until after the destruction of the second Temple, it would have been a simpler form of the Passover ritual meal, as described in Exodus.
Know that both meals would have moved from symbolic foods to a joyous feast, however, as the Jews celebrate their freedom in each age from various pograms and bondage to which they have been subjected, even as the first Passover was about being set free from the bondage of Egypt. It is most important to understand the celebratory nature of the Passover and the Seder.
A brief, personal story: As a first-year seminarian at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, eight of us accepted an invitation to join the congregation of Temple Rodef Shalom on Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh for their Seder in the Spring of 1985. Our spouses joined us in this unique opportunity. The week before, we were invited to a session with a Pitt professor who was also a Rabbi, so we could learn about the “order” of the Seder and what to expect. He went over the theology and history of the meal more than its practical aspects, but he did tell us it was his understanding that we would be dispersed among the congregation-members’ tables so we could “follow their lead,” so to speak. And while I grew up in a small town with a vibrant and fairly large Jewish population, and shared many meals and Jewish foods with friends and their families, I had never actually attended a Seder. Of course, when we arrived the next week at Rodef Shalom, we were NOT placed among other families, but were instead seated at two adjacent tables with only each other as company. Hence, we spent the evening gawking at neighboring Jewish families to see what and how to eat next! We arrived hungry, as the Seder was scheduled at a time that barely got us out from our final class of the day and over to the synagogue. Understanding this was, first and foremost, a symbolic meal, we pigged out on the elements of it. Know also that the Seder involves drinking four glasses of wine, ritually, as the Haggadah is shared. Each of us had four glasses of wine in front of us, and as a Methodist, I was thinking grape juice, but it was instead four full glasses of a really decent alcoholic wine. Eating only matzoh, horseradish, parsley, and the apple concoction known as Charoset, meant that the overabundance of wine left us a bit more than “tipsy.” As we sat there, still left hungry by the symbolic meal, and a bit blitzed, the “secret” of the celebratory nature of the Seder was suddenly revealed, as a huge entourage of servers emerged from a giant kitchen with a very generous, full-featured chicken dinner! As we wolfed down this glorious meal, we all hoped we weren’t being lousy witnesses for the seminary, but it is my understanding that Rodef Shalom’s invitation for seminarians to join them for Passover has never been repeated, so there’s that.
While the Gospels leave us in doubt as to whether the “Last Supper” Jesus had with his disciples was a Passover meal, let us assume it was, for the purpose of this exploration. The Exodus passage has God telling Moses and Aaron to “celebrate it as a festival to the Lord,” and to “observe it as a perpetual ordinance,” meaning make it rule that Jews will each year hold a Passover meal, which later evolved into the Seder. The original Passover meal had three elements: the Paschal lamb, killed and eaten as a sign of God’s provision and God’s giving Israel on a “pass” on the judgment God was about to bring on Egypt for the Pharoah’s hard-heartedness; unleavened bread, as a reminder of the haste with which they would be “getting out of Dodge” when the Pharoah finally yielded to that judgement; and bitter herbs, as a reminder of the captivity and suffering in Egypt. If Jesus celebrated a Passover meal with the disciples, this would have been the fare, most likely, accompanied by wine, which was both a ceremonial and culinary necessity.
Later, as the Seder evolved, five cups of wine were included, with the fifth one being set out for Elijah the prophet. Here is a brief explanation from the website of reformjudaism.org as to why the Seder has five cups:
The custom of drinking multiple cups of wine derived from God's promises to the enslaved Israelites. Four promises follow one another in rapid succession within Exodus chapter six, verses six and seven: " I will free you...", "I will deliver you...", "I will redeem you...", "and I will take you to be My people." Then, after an intervening verse, a fifth promise appears: "I will bring you into the land...." Each cup of wine is a symbol of the joy we feel as beneficiaries of God's promises. But is the fifth promise connected to the prior four, or is it a separate promise? On this the rabbis could not agree. Some said there should be four cups in honor of four promises; others said five cups for five promises.
The five cup model won out, but this fifth cup was offered to the great prophet, who was “invited” to join each Seder as part of its ritual. The Seder added other symbolic foods to the Passover commemoration including: Charoset, an apple, nut, and honey concoction symbolizing the mortar out of which the Jews had to make bricks while in captivity; a sprig of parsley (Karpas) representing hope and redemption, dipped in salt water, for the tears of God’s people while laboring in Egypt; and a roasted egg (Beitzah), symbolizing the continuation of life, according to God’s promise and provision.
