For me this week has been a week of the heavy heart. We have had a few deaths in the community. And we have lost one of our loved ones from our extended church family. As if that weren’t enough, every time you turn on the news you are inundated with pictures and scenes that almost don’t make sense because they are so horrible. There are towns in Mississippi that no longer exist. And there is the situation in New Orleans, which has finally been getting better this weekend, as supplies get to these people and they are able to get evacuated from their city.
A whole city has disappeared, at least for a time. People are without a place to live, they are without jobs, they are without schools. Many don’t have anything to identify them, no driver’s license or social security card. In one storm their lives were changed, our country was changed, and we were changed.
It is easy to become overwhelmed by what we see. We turn it off because we feel so helpless. We ignore it because it is too painful to dwell on all that is going on. And I wonder, where is God in the midst of the destruction, in the midst of the violence, in the midst of the pain.
But then I go back to what we are studying in scripture. We see a people, God’s people, living in the midst of destruction, in the midst of violence and in the midst of pain. We see Israel living as slaves in a land that is not their own. And we see God so clearly working on their behalf. We see God come down and bring them out of their slavery. We see God offer them freedom. We see God bring relief from their suffering. And we can hope and pray that God can do the same for us.
I. Passover
Exodus 12 finds us in an interesting and difficult place. Moses has reluctantly accepted the call that God has laid on his life. He has gone back to Egypt to speak to Pharaoh and bring Israel out of slavery into the desert, towards the Promised Land. Moses has not had the greatest success. God sent plague after plague to the land of Egypt. Pharaoh would be troubled by each plague and would promise Moses that he could take Israel out to the wilderness. He would ask Moses to pray for him and he would promise that the Israelites would go free. But then, when the plague ended he would change his mind and he would keep Moses and Israel in Egypt.
And eventually we come to the tenth plague. And it is a horrible one. All the firstborn in Egypt are to die in one night. One cannot imagine the horror and pain this would bring to the people of Egypt. One cannot imagine the suffering that the people of Egypt would have to suffer because of their hardhearted leader. But then it gets weird for the people of Israel. For they are told that they are to celebrate a festival. Their instructions are quite clear. They are to prepare a lamb to eat. They are to do so in a way that there are no leftovers. They are to go through their families and portion out how much lamb each person in their household will eat, and only cook that much. After we have stopped reading, in the rest of the chapter, we see that they are also supposed to bake bread without yeast, unleavened bread. The people of Israel are to have a celebration. They are to barbeque lamb. But their celebration is also supposed to have a sense of haste to it. They are to eat with their sandals on and their cloaks and staffs ready so that they can go. And they are to take blood from the lamb which they are eating and put it on their doorframe. If they follow this command, then the plague that hits the people of Egypt will pass over them. And they will be ready to go when they hear the call to leave.
This must have been a strange request for the people of Israel. First, they are called to have a feast, though they have not been delivered from slavery yet. You think they might worry that they are wasting resources. They are all told to take their most promising lambs and use them for the feast. They might argue that this is not the time for feasting. Perhaps after they have gotten out of Egypt they can do so, perhaps when they are hungry in the desert, the lamb will be much more needed. But God has given a command and they respond. Moses has promised them deliverance, but again and again, Pharaoh has changed his mind and you begin to wonder whether they really thought they would ever be able to go. And the rules for this feast are so specific. And then there is the odd request of the lamb’s blood on the door.
And yet, though what they were being asked to do was so very weird, the people of Israel followed Moses command, and did as he asked. And this is the moment that the exodus really began. This is the point where the people of Israel left Egypt and began their trek to the Promised Land. And this was the beginning of an annual celebrating which remembered that God passed over his own people, protecting them and saving them. God’s judgment came upon all the people in Egypt, but because of the lambs’ blood on their doors, the people of Israel were saved. The celebration of Passover was the center of their worship. It was Christmas and Easter wrapped up together. It was the place where they celebrated their freedom from slavery. It was the place where they celebrated their victory. And it is no coincidence that Jesus’ death came at the celebration of Passover. It is no coincidence that Jesus sat with his disciples and ate unleavened bread with them and drank from the cup with them and declared the bread his body and the cup his blood. When Jesus sat with his disciples and did this, it was during the Passover feast. It was when they were celebrating the freedom that God offered the people of Israel.
