Passover's New Day

Thursday of Holy Week, April 9, 2020

While the Israelites were still in the land of Egypt, the Lord gave the following instructions to Moses and Aaron: 2 “From now on, this month will be the first month of the year for you. 3 Announce to the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each family must choose a lamb or a young goat for a sacrifice, one animal for each household. 4 If a family is too small to eat a whole animal, let them share with another family in the neighborhood. Divide the animal according to the size of each family and how much they can eat.  Exodus 12:1-4

11 “These are your instructions for eating this meal: Be fully dressed,[a] wear your sandals, and carry your walking stick in your hand. Eat the meal with urgency, for this is the Lord’s Passover. 12 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! 13 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.  14 “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

Passover, the marking of the first day of freedom for the Israelites leaving Egypt, began last night, and ends with sundown this evening.  Jewish families will gather at the table and recite Scripture, explain their epic history of being God’s chosen people, joyful, worshipping people, disobedient, sinful people, and, like us, forgiven people; they will eat the meal of haste and remember.

As part of the remembering process they will think on the new order of things as God instructed them to consider this date as their New Year.  After 400 years of slavery they were getting a do-over, released from bondage to liberty.  This was their Fourth of July…a new, released-and-back-on-mission family of God.

I can’t help connecting this New Day feel to what we’re experiencing right now.  Of course our “bondage” to Coronavirus is only a few months old; hardly a four-century saga of suffering.  But I cannot help shaking the thought that we are on the cusp of a new normal that is game-changing.  And, if you’re asking exactly what that means, I have to demur speculation in favor of fuzzy.  I only have an impression something looms large for the human race. 

I will tell you what I hope, and that for which I pray: 

He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!”  Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!  Revelation 22:20

But, absent of that final prayer and promise of Scripture, the other possibility in my mind and heart is a regeneration of respect. 

·      Respect for our tongues and ears – where there is a kinder, gentler, more positive tone in daily speak in conversations, media, and any interaction between humans.

·      Respect for our stewardship of God’s resources

·      Respect for being what God created, not what our darkness imagined

·      Respect for God, Himself…a regeneration of refreshing revival

Our world has had enough of terrorism, plagues, and living in fear.  It’s time to get along and live the love of Passover’s New Day.

For You Today

The role of the church is not exhausted just because we’ve been locked out of our buildings.  Somehow, it seems, the church is reborn every time the pressure cooker of life starts to blow off steam.  This day is our new chance to get it right.

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You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Exodus 12 and the Passover see Ready to Travel and Seder; Meal of Haste and This Holy Week – Part 4

This Holy Week - Part 4

[1]

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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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] Ephesians 6:10-18

[3] Augustine, Confessions

Seder; Meal of Haste

[i]

Monday, January 16, 2017

“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.  Exodus 12:11-13^(NLT)

For Americans who think we invented everything, it is an appropriate comeuppance to know that six-thousand years before McDonald’s served it’s first hamburger, God gave the concept of fast food to Israel. 

The seder, or Passover meal, is meant to be eaten by people ready to move-out quickly.  That first meal was in preparation for Abraham’s nation to be saved from the last, and most devastating of plagues God brought on Pharaoah’s people for his pigheadedness in not freeing the Hebrew slaves.  That last plague, death of the firstborn, was only separated between Jewish and Egyptian firstborn children by blood from the lamb which was eaten as a central part of that last meal in captivity.  To this day God’s chosen nation celebrates this as an Independence Day, when God told them to keep their shoes, hats and walking sticks in hand; slavery was at an end, it was time to move out!

There is so much symbolism carried-over from Passover to the Christian celebration of the Lord’s Supper.  We wouldn’t do justice to it to try to cram a list into this little space. 

But, just consider the lamb’s blood for a moment.  The instructions God gave included painting the door lintels of Israelites’ homes as a sign for the death angel to pass-over that residence (hence naming the event “Passover”).  In the prophets, Gospels, and at least a dozen references in Revelation, God’s lamb plays a central role in our salvation as well as the condemnation of those who refuse to believe:

And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life that belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered before the world was made.  

Revelation 13:8^(NLT)

But what, if anything, does all this have to do with fast food?  Why is it a meal of haste? 

I’m so glad you asked. 

As the Hebrew children were to be geared-up, locked-and-loaded to move out following their God’s lead into the wilderness, crossing Jordan, and on to the Promised Land, so New Israel, the church is to be ready to move.

As the bitter herbs remind Jews of the bitterness of bondage, so the Christian, released from spiritual bondage is to remember the cost of that freedom with a distaste for sin.

The haste-meal of Passover isn’t a camping place, it is a point of departure.  When the Hebrew children left Egyptian bondage, they took with them what God provided, as God disciplined their former captors.  However, as they moved out into the wilderness, they left Egypt behind.  There were those who longed to go back, and the story of their fate is grist for another day.  But it serves to remind us that our Christian haste-meal also represents departure from half-hearted following God.  You cannot live with one foot in Egypt and the other in the wilderness; there must be a choice made.

For You Today

The Hebrew nation had 400 years of slavery to drive them to the decision to eat a meal of haste – a drive thru fast food on the way out of town.  They had to eat fast, because when God calls, everything else is secondary!  

So, what does it mean in your life to leave Egypt behind?  Got your shoes and hats on?                                       

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

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[i] Title image: A Seder Table, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons