Triduum Sacrum – Holy Thursday

Triduum Sacrum: Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Exodus 12:1-8; 11-14; Psalm 116; I Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

Like any set of instructions or a cooking recipe, the detailed prescriptions for the ritual observance of Passover in Egypt may seem inconsequential to us. Read tonight to make a connection with the Last Supper of Jesus which was a Passover Seder. Yet the ordinariness of these instructions conceal from us how unsettling and dangerous this passage really is.

The people are to eat quickly, standing around the kitchen sink. This is not a formal dining experience. No one is to dine alone. There is an urgency about the night.

It is the haste and anxiety experienced by parents in Central America quickly getting their children ready to send them off north through Mexico. You need to be one step ahead of drug dealers, soldiers, or gangs who will seize and/or murder your children. There is no time for long goodbyes. It is the experience of numerous generations of Jews or Christians today in Syria and Iraq who have been given 24 to 48 hours to leave lest they be rounded up. It was the experience of slaves in our country along the Underground Railroad. It is the experience of a battered person quickly packing to leave before an irate spouse, live-in partner or parent returns to inflict physical or emotional violence. Haste, urgency and danger make for an unsavory trinity.

Passover. It is a “last supper.” A last supper in Egypt. Life is filled with last suppers. Most often we do not realize it is a last supper.

There is the last supper we have with a parent, spouse or a child before they die.  The last supper with a friend. Yes, we say we will keep in touch but we never do. Life and distance take over. There is the last supper of a death row inmate…sitting alone…in contradiction to the Passover instructions. Did the families of Eric, Denny, Neven, Rikki, Tralona, Suzanne, Teri, Kevin, Lynn, and Jody, release the preceding night was the last supper before there loved ones were murdered at King Soopers supermarket?

Any supper can become a “last supper.” We never really know. That may challenge us as to how we approach and experience the sacredness of any meal and more importantly the people with whom we are sharing that meal.

Passover is marked by blood. Blood. Life itself as understood by the Hebrews. The blood of the slaughtered lamb was to mark the doorposts and lintels of the homes where the Passover meal was being eaten.

Yet how many people lack lintels and doorposts to mark because they are homeless, suffering from mental illness, abandoned by family because of sexual orientation or gender, asylum seekers and refugees on the run from war, violence, political and religious persecution, teens thrown out by their families for…? Why would a parent ever throw a child out on the streets?

Blood does not mark our doorposts and lintels but blood does mark our nation’s streets, our churches, supermarkets, movie theatres, college campuses and schools where mass shootings have occurred. And there is no one to pass over and offer us life.

The menu? The Passover meal is not haute or nouvelle cuisine. It is roasted lamb and unleavened bread, not the pita we like our wraps rolled up in but bread quickly baked because danger ensues [Consider that the next time you order a wrap for lunch]. And top it all off with bitter herbs. Bitterness and sweetness are the flavors of Passover. The despair and hope that mingles within the sinews of daily life. What are your hopes and despairs this night? They must be part of this meal.

Passover is a night of death. “For on this night I, [the Lord God of Israel,] will go through Egypt, striking down every firstborn of the land, both man and beast…” God seems bloodthirsty, yes? But all God has done is reverse the orders of Pharaoh of Egypt. As midwives were ordered to kill all newborn Hebrew sons so now the sons, heirs, cattle and livelihoods of Egypt will suffer the same fate.

In the light of Pharaoh’s order we need to ask ourselves the question, “Who is bloodthirsty?” God or us? As we experience within one week two more mass shootings in our nation, we seem impotent, or is it an unwilling and arrogant selfishness, not to address the care of the mentally ill, not to enact responsible gun ownership policies and to continue in our misguided concepts of personal freedom, as our children and young people are senselessly murdered before our eyes. Who truly is bloodthirsty?

Our God is not a God of death. And we may not know exactly what happened that night in Egypt but in the end it was Pharaoh – humanity – who was responsible for the slavery and brutality of the Hebrew people and the death of Egyptians.

Passover and the Eucharist, both last suppers, are dangerous sacred meals. They should cause us to question ourselves and our motives, our church and our society and there teachings, decisions and laws. These sacred meals at which we sit with our God must compel us to ask, who needs a Passover of the Lord this night!?