This is a
seminal episode in the history of the Jewish faith, and therefore, our
own. And through the good offices of
Cecil B. DeMille, it is easily envisioned in moviegoers of a certain generation,
through that eerie scene in the Ten Commandments. Remember?
The hand of the Lord, pictured as a greenish mist, creeping through the
midnight streets . . . at first all is silent, then the cries begin, the
shrieks as here and there, throughout the night, the firstborn of Egypt is
taken away . . . and we parents can imagine that, can’t we, the horror of it .
. . some of us have felt it, surely, but we all can feel it, empathize with it
as the blackness creeps down into our being . . .
And here, God
gives Moses and mouthpiece Aaron instructions about how to avoid the
destruction, how to side-step the tragedy.
And one wonders: why would God need an elaborate sign? Why would God need blood on the doorposts to
indicate who were God’s children? Doesn’t
God know? Isn’t God omniscient, and the
other two “omnis” to boot? Isn’t God omnipotent and omnipresent too? Well, maybe the author of
Exodus—traditionally supposed to be Moses himself—didn’t know about that when
he wrote this dark little tale. And
indeed, this is a good example of the evolving picture of God we get from
scripture, if it’s thought about in chronological order . . . in the Hebrew
scriptures, we get this picture of a God who’s very much human . . . in
Genesis, God walks up to Moses by the Oaks of Mamre, just walks on up looking
like anyone else . . . and God is certainly not pictured as unchanging in these
early scripture . . . God changes his mind on several occasions. And God is vengeful in these early passages,
sending Joshua to slaughter the men, women and children on Aiken, and killing
all the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, and vengeance is certainly
a human trait, no?
But as the
scriptures progress—we can tell about when each book was written—the authors’
perceptions of God change, so that by the end of the first century after Christ,
first John can write that “God is love.”
And where in love is there room for vengeance? Where in love is there room for killing
innocent, first-born babes, even if they are of the hated Egyptians? If
God is love, what can we say about this story?
Quite a lot,
actually. It is absolutely essential to
our Jewish friends . . . it’s the establishment of Passover, the most important
festival of the year. And because of
this, it has influenced us immensely. It
is because Passover is in the Spring that Easter is there as well. And I think it’s interesting to compare the
two . . . the festival of Passover commemorates the deliverance of the people
of Israel from the clutches of the Pharaoh.
You remember the story . . . Jacob—named Israel by God when he wrestled
with him on the banks of the Jabbok—grew wealthy and had twelve sons, and each
son begat a tribe . . . Reuben, Simeon and Levi. Judah, Dan and Naphtali. Gad and Asher, Issachar and Zebulon. And finally, Joseph and his little brother
Benjamin. Israel and his sons,
forerunners of the Israelite people.
And Joseph, who
was a little snot, really, was despised by his brothers because of it, and they
plotted to kill him . . . Rueben took pity on him, and as a result he was not
killed, but then he was sold as a slave to a passing caravan. By God’s grace, Joseph rose to power in the Pharaoh’s
employ—some say he was the Pharaoh’s toady—but it was only through his
intervention, his bringing of his family to Egypt, that the fledgling people of
Israel were saved from a terrible drought.
And so the Hebrew people thrived in the land of the Pharaoh, but later
holders of that office did not treat them so well, they were overworked
building the Pharaoh’s great palaces and tending his crops and livestock, and
their captivity became long and cruel.
But in spite of it all, they were multiplied
by the Lord, so that by the time Moses came along, they were legion, and after
having to flee the wrath of the Pharaoh, he returned to confront him and set
his people free. Of course, this was
easier said than done, and now, finally, here we are at the last straw . . .
plague after plague is sent to bedevil the Egyptian ruler and his people, and
every time, Pharaoh’s heart becomes hard, and he does not permit them to go.
And now it’s the last straw . . . and
whatever it is that happens, Pharaoh lets God’s people go. And it’s the original expression of
liberation theology, a reminder that salvation is not just spiritual, not just
pie in the sky by and by, but—often—concrete and bodily. And it’s important to remember this, when we
hear the dark whisperings against liberation theology. Right here is it’s locus, it’s genesis . . .
the Israelite people are liberated here, and they become a peoples on that day
. . . it is an act of liberation that is at the heart of the Jewish faith.
