(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 10, 2017, Proper 18)
A Living Memory:
God the Liberator, the Life-Giver
“Remember this day,” God says to
Moses on the eve of his people’s liberation (cf. 12:14). “Mark it on your calendar. In fact, make it the beginning of your
calendar, the first month of the year.
Make it the most important memory, the center of your world” (cf.
12:2). “Celebrate it every year,
til the end of time” (cf. 12:14).
Why is this memory so
important? Why make it the first month
of the year and celebrate it again and again? Because it is a timeless memory, a memory that lives, a
memory that comes true again and again.
God was, is, and will be the liberator, the life-giver.
Fast-forward over a thousand
years from Moses to Jesus, and the Israelites were still remembering that
Passover day. Jesus and his
disciples go to Jerusalem to remember it.
For them, Passover is not an idle memory, a pleasant recollection. It is a living memory, a memory that
comes alive again. As the
Israelites suffered in Egypt, so Jesus will suffer on the cross. As the Israelites were delivered, so
Jesus will be resurrected. Over a
thousand years later, it is still true.
God is the liberator, the life-giver.
Today, three thousand years after
Moses, the Jewish faith still celebrates the Passover. For them too, it is a living memory, a
memory that they have lived over and over again. As their ancestors suffered in Egypt, they too have
suffered: persecution in ancient Rome, organized massacres in Russia and
Eastern Europe, the Holocaust. And
as their ancestors found freedom from Egypt, they continue to find life
too. It is still true for them:
God is the liberator, the life-giver.
Insofar as the Lord’s Supper is a
Passover meal, we also celebrate the memory. In fact, we celebrate it every week—or even more often:
“Whenever [we] eat this bread or drink this cup,” Paul says (1 Cor 11:26). Just as the Passover was originally
ordained as the beginning of the calendar, the memory that would define time and
life itself, so the Lord’s Supper begins our every week, reminding us that
though the times may change, this memory will be true again and again: God is
the liberator, the life-giver.
The Lord Still Dies
Every week, at the very end of
the Lord’s Supper, we quote scripture: “For as often as [we] eat this bread and
drink the cup, [we] proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor
11:26). Up until this week, that
conclusion has always puzzled me and left me feeling a bit empty. Why do we only remember the Lord’s
death? Why not his resurrection? Why not new life?
But now I have a theory. It’s because the Lord still dies. It’s because there is still suffering
in this world. There are still
many Egypts, many Pharaohs, many chains in this world. We proclaim the Lord’s death not
because we’re pessimists or doomsayers, but because we believe there is more
liberating that needs to be done, more resurrection that needs to happen. This memory is not an idle
recollection, a pleasant reminiscence.
This memory is a defiant act of faith, a commitment to a different
future.
If God had solved the problems of
the world once and for all with the Passover event, then there would be no need
to remember. God invites the
Israelites to remember that day forever, year after year, because there will
still be suffering left in their world.
And God wants them to remember that suffering does not have the last word, that liberation and life are always at
hand, that God is the liberator, the life-giver.
That is why we remember the
Lord’s death every week. Because
every week we see his death in our world and yet we defiantly proclaim that
liberation and life are at hand.
When we hear about the thousands
who face a departure from their home and all they have known, we remember the
Lord’s death. When we hear about
the LGBTQ community rejected by the church, we remember the Lord’s death. When we hear about the poor Salvadorans
caught in the crossfire between the gangs and the government, we remember the
Lord’s death.
Johann Baptist Metz, a German
theologian who has spent his life wrestling with the memory of the Holocaust,
calls the memory of Christ “the dangerous memory of suffering.” It is dangerous because it sees in the
face of every suffering person the face of Christ, because it will not rest
until they do, because it defies the injustice of the world and proclaims with
love that liberation and life are at hand.
Not Just Back Then, But Now
For the rest of the sermon, I
would like to share with you some personal reflections. Here I am going to take a page from
Paul’s book, and preface what follows with a reminder: “This is me speaking,
not the Lord” (cf. 1 Cor 7:12; 2 Cor 11:17). As if you needed to be reminded of that….
When the Israelites celebrate the Passover or when we
celebrate the Last Supper, what we’re really celebrating is not an event
shrouded in the mists of history.
What we’re really celebrating is a God who liberates, who gives
life. Not just back then but
now. What we’re proclaiming is
that as sure as the week has seven days, or the year 365, suffering and
oppression do not have the last word.
