More Passover Resources

I hesitate to write too much about the rituals of other religions; most days, I feel hesitant about the idea of speaking as a representative Christian--I hate the negative stereotypes that don't represent any of the Christians that I know (as I've blogged before, believers are the least hypocritical people I know, but most non-believers wouldn't believe me), but I also feel a bit fretful, without any of the requisite degrees that might mark me as Christian expert.

I know that many people of all sorts of beliefs are fascinated by the intersections where various faiths meet, and Passover is one of those intersections. For people who can explain the Exodus story in ways I never could, go visit the Speaking of Faith website where their most recent show is posted. You can listen to the show with its compelling discussion of the Exodus story. Avivah Zornberg is a master interpreter of Scriptural mysteries and a scholar of Torah texts.

Plus, the website has lots of other resources, as well as references to books, for those who want even more. I particularly liked this page, with writings that have been inspired by Exodus, with a poem by Adrienne Rich and an excerpt of Martin Luther King's work, among others.

One of the disadvantages of just Googling "Passover Resources for Christians" (or something similar) is that you're likely to end up at all kinds of wackadoo sites that have not-so-hidden agendas. I'm always hesitant to trespass too far into the religions of others, but as I explore these sites, I realize that others don't share my trepidation.

Happily, we have sites like Speaking of Faith, sites that let us learn more about the religious beliefs of others, without demonizing these beliefs or twisting them.

Seder Resource: "Pesach For the Rest of Us"

When I was a teenager in the late 70's and early 80's, I remember being at several churches that did a Seder meal. Why would a Lutheran church create a Seder meal?

It's important to remember the Jewish roots of Jesus. Many religious traditions view the Last Supper, the origin of the Christian Eucharist, as a Seder meal, so why wouldn't we explore it?

It's important to remember the Jewish roots of Christianity, and the Seder has much to teach us. It's important to remember how central the Exodus story has been to the Jewish tradition, and how essential the Exodus story has been to many Christians, especially those that have been held in bondage.

Last year, I was still a member of my old church, and the Pastor, who had volunteered to create a Seder meal was having some trouble, so I volunteered to help. I found Marge Piercy's Pesach for the Rest of Us: Making the Passover Seder Your Own (Schocken Books, 2007) to be an invaluable resource.

Not only does Piercy discuss each individual element of the meal and offer recipes and prayers, she explores the theology behind each element. Piercy also does a wonderful job of explaining the importance of the Exodus story and how it continues to shape us. She reminds us, "Each person should find the work of redemption that touches their innermost values and sense of how things ought to be as opposed to how they are. That is part of the story of the Exodus, the rising in revolt against what is unfair and painful and unjust" (7).

It's probably too late to plan a Seder for a large group, although perhaps I underestimate the skills that individuals possess. But it's not too late to read this book and to ponder the importance of the Exodus story. It's not too late to buy some ingredients and to try a new recipe. It's not too late to add an Old Testament story to our Holy Week reading.

This week Passover begins on Maundy Thursday, which doesn't happen every year. Unfortunately, it means that most of us Christians won't be joining our Jewish friends at their Seders, since the days we would be most welcome would be Maundy Thursday and Good Friday (the first two days involve the ritual and the food, as one of my Jewish friends explained it to me, and are the days when non-Jews are most welcome). Still, for me the years when Holy Week twines around Passover are years that seem to have powerful symbolic opportunities, and it would be a shame to let this year go to waste.

So, explore the foods of Pesach and let yourself think about how those foods and symbols have found their way into Christianity, and indeed, into the non-religious sections of popular culture. Give yourself some meditation time as you prepare these ritual foods. Piercy ends her haggadah by saying, "Go in peace into the springtime and be renewed," which these religious rituals, the ones of Passover and Holy Week, are designed to help us do.

Happy Holy Week!

On my other blog, I wrote the following, which seemed worth sharing here: This week is one of those interesting weeks where various religious high holy days intersect. Today Palm Sunday begins the Holy Week that will culminate in Easter Sunday, and Passover starts on Thursday. For years, I wasn't much of a churchgoer, but I was in tune to these rhythms that filled me with a sort of longing; Barbara Brown Taylor says, "No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it" (An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, page xiv-xv). I wish for all of us a chance to think in meaningful ways about bondage, escape, exile and homecoming, about redemption and salvation, about the ways these stories and our stories are still relevant in the world.

Praying for Social Justice through the Years

Being in a Catholic church on Thursday night, surrounded by a variety of Christians, a hunger for social justice bringing us together, reminded me of an earlier experience of mine.

