October 4 2020
Exodus 12:1-13, 13:1-8
It seems like the coronavirus has affected every area of our life. So, it just makes sense, I guess that the upcoming holiday season will also be affected. I hadn’t thought about it much but this past week I was talking with Evelyn and she mentioned how this years Thanksgiving was going to be just a small affair and not the big gathering that her family traditionally has because of the fear of the coronavirus.As I thought about how this virus will now make us reconsider even holidays such as Thanksgiving it seems like this will also make us at least not take this holiday for granted. I mean Thanksgiving is kind of a strange holiday. It doesn’t involve the giving of anything or the celebrating of any one day in history. No, what Thanksgiving is known for is plain and simple, eating. It is a day when we get together as families to eat and not just eat but to eat turkey something we may only eat just once a year. Why do we eat turkey? We eat turkey because it s tradition. We may not be that fond of turkey meat but come Thanksgiving it is what will be the main course. Yet, Thanksgiving is of course more than just eating turkey with all the sides and perhaps pie for dessert. Thanksgiving is about family and it is about the stories and the conversations we have when we all sit down across from one another without a phone in our hands. And in the midst of our eating there with family remembering and sharing the stories that bind us together we also remember just what it is that we are grateful for and who is the one who deserves our gratitude for making all of it possible.
As we begin to think about the Jewish holy day of Passover, I believe that this day has much in common with our holiday of Thanksgiving. There is, like our turkey, the one unchanging meat of choice in the roasted lamb. And Passover is about family just as it was on that first night of Passover. What connects this annual celebration of Passover with all of the other Passover’s that have been celebrated before is the telling of stories, specifically the story of how God miraculously saved the people of Israel from death. The story begins with a child asking “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The child is told of how they were slaves down in Egypt and how the lord our God took them out with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. They tell their children, “If the Holy One, blessed be he, had not taken our fathers out of Egypt then we, our children and our children’s children would have remained enslaved to Pharaoh.” This in a nutshell is the heart of their night of remembrance and everything that is said and ate that night is to help those who partake make the connection with those who lived through that first Passover night. They eat the unleavened bread as a reminder that their ancestors had to leave Egypt in haste and there was no time for even the bread to rise. They eat of the bitter herbs to recall the bitterness of the slavery Pharaoh had kept them. They eat of a mixture of fruits and nuts ground fine to resemble the mortar that held the bricks that their labor made into monuments to Pharaoh. So through the meal and through the telling of the story they remember and they understand that the struggle of their ancestors is their struggle to.
My family and I have participated in this Passover observance which is called a seder meal. We have eaten the roasted lamb, tasted the bitter herbs and chewed on the hard and tasteless unleavened bread. Through this meal we too remember what it must have been like for these slaves who at long last were going to taste freedom through the power of God. Finally, the bitterness and hardship they once believed they would never would never see an end to was going to be over all because the God of their ancestors was listening to their cries and was moved to act on their behalf. As you eat this Seder meal you can’t help wonder just what that night must have been like, to be gathered in their homes, eating their roasted lamb, waiting with their sandals on, their staff in hand ready for the signal to go and then hearing the cries of their Egyptian masters as the first born children died in their arms. There in that night was felt deeply the tragedy of death and the hope of new life. Now, it may seem strange for us as Christians to partake of the Seder meal yet I believe that the Passover meal, above all the rest of the Jewish Festivals, is intimately connected with the story of Jesus. Without an understanding of Passover how could one make sense of John the Baptists outburst in the first chapter of John when upon seeing Jesus shouted, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” And it was the Passover meal that Jesus ate with his disciples on the night he was betrayed, the bread he broke and the cup he drank were part of the telling of the story of God setting his people free. So, it is not as if we can just dismiss this story of the night of Israels freedom from slavery as some past history that is no longer relevant. No, what was revealed on that night to the people of Israel on the night of their freedom pointed to the cross where not just the people of Israel but the whole world would at last be set free from the slavery of sin.
