Remembering into our Future By Jessica C. Gregory World Communion Sunday October 2, 2016 Exodus 12:1-13; 13: 1-8

Transcription

1 1 Remembering into our Future By Jessica C. Gregory World Communion Sunday October 2, 2016 Exodus 12:1-13; 13: 1-8 Last Sunday, a few members of Northminster s refugee team, including Laurie Davies, went down to Rogers Park to visit Fatima and Hassan* and their children, a family of six that we are sponsoring through Refugee One. Laurie shared with me about this visit as we enjoyed lasagna at ToGather Thursday evening. One of the highlights, she said, was enjoying pieces of harisi-a dense almond cake that Fatima had made for them. Upon tasting it Laurie commented that she d love to have the recipe. Fatima s eyes lit up and she started speaking in Arabic to her husband, describing the recipe to him. He tried, unsuccessfully, to translate it into English. After a few moments the two looked at each other and it was determined that Fatima would make the cake right then and Laurie could watch and see how it was made. So, despite the fact that she had just baked a harisi cake, Fatima began the preparations for another. Laurie watched her, fascinated. She was thrilled to have a private Middle Eastern cooking lesson! Methodically, Fatima gathered the basic ingredients farina (like cream of wheat only finer), sugar, powdered milk, butter, a little baking soda and a little almond flavoring. She then grabbed a sesame paste and used it to grease the cake pan. One by one, she poured the ingredients in a bowl without hesitation. Baking a harisi cake was one thing that Fatima could do confidently in this small city apartment. It was one thing that offered familiarity and comfort. No need to look in a cookbook or translate anything; Fatima knew this recipe by heart. And making it reminded her of her homeland, her family, her community and her life back home, thousands of miles away. This is the gift of rituals. Whether it is cooking or working out, taking communion or praying, the rituals of our lives, those series of actions that we do the same way each time, help form us and remind us of our identities. For Fatima and millions of other refugees, cooking is one ritual that offers calm in an atmosphere of chaos. Calm in an atmosphere of chaos this is what the Israelites yearned for in Egypt as God unleashed plague after plague. In our Scripture for this morning we meet Moses, Aaron and the other Israelites who are weary from God s actions: the water turned to blood, the frogs, the gnats, the flies, and the diseased livestock, just to name a few. They are also fearful for their lives and for those of their families. If they do not leave Egypt soon the Pharaoh will surely see to it they have a slow and

2 2 awful end, as he works them, his slaves, to death. It is at this point that, through Moses and Aaron, the Israelites receive instructions about the Passover. They learn of God s plan to murder all first-born children and animals in Egypt except theirs. God will save them and deliver them out of Egypt! But the Israelites must follow the instructions God gives instructions to mark their doorposts and lintels with the blood of a lamb and then roast the lamb and eat it, spiced with bitter herbs, along with unleavened bread. And they must do this quickly. In the details is deep meaning. The roasted lamb recalls the great sacrifice of Israel; the bitter herbs, such as horseradish, are a sign of the bitterness of the Jews slavery in Egypt. And the unleavened bread recalls the haste in which they had to eat, not even giving time for the bread to rise. In their great sacrifice of their lambs that night so long ago, the Israelites were given so much more than they offered, they were given their freedom! They were also gifted with a ritual with which to retell this extraordinary story of deliverance a ritual to be prepared, enacted and remembered from generation to generation. At the time when the Jews future became most perilous, God gave them roots roots that they could firmly attach to; roots that would not let them go. These are the roots the Jews clung to as they left Egypt and walked into the unknown of the wilderness. They journeyed away from slavery and into a life of freedom and hope and into a new life, new community and a new way of existing. How was community supposed to exist in the wilderness? The Israelites did not know, but they knew how it existed that Passover night. Participating in the ritual of the Passover meal gave the Israelites a necessary tool to remember their way into their futures. It reminded them of who they were; beyond nomads in between two worlds, they were God s chosen people, beloved and delivered out of slavery. As renowned Old Testament Scholar Walter Brueggemann reflects: [As they speak] this in remembrance [the] community is engaged in an act of resistance against an ideology [of forgetting] that will destroy any Passover driven humanness (Brueggemann ). As was the case then and still is, we must be intentional about remembering; it is easy to forget. Rituals help us keep our good intentions. Through doing actions in the same way over and over again we not only remember what to do, we remember what those actions mean and we remember what it is we believe. In the act of deliverance from the Egyptians, God reveals his core attributes to the Israelites. These core attributes are foundational to faith and, when lived out, create just and vibrant communities. You find them among the details of God s

