If someone asked you, “What is the foundational story in the
Old Testament?” what would you say? In other words, what is the story that is
the basis for all the others? Is it Moses meeting God in the burning bush? Is
it Jacob wrestling with God and receiving the name “Israel” as he travels to
face his brother Esau? Is it Abraham responding to God’s call to leave his home
and his family in search of a land that is promised to his descendents? Those
are all important stories to our Christian faith tradition, and to our Jewish
brothers and sisters, as well. But there is another story that, at least in my
opinion, is the foundational story
for the people of God. It’s the story that you just heard a few minutes ago –
the story of the first Passover.
The whole story is rather long. It takes nearly 2 chapters
in the book of Exodus to tell all of it (Exodus 11:1 – 12:42). The part that you
just heard (Exodus 12:1-14) is the heart of the story: the instructions that
God gave to the Hebrews before he sent one final plague on the Egyptians. God
told the Hebrews to slaughter a lamb and to smear its blood on the sides and
the tops of the doorposts of their houses. The firstborn sons of all the
Egyptian families would be killed; but the children of the Hebrews would be
spared. The angel of death would “pass over” their homes because the blood
would protect them. That’s exactly what happened; and that very night, Pharaoh
let the Hebrew slaves go free. If we read a little farther (Exodus 12:30-32),
we learn that “…there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house
without someone dead. During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and
said, ‘Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Take your flocks and herds…
and go!’” The Hebrews left so quickly, in fact, that they didn’t even have time
for their bread to rise. That’s why Passover is also called the Feast of
Unleavened Bread. The flat bread – the matzoh – reminds them of how quickly
they left Egypt when Pharaoh finally allowed them to go.
It’s a great story, full of drama. HBO could probably make a
miniseries out of it; and if they called it Passover
Blood they would probably get lots of viewers. But why do I say that it’s
the foundational story of our faith?
It’s not the first story of God’s grace towards his people; and it’s certainly
not the last. Why am I choosing this one story for special recognition? For the
answer, let me remind you what has happened to the Hebrews up to this time. When
God called to Moses out of the burning bush, the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt.
Moses’ job was to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let those slaves go free. You
all know how that turned out. Pharaoh
was unimpressed, to say the least. In fact, he made the lives of the Hebrews
even harder by taking away the straw that they needed to make bricks. So God
sent plagues on Egypt – flies and boils and hail and locusts. Darkness settled
over the land for three days; and the Egyptian livestock all died. But none of
these things happened to the Hebrews! They sailed through all the plagues
without even a hair of their heads getting mussed up. Only the Egyptians
suffered from Pharaoh’s arrogance.
Now, think about this for a moment. God protected the Hebrews
during the first nine plagues. Why
didn’t God automatically protect them during the tenth? Why did the Hebrews
need to smear lambs’ blood on their doorposts in order to escape that last
plague? Did God suddenly suffer from amnesia and need to be reminded which
families were Egyptian and which ones were Hebrew? Maybe the answer is not in
God’s ability to distinguish Egyptian from Hebrew, but in the people’s willingness
to claim their identity as God’s people. If we start at the first chapter of
the Bible and read all the way through Genesis and Exodus up to this story, we’ll
find that this is the very first time that God has asked something of an entire
people. Oh, Genesis is full of people’s responses to God; but they were all individual responses. Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob were all called by God, but they were called as individuals. Here, in this story of the first Passover, God called
a whole group of people. God’s instructions were for the entire Hebrew nation:
“If you want to survive the last plague, you have to make a statement. You have
to smear lamb’s blood on your doorposts.” That’s a pretty public statement,
wouldn’t you say? All the Egyptians who were living on Pyramid Street would see
that the house of their Hebrew neighbors had bloody doorposts! You can’t miss
something like that. Why, that would be like overlooking a house decorated with
Christmas lights that are blinking on and off in time to “The Little Drummer
Boy.” When the Hebrews followed God’s orders and smeared that blood all over
their doors, it was a public statement for everyone to see that they were
claiming their identity as people of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. “If
you want to escape that final plague,” said God, “you have to tell people who
you are.”
Sometimes we need to make statements like that, too. We
assume that everyone knows that we are Christians; but they don’t, not by a
long shot. Sometimes we need to remind them of our own identity. We tell them
all kinds of other things. We fly American flags to tell them that we’re proud
to be citizens of our country. We put decorative wreaths on our front doors and
welcome mats on our porches to tell the neighbors that they’re welcome to come
and visit us. We turn on our porch lights on Trick or Treat night to tell the
costumed children that we have Halloween treats for them. But what do we do to
tell our neighbors that we’re Christians? Our houses usually look the same as
all the others in the neighborhood. Now, I’m not saying that we should put a
twenty-foot cross in the front yard and put a spotlight on it at night. But
would it hurt to set out a manger scene at Christmas time so that Santa Claus
and the eight plastic reindeer that dance all the way across the front yard
have some company?
I suspect that part of our discomfort at making public
statements about our faith is that many of us see our faith as a private
affair. We aren’t interested in having other people force their faith on us; and
in return, we don’t want to force our faith on them. Going public with our
Christianity conjures up images of people who appear at the front door and want
to give us Bibles and pamphlets and draw us into all kinds of discussions that,
quite frankly, we’d rather not have. Is there a way to make a statement about
our faith without being obnoxious about it? Can we claim our identity as God’s
people without being Bible thumpers? Sure, we can! It’s as easy as just
slipping a few extra comments into our everyday conversations. Imagine that
it’s mid-December, and you’re in line at WalMart with several toys that you’ve
bought for a family from the angel tree at our church. The clerk who checks you
out comments, “It looks like someone is going to have a very Merry Christmas!”
You could just smile and say, “Gee, I hope so!” But what might happen if you
replied, “Yes, these are for a family that our church is sponsoring. We want to
share our joy with them and make sure that their children have gifts under the
tree on Christmas morning.” That kind of response isn’t offensive, and it leaves
no doubt as to where your faith lies.
Are we ready to claim our identity as Christians? We don’t
need to smear lamb’s blood on our doorposts; but God still calls us to make a
public statement that we are a part of the people of God. I challenge each one
of you to do just that during the coming week! Throw in an extra comment here
and there. Explain why you’re doing what you’re doing. Claim your identity as
one of God’s people! Who knows; it may turn out to be the most important thing
that you say all week.
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