AKMA offers a fascinating and (as always) deeply thoughtful post expressing discomfort with “the increasing frequency with which Christians set up and proceed to ‘enact’ seders“. He offers four specific “answers” on the issue. In his second answer where he raises the question of why some Christians imitate a seder he comments:
They adhere to a deracinated spirituality that regards anything that a “religious” person does as fair game for appropriation, since every path leads to the same goal, all are equally valid, blah blah blah. I don’t know what to say about this except that I can’t offer a charitable account of how such a direly wrong-headed trivialization has attained so predominant a cultural ascendancy.
(I am a fairly intelligent and well educated fellow and had to look up “deracinated”.)
I should confess that AKMA’s post challenges some of my own practices. I worship (at times) in churches that belong to traditions other than my own. (And have occasionally attended services at Beth Shalom synagogue as well especially around holidays.) I borrow/adapt some of their practices and liturgies. The senior pastor of the American church and I once planned a Jahrzeit service in which we recited (kid you not) the entire mourner’s kaddish.
(He and I both were educated in part by Jewish professors. He and I both did doctoral work in Hebrew Bible. We have a natural appreciation for Judaism.)
Perhaps it is wrong for me/us to do such things. But whether it is wrong or not – the excellent AKMA offers lechem for thought.
ADDENDUM – For what it is worth I have never “enacted” a seder. During their Spring Break mission trip to San Antonio our college students participated in a seder hosted by Messianic Jews. Each year St Luke’s Episcopal Church (which I have attended at times) offers a seder – with the important qualification that the seder is led by Rabbi Barry and Mrs Weinstein.
