Thanks For The Memories!
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle B
The dark of the night began to turn to the gray of morning. In the clouded distance could be heard the cries of mothers and fathers discovering the lifeless forms of their firstborn sons. The elders rushed from one adobe structure to another. "Quick!" they whispered, "pack the unleavened dough! Finish the lamb! Grab what you can! Now is the moment! Follow Moses to the sea while the Egyptians are preoccupied with their tragedy."
Hurriedly and silently, the dark shapes of men, women, and children passed under blood-marked lintels into the allies of their ghetto. Guided by their leaders, they rushed to the road to the sea. Not even a dog barked at them.
Their flight was the culmination of days of bargaining between their leaders and the Pharaoh. Threats of Moses had become realities: Frogs, gnats, boils, hail, locusts, flies, and diseased cattle had failed to persuade the king to release the slaves of Israel. Even some of the slaves themselves were not convinced that Moses' signs and wonders were all that extraordinary. The deaths of the firstborn caught Pharaoh's attention long enough to give the slaves a head start for the wilderness. The stumbling of the people through the Red Sea looked as though their efforts would lead to a watery grave as they looked over their shoulders and saw the Egyptian war machine close on their heels. But the chariots were caught in the muddy waters. The people struggled up upon the dry land and turned their footsteps in the direction of their meeting with destiny at Mount Sinai. They left behind the days and decades of digging clay, kneading the moistened clay with small hoes, shaping the clay into bricks, drying the bricks, and lugging the bricks to the construction sites. The unimaginable suffering, the drudgery, the heartless blows of the taskmasters, the deaths of the fainthearted under the merciless sun, all of it was left behind with those who began to bury their dead.
Freedom was born; a nation was born; a promise and a pact with the God of Moses accompanied them to the promised land. It began on that fateful night that would be called to mind in the countless homes of families gathered around roasted lamb and bitter herbs. In the following centuries, once a year on Passover evening, the youngest member of the family would ask, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" The adults conducting the proceedings of the evening would answer, "This is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he slew the Egyptians but spared our houses" (Exodus 12:27).
The most important question of the evening is not merely a question about an event in history. The questioner does not ask, "Why was that night different from all other nights?" but "Why is this night different from all other nights?"
In the first place, the celebration of the Passover is more than a celebration of history. It is the celebration of freedom from slavery for the slaves and their descendents. "They were freed and we are freed with them." "When God saved them, God saved us!" Holy Moses! Holy were his people! Holy are his people today!
The text from Exodus 12 records more than memories. In the first place, they are more than memories about us. For those old enough to remember the You Are There! series hosted by Walter Cronkite, the text lures the reader into the action of the exodus. Christians must be careful not to mock and offend their Jewish friends with hokey presentations of the Seder meal on Maundy Thursday evening in the fellowship halls. Yet, those "Christian" renditions of the Seder meal make a point: Christians, the new Israel, have also been invited to tag along in the exodus out of Egypt. The salvation of the Israelites is repeated in the salvation extended by Jesus to the faithful in the upper room. It's the same God. It's the same deliverance from the destroyer that plagued the ancient Semites, today named sin, death, and the devil.
Christians express the Jewish awareness of inclusion in their salvation story when they ask, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Of course, we were! How pitiful are the disclaimers who insist that the Jews killed Jesus! Hitler cheered the productions of the Oberammergau Passion Play depicting the Jews as sneering monsters with horns protruding from their heads. Modern Oberammergau productions omit the horns and depict only a portion of the crowd shouting, "Crucify him!" Modern textual research suggests that only some of the temple elite conspired against Jesus.
Contemporary Jews of faith join in the trek out of slavery. Contemporary Christians see themselves hammering the nails and thrusting the lance. Many are the contemporary Christians who sit at table in the upper room receiving the spiritual body and blood of our Lord on Maundy Thursday.
Secondly, the exodus memories are more than memories about family. Whether we march in the line of those headed for Sinai or join in the line of those headed for the communion rail, the focus is on family.
