Passover: Passing on the Faith

 

 

                There have been some fairly major deaths in the last week or so
—voice actor Peter Cullen, Singer Dolly Parton, Actor Tim Curry, Norway’s King Harald V, Writer & Farmer Wendell Berry, and Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem.
Inevitably when you read their obituaries there is a consideration of their legacy
—What did they leave behind?
What did they pass on?

                And, in our first lesson today
—the giving of Passover as a Perpetual Ordinance
—we find one of the most famous examples of something being passed on. The Story of God’s salvation… Faith being passed on… ultimately, it becomes about something more than remembering the past.
Instead re-membering God’s acts,
putting the faith together again, so that it can be passed on
—passed forward.

                Revealing his innate conservativism, Wendell Berry once wrote: “The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.”

                That’s what a living tradition is, that’s the goal of passing on the faith; to make of it something better, to hand off something that is intelligible to the present and serviceable to faithful folk in the future.

                Yes, Passover is about passing on faith.

Let us pray

 

                Any millennial will tell you that there are many reason to PASS, on faith—as in to skip it all together.
Everything from hypocrisies and abuses,
churches identifying with partisan causes, vibes being off, and so many choices each moment of our life that religion seems far too limiting and corrosive…

                But my generation is surely not the first one to struggle with such things…
for example, if you read between the lines, Matthew’s Gospel is written to a community struggling with abuses and factionalism
—these rules we read about today: widening, with an intentional gentleness, the conversation, when someone is hurt
—they are rules so that the powerless may receive recompense
—that the little ones (Jesus likely still has that child on his lap from earlier in the gospel) can find an advocate for them if someone in power is hurting them.

                For that matter, wrestling with legacy is embedded in the Exodus story
—Pharoah after all is using and abusing the Hebrews to build monuments to himself and to Egypt’s Royal past. Carved in stone and never to change…

 

                But Pharoah is confronted with an interesting alternative,
a more meaning laden way to build a legacy.
“Share a meal in community and tell the story of your salvation!
That’ll last for thousands of years!
That’ll transform lives generation to generation!”

                This story leads to both our Holy Communion (an innovation unimaginable to Aaron and Moses),
and also the Seder meal
—a much more elaborate festival than the literal words of Exodus 12
—a ritual still changing, still innovating,
from generation to generation,
continent to continent,
culture to culture.

                In addition to (and perhaps because) Matthew’s telling of the Jesus story is sanded against the grain of conflict and abuse, it also has an
innovative, changeable, contextual edge to it. For example:
-he records Jesus saying to the disciples, “Because you understand my parables, they now belong to you to use and interpret as you see fit.”
-Likewise—in today’s Gospel lesson—he records Jesus empowering and passing on both prayer and the ministry of binding and loosing to the disciples and those who will hear the Good News.

Matthew’s Gospel is written to be passed on, shared, let go of, and given to someone new
—given to those little ones who will find hope and relevance in them,
able to face unimaginable changes in an ongoing faithful way.
Not “The Church of What’s Happening Now” but a Church who can stay faithful, come what may.

 

                “So spill it, Pastor. How do we pass on the faith?”
Community and practice.

Community—gather together in families and household and with your neighbors… so that there are models of the faith…

If you look at all the large interview laden studies of the faith life of young people,
you find very quickly that religious young people stayed or became religious,
because they had examples of “Religion done right.”
People (and not just parents) who they could look up to and say:
“Yeah… I could do something like that.”
“Yeah, grandma is real about her faith.”
“Yeah, Uncle Pete isn’t blowing smoke.”
“Yeah, so and so sure loves Jesus—and I do to!”

Practice—faith is both caught and taught.
Do the thing, then reflect on it,
experience, then explain.

Have a habit of faith, religious rituals
—and also play the faith,
be so comfortable with it that you can bubble up with laughter about it…
as Chesterton once quipped, “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”

Be curious and creative, encourage the asking of questions
—even impertinent ones!
Be soaked in scripture and sacraments
—so that when you are wrung out like a sponge, you’re still swimming in the sea of faith.

Think of how Luther hoped the Small Catechism was to be taught
—the whole household together at supper memorizing and discussing the 10 Commandments, the Creed, and Lord’s Prayer.
Whole congregations gathered 4 times a year to do the same.
Community and practice.

 

                Faith is not Pharoah’s pristine monuments,
unchanging save decay and damage
—"a colossal wreck boundless and bare.”

No, it is a legacy like a donated organ,
or Wisdom dispensed as a story told over a family meal,
or a song sung in church and hummed at home and at work,
doors opened and opportunities preserved,
the ground of grace to stand on as everything else is shifting sand.

“Dear friend, wow, I know of a God who saves!
Fellow sinners, there is so much forgiveness here!
Starving masses—there is bread aplenty!
Lost strangers poorly wandering, there is a Way!

All you disconsolate, there is hope; there is a future.”

Amen.