Christ our Passover

Proper 19 A 2011
Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.


Sunday after Sunday, right before receiving Communion, we recite “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” We probably do not pay a lot of attention to the words, as we go into Episcopalian automatic pilot. At this deeply sacred moment in our liturgy, why do we remember the Passover?

A full answer to that would easily make up a graduate course and probably a lifetime of reflection. Rivers of ink have been spilled on this deep truth, both in the Bible itself and also in century upon century of commentary. But today we hear the story, the moment of the feast itself that we remember.

We have heard the story before. It is a tale filled with real danger. Slaves under brutal captors dream a wild and impossible dream—freedom. A people divided and broken as abused people become are told to gather as one. And they are made one—by the merciful yet dreadful judgment of a mysterious God who comes out of their deep past to make himself shockingly present and inescapably contemporary. The divine judgment is being uncorked against the complacency and prosperity and self-sufficiency of a great empire, an empire that trusts its gods to make the river rise and fall and to keep the harvest flowing and business humming and everyone in their proper place. The divine judgment will upset business as usual to its very core. The face of the divine Wisdom, says a later commentator, will smile gently upon the enslaved and the forgotten yet turn with a warrior’s snarl upon the powerful.

So do this, you who trust in the divine mercy. Gather as a people. Prepare this feast which has no fancy trimming, no elaborate appetizers or dessert. Keep your coat on and your knapsacks by your chairs. If your neighbor does not have one of these special, sacred lambs, these gentle animals which are suddenly charged with a sense of the Holy, then share. You are moving from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom. In one meal you will remember your need for the divine mercy and how deep that mercy is. In the symbols of roasted lamb eaten whole, in bitter herbs and in bread baked quickly without yeast, really tortillas cooked up on an open stove, you will remember the slavery and the yearning and the cost paid by an innocent animal and the cost paid by a God who breaks the divine heart in setting us free. You will realize how lucky, how blessed you are to eat this meal. You will realize you are a people together on a desert journey, a people traveling from darkness to light, a people whole and together wholly dependent on the mercy of God.

And so Saint Paul taught us, centuries later, to say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” Christ is the lamb. The church is the gathered people. There is slavery outside of us and slavery within us. Hear the summons, gather under the merciful eye of God, eat this simple hasty meal. And when you do, become one people and become the spotless lamb, the Lamb of God. Walk the journey from darkness to light.

The Old Testament tells us the story. The New Testament tells us how to live the story. We hear how to be this people for whom Christ is our Passover.

Jesus in the Gospel speaks very plainly and practically about how to deal with conflict in the community, conflict in the church. One commentator tells how this text might read today with responses that are all too familiar. “If your brother sins against you, then…” Smile and pretend it didn’t hurt, but never forget it and wait for a chance to get them back. Go home and complain to your family and friends and gossip about that other person for days weeks. Send them a nasty e-mail venting all your anger and cc/ the rector. De-friend them on Facebook. Or start to withdraw from the church, maybe even leave the church and look for another church where the members never sin against one another.

That’s a pretty common strategy “out there”, and all too often we act a lot more like “out there” than as citizens of the Kingdom. Through the years I have come close to despair at the difficulty we church-people have in living together and working things out in the light of the Gospel. Because the Way of Jesus, the way of the Passover, is a different way, a way from the slavery of resentment and retaliation to a new place of healing and freedom. According to Jesus, it is very practical. “Go talk to them alone”—respect their privacy and give them a chance for reconciliation. “Take one or two others”—again a chance to heal the wound in a discreet way. “Go to the church”—because the division of two members is a division for us all. We have been called to freedom by God’s mercy together; this is not a solo journey. “Treat them as a tax collector…” and the story does not end there. A wise old priest once reminded me, “Remember what we do with tax collectors and sinners? We search them out and forgive them.” For the promise of Jesus at the end of the tale is solemn and not given only for our comfort, but also for our challenge. “Where two or three are gathered, there am I in your midst.” The merciful yet awesome God of the Passover is among us—it is up to us to choose to be the gathered people of God, waiting for the divine mercy, saved by the blood of the innocent victim, or people who belong to slavery and to power. We can stay in the darkness of the weary dynamics of slavery and oppression, including slavery to our selves, or we can learn to walk free.

This is what we choose when we say, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.”