Christians and Passover

A reader of my Reflections on Good Friday at Contentions writes to advise me that not all Christians who celebrate Passover are doing so to “co-op” the holiday or “claim it as [their] own.”

I have every confidence that this is the case. I have written before now of my deep respect and affection for Evangelicals and Catholics who are proud to share a “great spiritual heritage” with the Jews.

At the same time, I must admit that the Christian observance of Passover makes me queasy. I don’t mean those observances that “Christianize” the holiday, which are described so well by Michael Medved in his essay “The Preposterous Politics of Passover” in this month’s Commentary and by Diane Cole in her Wall Street Journal report last week on Passover as the new Christmas. Those are little more than revivals of supersessionism.

I mean that even strictly faithful reproductions of an Orthodox Jewish seder by believing Christians leave me feeling queasy. Perhaps the problem is that I fail to grasp the theology behind such reproductions. Exactly what are these Christians affirming? “B’khol-dor vador hayav adam lirot et-atsmo k’ilu hu yatsa mimitsrayim,” the Haggadah says—“in every generation, a man is to regard himself as if he himself had gone out from Egypt.” In as far as Christendom comes out of Israel, and Israel went out from Egypt, some such affirmation can be faithfully uttered by Christians, I suppose.

But what about the blessings scattered throughout the Haggadah? The melekh haolam, the king of the universe, is thanked for “choosing us from all people and lifting us up above all tongues and making us holy through his commandments [mitsvot].” Do Christians really believe that following God’s commandments, guarding the Sabbath and keeping kosher and observing the laws of marital separation, is what sanctifies them? Or do they not believe, instead, that faith in Christ Jesus is the source of holiness?

Perhaps I will please no one and offend many by saying that Christian Passover seders are in my opinion just as inauthentic and unavailing as the “seder” that my sister-in-law is staging tomorrow night—three and four days after the appointed time—because it is more convenient for friends who work. Offensive or not, I will surprise no one who reads this blog by saying that I am hostile to do-it-yourself religion. To celebrate Passover is to understand that the liberation from Egypt was merely the necessary prelude to receiving God’s law at Sinai.

Passover means nothing unless it means a renewal of the dedication to keep all of those laws, including the obligation to remove the words mashiv haruah umorid hageshem from the daily “Eighteen Benedictions” once Passover begins—something that I would bet not even the most thoroughly Judaized Christians think to do.