2020.09.06 - Sermon

Scripture - Exodus 12:1-14

Exodus 12:1-14 (The Message)
12 1-10 God said to Moses and Aaron while still in Egypt, “This month is to be the first month of the year for you. Address the whole community of Israel; tell them that on the tenth of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one lamb to a house. If the family is too small for a lamb, then share it with a close neighbor, depending on the number of persons involved. Be mindful of how much each person will eat. Your lamb must be a healthy male, one year old; you can select it from either the sheep or the goats. Keep it penned until the fourteenth day of this month and then slaughter it—the entire community of Israel will do this—at dusk. Then take some of the blood and smear it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which you will eat it. You are to eat the meat, roasted in the fire, that night, along with bread, made without yeast, and bitter herbs. Don’t eat any of it raw or boiled in water; make sure it’s roasted—the whole animal, head, legs, and innards. Don’t leave any of it until morning; if there are leftovers, burn them in the fire.
11 “And here is how you are to eat it: Be fully dressed with your sandals on and your stick in your hand. Eat in a hurry; it’s the Passover to God.
12-13 “I will go through the land of Egypt on this night and strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, whether human or animal, and bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am God. The blood will serve as a sign on the houses where you live. When I see the blood I will pass over you—no disaster will touch you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14 “This will be a memorial day for you; you will celebrate it as a festival to God down through the generations, a fixed festival celebration to be observed always. 

Sermon - Melissa
The passage that we just heard comes in the middle of a much larger story - the journey of the Hebrew people, enslaved in Egypt, leaving their old life behind and before the promise of their own land that God would bring them to where they could be a sovereign people. God is about to liberate them from their oppressors by initiating the final plague against Pharaoh and the Egyptian people where the Angel of Death will sweep over the land, killing all the firstborn, human and animal alike. In this passage, God gives Moses and Aaron the instructions that would ensure the safety and protection of the fleeing slaves and instituted a ritual meal that would serve as reminders for generations to come of their chosen status as God’s people. In this act, they are no longer slaves, but family...known as the descendents of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - in this act, they are no longer oppressed, but liberated - in this act, they are no longer bound by a present full of despair, but launched into a future of hope and promise. So this is not only a story about liberation, but a story about the formation of identity as a people of God.

To be sure this isn’t a comfortable story. In it, we have to face a God that exacts painful judgment on a people and we wrestle with the fact that some are spared while others are not. God here brings down disaster after disaster on an empire that most likely also cried out for relief from locusts, darkness, frogs and flies, boils - to name a few. To be fair, Moses warns Pharaoh before each and every plague. This final violent act, God promises Moses, will be the one that changes Pharaoh’s mind - so the Israelites must be ready to move with whatever they could carry. 

So why do we, in this day and age, need to consider these things? Why can’t we leave this story to the history books and focus our hearts and minds on kindler, gentler aspects of life and faith?

I believe our time calls for a similar sense of urgency as we find in the Exodus story. God’s people ready to move, ready to resist the powers and principalities of this world, ready to drive the transformation needed in our church and in our wider culture. As Rev. Dr. Derek Weber writes, “that there are things worth killing, things that need to die for truth to live is a harsh reality that we cannot avoid. And some of those things are like firstborn children to those who hold on to them.”

In this story from Exodus we find instructions for the careful preparations the Israelites will need to make for the journey from slavery to freedom. In these preparations, there is acknowledgement for the suffering that has been experienced, the suffering that will enable their escape, as well as the suffering to come. The road to liberation is not an easily traveled one. Some things will have to be set aside and left behind for the journey to be successful.

Walter Brueggemann provides commentary on this text, on the people's "large sense of protectedness from the midnight violence that is loosed in the empire." On one hand there is some sense that we are "abidingly cared for in a world that is under profound threat" -- that God abides with us, provides for us, and protects us from all manner of evil on every side.
 
However, Brueggemann also sees Pharaoh and Egypt in "every agent of oppression and abuse (including one's own socioeconomic system)," and urges us to "an important restlessness. Indeed, when the community of faith no longer has this 'festival of urgent departure,' it runs the risk of being excessively and in unseemly ways at home in the empire." 
 
The invitation in this story, then, is to both be like the Israelites - ready to move, ready to be a witness of God’s liberating, transforming power -- and acknowledge the ways that we’ve accommodated ourselves in Empire and be ready to set those things aside for the sake of the freedom journey.
 
Certainly there are attitudes and behaviors within our own hearts to leave behind. There are also practices and beliefs prevalent in our churches and our culture that need to be sacrificed for the sake of God’s kingdom. Our nation’s history of white supremacy on a cultural level and our own personal emotional reactions as we talk about racism with our families and neighbors. Our global climate crisis where we’re seeing huge shifts in weather patterns with devastating effects and our own personal consumptive habits. Our worsening political tensions that divide friends and families and neighbors and our own needs to be right. Or - again in the words of Rev. Dr. Derek Weber, “What gods do we worship today? What gods that we are holding as sacrosanct, as precious to our self-identity, does our God want to execute judgement upon?”   

I want to invite us into a time of confession, as we offer to God those things we want to leave behind, the places where we are complicit with the powers and principalities of this world, the gods we are holding on to that require God’s judgment. These confessions can be personal, they can be communal for our church or our nation. If you have pen and paper nearby, jot those things down as you reflect on them. We’ll have several minutes to examine ourselves before moving into a time of prayer.

[reflection - play Jars of Clay “Oh My God” - lyrics: https://genius.com/Jars-of-clay-oh-my-god-lyrics]

During our time of prayer, there will be opportunities to name the places that you’ve identified within yourself or within our church or our culture. You can unmute and share them aloud or use the chat box and I will name them.

Let us pray.

God you call us to be ready - to be a people on the move, to be a people unveiling your kingdom around us, to be a people that shows forth your liberating love and power in our lives and in our world. And yet we confess that all too often, we express complacency and comfort. We sometimes unknowingly perpetuate suffering in this world. We sometimes inflict harm on others. We find ourselves more like Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Forgive us, Lord. We name before you the places we yearn to set aside and leave behind on the journey toward your justice and wholeness.

[people name places]

Hear us, O God, as we pray to you. Enable us to more faithfully follow Jesus, who proclaimed release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed and healing for the sick. Equip us with urgent passion for the transformation of this world for the sake of those bound by the chains of slavery and oppression. Amen.

In all this, I pray that we are given a continuing restlessness for the liberating work of God in our world as we remember this story where on the one hand we have judgment for oppression and injustice and on the other hand who cares about all God’s children. May we remember that this isn’t an easy or safe calling….it is not about keeping silent and hoping for the best. It is not about keeping the status quo or not rocking the boat. It is about rising up and being ready to move towards the transformation of our own hearts and towards that of society as a whole - as God’s kingdom is seen within us...and as God’s kingdom is seen around us. The journey is long, the journey is hard, but God walks alongside us, leading each one of us to freedom - and leading our world as well. May we ever be ready to take each next step along the way. Amen.

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