In 1986, I had a summer job with Lutheran Social Services of the Washington, D.C. area. I had returned eagerly because I had worked for them the summer before. But in the summer of 1985, we had all sorts of community projects, and I really felt we were making a difference. In 1986, my job consisted of answering the phone to tell people that the agency had no money to offer.

People who called didn't respond by saying, "O.K., thank you." They told me sadder stories, as if I had a secret stash of money that I might give them. They reacted with anger.

One night in June of 1986, I went to a prayer service in downtown D.C. to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Soweto uprising and to pray for peace and an end to apartheid in South Africa. I didn't labor under any delusions that we were creating change, but I drew a certain comfort from the ritual. My friend wore a "Free Nelson Mandela" t-shirt, but we didn't really think it would happen.

When Nelson Mandela was released from prison a few years later, I thought of that prayer service. When South Africans stood in line for days to vote for him, I wept. And I thought of that prayer service.

My atheist friends will ask me (rather indignantly) if I really think that our prayers made a difference. I answer, "I don't know." But what does it hurt to pray? Why do my atheist friends get so outraged at the idea? Again, I don't know.

Walter Wink reminds us that even if we believe in free will, this belief doesn't mean that God can't act in the world. But God won't act if we don't ask or demand it: "This is a God who works with us and for us, to make and keep human life humane. And what God does depends on the intercessions of those who care enough to try to shape a future more humane than the present" (Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, page 301).

And even if we're not sure we believe in prayer, Marcus Borg, who has his doubts about prayer, has words for us: "And this leads to my final reason for continuing to do prayers of petition and intercession. To refuse to do them because I can't imagine how prayer works would be an act of intellectual pride: if I can't imagine how something works, then it can't work. To think thus involves more than a bit of hubris" (The Heart of Christianity, page 197).

It's important to remember that there are many ways to work for justice, and one of the most important is to keep in our minds a vision of a better world, a place of peace and justice. Too many of us succumb to despair. We can't believe that change will come. Yet the history of the late twentieth century teaches us that social change may come in what appears to be a sudden instant, although observant people have been preparing for years or decades.

Justice vs. Charity

Last night I went to a B.O.L.D. Justice (Broward Organized Leaders Doing Justice) rally. This group is made up of religious people, primarily of the Protestant Mainline and Catholic varieties, who have come together to work on eradicating poverty, or at least to alleviate issues that aggravate poverty.

Last year, they focused their efforts on dental care. And now, a year later, there are more dental clinics, more money for dental care for those who can't afford it, and more dental health care workers employed in our county.

Will all poor people have good teeth now? No. But they have a better chance.

Last night's demands revolved around affordable housing and jobs. The leaders of the group had specific action plans, and they invited city and county politicians to the rally, where they asked for commitments from them. They had already met with these people, so these ideas weren't new. But there they were, in front of a huge amount of people, making a commitment.

And they know that they'll be watched and held accountable.

My husband asked me if I thought it would make a difference. I said that I did think it would make a difference.

It certainly won't solve all the problems. Even if we should achieve the modest increase in availability of affordable rental properties that we demanded, there will still be a serious shortfall between what's needed and what's available. Even if the new jobs created by the new federal stimulus projects go to Broward workers first (more specifically, for the first 30 days after the job creation, the job will only be available to people who live in Broward county), as we demanded, crafty people will still find ways around that.

Still, every little positive difference counts. And even if we aren't successful at creating change, God still calls on us to work for justice.

Not to contribute to charity, although God mandates that too. But to work for justice.

In a book I cannot recommend highly enough, The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg explains the difference this way: "Charity means helping the victims. Justice asks, 'Why are there so many victims?' and then seeks to change the causes of victimization, that is, the way the system is structured. Justice is not about Caesar increasing his charitable giving or Pilate increasing his tithe. Justice is about social transformation. Taking the political vision of the Bible seriously means the practice of social transformation" (page 201).

He offers this comfort: "The world's need for systemic transformation is great, but it is important not to become passive or discouraged ('without heart') because the need is so great. None of us is called to be knowledgeable about all of it or capable of doing something about all of it " (page 204).

Last night I was tired and cranky after a day of meetings and workshops, and I was tempted to stay home and go to bed early. But for years, I have yearned to belong to a church that supported activities like a rally for justice, and now that I'm finally a part of a church that does, I feel it's important that I actually participate.

