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.
