8 You shall tell your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’
The Exodus is what theologian Jurgen Moltmann calls "a perpetual event" -- an event which takes place "once and for all." And it is to all that the command is given to observe the Passover meal, year by year in rememberance of what The LORD did to free his people from slavery in Egypt.
Yet it is a special kind of rememberance that the Israelites are commanded to observe. The Israelites are commanded to remember in the past tense, but also always in the first person. The child asks at the Passover meal, "What is the meaning of this meal?" And the answer is a first person answer: "It is because of what the LORD did for ME when I came out of Egypt."
It is this first person rememberance which has kept the Jewish people always mindful of the plight of the stranger, the refugee, and the sojourner. As soon as the Israelites crossed over the Red Sea they were given the Law which again reminded them in first person that they were strangers in Egypt and that experience was to shape the way they ought to think and act towards the stranger among them. "So you, too, must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in he land of Egypt," (Exodus 10:19), "Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt," (Exodus 22:21), "You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God," (Leviticus 19:34). These words are not only for that first generation of Israelites brought from slavery to freedom, but binding on all generations. Again, in Moltmann's words, they were spoken "once and for all."
How would it shape us to think of ourselves, to remember ourselves, as people who were once slaves, once sojourners, and once foreigners? How would it shape the way we think of the foreigner among us? What about the manual laborer? The community wishing to worship their own God in their own way? Persons enslaved by forces of death and oppression, whether personal or societal? Would we have more sympathy, more compassion, less judgment if we were to remember that it was "out of Egypt" that we came also?
"It is because of what the LORD did for me," the lesson says. In other words, I couldn't do it by myself -- I needed help; and therefore it's required of me to help others also.
Exodus is a "perpetual event" -- something which happened to me and is a blessing for others also.
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