Now I had a teacher in college that really spent a lot of time looking for the shape of crosses in the Old Testament. He was a dearly loved teacher, and full of much wisdom, but I often felt that his classes were more like Sunday School than college. He would hold up a diagram of the temple that Israel worshipped at, and he would show how it was in the shape of a cross. He would point out the snake in the desert, on a pole and talk about how it was up on a cross. And he would talk about the doorframe that the lambs’ blood was on. He would point out that the doorframe would have blood on both sides and the top. And, if you connect the dots, this makes the shape of a cross. Many of us thought he was stretching just a bit with this. We would look at the tiles on the floor, where they intersect, point to them and say, Oh, look it’s the shape of a cross.
It is a stretch to see the physical shape of a cross in the blood on the doorways at Passover. But it is not a stretch to see this spiritually. You see, what that lambs’ blood did for the people of Israel, Jesus did for each of us on the cross. God saved his people from slavery, he protected them from plague. And he did this because of the blood that protected their doorways.
God saves us from that which oppresses us. And he does this because of the blood shed by his Son. When we talk about Jesus as the Lamb of God, it isn’t because we think he is sweet and cuddly. It is because he is the sacrifice that was offered in our place. He was sacrificed so that we can know life. He was laid down so that we can know salvation. He was killed so that we can begin our journey as we walk with our God and follow him out of our own slavery into his presence.
II. Remembering
The people of Israel didn’t always follow God the best. God rescued them from slavery. He took them out into the desert and promised to give them a land that was beyond their wildest dreams, one flowing with milk and honey. And even after having seen God work miracles and do great things for them, they still chose not to trust him again and again. Because of this, they spent 40 years in the desert. Because of this they found hardship after hardship as they wandered through that same desert. The lamb saved them, the lamb’s blood brought them out of slavery. But then they were called to follow God and obey God and trust God. At times, when they chose not to do this, they even contemplated returning to Egypt, returning to a life of slavery.
I fear that we sometimes are too much like the people of Israel. We refuse to trust the God that has led us this far. We refuse to remember that God goes with us on our journey and God is offering us a better destination than that which we came from.
It becomes particularly hard when we face the trials that this world brings, when we see the destruction of a hurricane, when we lose someone close to us. It becomes easy to wonder what God is all about. It is easy to think that we should just worry about ourselves and not follow this God who could let such a horrible thing happen in this world. It is easy to decide that it might be better back in Egypt, where at least things made sense. But then, for Israel, there was the Passover celebration. A time for them to remember the fact that God was faithful to them. It was a time that they could remember God had protected them from a horrible plague and God had rescued them from slavery. Hopefully their memory of this would help them to learn to trust God in their present situation. Hopefully by remembering that God had been faithful to them in the past, had saved them in the past, they could trust that God would be with them in the present as well.
III. Holy Communion
Today we celebrate communion together. We partake of Christ’s body and blood. We remember that Jesus is our Passover lamb. We celebrate that Jesus’ blood has saved us. But we don’t want to become like the people of Israel in the desert. We don’t want to allow ourselves to participate in this celebration regularly without paying attention to what it means. It means that God will be with us. It means that when God promises to do something he will stay true to that promise. It means that Jesus did something for us 2000 years ago, but he continues to be there for us today.
When we look at the pain and suffering in this world; when we feel overwhelmed by the loss that we see around us; we must remember that God is with us. We must allow him to work in the midst of evil. We must allow him to show himself in the midst of chaos. We must trust that he is there. Just as we trust that when we eat this bread and drink from this cup we are somehow receiving the body and blood of Christ. Jesus is our Passover lamb. He gave his life for us. As we celebrate communion today, let us remember this. Let us know the sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf. And let this affect how we live and what we do. When you take that bread, know that Jesus offered his body up for you. When you drink from that cup, know that Jesus’ blood has set you free. When you celebrate communion, remember God’s faithfulness in the past. But also look to the present and look to the future. Remember that God is promising to be with you today. Know that God stands with you in the darkest place and comes alongside you and walks with you. And as you celebrate communion this morning, promise again to walk alongside God. Amen.
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