Pentecost 12a
September 4, 2011
Exodus 12:1-14
One of my favorite websites to peruse every now and then is OldLutheran.com. They have a wonderful selection of products full of puns intended for Lutherans. You can get socks that say ‘Here I Stand’ or get shorts that on the left side of the back say ‘Left Behind’ and any number of other things that help you boldly proclaim your Lutheran heritage in a lighthearted manner. One year, after purchasing some items for a reformation party, I received a free gift from Oldlutheran that I now carry my knitting stuff in. It has the words “this is my Lutheran baggage” on it. And while I thought the pun was funny, it also got me thinking about the baggage that we carry…and I’m not talking about the baggage that Delta airlines charges you $20 a bag to check when you go on a trip, I’m talking about life baggage. We’ve all got life baggage, good and bad, things we’ve done, things we didn’t do, things that people have done for or to us or have just plain forgotten to do. Some of our life baggage lifts us up while some of it weighs us down.
The Israelites in Egypt were certainly weighed down by the baggage of the slavery that had been imposed upon them by the Pharaoh who didn’t know Joseph. For generations, the Israelites had been oppressed, worked to death and been tread upon by the Egyptians, who had taken them as slaves because they feared that the Israelites would rise up and defeat the Egyptians by use of military force. And now God is going to set them free.
Before the point where we enter this story, God has raised up Moses and Aaron as leaders of the Israelites and has sent them to Pharaoh with demands to let their people go. Even after nine plagues, Pharaoh has still not had a change of heart. However, now that we have entered the story, we see God instructing Moses and Aaron on how to make preparations for a meal that will take place the night of the tenth and final plague, a plague which will claim the lives of all the firstborn of Egypt, from the house of Pharaoh to the livestock. Now, if you read the narrative of the plagues, which begin in chapter 7 of Exodus, you will find the details a little bit lacking as far as specifics of the plagues themselves…and that’s what makes our passage for this morning so important.
The writer of this portion of Exodus wanted to make sure that the details of the Passover meal were laid out so that his readers could grasp the importance of what was going on at this moment in time. Freedom was at last in their line of sight and now God was giving the people instructions as to how to celebrate and remember their liberation from the hands of the Egyptians. And God is very specific as to how they were to go about this. On the 10th of this month, every family is to take a 1 year old male lamb from the sheep or the goats…if a family is too small for one lamb, they are to share it with their neighbors. On the 14th of the month, at twilight, everyone is to slaughter their lambs and put blood from the lamb on the lintels and door posts. Then roast the lamb over fire, organs and all, and serve with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. If anything is left over in the morning, burn it. And, by the way, eat the meal quickly, and be dressed as if you would be ready to leave at any moment. All of this was to happen on the night that God was to send the tenth plague upon Egypt, striking down the first born, with the exception of those in houses with lambs blood on the lintels and doorposts…them God would Passover.
The details of this narrative are very important to the writer of this part of Exodus, because they tell us about the beginning of God’s giving the Israelites a new and fresh start. People have said that the reason they had unleavened bread was because there was no time, but there were at least 4 days in which to make bread…and here’s the thing about yeast…it carries over the old with the new. So if you want to make bread that is totally new in character, without any traces of the old, you leave about the yeast. And if you want to cook something in a manner that leaves nothing of the old when you’re done, you use a fire instead of boiling. God was giving Moses and Aaron instructions of how to signal to the people that they were going to get a totally new start.
But what about this whole lamb’s blood on the doorposts and lintel deal? Seems a little gory, doesn’t it. Think about the rainbow from the story of the flood in Genesis, though. God told Noah that the rainbow would be a sign for both Noah and God that would help them both remember the covenant that they had made together. In a similar manner, the lamb’s blood on the doorposts of the houses of the people of Israel, while not as pleasant as a rainbow, served that dual purpose, to remind the people that they have received life and to remind God to Passover those houses, leaving those first born untouched by the plague.
The story of the Passover is considered to be the climax of the Exodus narrative and one of the most important and celebrated stories in the Jewish heritage. It is the story of a God who sides with the slave, the outcast, and the downtrodden…a God who does not leave God’s people behind but seeks ways in which to bring them something better. Each year on Passover, our brothers and sisters in the Jewish community gather to remember the night in which God liberated the Israelites from their oppressors.
Around that same time, we in the Christian community gather to remember the night in which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was betrayed and what happened in subsequent days with Jesus’ arrest, trial, death and resurrection. But we don’t just remember the events of Holy Week during holy week, every time we come to the table and celebrate the Eucharist we remember how God has passed over our sins and liberated us from the sin that oppresses us daily. There may not be blood on the doorposts, but the blood in the chalice still is enough to remind us of the life we have received. We remember how God looks at the baggage that we carry, especially the stuff that weighs us down…the things we didn’t do that we should have; the things we shouldn’t have done, but did anyways; the times we didn’t follow Jesus’ instructions to hold our brothers and sisters accountable when they have sinned against us, but instead either made it public or held grudges…God looks at that baggage and then passes it over, freeing us to live in ways that Christ would have us to live, released from the bonds that sin has over us.
When we were baptized, as Reed and Natalie will be today, we were marked with the cross of Christ. It is a mark that we carry with us on our foreheads for the rest of our lives. It is a mark that reminds us of who we are and whose we are. It’s also a reminder that we have been given life. We are God’s beloved children, called and claimed and washed…the baggage that weighs us down has been removed so that we can be free from sin and free to live. And so today we remember, we remember the day of our baptism, we remember the sacrifice that Christ made for us when we come to the table, eat of his body and drink of his blood, we remember that God has given us a new start, totally from the from old weights that drag us down so that we can live and be free to love, to loose and to live. Amen.
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