A group of Christian students decided to host their own version of the Jewish Seder meal. They asked a local rabbi to join them. The students stuck to the script religiously and reverently. The rabbi suddenly spoke up and offered a suggestion. "Don't be so stiff and formal!" he urged them. "When we do it, we say a prayer, then talk or laugh a bit, then we have a glass of wine, and after more conversation we say another prayer. It's a bit of a family thing. If you keep going the way you're going, you'll be done in twenty minutes."1
Those who have joined hands around the Seder meal have felt the power of the family circle. The Passover was moved later in Jewish history to the temple, but today it is back where it belongs: in the family circle.
The American family has taken many hits. In the mid-'80s, American sociologists defined the family in American culture as "a place where one is unconditionally accepted ... a place of love and happiness where you can count on the other family members."2 But alas, by the middle of the nineteenth century, "... the network of kinship has narrowed and the sphere of individual decision has grown."3
The sense of "family" has also diminished in the church family. Exceptions to the rule are the small country churches where the entire membership joins in prayer at worship and then joins in "fellowship" around a buffet table laden with salads, sandwiches, pastries, coffee, and powdered drinks. The northern European model of worship attended by individuals and occasional couples entering and leaving with no "Hellos" and no "Good-byes" is repeated in staid mainline American churches.
"The family that prays together stays together" is a rule often confused but rarely practiced. Holy communion, rooted in the Jewish Seder, is a family affair. Nuclear families come forward to the altar and rub shoulders with the greater family, the community of believers gathered together in baptism and then nourished together by the bread and the wine (or grape juice). Continuous communion underlines the family theme.
The congregational family also acknowledges the "communion of saints" in the third article of the creed. The observance of Maundy Thursday also brings about two billion members of the universal Christian family to the same altar of Christ who feeds his earthly family and pours out upon it the power of his blood. But there is more: Keep on adding the countless hosts of those past, present, and future, who stand before the throne of the Lamb in heaven.
Thirdly, the exodus memories are more than memories about our future. From the biblical point of view, history is linear. It runs in a straight line. The Jews gathered around the Seder table to look back and see themselves tagging along behind Moses and the elders herding them toward the Red Sea and the safety beyond. Christians "remember" at the Lord's table not only the Jesus who sat and sits at the head of the table but looks forward to the heavenly feast to come.
An American exchange pastor was finishing up his tour of duty in a town near Hamburg, Germany, when the planes plowed their fiery way through the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. One of his German colleagues phoned him that evening to ask if he would share the message at a special prayer service scheduled the following evening. The American agreed, finished the conversation, and then went into the parsonage library to look for a text. On the desk he found a framed quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Wonderfully protected by benevolent powers
Comforted, we await what may come
For God is with us in the evening, in the morning
And most certainly in every new day.4
Bonhoeffer wrote those lines shortly before his hanging at the hands of the Nazis.
The church was packed that evening; there was standing room only. After the service, two young girls with tears in their eyes approached the American pastor. "We are so sorry about what happened yesterday in America," they said and handed the pastor two red roses. A few weeks later, when the guest pastor celebrated communion and said his farewells to the congregation, there was a sense of being bound together that would not have been as strong had the events in America not taken place. The visiting pastor and the members of the German congregation confessed to one another, "We are family!" But it was a family with a common past and a common future. Fiery chaos in New York could not stop the migration of brothers and sisters in Christ, holding hands, assisting one another in the journey to God's future. The physical realm had too little power to delay the coming of the kingdom.
The event in the upper room preceded the event of Golgotha by only a few hours. Christians everywhere were in that upper room and accompanied the Nazarene upon the Via Dolorosa to the place of execution. When Christians stand or kneel at altars around the world, their thoughts are more than memories. Their collective back flash brings tears. It brings joy. It brings anticipation. It is accompanied by a sense of unity ... unity with all believers of all times and places ... indeed, a sense of unity with all people for whom Christ offered his body and his blood. Amen.