If that’s true, then where are
the liberation stories of recent generations? There’s one in particular that I think we need to remember,
and I would like to share it with you today.
April 3, 1865, is often cited as
the day that Richmond fell, and with it the Confederate States of America. That is certainly how I have been
taught to remember the day. As I read
recently through the story of that day, however, I cannot help but hear echoes
of another story. Listen with me.
One woman living in Richmond at
the time remembers that day as a day of darkness: “We covered our faces and
cried aloud,” she writes. “All
through the house was the sound of sobbing. It was the house of mourning, the house of death.”[1] Such words could easily have been
written of the Egyptian houses on that dark night of the Passover (cf. Ex
12:30).
Reverend Garland H. White, a
former slave who was serving as a chaplain in the Union Army, describes the
scene from the other side: “A vast multitude assembled on Broad Street, and I…proclaimed
for the first time in that city freedom to all mankind. After which the doors
of all the slave pens were thrown open, and thousands came out shouting and
praising God.”[2] Another chaplain writes also of divine
deliverance, “We brought…heaven-born liberty. The slaves seemed to think that the day of jubilee had fully
come. How they danced, shouted…shook
our hands…laughed all over, and thanked God…!”[3] And then in a passage that recalls the
divine command to remember the Passover forever (12:14), he writes, “It is a
day never to be forgotten by us till days shall be no more.”[4]
Indeed, forty years later, on
April 3, 1905, Richmond hosted the Emancipation Day Parade, commemorating the
day that many slaves in Richmond and across the south were actually liberated. Thousands gathered for the festivities
and celebrated with a procession through the city streets that ended up at the
Broad Street Baseball Park. (If
there are any history buffs among you, I’d be curious to learn exactly where
that was.)
Passover in Richmond—and What It Might Mean
As a native of Richmond, I have
been taught to remember April 3, 1865, as the fall of this city and the fall of
the Confederacy. But as a follower
of Christ, I am invited to remember the God who liberates, who gives life. Which means I am invited to remember
April 3, 1865, as a day of divine deliverance, a holy Passover. A heavy day and a day of great cost,
yes, as it was thousands of years ago in Egypt, but a day when the God the
liberator, God the life-giver, passed over the city—this city!—bringing freedom
to thousands.
I am honored to call Richmond
home, if for no other than that here happened a Passover. And this memory, which is but one of
many in the long line of memories going all the way back to Egypt, a host of
memories which ring most loud and most true in the Last Supper of Christ—this
memory is for me a defiant act of faith, a commitment to a different
future. It means remembering the
Lord’s death in the subjugation and suffering of those today who still share
the struggles that those slaves did: educational barriers, labor inequalities,
presumptions of guilt and dangerousness.
This memory means believing that God the liberator and life-giver is
against that suffering still, that Jesus Christ is in that suffering still, and
that his love will somehow bring new life out of that suffering. It means that while many dismiss or
minimalize the suffering of others, we remember the death of our Lord, who must
still be dying in these places, and we love in the middle of this suffering,
because we believe that love is even stronger than death. We believe that liberation and life are
at hand.
The Future in the Past
In today’s charged atmosphere of partisan politics, it is difficult to
talk about people’s lives without being implicated in a party or its policies. But heaven forbid that keep us from
talking. As a follower of Christ,
I am not partisan to one party or another. I am partisan to the people who are suffering, in whom our
Lord is still dying, whose lives cry out for liberation. I am very interested in politics, yes—the
politics of the kingdom of God, a kingdom for which I pray, a kingdom which I
believe is coming. And its coming,
I believe, is somehow tied up with this beautiful past of Passovers that we
remember.
Prayer
Lord Christ,
Whose death we still remember
When we see the suffering of our
world:
May the memories
Of Passover and the Table and
April 3
Inspire us to celebrate
The God who liberates and gives
life,
And to share in God’s liberation
By living in your love,
Which is stronger than death.
Amen.
[1] A Virginia Girl in the Civil War (ed.
Myrta Lockett Avery; New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903), 362.
[2] A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from
African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (ed. Edwin S.
Redkey; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 175-176.
[3] The Military and Civil History of
Connecticut during the War of 1861-65 (eds. W. A. Croffut and John M.
Morris; New York: Ledyard Bill, 1868), 791. These are the words of Henry Swift DeForest.
[4] The Military and Civil History of
Connecticut, 792.
[5] James Branch
Cabell Library, Special Collections and Archives.
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