"A Wilderness Passover" - Reflections on Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10), 11-14, Maundy Thursday, Year C

by John C. Holbert on Friday, February 14, 2025

          The book of Exodus is plainly not a typical tale that moves inexorably from slavery in Egypt to heroic release to the movement through the wilderness of Sinai to the giving of the Torah on the sacred mountain to Moses’s saving of Israel from the fury of YHWH on that same mountain. Those are the narrative emphases of the famous story of Israelite resurrection, engineered by Moses at the call of YHWH. However, that narrative constitutes, in fact, only about 60% of the whole of the book. The remaining 40% include all manner of cultic and legal traditions that become extremely important to an emerging Judaism but play almost no role in future Christianity, save the ten words (Ten Commandments) of Ex.20. The lectionary collectors choose these verses from Ex.12 because they offer what my NRSV headline titles “The First Passover Instituted.” And because Maundy Thursday invariably includes in its celebration communion, based however loosely on the ancient Jewish practice of Passover, it appears that referencing Ex.12 is an appropriate entree into the famous Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples in that Jerusalem Upper Room, shortly before his rejection, condemnation, trail, and death.

         Whether or not that Last Supper was, in fact, a Passover celebration—there is much debate over this issue— certain elements of a Jewish Passover meal do exist. I have admitted in other essays I have written over the years that I myself have led several Passover meals in Christian churches, often as entries into communion meals. After all, I well know the traditions of a typical seder (Passover), read Hebrew, and am well-versed in the Haggadah stories that have expanded and supplemented Passover meals through the centuries. I have also said that I will never again do so, feeling that my expropriation of this deeply Jewish experience is not appropriate for a Christian minister. However much our eucharist is founded on Passover, I now confine myself to its celebration and leave the seder for my Jewish colleagues to lead. 

         But why perform such meals at all? And more particularly, why does this initial seder appear right here in Ex.12, right between the terrible announcement of the final plague of the death of the first-born of Egypt (Ex.11) and the flight out of Egypt toward the Sea of Reeds and the final defeat of pharaoh and his armies (Ex.13-14)? It seems a most peculiar time to stop the forward thrust of the tale by inserting a series of ritual actions, many of which seem quite impossibly difficult to perform in the wasteland of the desert and appear rather out of place for a people literally running for their lives from the world’s greatest military force. Yet, here are the directions for celebration nonetheless. 

         “This month for you is the head of the months, the first for you of the months of the year” (Ex.12:2). This supposed calendrical statement flies in the face of later Jewish conviction that the “head of the months” was in fact Tishri, a fall month, aligning the calendar with the agricultural cycle rather than with a historical and foundational act for the nation. This could suggest that these traditions are indeed very old ones, and might help us understand the implications of the details of the celebration given: a lamb whole roasted over the fire in the bedouin way, not to be eaten raw, nor cooked in water; flat bread baked directly on that same fire; shared with neighbors as needed in case the neighbor has no lamb or cannot support one for a smaller group. All of these very old directions add to the sense that the ritual reenactment is nothing less than an archaic moment of national history, performed as an act of liberation while the destroying angel of YHWH raged through the Egyptians and passed over the dwellings of the Israelites.

         It may appear to be a slowing down of the forward movement of the tale, but when viewed as a ritual that focuses attention on eating and fellowship and sharing and solidarity, it may easily be seen as a crucial part of remembering and announcing the presence of YHWH for the people even as they face possible annihilation at the hands of their implacable enemies. So it was then, and so it still is whenever a Passover meal is celebrated in our own time. And so we Christians also may sense in our eating and fellowship and sharing and solidarity the certainty of God’s presence with us in Christ, as he faces his torture and death, and as we strive to live like him in a world that rarely takes seriously the story we have to tell, a story that calls into question the supposed powers and suggests that the only true power is to be found in God and in the gift of God’s only son to that world. It turns out that regular ritual and celebration is crucial for those who want never to forget who it is that has called them into service for the sake of the new world that is coming. This necessity for celebration of past events is as true for Jews as it is for us Christians. “Do this in memory of me,” Jesus said. And so we do, again and again and again.