03/27/11
Exodus 12:1-13, 21-28
Hudson UMC
We have been taking time this Lenten season to consider the theme of atonement and sacrifice throughout the biblical witness. First, we looked at the story of Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden, then we looked at the story of Abraham and Isaac. In the first, we saw that, though humanity had sinned and hidden themselves from God, clothing themselves in fig leaves, God reaches out to them, clothing them instead with skins. In the second, we saw that even the very best that we have to offer to God is replaced by what God himself gives, on our behalf and in our place. We have seen that atonement and sacrifice, far from being a nice and clean thing, is messy and often quite stressful. We turn to the next major story in the Bible that deals with sacrifice, the Passover. In it we see a third theme; sacrifice as ransom.
To understand the sacrifice commanded for Passover, we need to understand the context that led up to it. One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, was sold into slavery by his brothers because he was hated by them for being the favorite. Years went by and Joseph rose to tremendous power within the Egyptian government. When a famine came upon the whole region, it came to pass that Joseph was able to provide for his family, taking care of them instead of taking revenge on his brothers. Four hundred years passed. In that time, the Pharaohs forgot about Joseph and how he had saved the nation from the famine and even made the government even more powerful. They looked around and saw that, from the original seventy or so people who immigrated to Egypt, the Israelites had become a powerful nation within the nation. They realized that the Israelites had far deeper loyalties to their God and to their heritage than they ever would for Egypt, so they made them slaves and put them to work.
Soon, not even that was enough. The Egyptian leaders were so worried about an Israelite uprising, that they commanded that every male child should be thrown into the Nile. When Moses was born, his mother followed those orders, except that, when Moses went into the Nile, he was in a waterproofed basket. By the amazing providence of God, Moses was adopted into the Pharaoh’s family and grew up a mighty leader. However, the time came when, after years of living in exile, Moses was called by God to be a liberator of his people. He did everything he could to avoid it, most famously hiding behind his speech impediment; but God called him nonetheless.
The Exodus story is one of the most memorable of the entire Bible. Because of Pharaoh’s hard heart, ten plagues were unleashed on Egypt: The Nile was turned into blood, frogs, gnats, flies, disease broke out on the livestock, boils covered the people and animals, severe thunder and hail storms, locusts, and extreme darkness all afflicted the people. Just in case one wanted to say that Egypt was just having a tough year, the Israelites were spared from all of these. But the last of these plagues was the worst of all, it was the death of the firstborn in each household. It was this that finally made Pharaoh let the Israelites go, though even after that, he still chased after them.
The reason why this story fits in with the major theme of these Lenten reflections is that there was nothing magical about the Israelites that protected them from harm. It was not as though this plague took genetics into account. God gave very specific instructions as to what the Israelites needed to do and, in this case, obedience or disobedience was the difference between life and death. It was not as if the Israelites avoided this final plague without any cost whatsoever. It is true that their firstborns did not die, which is a wonderful thing, but we need to remember that it is not as if nothing died. Each household lost a life, but, instead of the life of a human being, it was the life of a lamb.
The key is the emphasis that God puts on the blood. After commanding the people to wipe the blood of the lambs on the doorframes, God explains the significance of this act. “The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.” There is something about blood that is crucially important. Again, in our modern, enlightened world, we don’t like to talk about sacrifices in the literal sense. We like to talk about the sacrifice of doing without some convenience, or the sacrifice of our time, but to actually speak of killing an animal and applying its blood seems to us to be barbaric.
Animal sacrifice is something that we tend to associate with ancient people, with those who simply did not understand everything that we now know to be true, with people who were profoundly superstitious. And while it is true that, often times, it was the case that animal sacrifice was carried out in just such a way, it was profoundly different in the case of Israel. After all, Israel’s sacrifices were the opposite of superstition. The sacrifices were not something thought up by the people, but commanded by the one God of Israel. Random sacrifices for whatever the people thought up and carried out however the people wanted to were clearly forbidden. It is interesting that there is a growing movement in modern-day Israel of people who desperately want to restore Temple sacrifice in that twenty-first century, scientifically enlightened country.
There is a strong sense in the Passover story that the deaths of the lambs and the sparing of the firstborns are deeply connected. If one of them does not die, the other one will. The lamb is understood to be a substitute for the human being; that is, the lamb dies in place of the firstborn. This substitute is understood as being grace from beginning to end. The question is never asked, “Why is God killing the firstborn?” After all, Pharaoh had shown by his actions that keeping the Israelites as slaves was far more important to him than the well-being of his people, allowing them to undergo intense hardships. Clearly Pharaoh would not be convinced by anything less.
