This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover. – Exodus 12:7

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 31, 2012): Exodus 12

I have to admit that I am a fast food eater – both in the food that I like to eat and in regard to the time it takes me to eat it. I have never really learned to appreciate fine cuisine – or the patience that I have to invest as I wait for it.  I have been trained well by my culture, I eat too fast, and during the day often at my desk. And it is not that I think that the way that I eat is healthy, but I also do not have the desire to change. And often when I eat at my desk, I do not even fully unpack my meal so that it can be cleaned away quickly if someone walks into my office.

Passover is maybe the advent of fast food. Even though the whole thing was planned, once the eating of the Passover meal started, the process had also begun. It was like a McDonalds stop at a drive through window at the very beginning of a road trip – it needed to be eaten fast and eaten ready to move. The trip was about to begin and the car was already packed.

That first Passover meal was eaten with a sense of expectancy, God was about to move. I think it was a sense that was lost in the celebrations that followed it. The Passover seemed to be more about the ritual then about the expectation of what God was going to do – when the people actually remembered to celebrate the Passover at all.

In the Christian Church, Passover corresponds with our Easter Celebration, but maybe the bigger connection is with our Eucharist remembrance. We celebrate it more than just once a year (well, at least I think we should), but every time we gather to eat it, we should do so with the expectation that God is about to move. Maybe once in a while we should prepare for communion early, but when it comes to taking the elements we should do it fast and without much thought, but with great expectation of the action that God is about to undertake on our behalf.

Judaism and Christianity need to be able to stand together in their anticipation of the movement of God. And we need to be able to approach our feast days ready to move at a moments notice.

       

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Exodus 13