c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) As Passover arrives this year, Jews won’t be the only ones gathering for the ritual seder meal. Christians and other non-Jews will be doing it too _ and debating all the while the sensitive matter of how to claim someone else’s religious tradition.

For some, the key comes in preserving Judaic authenticity and sticking to universal themes found in the Hebrews’ exodus-from-Egypt story. Texas United Methodist Church in Cockeysville, Md., for instance, will make no attempt on April 19 to find a message of liberation through Jesus Christ embedded in the symbols of bitter herbs, boiled egg or lamb shank.

“I’m not trying to Christianize this,” says the Rev. Janice Meyer, pastor of Texas UMC. “That’s why we’re doing it in April (at Passover) rather than at Holy Week in March. … The intent is to bring people back to this universal wholeness and healing of having a meal together.”

Yet for other Christians doing the seder at Passover this year, finding Jesus in the meal’s elements is exactly the point. The crowd of about 400 who partake on April 26 at Resurrection Fellowship Church in Loveland, Colo., will unequivocally hear, for example, that the broken matzah represents “how Jesus was pierced for our transgressions,” according to Judy Ireland, women’s programming coordinator.

“We approach it from a Jewish point of view with the seder and how you do it, but then we add a lot of Jesus elements into it,” Ireland says. “It’s so interesting. The Passover dinner and things really do point to Jesus.”

In a seder meal, participants follow a structure of questioning, answering and eating symbolic foods to recall the biblical narrative of the Hebrews’ liberation from captivity under Pharaoh. For Jews, each element has a specific meaning, from a blend of apples, nuts and spices that represents mortar used in pyramid building to salt water that helps recall tears of woe and joy.

How non-Jews should interpret the seder meal is a subject of increasing discussion. Seder interest has swelled enough among non-Jews that Paraclete Press this year published a primer, co-authored by a Baptist pastor and a rabbi: “Let Us Break Bread Together: A Passover Haggadah for Christians.” Authors Mike Smith and Rabbi Rami Shapiro estimate about 1,000 Christian churches perform a seder meal each year.

The timing of the seder is a matter of debate as well. Smith, who serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tenn., says “it’s probably safer (for Christians) to do it during Holy Week” than at Passover. The reason, he says, is to avoid the potentially offensive appearance of “stealing” a Jewish ritual or placing a Christian stamp on it. He suggests Christians do seders on the Thursday before Easter, in remembrance of Jesus’ final Passover meal, known as the Last Supper.

But doing the seder at Passover may actually be more respectful of the tradition’s roots than a seder staged within the Christian Holy Week, in the opinion of the Rev. Jory Agate, a Jew who has led seders for eight years at her congregation, First Parish (Unitarian Universalist) Church in Cambridge, Mass.

“It’s a Jewish holiday. It’s not a Christian holiday. … It’s not at all related to Easter,” says Agate, First Parish’s minister of religious education. To divorce the ritual from its Passover timing, she says, “feels like a dishonoring of my tradition and a Christianizing of it.”

In certain years, Passover and Holy Week overlap to make timing decisions a non-issue. But this year, Passover is a full month later. Although many churches performed the seder at Holy Week, Smith says a growing number are choosing to do it at Passover instead.

“I think there’s an increasing openness to possibilities and to observing the Passover at Passover,” Smith says. “As a congregation’s comfort zone grows, they become more open to the possibilities.”

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Still, in terms of living out those possibilities, Christian communities bring a range of motives to the endeavor of a seder timed to coincide with Passover.

Messianic Jews, who believe in Jesus as the Hebrews’ hoped-for Messiah, are this year using the Passover season to bring their message to seder-serving Christian communities. Jews for Jesus Executive Director David Brickner will speak April 21 and 22 at seder meals hosted by Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky. Others hosting Messianic speakers at their April seders this year include Clearview Baptist Church in Pinson, Ala. and Whitemarsh Island Baptist Church in Savannah, Ga.

For Resurrection Fellowship, a charismatic nondenominational church of more than 5,000 members, the seder marks one of many ways the church extols Jewish tradition and culture. Regarding the state of Israel as a fulfillment of God’s prophecy, the church sends quilts to victims of terrorism and supplies for Israeli soldiers, all in order to “show them the love of Jesus,” Ireland says.

A seder at Passover and a Feast of Tabernacles in the fall, Ireland says, help educate the congregation about Jews as “God’s chosen people, and we are grafted into them.”

Although the congregation hopes Jews will one day accept Jesus as their savior, she says they purposefully don’t evangelize Jews.

“We just love and honor the Jewish people,” Ireland says. “We put a Christian spin on (the seder), and we’re not trying to be Jewish.”

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