So, we begin our look into just what does Passover signify by first explaining the strange name of “Passover”. It is called in our modern times Passover however in the Hebrew it is known by the word pesach. The reason that we call it Passover was that Tyndall, the early Bible translator, thought that this is what is meant by the Hebrew word pesach. Now it seems to fit somewhat when we consider that the angel of death passed over the houses of the Israelites because of the blood on the door posts but the word pesach was being used to describe God not the angel of death and it doesn’t make sense that God world pass over the house of those he was going to save. So, in order to understand this strange word pesach we need to look elsewhere how it was used and it is used in only one other place in the scriptures in the thirty first chapter of Isaiah, the fifth verse. There we read, “Like birds hovering so the Lord of Hosts will protect Jerusalem; in protecting it he will rescue it; in sparing it he will save it.” So, pesach is connected with thoughts of protection, rescue and salvation. Now, the Hebrew people did not like abstract concepts but rather used concrete examples to convey what they meant so this image of a bird hovering is important as a visual image of protection, rescue and safety. To our modern ears though a hovering bird is still hard for us to imagine so perhaps we can use something Jesus said to give us a clearer picture. At the end of the twenty third chapter of Matthew, Jesus as he approaches Jerusalem, cries out, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often I would have gathered your children together as. Hen gathers her brood under her wings and you would not.” I always thought that this was a strange image that Jesus uses here to describe his love for the lost children of Israel however when we understand that Jesus was coming to celebrate pesach and the image of the protection that pesach is to convey to us is a bird hovering, this image of a hen makes perfect sense. This is what God was doing on that night of his pesach, gathering his children under his wings, protecting them from the angel of death just like a hen gathers her chicks when she senses danger.
With this understanding of pesach then we also become aware that God was not only setting the people of Israel free from their slavery on that night he was also revealing something about who he is. Here on the night of pesach God becomes known as savior, the one who protects and saves his people. Now, what is interesting is that God being savior is intimately connected with God being known as creator of the universe. The story of pesach recorded in the twelfth chapter of Exodus begins, “The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt….” What must kept in mind when we read this is that the early Jewish writers of the scriptures we read were so in awe of the name of God that they refused to write it instead inserting the word “Lord” wherever they found the name of God. What happens when they did so is that what God was trying to reveal about himself is lost in translation. As we read in the third chapter of Exodus, Moses inquired of God just what name should he use when people asked him who this God was that had sent him. God told Moses. “Say to this to the people of Israel, YHWH the God of the fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and of Jacob has sent me to you.” Now, we have to ask why this name of God is so important to the story? Well, when you study this name in the Hebrew language what you find is that it is actually three Hebrew words melted together. The three words are the word for the past, the present and the future. What this name conveys about God is that he is a God who experiences what was, what is and what will be all at once. Now, just trying to imagine what that must be like is a mind-blowing experience. Well, if you ponder a little more about the way God experiences time you start to realize that in order to experience reality like God does means that God exists outside, separate from our world. This just makes sense because God exists outside of time because after all he is the creator of time.
Now why God revealing himself as the Creator is so important to our story is that the Egyptians worshiped what God had created as their gods.They worshipped the sun, the rain, living animals all in the hopes that the power they saw in these things they worshipped might use that power for their benefit. Now the problem with these so called gods is that they were so unpredictable. You never knew when the rain god might show up or when clouds might hide the suns rays. So, to show the Egyptians how small their gods were, the one true living God, the God who exists outside of time, brought plagues upon them, plagues that were objects that the Egyptians worshiped, and through Moses, God told them when these plagues would happen. God was proving that he was God over their gods and he was a God who could do what none of their gods could do and that is he could tell when his power was going to show up in a mighty way.
Now, God as the Creator had a different message for the people of Israel. As they pondered on this God who stood outside of their world, the one who created it they realized that he had a reason for creating this world, that he had willed this world into being. And if God had created the world on purpose and I am part of all God had created it just figures that God created us with a purpose in mind. This life we have is a gift given to us by the God who created us.This discovery just makes us want to find ways to express our gratitude to this God who created us.So, in this exchange of a life from God and the gratitude of our hearts back to God there is established a relationship. In this relationship, like in all relationships, there is an expected feeling of love for the one who gave us this most precious gift of life. This love springs from the knowledge that our lives are not some byproduct of cold, blind chance. No, there is a Someone who desires you and me to be here, a Someone who has brought us into this world, a Someone who gave us everything so that we could make something of ourselves here on earth. When our relationship with God is like this then it is not hard to understand what we read in the fourth chapter of Exodus, “The Lord said to Moses, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, so that he will not let his people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me.’ If you refuse to let him go, behold I will kill your firstborn.” This reveals to us that here is the beginning of our understanding of God as our Heavenly Father and knowing ourselves as his children. Israel would be the first-born, the first child of God who would be a nation of kingly priests who would like a first-born in most families, an example to the children who would come later.