The question might be raised, “Why could God not simply protect the Israelites instead of making them sacrifice the lambs?” After all, after declaring, in the last chapter, that this plague was coming, God said, “But not a dog shall growl at any of the Israelites – not at people, not at animals – so that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.” If God makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel, why does this whole process need to take place?
God did indeed make a distinction between Egypt and Israel. It was a distinction that had gone back all the way to Abraham. God called Abraham from his hometown and promised to be with his descendents in a special way. Even in that call, however, the distinguishing of the Israelites involved response. To be an Israelite without response was a contradiction in terms. If Abraham wanted to stay in Ur, he could not have been the father of the people of God. If the people refused to let God set them apart in Egypt, they would be cut off from the people and treated like Egyptians. The institution of Passover is the concrete manifestation of the distinction that God made between the Israelites and the Egyptians.
There is a sense of retribution in the story of the exodus from Egypt. The Israelites were told to borrow gold from their neighbors right before the final plague happens, then they walk out of Egypt, taking its wealth with them, which has been seen as God compensating them for their four hundred years as slaves. It might be said that the killing of the firstborn can be seen along these lines. When Moses was born, the Egyptians were killing, not only the firstborn of every family, but every single male child that was born. When we compare what God does with the cruelty of humanity, and when we consider how strongly the selfishness of the Egyptians played into Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites go, God is truly seen to be merciful, even in judgment.
What is interesting is that the practice of Passover was not a one-time thing. Rather, God instituted it as a perpetual ordinance, something that will be celebrated every year, to remind them of the fact that, when God struck down the Egyptians, he saved his people. It is a festival that marked one of the high points in the Jewish year during the life of Christ and continues to this day. In fact, since the whole celebration of Passover lasts for seven days, our celebration of Easter will fall right in the middle of it. Though the ancient Israelites did not think of time as simply repeating itself, but saw history as moving to a particular point, they took advantage of the yearly cycle to remember what God had done and to reinforce their identity in the midst of the pressures of life.
If the key aspect of sacrifice that we saw in the story of Adam and Eve was atonement and the key aspect of sacrifice that we saw in the story of Abraham and Isaac was substitution, the key aspect of sacrifice we see in the story of Passover is ransom. God was delivering his people with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm; Israel was being preserved by the slaughter of lambs. By their obedience, they would be rescued from foreign oppression. The lambs died so that the human beings did not have to. A price was paid. The Israelites were freed, but only at the price of a lamb, sacrificed and eaten by the people.
We will come back to this point again later in this season of Lent, but it is this idea of ransom and deliverance that helps us to understand what Christ has done on our behalf and in our place. In Luke’s account of the Transfiguration, we read the following: “And behold, two men were talking with him; and they were Moses and Elijah, who, appearing in glory, were speaking of his departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” The word translated “departure” is the Greek word εξοδον, which means that, when Jesus speaks of his departure, it could be translated that he was speaking of “his exodus which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” When we see it this way, we see that Jesus did not see his self-sacrifice to be nothing more than a tragedy, but rather a doing of a work that was so incredibly significant as to rival, if not surpass, the powerful movement of God in the Exodus from Egypt.
The point is that, when we think about the death of Christ on our behalf and in our place, we need to think of it not simply as the covering of our sins, not simply as the substitution of even the best we have to offer to God, but as a ransom, as a liberation from captivity, of a freedom from oppression and a new life under the command of no one but God. Overnight, the entire situation of the Israelites was changed. One moment, they felt that Moses, and the God working through him were doing nothing but making their lives harder, promising deliverance but only upsetting the Egyptians, who increased their workload because of it. And yet, the next day, they were released, they were not only let go, but they were driven out.
That is why they had to eat the lamb quickly, that is why they had to use unleavened bread, which takes much less time to bake, because they had to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. It was not long before Pharaoh changed his mind once again. Time was of the essence. And so it is today. There are seasons in our lives where we do not feel that God is moving, or that, if he is moving, it only seems to make our lives harder rather than easier. However, we must always remember that God has worked hard to redeem us, that our deliverance is coming, and that we must be ready for it. Who knows whether our deliverance might come this very day and that our whole lives are transformed in the blink of an eye. In a single night, God transformed Israel from being an oppressed nation of slaves to being free people who possessed the wealth of one of the mightiest nations on the earth.
Brothers and sisters, we have been bought with a price and we belong to God. If the Israelites did not take their distinction from the other nations seriously, they would have been swept up with the tragedy that struck the Egyptians, but they realized that being called by God required obedience, even when God called them to do something that seemed so silly as to trust that they would be freed when their bondage had never seemed more extreme. We, too, have been called and set apart, so we must trust that God can still do miracles, can still change lives, can still set us free from that which binds us, for that is a key part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us pray.
AMEN
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