[Dialogue] Spong the correct text (sorry)

[KroegerD@aol.com]

February 23, 2005


The Connection between the Crucifixion and the Passover, Part IV:
Searching for the Linkage 


In this series of essays, I have tried to push our analysis of the Passover story that anchors the gospel accounts of Jesus, beyond that primitive literalism that so often captures religious systems, so that its real truth can be perceived. This attempt is focused on the goal of discerning what it was that constituted the original and powerful Jesus experience. Something caused those first disciples to come to the conclusion that somehow, in some way, through some means, God had been met in this Christ, and that in Jesus a doorway into God had been opened. In that process, I suggested that the coupling of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus with the Passover story of the killing of the paschal lamb resulted not from history or memory, but from an interpretive, liturgical process. That is, the passion narratives of the gospels were written not in a reporter's language but in the language of worship.

The first step was to demonstrate the fact that so many parts of the crucifixion story include symbols that suggest that it occurred in the fall of the year rather than in the early spring. Among those symbols were the leafy branches of the first Palm Sunday, the fig tree that Jesus was said to have cursed because it bore no figs months before its fruit might have been expected, and the Jewish fall festival of Sukkoth that seems to have provided significant content to the Christian narrative. Next I examined the substance and the form of that first passion narrative recorded in Mark, demonstrating that its content came not from eyewitnesses but from the ancient sources of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. Its form suggested that it was written to observe a twenty-four hour vigil. It was neatly divided into eight three-hour segments that would carry the worshippers from 6:00 p.m. on what we now call Maundy Thursday to 6:00 p.m. on what we now call Good Friday. Since according to the earliest Christian sources there were no eyewitnesses to the crucifixion, its original purpose was surely not to relate what actually happened on that hill called Calvary. Jesus died alone. We must not forget that authentic note in Mark's gospel that tells us that when Jesus was arrested, all of his disciples, ALL OF THEM, forsook him and fled. When the death of Jesus began to be seen as similar to the death of the paschal lamb of Passover, it was natural that the crucifixion story and the Passover would be blended and the one superimposed on the other.

Paul made that connection quite overtly when he wrote in his epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 5:7), that Christ 'our new paschal lamb,' or 'our Passover' as the King James translators have it, 'has been sacrificed for us.' He then urged the Corinthians to 'celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.' The Book of Exodus suggests only unleavened bread was to be eaten at the time of the Passover (Exodus 12:1-14). Paul makes this reference with no explanation because it clearly had become an accepted part of the Christian understanding of the death of Jesus by the mid-fifties when this epistle was written. Our question thus becomes: What did it mean to the early Jewish Christians to see the death of Jesus as linked to the slaughter of the Paschal Lamb?

First, let me relate the biblical story of Passover from the book of Exodus, for I discover that Christians are typically ignorant of the sacred traditions of the Jews. The biblical setting for the first Passover is ancient Egypt. Moses armed, we are told, with the power of God has gone in answer to a call heard in the burning bush to negotiate the release of the slave people from Egypt. The Pharaoh was unmoved by Moses' plea and so God begins a divine reign of terror against the Egyptians that we have come to call 'The Plagues.' First, the Nile was turned to blood and the fish in it died. Next came the plague of frogs, then gnats, then flies, then the cattle became sick and the Egyptians broke out with boils. This was followed by the plagues of hailstones, locusts and darkness. Periodically during the plagues, the biblical story tells us that Pharaoh relented and promised to let the people go whereupon God removed that particular plague. But the narrative says both that 'Pharaoh's heart was hardened' (Exodus 9:34), and that 'God hardened' his heart (Exodus 10:20), thus allowing the plagues to continue their devastation.

Finally, in some desperation, the story reaches its climax in the 11th and 12th chapters of Exodus. There God informs Moses of the divine plan for the final and most devastating plague of all. God will send the angel of death throughout the land of Egypt to slay the first-born male in every household. However, a problem arose as to how the angel of death would know the difference between a Jewish home and an Egyptian home lest this angel kill Jews by mistake. Clearly God hated only Egyptians! To solve this problem, God tells Moses to instruct the people of Israel to protect themselves in this manner.

Each family is to choose a lamb from its flocks on the 10th day of the month called Nisan. If a family is too small to consume a whole lamb, it is to join its neighbors or to gather single people into extended family groups so that no one is excluded from the feast or put at risk from the avenging God. The lamb to be sacrificed shall be male, one year old and without blemish, says the text. On the 14th day of that month, this lamb is to be slaughtered and the blood from the lamb shall be sprinkled on the Jewish doorposts of those homes in which the paschal feast is to be eaten. This blood would be a sign to the angel of death that this was a Jewish home so that no one within it would be killed. Presumably the angel of death did not have supernatural power, or the ability to discern a Jewish home from an Egyptian home so the angel had to be guided by the sign of blood on the doorpost. Wherever a bloody doorpost appeared, the angel of death would "pass over" that house and thus slay only Egyptians. This is where the term 'Passover' emerges. It was a strange tribal story, in many ways an evil story that portrayed God as hating all those whom the chosen people hate. When this angel struck, death was experienced from the palace of the Pharaoh to the humblest Egyptian household, including even the first-born male animals in the Egyptian flocks. While all of Egypt was in mourning the Jews would ceremonially eat the roasted body of the lamb of God before beginning their escape to the freedom of the wilderness. That is the Passover story in all of its gory details.

