CLICK HERE for a Maundy Thursday DFW Online Worship Resource List AND/OR your Instructions for the Mt. Olive Lutheran Church Maundy Thursday Fun Family Facebook Photo Contest.
WHY IS THIS NIGHT DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHER NIGHTS?
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (Message) - Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.
I hope you will take some time to click the links in this post and get to know more about the Haggadah Seder. As a Christian, nothing has affected my faith quite as profoundly as learning to sing the Hebrew Traditions.
The SEDER
The SHEMA
The SHABBAT
The HAGGADAH
SHALOM Chaverim
Okay, that last one may not be a Hebrew Tradition.
But like all of the others, I was introduced to the ritual, the tradition, as a young boy.
And in many different settings, both Jewish and Christian, I have had a chance to repeat, renew, and remember these traditions with folks I have come to love dearly through the years.
Our Savior's Lutheran, Rockford, IL
Hillel Jewish Student Center, Texas A&M Univ.
All Saints Lutheran, Minnetonka, MN
Peace Lutheran, Charlotte, MI
Resurrection Lutheran, Plano, TX
Rejoice Lutheran, Coppell, TX
Community of Hope Lutheran, Ft. Worth, TX
But there are two Seder experiences that I have enjoyed that have overshadowed all the rest. Because they reminded me in some way of Tevye and Golde's table in Fiddler on the Roof.
If you click the link to The Sabbath Prayer, here or above, and watch the beginning, Golde does something simple with such practiced grace, that you might have missed if you've seen it already. She lights two candles. Probably two of the most valued heirlooms the family owns.
During the Seder, just like on most Sabbath evenings, an honored lady in the family, perhaps the hostess, will light the candles. And say a cherished prayer. Often two candles, for reasons we'll discuss on Good Friday. But sometimes more, depending on how many guests might be gathered around the table(s).
I was so honored when Linda and Walt Downes and Sammy and Maddie hosted our family in their home in Ionia, Michigan in 2003. I can't remember Linda lighting the candles. That wasn't a part of the ritual I had grown to appreciate yet.
What excited me that night was that we were welcomed to the table of a mostly Jewish family, sharing the Seder as Linda had learned it growing up. It wasn't the amended Lutheran version I was used to. She had learned to read Hebrew as a child in her Conservative Jewish home. So somebody was at the table who could read the Hebrew text far better than I could. Her synagogue training was, of course, much more effective than my seminary classes. And, then too, she had almost every Sabbath to practice.
Later that year we would be doubly honored to attend their daughter's Bat Mitzvah. And hear them reading the Torah in Hebrew. It is a moment I will always cherish. Any chance I get to hear the Old Testament, the Pentateuch I too read in Hebrew ... Any time I hear it read again in the original language, especially by somebody of the Jewish faith, gives me chills. It's like I'm hearing the text read the same way that Jesus heard it. Because. I am.
I wish we as Christians paid a lot more attention to the Jewish traditions that Jesus practiced as a child and as a young man. Passover. Sabbath. The Shema. We often seem to forget that Jesus learned to read the Bible in Hebrew like any devoted young Jewish child today. And Jesus had a most memorable Bar Mitzvah in Jerusalem at the age of 12 himself. Much of it while his parents were desperately looking for him, thinking he was lost.
But he was in his Father's house. Honoring the faith traditions of his mother and father. Honoring what he had learned and practiced over and over, year after year at home, with Mary and Joseph. Praying, as he would say many times in his life, to Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha’Olam, Oh Lord, Our God, King of the Universe.
Almost 15 years later I would again sit at a table with a faithful Jewish family sharing another Seder. This one in a much larger space with the many Jewish residents of Highland Springs Retirement Community, where my wife, Jamie works as the Chaplain. She has the blessing of being the pastor for her Jewish residents as well as the Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, and Moslem residents.
On that night, I heard the question Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights so differently than ever before. If you click on that link, you will hear the whole Hebrew text of the questions the children ask during the Seder. And the answers. With translations into English.
But on that night, I did not get the English translations. Just the beaming, excited faces of grandchildren singing the song for their parents and grandparents. In every Lutheran version I had ever shared of the Seder, we just read the words, like this wonderful meal last year at Community of Hope. But at Highland Springs, the generational impact of this tradition began to sink in for me.
