Making the People of God, #4

4. Why “Do this?” (Part 3)

The first great theme of the Old Testament is “freedom from bondage.” Moses, a leader inspired by God, took the Hebrew slaves from Egypt, where they were building monuments for the pharaohs. Their lives were wretched; without hope; with no future; no power; no expectation of relief; no organization; working at a task that provided them with no benefit; no entertainment; they had even forgotten their God; nothing at all – except the impossible task of work with insufficient, incorrect tools. Even the most needy persons in our nation have nothing to compare with the hopelessness, loveless life of these Hebrew slaves.

Suddenly a speech-impaired man from the ruling class comes to them, organizes them around their God – whom they had all but forgotten – and tells them that they are to be set free to go worship their God. While the miracles done by Moses are told in a manner to convince Pharaoh the free the slaves, they certainly had the additional affect of convincing the Hebrews of Moses’s authenticity. After a time – ending with the Passover Angel – they were set free; they went on their way.

As they were reveling in their new freedom., suddenly they saw the army of Pharaoh following them. The old bondage was reaching out to snatch back its escaped slaves. In terror, they moved faster – perhaps to out-run the army chariots? Suddenly, in front of them, a body of water appears. The army chariots behind; the water in front – what were they to do? The brief fire of freedom was to be extinguished: either by the violence of the army, or the water before them. Maybe it would have been better to have remained slaves! Bad as it was, it was predictable.

A strong east wind blew all night long. (Exodus 14:21)

The Hebrews went through the place where the water had been– with dry feet. Then the wind ceased; Pharaoh’s army was destroyed. Now they indeed were free! Now indeed they were free! Free at last! Free at last! Finally – free! No more bondage; no more bricks; no more work; no more external authority; no more rules made by other people: they were free. In the exuberance of their freedom, they continued with Moses to the place where they worshipped their God. They thanked him for deliverance.

After a while – like children on school vacation – the question arose: Now what?

They complained about their freedom. How were they to eat and drink? Looking into that horrid past, it suddenly seemed rosy: there was plenty of food in Egypt; perhaps they should go back. The Nile river ran through Egypt; plenty of water. Suddenly they toyed with going back to the past. Power requires responsibility; is it worthy it?

Give back that freedom – which required them to use the minds that the Lord God had given them. They wandered around in a wilderness for a long time – forty years. They experimented with many things; strange gods; strange practices; peculiar interpersonal relationships. They complained about the responsibility of their freedom. They could not get along with each other even when Moses supplied them with leadership and rules from God. They did not understand the rules and chose not follow them. Even the new leadership became weighed down with the failure of free people to be responsible for their interrelated lives. More than once they complained that slavery (no power) in Egypt was preferable to freedom (power). They were free, but they did not know how to live with their freedom.

In spite of their many failures to accept the freedom they had been given, they did not turn back. They moved on to the Promised Land – that place of hope – where all their expectations of the meaning of freedom would come true. The Promised Land was not like Egypt: it was a land where they would be in charge. No one would tell them what to do; they would have food in abundance; each person would have his or her own home; all children would be above average; life would be, in a word, a bowl of cherries. Hope in the future helped them overcome their displeasure with the present; and they rejected the concept of turning back to the past.

But it was not exactly what they had expected.

All this is included in Jesus’s specific direction:
Do this for my anamnesis/remembrance/recalling. Why?
First of all, the Eucharist is associated with the Passover festival. Whether it was the night before the Preparation of the Passover as in the Fourth Gospel, or whether it was the First night of Passover is not really as important as the direct association with Passover. Passover is the celebration of freedom. More than that: Passover is the celebration of the unmerited love of God – love freely given for no reason imaginable by the human mind.

The only reason that the first Passover took place is that God loved those whom God chose to set free. Abject slaves; living with all decisions made by others; poverty; negative worth; powerless people; people with absolutely nothing in their favor, not a single positive item – in the way that humans (separated from God by sin) look at things. Yet God brought the freedom and gave them power over their lives.

This was done in accordance with their own recollection of someone named Abraham. This Abraham, their legends had it, was a very old, childless man who was very wealthy and powerful in his time. He had a vision of the Lord God. God promised him that Abraham would have children more than the stars of the heavens, than the sands of the sea. This happened at the end of Abraham’s life. Yet it was the beginning of Abraham’s life that started it all. Without question, Abraham left his homeland at God’s direction, went west, and, by being faithful, he became successful as the world sees success.

But in the one thing which everyone thought to be of great importance, Abraham’s life was incomplete. He had no child to inherit his estates. When he had the vision as a very old man, when God announced that he would become a father at the age of 100 – married to Sarah, who was in her 90’s – Abraham believed: – that is, Abraham had faith. That faith set him free from fear for his estates.
For no valid human reason Abraham was the object of the love of God. God’s loved showered on him and Sarah, and Isaac was born.

To test Abraham’s faith, Abraham was asked to sacrifice (kill) his son Isaac as an act of worship to God. When Abraham raised the knife to kill his son, God recognized Abraham’s faith: and “it was counted to him as righteousness.” A ram was caught in the thicket, and the sacrifice was completed. ( John the Baptist called Jesus “the Lamb of God.”) Faith, such as Abraham’s; or faith, such as the slaves had: faith resulted in the love of God being released on them.

The Love of God is the essence of the Creation. It is the primary force of union and of creation. The only thing that prevents humans from receiving this bountiful, gracious love of God is the selfishness that places something other than God at the center of life.

Making the People of God, number 3

3. Why “Do this?” (Part 2)Last week, the necessity of using metaphor was discussed. Metaphor was applied to the Creation story in Genesis. When this is done, then one sees the Christian concept of God – as distinct from the prevailing American idea of God – in a totally different manner. Many who loudly call themselves Christian have an inadequate, if not downright wrong, idea of God.