And I'm so glad I went. I sat with my new church friends and looked around the beautiful Catholic church and felt so inspired; my work day exhaustion just melted away. Tomorrow I'll blog about a time in 1986 when I felt a similar feeling, at an anti-apartheid prayer service.

"An Altar in the World"

I read an except of Barbara Brown Taylor's An Altar in the World in a recent The Christian Century. I bought the book the next day, and it arrived in the mail yesterday. I devoured half of it last night.

These days I am so grateful for any book that can gather my fragmented attention and focus it. I am so grateful for a book that makes me say, "Hmm, I could stay up one hour more and still function tomorrow." These days, it's the rare book that I can't put down.

An Altar in the World is one of those rare books. Barbara Brown Taylor has theological training and served for years as an Episcopal priest, but her latest book focuses on the idea of finding God outside of a church and the sacramental aspect of every day activities.

For example, she talks about hanging up wet laundry, hanging up the clothes and praying for the people who wear them, for the trees that died to make the clothespins, for the company that makes the clothespins. She talks of laundry fluttering like prayer flags.

She gives us wonderful nuggets like this one after she's talked about the reliability of the results of her daily exercise routine on the treadmill: "Spiritual practices are not like this. The only promise they make is to teach those who engage in them what those practitioners need to know--about being human, about being human with other people, about being human in creation, about being human before God" (page 59). She also gives us wonderful quotes by other people, like this one by Thich nhat Hanh: "The miracle is not to walk on water but on the earth."

She's remarkably clearheaded about an honest spiritual life. Taylor isn't one of those theologians who will offer you a magical prayer of Jabaz or promise great riches if you follow certain principles. She says, "Popular religion focuses so hard on spiritual success that most of us do not know the first thing about the spiritual fruits of failure" (page 78). Finally, someone who is willing to talk about these issues! And someone who writes about them so beautifully.

Just because she's talking about finding God outside of a church building doesn't mean that she's left behind her Christian beliefs. She talks about prayer, Sabbath keeping, and other spiritual practices (like paying attention to one's surroundings). She makes many references to great spiritual thinkers, most of them Christian. Her writing makes clear that she has been shaped by Christian values and that she hasn't abandoned them.

In fact, she's widening the possibilities for experiencing the Divine, which will be of great value to the many folks who aren't going to find God in a church building. What a wonderful accomplishment!

Meditation on This Week's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, April 5, 2009:

First Reading: Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm: Psalm 31:9-16

Second Reading: Philippians 2:5-11

Gospel: Mark 14:1--15:47

Gospel (Alt.): Mark 15:1-39 [40-47]

Every so often, I come across a song or hymn (and sometimes, a book or a preacher) who seems to have a strangely Old Testament view of God. This past week, it was a song that expressed the belief that God gives and God takes away, and God's approach to this giving and taking away is arbitrary and impossible to understand.

How peculiar, I thought. I can accept the idea that God tries to give and only finds my clenched hands. I can accept that my needs might take some time for God to meet (like a faculty member who asked to be relieved from teaching on Saturdays--I can do that for her, but not immediately, since classes start in a week, and the schedule is set). I can accept that God has a larger picture, and some of my yearnings may not fit with the larger vision.

The idea of a capricious God who says, "Ha, ha, ha! I gave you that great job, and now I'm going to yank it away. But first I'll wait until you've financed some purchases, and you're really counting on the money. Then I'll have you lose your job. And I'll throw in a health crisis, just for my own amusement"--that's a horrifying idea. Those things may indeed happen to me--but it's not the fault of God.

This week, most Christians will hear the Passion story. We start with Palm Sunday, where so many people seemed so enraptured with Jesus. Yet days later, they're willing to crucify him.

The lesson here: God is not fickle; it's humans and the societies that humans create that are fickle. You can be acclaimed in one season and denounced in the next.

Our Scripture readings remind us again and again of the folly of putting our faith in the things of this world, and we seem to be living in a time period that proves the Scripture. Those of us who didn't invest in stocks may have invested in our houses, and some of us cautious folks kept our money in what we thought were safe structures (money market accounts, savings accounts). Ha, ha, the joke is on us all. Many of us went to school so that we would have white collar jobs that we could count on. And now, we're discovering that we're just as expendable as your average factory worker.

The Passion story reminds us that dreadful things may happen to us. God took on human form, and even God couldn't avoid horrific pain and suffering. But the Passion story also reminds us that we are not alone. God is there in the midst of our human dramas. If we believe in free will and free choices, then God may not be able to protect us from the consequences of our decisions. But God will be there to be our comfort and our strength.