____________
1. Reginald H. Fuller, Proclamation: Series B Holy Week (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. 39.
2. Robert Bellah, et al, Habits of the Heart (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 87.
3. Ibid, p. 89.
4. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wiederstand und Ergebung (Munchen or Muenchen: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 11. Auflage, 1962), p. 275 (author's translation).
Hurriedly and silently, the dark shapes of men, women, and children passed under blood-marked lintels into the allies of their ghetto. Guided by their leaders, they rushed to the road to the sea. Not even a dog barked at them.
Their flight was the culmination of days of bargaining between their leaders and the Pharaoh. Threats of Moses had become realities: Frogs, gnats, boils, hail, locusts, flies, and diseased cattle had failed to persuade the king to release the slaves of Israel. Even some of the slaves themselves were not convinced that Moses' signs and wonders were all that extraordinary. The deaths of the firstborn caught Pharaoh's attention long enough to give the slaves a head start for the wilderness. The stumbling of the people through the Red Sea looked as though their efforts would lead to a watery grave as they looked over their shoulders and saw the Egyptian war machine close on their heels. But the chariots were caught in the muddy waters. The people struggled up upon the dry land and turned their footsteps in the direction of their meeting with destiny at Mount Sinai. They left behind the days and decades of digging clay, kneading the moistened clay with small hoes, shaping the clay into bricks, drying the bricks, and lugging the bricks to the construction sites. The unimaginable suffering, the drudgery, the heartless blows of the taskmasters, the deaths of the fainthearted under the merciless sun, all of it was left behind with those who began to bury their dead.
Freedom was born; a nation was born; a promise and a pact with the God of Moses accompanied them to the promised land. It began on that fateful night that would be called to mind in the countless homes of families gathered around roasted lamb and bitter herbs. In the following centuries, once a year on Passover evening, the youngest member of the family would ask, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" The adults conducting the proceedings of the evening would answer, "This is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he slew the Egyptians but spared our houses" (Exodus 12:27).
The most important question of the evening is not merely a question about an event in history. The questioner does not ask, "Why was that night different from all other nights?" but "Why is this night different from all other nights?"
In the first place, the celebration of the Passover is more than a celebration of history. It is the celebration of freedom from slavery for the slaves and their descendents. "They were freed and we are freed with them." "When God saved them, God saved us!" Holy Moses! Holy were his people! Holy are his people today!
The text from Exodus 12 records more than memories. In the first place, they are more than memories about us. For those old enough to remember the You Are There! series hosted by Walter Cronkite, the text lures the reader into the action of the exodus. Christians must be careful not to mock and offend their Jewish friends with hokey presentations of the Seder meal on Maundy Thursday evening in the fellowship halls. Yet, those "Christian" renditions of the Seder meal make a point: Christians, the new Israel, have also been invited to tag along in the exodus out of Egypt. The salvation of the Israelites is repeated in the salvation extended by Jesus to the faithful in the upper room. It's the same God. It's the same deliverance from the destroyer that plagued the ancient Semites, today named sin, death, and the devil.
Christians express the Jewish awareness of inclusion in their salvation story when they ask, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Of course, we were! How pitiful are the disclaimers who insist that the Jews killed Jesus! Hitler cheered the productions of the Oberammergau Passion Play depicting the Jews as sneering monsters with horns protruding from their heads. Modern Oberammergau productions omit the horns and depict only a portion of the crowd shouting, "Crucify him!" Modern textual research suggests that only some of the temple elite conspired against Jesus.
Contemporary Jews of faith join in the trek out of slavery. Contemporary Christians see themselves hammering the nails and thrusting the lance. Many are the contemporary Christians who sit at table in the upper room receiving the spiritual body and blood of our Lord on Maundy Thursday.
Secondly, the exodus memories are more than memories about family. Whether we march in the line of those headed for Sinai or join in the line of those headed for the communion rail, the focus is on family.