Beyond sharing this information for any of you who were not up on the Jewish Passover/Seder celebration, why is it important for us to know this? If the Passover IS what Jesus was celebrating with his disciples on the night he was betrayed, it puts a very different “spin” on his using it to consecrate that first Holy Communion. Jesus was most likely NOT “Christianizing” timeless commemoration of the Passover, but giving Christianity firm Jewish roots, and “extending” its key elements to the rest of the Gentile world. Those key elements are: God’s miracle of creation; God’s abiding love for all of God’s people; the concept of “covenant” that defines and sustains a relationship between God and humanity; and God’s freeing, redeeming, and forgiving acts. In Christ Jesus, God was now all people into relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The significance of doing this at Passover may be that the “New Covenant” Jesus institutes with the non-Jewish world includes a “New Passover,” as God now “passes over” the sins and short-comings of all people. This “pass,” what we Gentile Christians might call “salvation” is not the central point of the Gospel, as some have made it, but merely the starting point! God forgiving sin is easy; humans being covenantally committed to live in relationship with God and each other, and living out the teachings of Jesus, is hard, and will require a lifetime of effort. Even as the Passover celebration was ordered so Israel would never forget both their suffering under oppression and God’s deliverance and freedom, so Jesus gives Christians Holy Communion, so we never forget our own deliverance and freedom to live the life of Christian discipleship. Our Roman Catholic siblings call Communion “food for the journey.” It is OUR Passover.
Even though we can certainly see so many parallels between the symbolic foods of the Passover meal and modern Seder manifestation of it, we should not “Christianize” it, as this is offensive to our Jewish siblings. Again, it is more appropriate to see that Jesus uses the meal to provide a Jewish faith foundation to God’s outreach to the Gentiles through the Christ Event. I have been guilty of having symbolic Seders in some of my churches, and even bowing to the temptation to bring Christian symbolism to the elements of the Seder. I have come to understand both the offense to the Jews that this is, as well as how inappropriate it is, theologically. There is one important parallel we can draw from Jesus’ institution of the Lord’s Supper at a Passover meal, however.
Again, the Passover celebration is held to commemorate God’s freeing God’s people from bondage in Egypt and leading them to freedom—free life--in the Promised Land. The lamb that is killed and eaten is the Paschal lamb, or the “lamb of freedom.” This is NOT the lamb that was sacrificed for atonement from sin in the tabernacle or the temple! It is a celebratorylamb that is joyous consumed by all of the people at the feast. The important parallel here is that Holy Communion is meant to be a celebratory meal as well, recalling Jesus’ sacrifice that lead to our freedom. To turn it into merely a solemn remembrance of Jesus’ “blood sacrifice” for sin is missing the big picture of what it is meant to be! Christ is announcing he is the Paschal lamb for us, freeing us not just from sin, but for “joyful obedience.” One this, much of our Communion liturgy is often short-sighted and even obfuscating.
To make the Good News of Jesus Christ focus so strongly on the atonement of sin and “personal salvation” is to miss so much of the power of the Christ Event. Like the Passover celebration, Holy Communion reminds us of how God “passes over” our sin and offers us freedom and life in the “promised land” of the unfolding Kingdom or “realm” of God. We are called to be partners in this unfolding, living in covenant with God, working together to feed the poor, alleviate suffering, share the Good News of God’s love in Christ, and love God and neighbor with an unfailing passion. As Galatians 5:1 reminds us, For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. It is my belief that fixating on human sin and an inordinate focus on the need for atonement has become for much of the Christian world a type of bondage. In Christ we are set free. Accept it! Now, share celebratory meal—Communion, “food for the journey”—and go live the life of that freedom, within the teachings of Christ’s New Covenant.
Remember, we weren’t designed for selfishness and loneliness, but for relationship and community. We screwed that up.
We weren’t designed for hate, but for love. We screwed that up.
We weren’t designed to be judges of each other, but for advocating for one another and uplifting one another. We screwed that up.
We weren’t designed to separate ourselves into “camps,” divided by doctrines, a host of “isms,” and irrational fears. We screwed that up.
We weren’t designed to consume the earth and use it up, but to marvel at it and be good stewards of its rich resources. We screwed that up.
We weren’t designed to hide from God, but to walk with God in the garden. We screwed that up.
Hear the Good News: In Jesus Christ you ARE forgiven! And in Jesus Christ you are free to right the wrongs and fix the things we’ve screwed up! Amen.
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