Sermon: “The Promise of Passover”
October 4, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: Exodus 12:1-14, John 1:29 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
A few years ago, two congregations – a Methodist congregation and a Jewish congregation – came together to at the time of Lent and Passover to learn from one another. The Pastor of the church and the Rabbi had become friends and they enjoyed the opportunity to bring their congregations together to compare and contrast their two biblical faiths and to celebrate. During a discussion time, a member of one of the congregations asked a simple question of each of them: “How would you sum up the message of your faith in one sentence?” (Thanks to Rev. Bob Kaylor, pastor of Tri-Lakes United Methodist Church in Monument, CO and senior writer for the publication Homiletics, for sharing this story in a sermon posted to his website, bobkaylor.com)
The Rabbi went first, responding, “That’s an easy answer for Jews: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!” In one sentence, that’s the simple message of the Passover.
The story of the Passover is the central story of the Jewish faith. Last week we left off our broad tour of the biblical story and of God’s promises, with the story of Joseph. He was mistreated by his brothers, sold into slavery and taken to Egypt. But God is with him throughout his ordeal and eventually Joseph rises to leadership in Egypt, overseeing the storage of food and grain for a time of famine. When his brothers come to buy grain, they are reunited with Joseph, and eventually the whole family, all 70 of them, move to Egypt. There, the family grows more and more in number, just as God promised Abraham they would.
Many decades later, the Pharaoh of Egypt began to worry that this large ethnic group within the borders of his nation might become a national security threat. He was fearful they couldn’t be counted on to be loyal and patriotic in the event of a war. So he began a systematic oppression to keep them weak and dependant, to create fear and trepidation. The Israelites (these are the descendants of Jacob, who was also called Israel) were forced to work as slave labor building cities for Pharaoh and they were terrorized by a genocidal plan to kill their newborn boys. It was a time of great suffering, great fear, and they cried out to God to be saved.
During this time the Hebrew midwives resisted Pharaoh’s orders and one woman was able to hide her baby boy for 3 months. When she couldn’t hide him any longer, she put him into a waterproof basket and set him afloat down the Nile River. Pharaoh’s daughter hears him and draws him out of the water, and names the baby Moses, which sounds like, ‘draw out’. The name is especially fitting because God will later use Moses to draw the Israelite people out of Egypt, out of their bondage to slavery.
Moses’ story is the stuff of movies, from the classic “The Ten Commandments” (with several remakes over the years) to Disney’s “The Prince of Egypt”. At the age of 80, Moses is commissioned to be the intermediary in a show down between the God of Israel and the Pharaoh, who the Egyptians view as a god. Moses took God’s message to Pharaoh: “Let my people go that they may worship me.” The word for worship is the same as serve, and of course if the Israelite people were go serve their God Yahweh, then they would no longer be serving Pharaoh with cheap labor. So naturally, he resisted. God challenged Pharaoh with a series of plagues, each designed to show the Lord God Almighty’s control over things representing Egyptian gods – the river, frogs, flies, locusts, livestock, hailstorms, even the sun.
The tenth plague would be the final straw – a deadly plague on all first-borns. God sent this message to Pharaoh through Moses, “This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, ‘Let my son go, so he may worship me.’ But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.”(Ex.4:22-23)
This may sound cruel and vengeful, but remember: God’s people are being treated cruelly, being exploited, being killed. They have cried out in desperation against the injustice. The LORD God is a God of justice and judgment, just as much as God is a God of love and compassion. God loves His creation and the people in it too much to allow those who seek to destroy it to go unchecked. It is out of love that God corrects those who hurt others. ‘No justice, no peace’ is a powerful statement of the promise that God will not rest until all injustice has brought to account. Yet God also makes a way for those who will listen to Him, who want to be in relationship with Him and to live under His Lordship, to be saved.