3 3 instructions to the Israelites. The Creator God made us to live in community so, at the Passover, God draws the whole congregation of Israel together to learn of and partake in a sacrificial meal. The Creator God believes that the good of the community as a whole must be cultivated and maintained, so the instructions command inclusivity: If a household is too small for a whole lamb it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one (12:4). The Creator God rejects the economy that is based on hierarchical oppression by which the poor produce an abundance of food that the rich enjoy. So the meal of the Passover is not too much not meant to have any leftover. It is meant to be just enough: You shall let none of it remain until the morning (12:10). This meal brings about a new economy of food for the Israelites that of just enough, enough sustenance for the day that requires trust in God to provide for tomorrow. It is a meal for all, a meal that is essential and enough, but it is not abundant. It is such a meal that we will partake this day, along with Christians all over the world. This meal, ours of bread and grape juice rather than bitter herbs and matzah, offers the space to re-tell our story of faith our story of Jesus life among us, his sacrificial death and his rising and to celebrate it actively together. Even though we will receive the bread and cup at our seats we are active in this meal, for we feed it to one another. As you pass the bread basket to your neighbor, your sibling in Christ, you say, This is the bread of life, broken for you. Broken for YOU you who almost didn t get out of bed this morning because you hurt so much, you who keep running from one thing to the next so you don t have to think about the diagnosis, you who had a wonderful evening with friends last night but still feel so alone. As you offer a cup of grape juice to each other, you say, This is the cup of salvation poured out for you. Poured out for YOU you whose boss said you aren t doing a good enough job, you who can t sleep because life is so hard and money is so tight, you who are doubting God so much the words of the Lord s Prayer won t come. For each of us and all of us, in this Sanctuary and around this world, Jesus gave his life. For him death was not the end, and neither is it for us. It is this hope to which we cling, especially when times are difficult. And when they are not, we come to this table with hearts full of gratitude for God s blessings to us. Throughout our lives we endure hardships, celebrate joys and experience many ordinary days. And during all of it, we return to this table, meeting God where we are in our weakness or strength, and we remember the deep abiding love God has for us. In God s eyes we are always enough. We are beloved. We are never alone. As we constantly grow and change, the table before us remains the same, always offering sustenance for our day and love for our life, inviting us to return to the world with faith and energy and wisdom.

4 4 As our Book of Order describes: In this meal the Church celebrates the joyful feast of the people of God, and anticipates the great banquet and marriage supper of Jesus Christ. Brought by the Holy Spirit into Christ s presence, the Church eagerly expects and prays for the day when Christ shall come in glory and God be all in all. Nourished by this hope, the Church rises from the Table and is sent by the power of the Holy Spirit to participate in God s mission to the world, to proclaim the gospel, to exercise compassion, to work for justice and peace until Christ s Kingdom shall come at last (W ). Soon we will rise from this Table, return to our own worlds, and participate in God s mission with joy and confidence, for we re-enter a world in which we have a place, a world that we call our home, a world filled with friends, family and communities of support and care. Our ritual of Communion takes us out of one home and into another. But for Fatima, in many ways her kitchen table and the rituals done at it may feel like her only home. Perhaps she was eager to make the harisi cake for Laurie because it gave her a chance, through the actions of baking it, to feel like she was at home, a home she left so long ago. She and her family fled their home in Syria in 2013 and spent three years living in Jordan, before coming to the United States not even six months ago. Thousands of miles and many years away from Damascus, Fatima finds her home at the kitchen table. She remembers who she is a Syrian woman, a wife and a mom. Thousands of miles and millennia away from Jesus life and death we find him at this table, with his arms open, inviting us to be his guest. We remember who we are children beloved by God, siblings in Christ, followers of Jesus. And so Fatima goes to the table, and so we go too, remembering who we are, looking forward with hope at who we will become. Thanks be to God. AMEN. *Names of the refugees have been changed to protect their privacy. Works Cited Brueggemann, Walter Exodus in The New Interpreter s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes. Vol. 1. pp. 787

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