The Christian God of the Bible – including both Old and New Testaments – is not part of Creation. This God created everything that exists, including all the laws of physics and mathematics, from nothing other than what we call – using metaphor – thought or imagination. Continuing the metaphor, the mere thinking made it real, and it came into actual existence through the – metaphor – power, or Spirit, or soul, of God. (Stephen Hawking indicates that we lack the knowledge of math to fully be able to comprehend much more than we now know of the moment of the “big bang.”)

The Christian God of the Bible is, however, not just the Creator who did it and then (metaphor) stands back and watches it go. The Christian God of the Bible is intimately and actively involved in the process of Creation – for creation is an on-going process. Again, this is something we can only learn by observation, by reflection, and by faith. Then the observations, reflections and faith express themselves in story. “Story” is a combination of observation and reflection, told in a manner that includes the observation and the reflection in support of the faith of the community. That is what the Bible does for us. It tells us how the observation of events – history – illustrate the action of God in creation. (The clearest illustration of this is: The 6 PM Evening News TV on the day the Israelites went through the Red Sea, both in Egypt and in Israel, had the same lead story, a reporting of the same event: but the story in Egypt was quite different from the one in Israel.)

When one begins to understand the Bible in this manner, then real faith can commence, and the direct relationship of God to the ordinary events of daily living can be seen. When that happens, then it becomes possible to perceive the action of God in the redemption of humans – the restoration of relationships with God, with Creation and with Each Other. When that happens, then the Bible becomes a paradigm of restored relationships, rather than a book of laws to be obeyed. It comes quite clear that it is impossible for humans ever to earn God’s love. There is absolutely nothing at all that humans can do that will ever destroy God’s love – not even the murder of God’s only Son. (metaphor) God’s love is consistent and constant. When humans believe (have faith) this, then they can take their full part in the procreation and completion of Creation: in faith enhancing all relationships between people, God and all aspects of creation with the dynamic of love.That is what the Eucharist is all about.

When Jesus said “Do this for my anamnesis – in remembrance of me,” he brought all of this into the minds of the disciples. (Apparently more than just the Twelve.) “Do this” includes the entire history of Israel, the whole paradigm of God’s relationship to Israel. This is best understood in the three major themes presented in the Old Testament. These themes are: 1. Freedom from Slavery (Exodus); 2. Homecoming/Restoration/Heavenly Banquet (End of Exile, Isaiah chapters 40 – 55; 3. Mediation of Grace through Institution (rebuilding of Temple, Sacrifice, Ministry, Torah).

To this very day, the first of these (Freedom from Slavery) continues as a major part of the continuing Jewish/Hebrew religion. To participate in Passover is to be involved in a great and wondrous celebration of the power of God, the graciousness of God and the exaltation of humanity. And perhaps most important, the celebration of Passover is not the looking back with affection on some past event. Passover is not a commemoration of something that happened 3500 years ago. Passover is not the desire to return to some pervious period in the past as a “better” time than now. No, Passover is the making present of the act of God that demonstrated the love of God for those whom God has chosen as the recipients of God’s love.

The love/action of God gives a freedom God’s people did not know or understand. Look at the recipients: slaves in a nation ruled by a despotic ruler/god; desperate to demonstrate his ability to overcome the laws of nature and live forever. These sophisticated Egyptians even – perhaps – had the beginnings of a belief in the One God. They took these foreigners, enslaved them, forcing them even to forget their own heritage. The condition of the Hebrew slaves was dreadful: insufficient food; incorrect tools for the task; impersonal interrelationships; poverty; harassment; in short, every discrimination-evil known to humanity. Not only were they required to destroy their children, but they did it without complaint.

With one exception.

Moses was one of these horrid Hebrew slaves. But his mother had faith. After assuring his ability to survive, she sent him floating down the river for a future she could not imagine. The baby is discovered by a princess of the royal family and raised as her own child. (Serendipity? Luck? Fate? Coincidence? Fluke? Act of God? – it depends on your own faith.) And look what happened!

Through the actions of Moses, this unfortunate gaggle of slaves, these unsophisticated, uneducated, unknown people with no homeland, no history (in the sense of war and conquest), no claim to significance by any set of standards suddenly found themselves set free.

This freedom came to them, in effect, as a bolt out of the blue. A flash of lightning gave their lives a new meaning and purpose. They had done nothing at all. But it happened. It happened when the wind – the sign of their Storm-god – came up and blew back the water so they could escape the pursuing Egyptians. (Wind was observed blowing back the water in the shallow lakes that covered the isthmus of Suez during the construction of the Suez Canal.)

For no observable reason this tattered people was set free. They were delivered from their misery. They experienced the action of God. They gave thanks to God for their deliverance. How could they show their gratitude? First, by making present the loving action of God throughout all ages; second, as a paradigm, or model, for all humanity. (Metaphor)

“Do this.” The “This” is the action of God, setting free not only the Hebrews, the first followers of “The Way”, the Christians. It was the person of Jesus who “did this.” Jesus did this, not by his teaching, not by his miracles, but by the total offering of his own life. This self offering – this obedience – this utter faith in God – is the making holy (sacri-fice), the “showing” of the complete love of God for his people, the bringing of his people into full life in God. This, in the first three Gospels and Paul, is the setting free - for no reason -that God did at Passover with Moses. For no (humanly discernable) reason, God acted. The unfailing love of God came because God chose to bring it. But God brought it to the People of God, those who were looking forward to God’s loving action – Messiah??