Now try to imagine a synagogue celebrating Passover in those years following the crucifixion of Jesus at which some of the disciples of Jesus, "The Followers of the Way" they were called, were present as worshipers. As the drama of Passover was reenacted, these early disciples used the liturgical setting to help them understand the meaning of Jesus' death. His death, they had come to believe, had also hurled back the power of death. With his own blood Jesus had pushed the specter of death away from his people. I suspect this connection was first made in a primitive Christian sermon and it went something like this: "Our ancestors once lived in bondage in the land of Egypt. When they made good their escape it was because God had used the blood of the paschal lamb to break the power of death. Now in a similar fashion, we who lived in the bondage of sin have experienced a new deliverance. The blood of Jesus, our new paschal lamb, has been placed upon the cross that was symbolically the doorpost of the world. That blood has broken the power of death that is always the result of sin and is its ultimate punishment, according to the story about the Garden of Eden. So the blood of the new paschal lamb has freed those of us who through this Christ now come out of our bondage into the glorious liberty of the children of God. We will thus be spared the permanence and pain of mortality, for in this Jesus death itself has been swallowed up in victory." The cross thus came to be viewed the moment of deliverance for the followers of Jesus, just as the slaying of the paschal lamb had become the moment of Jewish deliverance. The Christian observance of its founding was celebrated in the liturgy of the Eucharist in every age, just like the Passover was celebrated every year as an observance of the founding of Judaism. Liturgy serves to remind us of who we are, where we have come from and what it is that we have come to believe is our ultimate destiny. In this manner, crucifixion was tied into Passover and by the time the gospels were written decades later, the liturgical interpretation of the cross had been historicized and the crucifixion of Jesus was said to have literally occurred at the time of the Passover. Then quite naturally the liturgy recalling the final hours in Jesus' life became for Christians an expanded version of what the liturgy of the Passover had been for Jews.

After the Christian Church became substantially Gentile by the turn of the century, this Jewish background was first ignored and then forgotten. That meant that the description of the founding moment in the Jesus story began to be understood as the account of eyewitnesses. So it was that the story of the cross became literalized as if it were an objective historical account of the founding moment of the Christian faith.

To deliteralize this experience is not to destroy it, as traditionalists believe, it is rather to open the experience so that it becomes timeless, and people in every age might enter it. Once the deliteralization process begins, however, it goes on and on. If the story of the cross is not remembered history, if the connection of the Passover with the crucifixion is not literal then is any part of the time frame of the passion story to be literalized? Was the symbol of the three days that was said to separate crucifixion from Resurrection a literal measure of 72 hours? Or is there some new and deeper meaning even there? To that question I will turn next week.

-- John Shelby Spong


Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong

Andrew, a retired priest from Sun City, Arizona, writes: 

I have a real concern when it comes to categorizing people into groups and then labeling them. Are all heterosexuals good and all homosexuals bad? I have known several homosexual priests in my 52 years of priesthood who were good men and did fine work in the Church. Is Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, who was elected by people who knew him well as a priest, guilty of any sin now more than before? If so, his only guilt that I see is honesty about his life. I thought honesty to be a Christian virtue!!! How do you feel about this? 

Dear Andrew, 

Of course there are good and bad people who are homosexual. There are also good and bad people who are heterosexual. That is not what the struggle for justice is all about. Discrimination is about judging a person on the basis of his or her being, not his or her doing. Discrimination is about forcing a definition on all members of a rejected minority. People always use irrational conclusions to justify their prejudices.

One of the signs of prejudice is to lump a whole group of people together in the same conclusion. Statements that begin with the words, "women are," or "Jews all do" or "all homosexuals act this way" or "all black people act that way" are inevitably false distortions. People are people. They come in all sorts of sizes, shapes, colors, religions, genders and sexual orientations. The sooner we begin to counter the "lumping tendencies" of our prejudice, the better off our world will be.

Gene Robinson is a friend of mine. He is a gifted, honorable, bright, articulate priest who was judged by those who knew him best to be their choice to be their bishop. His election was confirmed by the highest decision making body of my church. No one acted illegally or immorally. The idea that we should apologize for allowing our homophobic prejudice to die is ludicrous. I honor Gene Robinson and the choice his colleagues made in electing him. He will bring great credit to our Church. Those who try to diminish him because of his sexual orientation do not and will not.

-- John Shelby Spong


-- 
Dick Kroeger