A week ago yesterday,
along with 150 other people from various faith
traditions,
I participated in an interfaith Seder
in preparation for this
year's Passover celebration.
Rabbi Samuel Weinstein presided at the
event
at Temple Shomer Emunim in Sylvania.
We prayed together,
listened
to a historical and theological explanation
of the ritual and the symbolic
food,
sampled the bitter herbs-- maror--
and the boiled egg, haroset,
parsley, motzoh...
and drank four glasses of wine.
We made new friends and
shared our stories.
It was the meal that Jesus shared with his
disciples
the night before he
died.
_________________________________
Four days later, on the night
before Passover,
a neo-Nazi charged into a Jewish facility
in Overland
Park, Kansas,
a JCC and temple just like the one we had gathered in.
His
vicious anti-Semitism took three
lives.
_________________________________
Tonight we Christians
begin
our annual celebration of the paschal mystery.
It's not easy to pull our
focus away from this violence.
Yet the Passover continues for our Jewish
brothers and sisters,
in spite of the hatred aimed at them.
The Triduum
begins for the grieving families
of the Methodist grandfather and
grandson
and the Catholic mother killed in Overland Park,
in spite of the
tragedy visited on them.
With them, we assert once again
our faith that
God acts in history
and that God's action is good, not
evil.
_________________________________
We Christians see the paschal
mystery--
Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again--
as a
universal pattern.
As Fr. Richard Rohr puts it,
"Life will be death,
failure, and absurdity,
which can lead to renewal, joy, and beauty.
The
pattern is inevitable, universal, and transformative."
Jesus reveals and
lives this pattern
and tells us that we can trust it.
The pattern is
everywhere,
and Jesus is our model and our guide.
Each of us experiences
the same pattern in our own lives.
We are born. We live. We die.
And we
are reborn to live again.
Each of us has lived and re-lived that pattern many
times already.
We have started something--schooling, marriage, job,
friendship--
and given it our best.
And along the way we've failed, fallen
short of the mark,
then picked up the pieces and tried again.
Our hope, as
it's said, springs eternal.
We keep on keeping on.
We get up and go
again.
_________________________________
At that interfaith Seder the
pattern of our history,
of our human lives and deaths,
and of Jesus' life,
death, and resurrection,
merged for me.
I knew the presence of my
ancestors in faith.
I enjoyed the presence of new friends.
I felt the
presence at the table
of Jesus the Jew
and the risen Christ.
It's that
same paschal mystery we celebrate in our three-day ritual,
beginning
tonight.
It's all one event, a remembering of life and death and
resurrection;
it's all one with our own lives and Jesus'
life.
_________________________________
Over the next three days,
you
and I will give witness to Jesus' commitment
to live in love and truth,
faithful to God's will,
even at the cost of his life.
The commitment
transforms him,
as it transforms us
when we ground ourselves
in God's
unconditional love
and Jesus's prophetic example.
Tonight we remember and
celebrate in our table fellowship
the call to serve one another--
to wash
one another's feet.
_________________________________
No matter the
challenge,
with God's love we rise again,
and again.
--
Holy
Spirit Catholic Community
Mass at 2086 Brookdale (Interfaith
Chapel):
Saturdays at 4:30 p.m.
Sundays at 9 a.m.
Mass at 3535
Executive Parkway (Unity of Toledo)
Sundays at 5:30 p.m.
www.holyspirittoledo.org
Rev.
Bev Bingle, Pastor
419-727-1774
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