Exodus 12:1-14; Romans 13:8-14
Rev. Laura J. Collins
September 8, 2002
The first time I attended a real Seder – that is, a Passover meal held in the home of observant Jews with a large extended family present -- I was struck by the liveliness of the liturgy. It was nothing like the quiet, solemn Protestantism to which I was accustomed. There was raucous singing, inter-generational dialogue, drinking, dancing and interruptions to the standard liturgy to allow for a feminist mid-rash on the text.
Besides the enthusiasm of the participants, I was attuned to the aliveness of the liturgy itself. In recalling the Passover -- that moment in Jewish history when God liberated the Hebrew people from slavery -- the liturgy placed everything in the present tense. God delivered us, we read and sang together. Not God delivered them -- some barely remembered ancestors from a nearly pre-historic time -- but God delivered us. The salvation of God in that liberating moment was not simply a memory from the archives. It was a living reality. God is the liberator. God is the one who delivers. When God set salvation in motion, God did not stop with one group of people at one place and one time.
In that event, I gained a new understanding of our own Christian tradition of the Lord's Supper. The sacramental nature of communion -- like the sacramental nature of the Passover meal -- is not that we are simply observing symbolic remembrance, but that we are, in fact, embodying the reality of the event all over again. Not just that Christ was present with the disciples in an upper room, but that Christ is present with us, whenever we eat and drink together, remembering him. God delivered us.
When we share the words of the great mystery of our faith -- Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again -- we place ourselves in the middle of an ongoing saga. Past, present and future come together in a reality shaped by God's eternal view, rather than our temporal one. In this act of worship, we make incarnate an alternative view of the world. Rather than a world uninhibited by spiritual power, we enact and claim the spiritual power of the past in our present reality and, in so doing, we name our hope for the future.
On this week of remembering September 11, we need more than ever to claim the power of spiritual presence for our world and name our hope. Is the God of the Exodus still liberating us? Is the Christ of the cross still present?
It was not accidental that God asked the Hebrew people to mark their homes with the sign of blood. Not just an eye-catching color, blood is the sign of life. At our beginning, we come forth in our mother's blood. The flow of our blood through our veins is our life. The blood of a lamb marked the Hebrew homes not for God's sake – the creator of the universe was capable of figuring out who lived where! – but for the people's sake! To remind them of God's promise. "This blood shall be a sign for you," God told them.
Nor is it accidental that Jesus, in celebrating Passover with his friends, took the cup of wine and said, "This is my blood, which will be poured out for you." Christians have been criticized for the cannibalistic sounding words of the communion liturgy. But what are bread and blood? They are signs of life -- the staff of life, the beginning of life. And just as the Passover blood marked new life and a new beginning for the Jewish people, Christ's death marked new life for his followers. Neither event was without loss, neither was without sorrow, neither was without blood.
We have become a nation well acquainted with blood, as we recall this week. In that way, we have become more like most other nations of the world, for whom loss of life on their own soil has been a long reality. We said to each other one year ago -- things will never be the same, we'll never be so crass, so petty, so consumed with consumption again. That lasted a few months -- maybe.
What difference did September 11 make? For some people, those closest to the event, it no doubt altered their reality forever. But what about the rest of us? Did it change anything, really? Last September I quoted Ecclesiastes "Nothing is new under the sun." This type of terrorism might be new. Our proximity to it might be new. But the realities that put the terrorism in motion and the reality of hatred and violence are not new, not since the Exodus, not since the crucifixion, not since the beginning of time.
What our faith does for us is put all of life into a larger context: God delivered us. Not somebody thousands of years ago. But us. What happened then is a living reality today and shapes our future as much as it defines our past. That is what our liturgies and prayers and scriptures and sacraments do for us -- bring all of our lives into the perspective of eternity. Our futures are shaped not just by what happened yesterday or one year ago but by a past that is still present. The creator is still present in the creation. The redeemer is still redeeming. The sustainer is still sustaining.
The apostle Paul was as observant a Jew as you might find. He understood this liturgical and spiritual reality. And for him, it completely shaped not only how he understood the world theologically, but ethically as well. If God is the God who has loved us, then we are called to embody that love for one another.
Today's reading from Romans hardly needs any explanation. "The one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ... Love does no wrong to a neighbor." If there are parts of Scripture you have trouble understanding or believing, then I invite you to spend a few weeks (or years!) meditating just on this. If you want to grow as a Christian, it is enough to keep you going for sometime. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Maybe we get stuck on it because we still think that we need to feel something warm and fuzzy in order to love our neighbors -- especially our least favorite ones. Christian love is not about warm fuzzies. Sometimes you might feel them, sometimes not. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you feel disgust, even, for your neighbor. Your personal emotional state does not excuse you from acting in love. Love does no wrong to a neighbor.
"Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day ... put on the Lord Jesus Christ ..."
We come to the table together today to remember Christ, but even more, to put on Christ. To clothe ourselves in Christ's spirit for the present reality and let it shape our future. A future unwilling to wrong any neighbor, anywhere. In Iraq, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, or in Takoma Park. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's a clear guideline, if not an easy one.
Come to be strengthened by the past, in the present, for the future.
Amen.
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