And because of this, it is in our DNA as
well . . . liberation—bodily freedom from oppression and captivity is in our
bones. And it’s why Moses was such a
pivotal personage in African American streams of our faith . . . Go down Moses,
way down in Egypt land, Tell old, Pharaoh, let my people go . . . and when they
sang that song, African American slaves were not singing about Moses, but about
their own yearned-for freedom from captivity at the hands of white land
owners. Moses isn’t a revered name in
African American circles for nothing, there have been a lot of black folks with
that name over the years.
If the Passover story is about
liberation, it’s also about sacrifice: the lambs without blemish, chosen by
each family, fattened up for four days, then slaughtered at sunset . . . their blood is smeared on the doorposts
and lintels, and when the Spirit of God sees the blood, God will pass over the
house and move on to the next. And so,
it is literally the sacrifice of the blemish-less lamb, the blood of the lamb,
that keeps the Israelites alive long enough to come up out of the land of the
Pharaoh.
Now . . . where have we heard that
phrase “the blood of the lamb” before?
Could it be . . . Jesus? Christians appropriated the Passover symbolism
to describe the indescribable, to describe the act of atonement that God
effected through God’s son Jesus Christ.
Jesus became the lamb without blemish, without sin, who was sacrificed
so that we might be forgiven for ours, forgiven once and for all time. Christians, many of them Jews to begin with,
used the imagery they knew to explain the mechanics of reconciliation.
But we shouldn’t confuse imagery, we
shouldn’t confuse an analogy, with the thing itself. And in fact, the New Testament authors do
not: they use a number of analogies for atonement. They speak of Christ paying a price, serving
a sentence, and making restitution for our mis-deeds. Perhaps the most popular model is that Christ
died instead of us, that he substituted for us by taking our place. The way I like to think of it is using the
so-called Christus Victor model, where Christ in effect defeats the forces of
sin and evil, vanquishing them and thus setting us free.
However we think about it—and if anybody
tells you they know the truth, I have a bridge to sell you—however we think
about it, the fact remains: Christ died
for our sins, and we have been redeemed, as sure as the Sun rises in the East .
. . we have been redeemed. We have been
liberated by God as surely as our Jewish ancestors in the faith were, brought
up from Pharaoh’s land.
But our passage speaks of more than
that. More than just the act of
liberation, it speaks of remembering that act as well. “This month shall mark for you the beginning
of months” and that Hebrew word for “beginning” is rash, or head, or
chief. Passover comes in the chief
month, the most important month, and this story is the establishment of a
tradition, of an ordinance: This day
shall be a day of remembrance for you.
You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord. Throughout your generations you shall observe
it as a perpetual ordinance. An
ordinance, an ordered thing. Observant
Jews, if they are faithful, cannot not observe
Passover. That’s why they’re called . .
. observant.
In a similar manner, we are called to observe
the Lord’s Supper. Faithful Christians
are not faithful if they do not . . . it is an ordinance. Here’s what Paul had to say about it: “For I
received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the
night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread . . .” and then he proceeds
with the familiar words I will say to you in a minute. The Lord handed it down to Paul, and he
handed it down to the congregations he founded . . . it is an ordinance, an
order. Now, we Presbyterians believe,
like the majority of Christians do worldwide, that it is more than that, that
as a sacrament, God does something, that it is a means of grace, where grace is
somehow dispensed. But we too often
overlook the fact that we are commanded to do it, in multiple places in the
scriptures.
And why are we commanded thus? Well, Jews are commanded so that they and their
families will remember the mighty works of the Lord, and God’s loving kindness
toward them, and that is part of it too: do this in remembrance of me, Jesus
said. We are to do it so that we
remember the gracious acts of a loving God.
But Paul gives us another reason, and
it’s kind of a surprising one: for as often as you eat this bread and drink the
cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. When we celebrate the Lord’s supper, we are
sharing the Gospel, we are fulfilling another ordinance, that we proclaim the
good news in thought, word and deed.
So next time we take the cup and the
bread and say the words of Jesus and Paul, remember that other liberating act,
that first act when Moses went down to Pharaoh’s land, and remember too our own
tale of redemption, the act that is peculiar to us, when God became incarnate that
we might be free. Amen.
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