Part of Salvation History

This evening our congregation will gather for a Passover meal, a Seder, something that has become rather popular in churches, though not everyone is happy about it. A blog post entitled "No 'Christian Seders,' Please!" has popped up a good bit on Facebook lately. At the same time, there is a book on my desk subtitled A Passover Haggadah for Christians that is co-authored by a rabbi and a pastor. There is no clear-cut guidance on such things it would seem.

Christian Seders or not, all the gospel accounts want to connect the events of Holy Week to the Passover. But I do not think they do so in any attempt to take over or supersede Jewish faith or practice (something the aforementioned blog post worries about happening with Christian Seders). Rather they want to connect the events of Jesus' death and resurrection to God's saving acts, and number one on that list is God rescuing slaves from Egypt in the Exodus.

To my mind, a grave mistake made by many Christian traditions is spiritualizing "salvation," transforming it from concrete, historical acts of rescue into a ticket to heaven when you die. The salvation of Exodus rescues the Hebrews in order to form them into the people of Israel, a peculiar community ordered very differently from the kingdoms of the world. And Jesus' own teachings about the kingdom of God are very much in keeping with this, about God's continuing work within history to create a community that reflects the ways of God rather than those of "the world."

One of the reasons I am okay with "Christian Seders" (done with care and sensitivity) is that we need to locate Christian notions of salvation within the larger scope of salvation history. Doing that is not about taking over or superseding Jewish practice. It is about letting such practice reeducate us on just what salvation is about. (I got this notion of being "reeducated by Judaism" from Walter Brueggemann in his book Sabbath as Resistance, where he says, "As in so many things concerning Christian faith and practice, we have to be reeducated by Judaism that has been able to sustain its commitment to Sabbath as a positive practice of faith." And I think salvation is one of those "so many things.")

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Presbyterians don't use the language of "personal salvation" as much as some other Christian groups, but the idea has profound impact on us nonetheless. Many of us think of salvation as a personal, individual thing, even if we never speak of "being saved." But neither the Exodus nor the kingdom of God can happen to individuals. Such events in salvation history are profoundly corporate. God rescues people, not individual souls, and it would do Christians a world of good if our understanding of salvation was, in large part, defined by Passover and the events of the Exodus.

I take it that the gospel writers share such notions. That may explain why "Passover" is spoken four times - with "Unleavened Bread" thrown in for good measure - in the opening of today's reading from Mark. Jesus' salvation must be a lot like that one.

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