As we commemorate to-day the 200th anniversary of the Act of Parliament which ended British participation in the slave trade, it is singularly appropriate that both our readings this evening should be concerned with preparations for the Passover, the Feast which itself commemorates the escape of the Jewish people from their slavery in Egypt. The two commemorations the one elaborate and public, the other simple and private to the point of being secretive also remind us that historical memory and narrative is a living reality which each generation adapts to its own needs and purposes. What might we learn from these contrasting examples as we approach our own celebration of Holy Week and Easter?
The two books of Chronicles are not generally regarded as very interesting, but I am intrigued and attracted by their emphasis on the role of the Levites. In the New Testament priests and Levites are usually lumped together as representatives of the religious opposition to Jesus, but in Chronicles the Levites really come into their own. Originally their main task was to act as porters, carrying the various bits of the moveable ark of the covenant, which had to be continually taken to pieces and put together again as the people of Israel trekked through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. If you’ve ever had to wrestle with an IKEA wardrobe, you will have learned to respect the very special skills they must have had. Later, when the ark found a permanent home in Jerusalem, and still more after the temple was built, their duties evolved into something more like those of our own laity, assisting the priests not only in their duties at the altar, but as gate-keepers, cooks and sacrifice attendants, and as musicians. They kept and counted the utensils in and out, they looked after the oil and the incense, the wine and the spices, they made the flat cakes and the rows of bread. The work of the musicians was especially valued, with some appointed to prophesy on the lyre, others on the harp or the cymbals, and of course others to minister before the tabernacle with song. Some of them even lived in the chambers of the temple free from all other service (1 Chron 9.33), though there was a snag they were on duty day and night. Were these the first full-time professionals?
This emphasis on good order and excellence in all aspects of worship is no side-show. It is absolutely central to the narrative which the Chronicler is concerned to deliver. The two volumes of the book of Chronicles are a history of the Jewish people from Adam and Eve (very briefly) to the moment when Cyrus the Persian passed the edict which allowed the exiles to return from Babylon to Jerusalem, and rebuild their temple there. It seems to have been addressed to two audiences. Externally the rulers of both Persia and Egypt needed to be told that neither was the cradle of civilisation unimportant as the Jews might be in geopolitical terms, they were God’s chosen people, and in theological terms Jerusalem and its temple was the true cradle of the only civilisation that really mattered. And internally the Jews themselves needed to be told that as a nation they had only prospered in the past, and would only prosper in the future, when they were faithful to God, and consequently serious about worship. Thus the book focuses almost entirely on the Davidic monarchy, the building of the temple by David and Solomon, and the few short periods of religious revival in the centuries that followed notably under Hezekiah and Josiah. Most of the other kings are dismissed with a single line He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and came to a nasty end in consequence. Josiah, the good king behind the religious revival in our reading tonight posed something of a problem, since he died in battle. Ergo, he must have done something terribly wicked. And so what was probably a political and strategic error of judgment, that cost him his life on the field of battle, has to be presented as a case of disobedience to God leading inexorably to severe judgment and an early death. The result is a book which is probably even less objective as history than the books of Samuel and Kings. The theology also links good and bad behaviour with good and bad outcomes in a way which more thoughtful writers, such as the author of the book of Job, came to see as factually untrue and therefore problematic. But it does highlight the establishment of Israel’s normative political and cultic institutions in the time of David and Solomon, especially the worship of the Temple, underscoring the continuing importance of all this for the life of the nation. The Passover celebration described in our first reading was the mark of a good king and a faithful people.
What a contrast with Jesus’ last Passover, if indeed the Last Supper was a Passover at all. St Luke is clear that it was, though St John places the Passover a day later, using that to explain why Pilate had to come out of his house to meet the chief priests in public they could not go into his house without breaking religious rules which would interfere with their celebration of the Passover on the day following the meal which we know as the Last Supper. Be that as it may, the arrangements were very simple and very domestic by comparison with the great public ceremony described by the Chronicler. In a pilgrim city it was not unusual for a house to have a guest chamber for renting out, probably on the top floor, and very likely reached by its own staircase, where the company could make its own arrangements as seems to have been the case here. But if everything had to be brought in, the meal could not be very elaborate.
One of the interesting things about Chronicles is that although the book is presented as history, and much stress is laid on the proper celebration of the Passover, there is no mention of the exodus itself. It is almost as if the actual event has been air brushed out, perhaps because it inconveniently links the people of Israel with a past in Egypt, which doesn’t suit the Chronicler’s emphasis on Judah and Jerusalem. For St Luke by contrast, and we may infer for Jesus himself, the historic significance of the Passover is massively important. The first Passover, eaten in haste on the last night before the Jews fled from Egypt in the confusion caused by the simultaneous death of every other first-born male in the land, signalled the final denouement in the crisis which led to exodus and freedom. Jesus knew that same moment of crisis had come for him too, and it allowed him to underscore vividly the similarities as well as the differences between the old covenant and the new. There were strong parallels in the celebratory meal that would act as a perpetual reminder of the event, and in the underlying fact of dramatic rescue. But there were marked differences too, notably in the complete overturning of what it means to be a leader. Moses had led the people of Israel out of Egypt with a high hand, David and Solomon had been great kings in the traditional sense, and when Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to die, they start to argue about the succession. Who is going to be the greatest among us, they want to know. And Jesus, who perhaps models himself on the suffering servant of Isaiah’s poems, insists that whoever wants to be the leader must become the servant of all, as he has shown himself to be. This is not virtue and reward in the sense understood by the Chronicler, or indeed in the sense which underlies the disciples’ dispute about greatness. It is a radically new understanding of what it means to be God, and what it means to be a follower of Jesus and a true worshipper of God.
It is no longer enough to follow a prescribed liturgy, however venerable and well ordered and beautiful, though it remains the case that when it comes to the worship of God, nothing but the best is good enough. What is required of us goes deeper than that. William Wilberforce was not the first to perceive the evil of the slave trade. More than 200 years earlier Queen Elizabeth I had declared that the slave trade would call down the vengeance of heaven on those who engaged in it. But he did devote more or less the whole of his adult life to the cause, campaigning for it in Parliament for more than 20 years, and when the trade was abolished campaigning for the abolition of slavery itself. In the process he forfeited any hope he might have had of ministerial office under his friend William Pitt, both his personal finances and his health suffered under the continual strain, and he died in 1833, within days of the passing of the further bill for the abolition of slavery itself. He was honoured then with burial in Westminster Abbey, and we rightly honour him now as the leader of a noble campaign rooted in his profound Christian faith.
Our readings tonight call us to a worthy commemoration, both in public worship and in private, of the events which have won us our freedom from the slavery of sin. If we are to honour God in our worship, then we must honour him also in lives of loving service to one another and to him, not knowing where that will lead us, but trusting in his love to see us through.