The Lessons of the Passover

Local pastor urges Christians to explore Judaism; interdenominational event celebrates Jewish feast

Friday, April 18, 2008
By KAY CAMPBELL
Huntsville Times Faith & Values Editor kay.campbell@htimes.com

Christ Our Passover, a Christian celebration and reinterpretation of the ancient Jewish Passover Feast hosted annually in Huntsville by an interdenominational ministry, has been attracting national attention, not all of it supportive.

Huntsville Pastor Bob Somerville, founder of Awareness Ministries, is becoming nationally known for his work to encourage Christians to explore the spiritual legacy and lessons of Judaism from a Christian point of view.

Christians traditionally believe Jesus celebrated and reinterpreted the Passover meal in his Last Supper with his disciples before his crucifixion. The Christian Eucharist communion meal uses elements from the Passover feast to symbolize the sacrifice of Jesus.

Christian interest in the Passover and other early Jewish festivals is growing nationally, Somerville said Tuesday night, as he prepared for the local celebration. Locally, the women's seder and the community seder hosted by Temple B'nai Sholom have both had waiting lists for non-Jews interested in understanding the feast.

Somerville's efforts have been misunderstood by both Christians and Jews, he said. Christ Our Passover was described as part of the trend of evangelical Christian interest in Jews and Israel in a recent story in The Forward, a New York-based Jewish newspaper that used to be published in Yiddish. The headline for that story, posted at www.forward.com, reads, in part, "Evangelicals misappropriating Passover."

"Some Christians think I'm a Judaizing apostate," Somerville said Tuesday night as he led the Passover demonstration at a service attended by about 900 in the Von Braun's North Hall. "And some Jews think I'm attempting to hijack their faith."

Neither is true, he said. What he's trying to do is to understand his own faith in a deeper way.

Jews have been celebrating Passover for 3,800 years, and they have yet to exhaust the lessons of the symbolic meal, Somerville said. And Christians have much to learn by observing the ancient seder, designed to teach spiritual truths in a concrete way.

"Judaism does not need Christianity to explain its existence, but Christianity needs Judaism," Somerville said. "The early church fathers tried to erase anything that seemed Jewish from the Christian church. We may have Jesus, but I believe the Christian church needs an education."

The Huntsville Christ Our Passover service includes Christian prayers, songs and an explanation of the traditional elements of the Passover seder, a feast that recalls the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. The weeklong festival of special foods and prayers begins Saturday at sundown.

"This is not a Christian feast; it is not a Jewish feast," Somerville said. "This is of the Lord. We serve the God of the universe. He is not an ethnic God, but the eternal God."

"I don't care if you are white bread, brown bread or a bagel," he said, holding up three pieces of traditional Passover matzo crackers wrapped in a napkin. "We are one people in unity. And we all need deliverance."

In keeping with the promise of God to Abraham recorded in Genesis 12:3 to "bless those who bless thee," the offering from the celebration was designated this year to the Jewish Federation of North Alabama, the nonprofit relief agency of the Jews.

"God loves all people," Somer-ville said, "but Jews, more than any other group for their meager numbers, have blessed all the people of the Earth."

Just two examples, Einstein and Levi Strauss, were enough to demonstrate his point, he said, tying Huntsville's existence to Einstein's breakthroughs in physics, and the comfort of people around the world to the denim of Levis.

"That such a people of blessing should be so persecuted and maligned through the ages," Somerville said in amazement. "Until the Jews passed us Gentiles the spiritual ball, we were nothing. Everything we have spiritually comes from God through the Jews to the church for the benefit of all mankind."

For the last several years, Christ Our Passover has also collected an offering to be used for community work. Past recipients have been the Huntsville Police Department and a local reading program.

This year's offering - more than $14,000 at press time - will be used for relief work among refugees in Israel and also for tuition for local teachers who want to attend Holocaust workshops, said Laura King, Federation president, who accepted the donation Tuesday evening along with Margaret Anne Goldsmith.

"Each of us must struggle to break out of our narrowness," King said in her acceptance remarks, drawing a parallel between the bonds of slavery and the bonds of entrenched thinking. "We must learn to accept a gift without suspicion and to build a future of cooperation and mutual respect. You have contributed to that healing."

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Related Christ our Passover Articles: The Door to Christian Unity and Three Times a Year in One Accord