Thursday, June 9, 2011

Bittersweet

From the St. Stephen Archives

Last week, Holy Week, I celebrated the Passover with a small group of friends. Wednesday evening we gathered together to drink, eat, sing, and tell the story of how God liberated the Hebrew people, his chosen people, from slavery to Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt. We took part in a Christian seder, a symbolic meal that retells the story of the exodus and recognizes the great deliverance that God has brought, still brings, and promises to complete in each of our lives.
I love the seder (a Hebrew word meaning “order”). I love the sequence and structure of the meal, the preservation of ancient rituals, and the sacredness of the celebration. I love reciting prayers that have been spoken in Jewish homes for 4000 years. I love retelling a story that has formed the identity of an entire people, a people who have become my people because of Jesus. I love seeing the connections between the exodus and the crucifiction, the point at which God delivered us from our slavery to sin. And I love the meaning behind each item on the seder plate.
This past year I was particularly struck by the pairing of the karpas with the salt water, and the maror with the charoset. The karpas (a green vegetable, usually parsley) represents spring and new life. It is fresh and vibrant and crisp and green. Its place in the meal is accompanied by a reading from Song of Songs, which reminds us of the joy and fullness of life that is given and sustained by God. But before we eat the karpas, we dip it in salt water, which represents the tears of the slaves and reminds us that life itself is not always sweet. This combination of newness and bitterness reminds us that though God has created life to be good, it is often mixed with tears of pain and hardship and sorrow.
The eating of the maror and charoset are similarly symbolic of the positive and negative emotions and experiences that make up our lives. The maror, or bitter herb, is traditionally a horseradish root. If you’ve ever had horseradish in its rawest form you know that it is potent stuff. It burns the sinuses and often brings tears to the eye. Maror reminds us of the bitterness of living in slavery, the hardship of the Hebrews before liberation, and the bitterness of our own lives when we are slaves to sin. Following the eating of the maror we add the charoset, a chutney that is a combination of apples, nuts, kosher wine and spices. The charoset resembles the mixture of clay and straw that the Israelites used to make bricks. When added to the maror it reminds us of the mixture of joy and sorrow that makes up our lives. The charoset also serves as a sign of hope, hope that the bitterness will pass and that deliverance and redemption will come as God has promised.
Take a moment to consider the bittersweetness of life – your own life and the lives of those around you. We need only turn on the radio or open the newspaper to stories of tsunamis, earthquakes, and civil war to see evidence that life is bitter. And we need only look outside at the spring sun that shines through the branches of the trees or the green buds that blossom into flower to see evidence that life is good. Hope for new life illuminates even the darkness of death.
It is in our darkest and bitterest moments that we most rely on the unchanging nature of the Hebrew God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God of you and me. He is a God who delivers us from darkness and sets us free from all that enslaves us. He is a God who redeems our lives and restores what is broken. May he give you the strength to endure hardship and hope to trust in the promised restoration.

No comments:

Post a Comment