Thursday, April 09, 2009

Passover with a Christian Twist

We had a Seder at church tonight - the BAPTIST church.   Since this is one of those unusual years when the Christian Maundy Thursday service and Passover coincide (sort of - Passover began at sundown LAST night, but who's counting), we decided to have a traditional seder meal (sort of - I don't think the spaghetti has a long history for those "get-the-heck-out-of-Egypt-and-through-the-Red-Sea" Jews of the Exodus) with "bitter herbs" and sweet apples/dates and roasted eggs (sort of - rather than roasting them brown, we boiled brown ones) and Matzo ball soup and matzah bread and "fruit of the vine" (sort of - grape juice - but then again, we were to be leaving the leavening - yeast - so that might have been fairly accurate - if very Baptist) and a passover cake.   The passover cake (I assume it is reasonably authentic, but who's to know?) was very good - made with coffee, and chocolate and crushed almonds.   We joked that what with the "mad Exodus" there was no time to make coffee, so it was just cooked right into the cake.  And although we may not have been completely true to every aspect of the meal, the seder (or "order") was pretty close and gave a neat perspective on our Christian tradition of Easter.   It was nice to be reminded that Jesus wasn't a Christian - he was a Jew.   And so much of our Christian communion comes right from the Passover tradition.   In fact, I had always thought of eggs at Easter as a pagan tradition that got "thrown in" as a "teaser" for pagans.  It would appear that it has legitimate roots in the Seder as a reflection of new life to come.   Go figure.  The third (of four) cups of "fruit of the vine" is the cup of redemption and the one attributed to Elijah who is to usher in the Messiah.  It is believed that it is this cup that Jesus used for his symbolic statement during his last seder with his disciples.  It was truly a fresh and refreshing look at the moments leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection.   One I hope to repeat.

1 comment:

  1. I've mentioned the book before, but "Girl Meets God" made me want to convert to Judaism. Grant it, Messianic Judaism. But the symbolism and traditions of the Jewish faith are unparalleled. We have let go of too many of their grounding strengths -

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