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Perhaps it’s because of my annual viewing of The Ten Commandments around Easter, but I must admit that I have something of a romanticized view of the Passover event. I think that all of the central stories of our faith, the ones we repeat through the liturgical year, are susceptible to this kind of reductionist reading, but for much of my ministerial life I’ve thought of this event in a dramatic, if simplistic, light: It’s a mighty miracle of God of such magnitude that it needs to be commemorated and replayed annually as a reminder of God’s salvific power. On the surface it’s straightforward, with easily recognizable good guys and bad guys and a plainly victorious outcome. But as I sit with this text again, I can’t escape the messiness of this miracle.
There is of course the literal mess that sits at the heart of the narrative. Central to God’s act is the smearing of blood over the doorways. Can you imagine the smell in the Hebrew section of town? Between the slaughter of all those lambs and the outward posting of the blood, the smell would have been arresting. Maybe more importantly, beyond the gore of the ritual, this passage refuses to fit neatly into any one theological box. Its meaning is messy.
The tension is thick in this text, both in the drama of the moment and in the theological implications. There are so many competing ideas. We have the precision of the sacrifice and the specificity of the commemoration paired with the chaos of the moment. The salvation of innocent lives happens because of the murder of some innocent lives. There is the celebration of a feast in the shadow of grief. Israel cheers as Egypt mourns. There are careful instructions about sharing the meal with those who may not have enough, but leftovers are forbidden, and there are clear rules about who can participate in the meal. This meal that is instructed to be eaten “in haste” leads to a remembrance ritual done by subsequent generations that lingers.
The homes of the Hebrews serve as both sanctuary and prison. Lives are preserved through a sign of death. The blood on the doorway secures life, but the blood came from death. The contradictions and contrasting understandings of God abound in this text. It refuses a simple reading. When you read this passage, instead of assuming your understanding from past recollections, the Passover becomes liturgy and crisis, order and chaos, careful commemoration and present immediacy. It is precision and mystery, celebration and lament, judgment and mercy. God’s miraculous work is done in tension as God works in the messiness of the both/and.
This may be one of the gifts of this text for contemporary readers. The Passover event suggests that the deepest acts of faith occur in the uncomfortable space where joy and grief, liberation and loss, hope and horror all occupy the same table. Our challenge becomes to figure how to resist the urge to solve the so-called contradictions and to faithfully inhabit the tension of God’s work.