The way to be saved, we see in the story of the Passover, is through blood. The blood of that perfect, young lamb is to be smeared on the doorposts as a sign of God’s protection when the angel of death goes through the land. The blood of the lamb is a substitute for the blood of the firstborn, allowing God’s judgment to pass over that house. And after the blood is used to mark the doors, the lamb becomes the main course of a meal. It is a meal that marks their rescue from slavery and the start of a life of freedom. A meal eaten in such haste to enter that new life that God tells them to eat it with their coats on, their shoes tied, and walking sticks in hand. A meal eaten in such haste that the bread, the staple of life, doesn’t have time to rise with yeast.
This meal is to be repeated year after year as a remembrance of what God did, a celebration of both a past event and a present reality. “You were once slaves,” the Rabbi will say, “but remember that you are free because of what God did.” Each new generation is drawn into the story so it becomes their story, too. The youngest child begins the Passover meal by asking, “Why does this night differ from all other nights?” The Passover meal enacts the story in taste and touch, sound and smell, a meal of freedom and hope, a reminder that you were once slaves, but God made a way…
“They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!”
It was then Pastor Kaylor’s turn to answer the question, to describe Christianity in one sentence, and he said something very similar: “They killed him, he won, let’s eat!”
I would like share with you how he explained this further, for he said it so well: Jesus came from that family of Israel. He would have participated in the Passover meal as he grew up. As a firstborn, he would have understood the gravity of the tenth plague. Matthew’s gospel tells us that like Moses, the infant Jesus survived the plans of a genocidal king. And like Moses, Jesus was sent to liberate his people from slavery – but slavery in an even larger sense – the slavery of humanity in bondage to the destructive, anti-creation forces of sin and death.
Like Pharaoh, those forces would not let God’s people go easily. It would take God’s judgment to convince them – God’s fierce dedication to the covenant promise that he made with Abraham for the blessing and benefit of the whole creation – a promise sealed in blood. But the twist is that this time, it was God Himself who would shed the blood, God himself who would be the lamb, God himself who would give up his firstborn to that His people might be free.
On the night before death came calling, Jesus gathered at the table for the Passover meal. All the familiar items were on the menu – the roasted lamb, the bitter herbs, the unleavened bread, and the wine. The youngest disciple would have asked, “Why does this night differ from all other nights?” Jesus’ answer, however, was a new liturgy that completed the old, old story – his story, their story, our story.
He took the unleavened bread, a sign of a hasty run for freedom, and he broke it. He gave thanks to God, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” And he gave it to his disciples saying, “Take and eat, this is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” The one who broke Pharaoh would be broken himself to lead his people to freedom.
And then he took the cup. There are several cups of wine in the Passover meal, including a cup of blessing and a cup of suffering. Jesus took the cup and said, “Drink from this, all of you, this is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” It is his own blood, the blood of the lamb, that would mark those who belong to him – not on the doorposts of their homes, but on the doorposts of their hearts. It is his blood that saves his people from death, that forgives their sins, and makes it possible for judgment to pass over them so they can journey to the kingdom which God promises.
The firstborn over all creation will die on a cross the next day – the innocent one, unblemished by sin, dies for the sins of his obstinate people. But in dying, he provides their way out of slavery to sin and death, a way to freedom. Then he rose from the dead, breaking death itself and freeing his people from its enslaving power. In the cross and the empty tomb, Jesus stood before the powers of this world and proclaimed, “Let my people go!”
“They killed him, he won, let’s eat!”
This is the story that we share – the story of God’s people. It’s the story we remember every time we come to this table, which is why we do it so often along with Christians around the world. (Today is World Communion Sunday.) It is a reminder of the past, a sign of the risen Christ with us in the present, and the guarantee of a future in the promised land of God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
This is the meal that reminds us of who we are – we were slaves to sin and death. Like the Israelites, there are times we want to go back to that slavery, that Egypt. Things were rough, but at least they were familiar. But the bread and the blood remind us that the only way to real freedom is forward into God’s promised kingdom. We touch them, taste them, smell them, and we remember who liberated us. We are marked by them and by our baptism – a people led to freedom through the water, just like the Israelites. Jesus said, “Do this…” Do this so you won’t forget. Do this and become part of the story. Do this and follow me to the place I have promised. (https://bobkaylor.com/the-promise-of-passover/)
Communion Song: “Lamb of God”
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