A Day to Commemorate
a sermon based on Exodus 12:1-14
by Rev Randy L Quinn

Last spring I invited you to join us for a Passover celebration. While it was an open invitation, only about two dozen people were with us that night as we did our best to present an authentic Jewish Passover meal, given the constraints of our particular home and the foods available to us.

During the Seder Supper last spring, I told the story of my first Passover celebration. It was held in the home of Sherwin and Shoshana Schwartz. Shoshana was my Hebrew tutor/teacher while I was attending seminary and she invited me to her home for their family celebration.

That evening changed me and it changed my understanding of both the Passover story in Exodus and the Last Supper in the Gospels.

The celebration itself seemed like a cross between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was like Thanksgiving in that there was more food than I could ever have imagined - and leftovers to last a week or more. It was a time of feasting and celebrating God's goodness. But it was also like Christmas in that it was a religious meal celebrating an historical event that continues to affect the lives of the participants.

Where it differs significantly from both Thanksgiving and Christmas is that every part of the meal is told in present tense. This is not just a celebration of an event 4,000 years ago that is kept alive in Jewish homes every year.

In the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which Ronda and I saw a week ago, the primary character in the story tells about being sent to "Greek school" to learn the language and history of her people. In the end of the movie, she sends her own daughter to "Greek school" for the same reason.

But Passover is different. It isn't just about learning culture; it's about being connected to the past by moving the past to the present. The participants in Passover celebrations today speak in the present tense because they know that God gives them freedom; God gives them life; God gives them salvation; God gives them a future as well as a past.

Passover is not just a meal with a story. It is a grand drama in which every person who celebrates it becomes a key character in the story - the story of God's grace and God's salvation. Let's stand as we hear God's directions for celebrating the first Passover.

Read text.

Out in the countryside, not far from Ronda's home town, there are the remains of a family farm. From the road you can see the foundation of what was a house. There are the remnants of a barn that has fallen in on itself. And there is an old concrete silo that is no longer in use. The fields around the buildings are still farmed, but the farmer no longer lives at that location - in fact the farmer may not even own the field.

Before I met Ronda, I had seen those buildings, but didn't think much about them. In that part of Kansas - like many other places around the country - it's a fairly common sight.

But the first time I was with Ronda as I passed that particular farm, she told me that her father helped build that silo when he was a teenager. And I soon learned that every time anyone from her family drove past the silo, the story was retold. I heard it when I went that way with her parents in the car. I heard it when we drove past it with Ronda's children in the car. In time, I found myself telling the story, too.

It was like a big family joke that you had to tell. You couldn't drive down that road without telling about how Grampa Don helped build that silo. In fact, we tried to drive by once without telling the story. Ronda and I just looked at each other and smiled. The story was going in our heads even if it had not been voiced aloud.

The last time I was in Kansas, I was saddened to see that the silo is gone. But I was not surprised to know the story was still being told. The story will be told as long as anyone in our family drives by that particular site.

Maybe you have stories like that in your family?

They aren't necessarily significant stories. They don't always have an object associated with them. They are just well-rehearsed stories. They are stories that have been told so often that everyone can almost recite them by memory.

What are some of those stories in your family? (I will open the floor to hear some of those stories.)

There are also other kinds of memories. There are corporate memories, for instance. These are memories of events that we all experienced at the same time. Sociologists have named a few key events as shaping the generations who experienced them - who share those common memories. They refer to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 or the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 or the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. In more recent years, sociologists have suggested that the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 may be one of those events because so many children were watching it on TV at school.
There is no question in my mind that the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center last year will be included in the list of key events that shape today's generation.

These events are held in our corporate memories. We all remember where we were when they happened. And the first one of those events we remember shaped us in ways we cannot always name, but there is no doubt our lives were and are affected by them.

Some time ago I heard a discussion on the radio about memories. A scientist, whose name I no longer remember, was telling about his discoveries from his research. He has learned, for instance, that when we re-tell a story from memory it reinforces the memory and makes it last longer.

I don't remember the details of his discussion, but I do know the metaphor that was in my mind as he talked about how our brains work. It's like books on a shelf in the library. Except in this library the pages fade when they are not exposed to light. The only way to keep the books meaningful is to open them periodically and expose them to the light. Otherwise the pages fade away and the information can no longer be retrieved. And whenever you take a book off the shelf, the light illumines the pages again and what is written there is renewed to its original intensity.

The scientist was explaining it using information about the chemicals in our brain. We pull memories out of storage, mix them with the current chemicals in our brain and re-store them. The dilemma, he said, is that with each rehearsal of the memory, they are susceptible to change. In time, it becomes possible that what we remember is no longer the same as the first memory itself. The new mix of chemicals may change the actual memory.

Our body - our brain actually - takes advantage of that in good and healthy ways. The best example is probably heard in the stories of the pain of childbirth. Mothers may tell the story of giving birth, but with each retelling, the pain becomes less vivid until the pain is no longer remembered; soon only the joy of new birth is retold. There is a memory that pain existed, but it is a mere shadow of the pain that was originally experienced.

In 1993, I was at Camp Pendleton with the Naval Reserves. I was helping facilitate a class for Chaplain's Assistants - known in the Navy as Religious Program Specialists or RP's. During one of our hikes, the Marine Gunnery Sergeant who was leading us had all 22 of the RP's stop in the middle of a small creek. He then had them do push ups in the river. I got it on film before the Gunny pressured me into joining them, too.

Afterwards, I asked Gunny what that was about. His answer was simple. "Making memories, sir, I'm just making memories."
He knew what he was doing. And it worked. Seven years later I met one of those same RP's. He stopped to remind me of his "Marine Corps baptism in the river."

God knows how memories work, too. So God told Moses and the people of Israel to remember the Passover. Not just by telling the story but by acting it out every year, acting it out so that every descendant of Abraham would know that God saves them - not just in the past, but in the present as well.

In the church we rehearse the story of Christ's Passion when we celebrate communion. It becomes more than a reminder of the past; it is for us the story of OUR salvation. By retelling it on a regular basis the memory is kept alive and stored in our minds as if we had been there in person.

I hope that happens in Sunday School, as well. I hope the teachers in the classrooms make memories with the children, memories that will be rehearsed and retold throughout their lives.

But the truth is we are making memories for young people, too. I don't believe the only teachers are in the classroom. Every one of you is also teaching those young people. You are making memories here.

If you don't believe me, ask some of the "older children" who grew up in this church and are now young adults. I've heard them tell me about this church in the past - how it was often so full the doors to Wesley Room open and there were people sitting in the balcony.

You are making memories - with your presence as well as your absence.

I'm extremely grateful to the teachers in the classroom. I pray for them regularly and I hope you do, too. I hope they find ways to make the stories of Jesus come alive for the children so that the Bible is not just a story of God's work in history but a reminder of God at work in the present.

It's the same story we all remember and commemorate whenever we gather.

God told the people of Israel that Passover was a day to commemorate. So is today, for "this is the day the Lord has made" (Ps 118:24).

Thanks be to God. Amen.