Embodied Memory
Text: Exodus 12:1-13; 13:1-8
“Remember this day which is the day that you came out of Egypt, out of the place you were slaves, because the Lord acted with power to bring you out of there.”
These are the words that God says after the story of the Passover. Remember. And not only remember but pass along the memory. And not just the memory, but the specific actions, the series of instructions that you followed on the night of liberation and destruction.
I’m not going to talk very much about it today but I think it’s worth acknowledging that the Passover is a violent event. It’s one of many such events in the Hebrew Bible that are hard to reconcile with my own understanding of a God who is just and compassionate: the fact that the liberation of one people required the destruction of another.
Briefly, I will say that scholars like James Cone, who wrote God of the Oppressed and A Black Theology of Liberation would say that those who are oppressed, who are under the thumb of empire, need a God who is powerful. A God who can do for them what they cannot: wipe out the oppressor. Such a theology is uncomfortable to me. But I have never been on the underside of the empire, so I’m willing to sit with that discomfort.
The Israelite people, these descendants of Jacob and his brothers, who were the main characters in our story last week, have gone from having a comfortable place in Egypt to being enslaved. There comes a time, the story says, when a Pharaoh ruled who did not know Jacob and who began to subjugate the Israelites. They are on the underside of power.
In their enslavement, God gives them a leader in Moses and a way to prepare for their freedom. There is a specific order of things that will be significant in a number of ways. Specifics foods and ways of preparing them and methods of eating and how to prepare their spaces. In that moment, both the blood on the door and the ritual itself mark the Israelites as God’s people. Then and in ever celebration, it is a meal to be shared. In that moment and in its reenactment, the meal is a reminder to be ready at all moments to follow God.
“Remember this day which is the day that you came out of Egypt, out of the place you were slaves, because the Lord acted with power to bring you out of there.”
Even to this day, Jews practice this Passover meal, as we talked about in our lesson for all ages. Each of the things on the Passover plate, each of the commemorative actions and questions, all of that ritual is a reminder of God’s power to liberate and God’s faithfulness in times of trouble. God gave the people a way to remember with their bodies.
There are some Christians who have adopted the seder celebration, often combining it with Holy Week services. I do not believe it is ours to celebrate. Both because that would be inappropriately coopting something from another faith and culture, but maybe more theologically importantly: Jesus enacted for us rituals that commemorate God’s power to liberate and release and that remind us of our calling to service and discipleship in Christ.
One of the powerful things about ritual is that even though it is often accompanied by words, it isn’t the words in themselves that are powerful. It is the embodiment of a memory. Communion is an example for us of how that works. When Jesus says, “Every time you break this bread and drink this cup, do this in remembrance of me.” Is our central ritual. Our “Remember this day, which is the day you came out of Egypt.”
Communion grew out of a Passover celebration, of course, a gift of Jesus to his friends, when he enacted a new covenant. And because the ritual of communion is a gift to all Christians, because it is enacted, even though it is accompanied by those ritual words, words are only a part. It transcends language.
I often think about a time in Korea when we were worshiping with Grace and Peace Mennonite Church. Worship was all in Korean but when we celebrated communion, with Naomi sitting on my lap, I could recount to in whispers what was happening when the bread was broken and blessed, when the cup was poured and raised in thanks. When we all ate and drank together, even without a common language we were the body of Christ, remembering the body of Christ.
One of my favorite memories of this past year is our small foot washing gathering at the Neuhousers. Much like communion – and rooted in the same gathering of disciples – Jesus gave his friends and followers a memorial ritual. This one to remember our posture toward each other and the world.
“Remember this day, which is the day you came out of Egypt” is a refrain in much of the Hebrew Bible as a reminder that because they had once been enslaved under empire, the Israelites must act with loving kindness to the stranger and sojourner.
When we wash each others’ feet, we are assuming the posture of service and vulnerability. The antithesis of empire. Foot washing has always been one of my favorite rituals of the church because like Passover it gives us a way to embody our discipleship.
The way that Jewish people continue to remember and celebrate the Passover and to tell the story of freedom from Egypt is to act as if it is not only a story from the past, it is their story as well. The story of the Israel captive in Egypt is a story still alive in contemporary Judaism. Knowing this about the Jewish experience – that the identity of Judaism is still tied up in the story of oppress – along with the knowledge that Jews are still stereotyped and despised, that antisemitism is alive and thriving, helps me to nuance my feeling about the now year-old war in Gaza.
Mennonites also tell stories about our oppression. We love to uphold the martyrdom stories, enshrined in The Martyrs’ Mirror and the waves of migration that we faced in order to find religious freedom and escape conscription in the empires’ armies. In this way I have thought we held some affinity with the Jewish experience – both because of the history of violence enacted against our ancestors and because of a historical connection between ethnicity and faith.
The big difference is power. While our ancestors may have been captured and even tortured and killed because of Anabaptist beliefs, our ancestors also held prominent positions in government, were wealthy tradespeople, were given lands of indigenous people by governments in Russia and the US and Canada and Paraguay and Bolivia. We were not forced into ghettos, refused service or excluded from whole professions, or funneled into death camps. We have always had access to power in ways that our Jewish kindred have not.
How we use our power, how we tell the stories central to our identity are important. For Mennonites, a return to Jesus’ invitation to remember him through serving each other and our communities – especially when we are the ones with power – and to remember his ministry of nonviolence love each time we eat and drink.
I was curious how Jews who have been active in justice and liberation movements celebrate Passover. How this central ritual is remembered and celebrated among them. I turned to Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization and community which has been an active leader in the Ceasefire movement.
In a statement about their materials written in 2022, they say, “This year we dedicate our seders to all of us, to our insistence on intersectionality, from gentrification to colonization; we are organizing to disrupt the root causes of displacement and violence at home and abroad.”
This past year, their memorial celebration was much more pointed. “This year, we will not fulfill the requirement of Shulchan Orech by eating a festive meal while the weaponized starvation of the Palestinian people is taking place.” Instead of eating the Passover meal, JVP invited their communities to take liberatory action through calls for ceasefire and restoration of food and medical aid.
In a Haggadah written for this year, a kind of story litany for the celebration of the Passover seder, Rabbi Brant Rosen wrote an interpretation of the four questions. These are the questions that children are supposed to ask during the celebration – a tradition that I love and that we don’t have a parallel for that I can think of. They are questions intended to shape memory and formation. Here are Rabbi Rosen’s Four Questions:
Your child will ask why do we observe this festival? And you will answer it is because of what God did for us when we were set free from the land of Egypt.
Your child will ask were we set free from the land of Egypt that we might hold tightly to the pain of our enslavement with a mighty hand? And you will answer we were set free from Egypt that we might release our pain by reaching with an outstretched arm to all who struggle for freedom.
Your child will ask were we set free from the land of Egypt because we are God’s chosen people? And you will answer we were set free from the land of Egypt so that we will finally come to learn all who are oppressed are God’s chosen.
Your child will ask were we set free from the land of Egypt that we might conquer and settle a land inhabited by others? And you will answer we were set free from the land of Egypt that we might open wide the doors to proclaim: Let all who are dispossessed return home. Let all who wander find welcome at the table. Let all who hunger for liberation come and eat.
I love this. I love how liberative and liberating it is in the way it uses this embodied memory a reminder that our own freedom should empower us to free others. In our rituals, may our celebration of communion spur us to feed others. May we wash each others’ feet remembering to serve others. May we “Remember this day which is the day that you came out of Egypt, out of the place you were slaves, because the Lord acted with power to bring you out of there.” And may we use our Mennonite power to liberate others.
—