So, as we come to this pesach night we must also see it as the night when the first-born child of God, the nation of Israel was born. For this birth to happen meant though, that they place their faith in God, doing what he instructed him to do. God told the people of Israel to take a sheep or a goat and for three days tie them outside of their homes. Now why is this significant? Well, sheep and goats were one of those things that the Egyptians worshipped as their gods. So, the Egyptians would have seen that the people of Israel, their slaves, had taken what to them was an object of worship and displayed them in front of their homes. That would make the Egyptians wonder just what they were up to wouldn’t it? Well, imagine their surprise when on the fourth day they watched as this object of worship was slaughtered and its blood smeared across the doorposts of the homes of these slaves. What an act of defiance! The message was clear, Egypt and its influence stops at the door. Within this home the God who created everything is the God who is worshiped and obeyed. The blood cried out that these people were pledging their allegiance to their Heavenly Father; no longer would Pharaoh demand anything from them. Inside of their homes on that fateful night they would not just be gathered together as a unified people they would be more importantly be gathered beneath the wings of God, held safe within his arms from which no one could snatch them. Thus they could begin to see the connection between knowing God as our Creator and also understanding God as our Savior.
The death of the firstborn of Egypt while tragic, serves to yet convey the truth of those who refuse the hope offered to them by the God who created them. The night of pesach teaches us that the future God is bringing about belongs to those who know themselves as his children. To be a child of God means that we, in front of a watching world put to death the idols this world worships, what John in his first letter describes as being, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the arrogance of our possessions. These as John writes are of a world that is passing away; only those who do the will of God will abide forever.The place where we abide is beneath the safety and protection of the wings of God. This is what we witness when we look upon Jesus on the cross. As Paul writes in the eighth chapter of Romans, “God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering condemned sin in the flesh…”The sin of our flesh is our weakness and vulnerability which creates in us anxiety. In our anxiety and fear we seek to feel whole and safe by taking what God has created and worshipping those as a means of overcoming our hopelessness. Our flesh uses the law, and power and violence to protect ourselves, a hostility that was the force behind the words, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Jesus refused to allow his flesh to rule in him choosing instead to allow the Holy Spirit to offer his life up to his Heavenly Father as a perfect and pleasing sacrifice. On the cross, the blood of Jesus was shed, flowing down the cross, the very doorpost of heaven. There Jesus put to death his life in the flesh, the very root of every idol the watching world worshipped. As Paul wrote in the fifth chapter of his first letter to the church at Corinth, Jesus most assuredly was our Passover lamb.Jesus went to the cross knowing that there is no safer place, no better place of perfect protection than under the wings of God held fast there in his love. It is there, held in that love, that our anxiety and the fear that is rooted in our weakness and vulnerability, is dealt with once and for all. Jesus, hanging by nails upon the cross was a stark image of weakness and vulnerability yet the truth of his experience was not fully known until three days later when he arose in power stepping out of the grave more alive than ever. Jesus could be weak, opened up to the hurts of this world because he had faith that his Heavenly Father was the one who had the power to raise the dead the power to bring into existence that which does not exist; in other words he had faith that his Heavenly Father was the Creator of all, a creation that would find life at last through Jesus. This is why we know Jesus as the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world for by this same faith of Jesus we too are set free from the sins of the flesh, free to live a life serving our Heavenly Father with the life received through his Spirit. This is what that pesach offering was pointing to so long ago on that dark night in the heart of Egypt. May we, like the people of Israel, remember what God has done to set us free so that we might live for his honor and glory as his children. Amen!
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