A group of Christian students decided to host their own version of the Jewish Seder meal. They asked a local rabbi to join them. The students stuck to the script religiously and reverently. The rabbi suddenly spoke up and offered a suggestion. "Don't be so stiff and formal!" he urged them. "When we do it, we say a prayer, then talk or laugh a bit, then we have a glass of wine, and after more conversation we say another prayer. It's a bit of a family thing. If you keep going the way you're going, you'll be done in twenty minutes."1
Those who have joined hands around the Seder meal have felt the power of the family circle. The Passover was moved later in Jewish history to the temple, but today it is back where it belongs: in the family circle.
The American family has taken many hits. In the mid-'80s, American sociologists defined the family in American culture as "a place where one is unconditionally accepted ... a place of love and happiness where you can count on the other family members."2 But alas, by the middle of the nineteenth century, "... the network of kinship has narrowed and the sphere of individual decision has grown."3
The sense of "family" has also diminished in the church family. Exceptions to the rule are the small country churches where the entire membership joins in prayer at worship and then joins in "fellowship" around a buffet table laden with salads, sandwiches, pastries, coffee, and powdered drinks. The northern European model of worship attended by individuals and occasional couples entering and leaving with no "Hellos" and no "Good-byes" is repeated in staid mainline American churches.
"The family that prays together stays together" is a rule often confused but rarely practiced. Holy communion, rooted in the Jewish Seder, is a family affair. Nuclear families come forward to the altar and rub shoulders with the greater family, the community of believers gathered together in baptism and then nourished together by the bread and the wine (or grape juice). Continuous communion underlines the family theme.
The congregational family also acknowledges the "communion of saints" in the third article of the creed. The observance of Maundy Thursday also brings about two billion members of the universal Christian family to the same altar of Christ who feeds his earthly family and pours out upon it the power of his blood. But there is more: Keep on adding the countless hosts of those past, present, and future, who stand before the throne of the Lamb in heaven.
Thirdly, the exodus memories are more than memories about our future. From the biblical point of view, history is linear. It runs in a straight line. The Jews gathered around the Seder table to look back and see themselves tagging along behind Moses and the elders herding them toward the Red Sea and the safety beyond. Christians "remember" at the Lord's table not only the Jesus who sat and sits at the head of the table but looks forward to the heavenly feast to come.
An American exchange pastor was finishing up his tour of duty in a town near Hamburg, Germany, when the planes plowed their fiery way through the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. One of his German colleagues phoned him that evening to ask if he would share the message at a special prayer service scheduled the following evening. The American agreed, finished the conversation, and then went into the parsonage library to look for a text. On the desk he found a framed quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Wonderfully protected by benevolent powers
Comforted, we await what may come
For God is with us in the evening, in the morning
And most certainly in every new day.4
Bonhoeffer wrote those lines shortly before his hanging at the hands of the Nazis.
The church was packed that evening; there was standing room only. After the service, two young girls with tears in their eyes approached the American pastor. "We are so sorry about what happened yesterday in America," they said and handed the pastor two red roses. A few weeks later, when the guest pastor celebrated communion and said his farewells to the congregation, there was a sense of being bound together that would not have been as strong had the events in America not taken place. The visiting pastor and the members of the German congregation confessed to one another, "We are family!" But it was a family with a common past and a common future. Fiery chaos in New York could not stop the migration of brothers and sisters in Christ, holding hands, assisting one another in the journey to God's future. The physical realm had too little power to delay the coming of the kingdom.
The event in the upper room preceded the event of Golgotha by only a few hours. Christians everywhere were in that upper room and accompanied the Nazarene upon the Via Dolorosa to the place of execution. When Christians stand or kneel at altars around the world, their thoughts are more than memories. Their collective back flash brings tears. It brings joy. It brings anticipation. It is accompanied by a sense of unity ... unity with all believers of all times and places ... indeed, a sense of unity with all people for whom Christ offered his body and his blood. Amen.
____________
1. Reginald H. Fuller, Proclamation: Series B Holy Week (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. 39.
2. Robert Bellah, et al, Habits of the Heart (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 87.
3. Ibid, p. 89.
4. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wiederstand und Ergebung (Munchen or Muenchen: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 11. Auflage, 1962), p. 275 (author's translation).
