Reflection - The Fourth

By Steve Hall

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040121-Evening.cfm
Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14
1 Cor 11:23-26

I remember “Peanuts.” You know. One of the most important among comic strips in years past. Late July or early August one year the first frame of the strip pictured Charlie Brown walking toward Pig Pen. Pig Pen was clearly eating. You could tell by his “chomp, chomp, chomp.” This occupied the next two frames. In the final frame Pig Pen dusts off his hands, looks at a puzzled Charlie Brown and announces: “Well! That’s the last of the Easter eggs.”

The scene brings us to the obvious question: How old is too old?

While many may volunteer an answer, the true question, the vital question has more to do with faith, religion, spirituality and religious ritual than any of the multitude of other possible alternatives. Accordingly, I will proceed ignoring outside commentary.

The year is rapidly moving toward the conclusion of Lent. This week is traditionally known as Holy Week, though the first day most of us will encounter the annual rituals for the week will be on Thursday. Our faith designates this day as Holy Thursday — not that other days are lacking, but that this day is different from all other days, and uniquely so. This Thursday we recall and celebrate an event from almost two thousand years ago. That’s a long time in human terms. Only relics and remnants, pieces and fragments remain for us from that period of Western, or any Civilization. Little that is of human origin from the era has weathered the passage of time; but this singular event continues to live and breathe and flourish.

That being the case it is only right that we should ask after two thousand years: How old is too old? When should we clean house and discard antiquities?

But before we can seriously address the question there is more to consider.

There was a time in Egypt when true Divinity confronted the intuitive divinity of men. The conflict was not a pleasant one — at least not for the Egyptians and their Pharaoh. Ultimately, the focus became a matter of life and death. Those who opposed the one and only Lord God were promised death. Those who stood with him were offered life — and life was embodied in the death of a lamb.

Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old; you shall take it from the sheep or from the goats; and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs in the evening.
Then they shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat them. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for ever.
(Exodus 12: 3, 5-8, 12-14)

The Hebrews — who centuries later would be known as Jews — observed the Lord’s directives that fateful night. They continued to observe the feast for the approximately twelve hundred years that preceded the Holy Thursday we will soon celebrate. In the course of those years the ritual meal always incorporated a specific directive:

“When your children say to you, 'What does this rite of yours mean?' you shall say, 'It is the sacrifice of the LORD's Passover, for he passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt, when he slew the Egyptians but spared our houses.'” (Exodus 12:26-27)

It was for this ancient Jewish celebration that Jesus and the disciples gathered that first Holy Thursday night. It was then that the stage was set for the lamb to be slain, for his blood to shelter them from death, for his body to be physically consumed. So we find that our celebration is not two thousand years old; it is thirty-two hundred years old.

Common sense may tell us that that old is too old. The feast is judged by some as coming from a primitive time and from an ignorant, superstitious people. But these modern skeptics need to be challenged. What philosophers of today measure up to an Aristotle or Plato? Who is the engineer who has determined how the pyramids were built? What mathematical contribution has been as valuable as the zero? And as for superstition, there too we appropriately question and ask: Who has shown the faith of Abraham? Who has walked with God more closely than Moses? When was the last time a people were saved from death by eating a meal? What has God done for you lately?

For any who might doubt the intentional connection and continuation of that first Passover in Egypt and the one we remember annually on Holy Thursday, there is a particular incident that deserves attention.

As is typical of all recurring events in which humans engage, the Passover meal came to embody certain ritualistic customs. Among these was the practice of sharing a cup of wine at four specific times during the meal. The sequencing of actual events at that evening celebration varies a bit with the four evangelists. Consequently, I am here relying on the scholarship of Scott Hahn. Each of the three synoptic gospel authors record that, late during the meal, Jesus declines to partake of the cup then being shared. Scott Hahn believes that the cup Jesus declined was the final cup, customarily known as the “Blessing Cup.” Paul makes reference to it in his letter to the Corinthians.

“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16)

Mark, the earliest of the evangelists, records the entire scene this way:

And as they were eating, he took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, "Take; this is my body."
And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it.
And he said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
Truly, I say to you, I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God."
(Mark 14:22-25)

The conclusion which Professor Hahn has drawn from this and other evidence is that, at that point, the Passover meal had not truly concluded. It is in John’s Gospel that we see the meal completed. John, I remind you, is the only Apostle present at the crucifixion. It is he who tells us that, toward the end, Jesus said “I thirst.” Consequently he was offered vinegar — sour wine — .

“When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, "It is finished"; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”
(John 19:30)

The Passover of the New Covenant was now complete. The lamb was slain; his blood would shelter men from death; his body could be eternally, physically consumed.

How old is too old? I don’t know.

But a perpetual life-giving event can hardly be proclaimed either old or dead.