Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, March 29, 2018
“These are
your instructions for eating this meal: Be
fully dressed, wear your sandals, and carry your walking stick in your
hand. Eat the meal with urgency, for
this is the Lord’s Passover. On
that night I will pass through the land of Egypt and strike down every
firstborn son and firstborn male animal in the land of Egypt. I will execute judgment against all the gods
of Egypt, for I am the Lord! But
the blood on your doorposts will serve as a sign, marking the houses where you
are staying. When I see the blood, I
will pass over you. This plague of death
will not touch you when I strike the land of Egypt. “This is a day to remember. Each year, from
generation to generation, you must celebrate it as a special festival to
the Lord. This is a law for all
time. Exodus 12:11-14(NLT)
Friday evening
Jewish families will be gathered all over the world to celebrate Passover, the
moment God’s very special chosen nation was born. They ate the bread of haste,
and marched out of Egypt on their journey to the Land of Canaan. Now that sounds simple and jubilant, doesn’t
it? It was jubilant; how could the end
of 400 years of slavery be other? But simple
is another story. Passover is a
beginning, not a conclusion.
That rest of the story
includes many battles, wrong turns in the wilderness, judgment and
conquest. Winning the right to occupy
the Promised Land was a snap compared to walking the straight and narrow
of keeping it! The whole record of
Israel’s history is spiked like the stock market…up one day, and crashing the
next. Every time you blinked someone was
doing evil in the sight of the Lord, getting punished, and the next day the
cycle would start all over again. Rags-to-Riches,
Hero-to-Zero, and back.
If that story
strikes a familiar chord with our life experience, it’s because Israel’s
story is our story too in this way:
Like Israel, we are born into humanity in an instant; the next
threescore-and-ten years are a labyrinth of exploration, pain of wrong choices,
momentary happy times, and lots of surprises. It’s not all melancholy, but Life-101 can be a
tough teacher!
If repeating the
mistakes of our ancestors isn’t enough, most of us also find new ways to create
potholes in navigating our life’s highway.
Trouble, like Job’s sparks flying upward from the fire, is the way of
humanity. If it isn’t a natural
disaster, we create enough unnatural ones, wars, terrorists, meddling relatives,
greed, lust, envy…and so the minefield continues.
The people who celebrate
the Passover are the same as those who come to the Lord’s Supper table. We all eat the bread with urgency, with the
taste of bitter herbs on our tongues, remembering the acrimonious darkness of
sin and how it enslaves us. And we try
to heed the instructions to be fully dressed, wearing sandals of peace, helmet
of salvation, belt of truth, and staff/sword of the spirit in hand[2]. All of this signifying we’re ready to
move-out, drop it all, leave everything behind at the sound of our Lord’s
voice.
Is it any wonder
the Christian life is called a pilgrimage?
When you live life as a pilgrim, home is always somewhere else. As with Augustine[3],
how can we be at rest anywhere until our souls are at home with Him?
For You Today
If you celebrate a
seder (Passover) meal, or the Lord’s Supper this week, remember this is the
mark of a pilgrim; you’re a traveller…you’re not home yet.
So, travel well,
be sure-footed and safe, as you stay close to He who leads the way.
You chew on
that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day. 
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