How children and parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents all share their faith in one room. But the four generations can represent almost a century of Passover meals, shared together. Linking back to other generations almost now forgotten. But all sitting at similar tables at a similar time of year. Lighting, perhaps the very same candles, passed down through the family for generations.
And as the grandchildren sang the Ma Nishtana, I had no idea whether they understood the Hebrew words any better than I did. Some may never experience their own Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah, and learn the subtleties of Hebrew consonants and vowels. But they were learning the rhythm and the pattern of the original biblical language. The music of their people. The music of their family. Something they were singing together at home, much like Mary and Joseph likely sang with a growing Jesus.
What we often, as Christians, as Lutherans, forget during Holy Week is that the Last Supper was also a celebration of Passover. Perhaps even a Seder Meal. The story of Exodus. Unleavened bread. Candles. Cups of wine. The bread lifted up. And prayers that followed. The wine lifted up. And prayers that followed.
A lamb sacrificed for God's people. And the blood splashed on wood. Not yet the wood of the cross. But the wood of a door post.
So the plague would pass over the homes of God's people.
What we often, as Christians, as Lutherans, as Americans, forget during Holy Week are the amazing parallels ...
between God's people who were slaves in Africa, in Egypt not quite 1500 years before Christ ...
and God's people who were slaves, stolen from their homes in Africa, even Egypt a little more than 1500 years after Christ.
James Cone, the author of Black Theology and Black Power, once said in an interview with Terry Gross on NPR, that it was, “especially the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt [that] became a central theme in my theology because it’s been a central theme in black religion. Here you have salvation of an enslaved people being liberated. Actually, ‘salvation’ meant ‘to be delivered from bondage.’ That’s literally what salvation means in the Bible, to be set free. And I began to see a powerful thing.
Now, I studied that in seminary, but they didn’t teach it like that. They taught it in a way as though it was unrelated to the struggle for justice in society today. But I also saw prophets like Jeremiah, Amos, Isaiah, Hosea, Malachi — all these prophets spoke for the poor, spoke for the weak. So if you read the message of the prophets, it is a condemnation of the nation and also of the religious practices of that time for oppressing the poor. That’s why Amos said, ‘Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’”
Leonard Fein, in an article entitled, To Know The Full Meaning of Freedom, not only relates this quote from Dr. Cone, but also these lines from the Seder. Very early in the celebration, we raise the matzo and say (in Aramaic, no less),
“This is the bread of affliction; let all who are hungry enter and eat; let all who are in need come and celebrate Passover. This year we are here; next year may we be in the land of Israel;
This year we are slaves; next year may we be free people.”
And then there is the line in the Seder, “In every generation, we are obliged to see ourselves as if we personally had been part of the exodus from Egypt.”
And Fein quotes another advocate for justice, Brazilian bishop Helder Camara, who once said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
If we take the Seder seriously, we are challenged to see ourselves as slaves as long as there are any in our community, our country, our world who are not free. The plight of the Israelites before the Exodus is also our plight. At least until we join in a journey toward justice ... with the homeless man begging on our street ... the young girl living as a sex slave in an apartment on the other side of the interstate ... the immigrant family torn apart as one side of the family is deported and the other remains here.
The Seder, if we let it, draws our children and grandchildren into a vitally important story of Scripture, that led not only to the Last Supper on the night before Good Friday, but also to the cross.
And the Seder, if we let it, draws our children and grandchildren into a journey for justice that started in the Old Testament and continued into and through New Testament.
The story of Exodus is an ongoing story. It happened over 3000 years ago. It happened again before and after the Civil War. It happened again in the 1960's with Martin Luther King. And it is happening now. Again and again. And again.
And like all great stories. It only means something to our children and grandchildren. If they hear it at home. A lot. Too.
As we light a candle. And gather around a table. And tell the story. At home. And let them learn to tell it to. Even sing it.
As we eat together.
With a little wine. Some unleavened bread. Some vegetables and salt water and bitter herbs.
And some good roasted meat.
I hope you have a meal something like this, quarantined in your home this Holy Week. For this too, can become a story you remember for generations to come.
And when you do. Please.
Take a picture of it and share it with me.
It will help us remember it. And retell it in the years to come.
How we were delivered. And set free.
By our loving God.
Amen.