Exodus 12:1-14

“Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; Therefore, let us keep the feast” (BCP 364). How many times have we recited this familiar couplet after the Fraction, just prior to receiving Holy Communion? A few times, right? For some of us, more times than we can remember. The Host, elevated and broken… the ritual words, prayerfully spoken… and then the gifts of God are shared by the people of God. Beautiful. If only we could make that moment of shared faith, hope and love last throughout the week. But alas, we humans are often less inclined to Godly virtues than we are to our own worldly pursuits. No finger pointing here… it’s all of us. And it’s a pity.

“Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” Or perhaps more clearly: “Christ, who is our Passover, is sacrificed for us….” What does that mean? In today’s lesson from Hebrew Scripture, we read about the very first Passover, instituted by a God, mighty to save, to help his people escape generations of bondage in Egypt. As you may recall, back towards the end of the Book of Genesis (Chapter 37), we were introduced to seventeen-year-old Joseph, the twelfth (and favorite) son of the patriarch Jacob, who gave him a fabulous “coat of many colors.” Joseph was quite the dreamer, and many of his dreams (which he loved to talk about) placed him in a position of great preeminence over his siblings. This engendered a sense of great antipathy towards Joseph among the brothers, to the point that they decided he needed killin’. But God spared Joseph’s life, and he was merely sold into slavery in Egypt… where he made quite a name for himself interpreting the dreams of all sorts of folks, including those of Pharaoh himself! Joseph was richly rewarded by Pharoah (he actually became his chief of staff!) and was eventually reunited and reconciled with his brothers when they fled to Egypt from Canaan with their families and their father Jacob, on account of severe famine. So, the brothers conspired to kill Joseph… but God stepped in and brought good from bad, thus saving his people from the error of their ways (Genesis 42-45). Ain’t it funny how God works?

Times were good for the Israelites in Egypt for several generations: they were treated as honored guests… given places to live in the land of Goshen, and plenty of food to eat. But at the beginning of the Book of Exodus we read, “Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” As our friend Scooby-Doo might say, “Ruh roh…” And, sure enough, the lives of the Israelites spiraled from being honored guests to abject slaves practically overnight. They worked in the fields, they made bricks, they did all the manual labor required to support Egyptian society. But it was never enough. The more they produced, the more work was heaped on top of them. But the Israelites were prolific… and Pharoah got nervous, so he ordered that all male babies born to Hebrew women should be killed outright (Exodus 1:8-22). But there was one little man-child who survived the ethnic cleansing. Pharoah’s daughter found him in a papyrus basket amongst the rushes on the edge of the Nile River one morning. Dad, can I keep him? (Exodus 2:1-10) Y’all know the story: how little Moses grew up as a prince in Pharoah’s household… until an unfortunate incident wherein he saw an Egyptian overseer beating up on a Hebrew slave… and killed him. “Murther most foul!” (cf. Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5) Welp, Pharaoh found out about it and sought to kill Moses, but Moses skedaddled to the wilderness, traded his princely togs for shepherds clothing, and expected to spend the rest of his days quietly, in exile (Exodus 2:11-15). BUT… God had other plans. 

You see, there was this burning bush… and the voice of God telling Moses to return to Egypt to rescue his people from bondage to Pharoah. So, back he went to engage the big man himself and convey a message from God: “Let my people go!” (Exodus 3-4) But Pharoah wasn’t all that receptive… who’d do all the work, right? So God, through Moses, had to play hardball. There came a series of plagues (signs) aimed at convincing Pharoah to let the people go: First, the Nile River turned to blood… (Exodus 7:14-25) “Nope!” said Pharoah. Then it was frogs, frogs, everywhere! Yipee! Again, “Nope!” Clouds of gnats and flies swarming, biting everyone… and then Pharoah’s will almost crumbled. “Ahhh….Nope!” (Exodus 8) So, all the Egyptians’ livestock (horses, donkeys, camels, cows, sheep and goats) died. And boils formed on the bodies of Egyptian men, women and children throughout the whole land. Still, it was “Nope!” Thunder crashed, lightning cracked… floods and hail ravaged the land… a season of crops was laid low… and Pharoah finally relented. “All y’all Hebrews… get the heck out of here… and never come back!” …until the weather cleared, and then he changed his mind. “Just kidding… Nope!” (Exodus 9)

And then came the locusts… “They covered the surface of the whole land, so that the land was black, and they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left. Nothing green was left on the trees or on the plants in the fields, in all the land of Egypt.” Please make it stop! said Pharoah, and Moses did… and Pharoah said (with a smirk, I think) “Nope!” So, darkness covered the land—a darkness that could be felt—for three whole days! Nobody could see… nobody could move (except the Hebrews)… society and commerce ground to a halt. Pharoah had finally had enough. “Get away from me!” he said to Moses. “Take care that you do not see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die.” “The answer is and will remain: Nope! Nopity, nope, nope, nope!” to which Moses responded, “Now you’ve gone and done it. Indeed, after today, I will never see your face again.” (Exodus 10) And Moses prophesied: “Thus says the LORD, ‘About midnight I will go out through Egypt. Every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the firstborn of the female slave who is behind the handmill and all the firstborn of the livestock. Then there will be a loud cry throughout the whole land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again” (Exodus 11:4-6). He said some other stuff too, but y’all get the gist. 

And this brings us to today’s reading from Exodus. God, through Moses, had told Pharoah about the tenth and final sign… and Pharoah chose to ignore the warning. So, a series of events was set in motion that resonates with and informs our Christian faith to this very day. “I’ve heard the cries of my people,” said the LORD. “What I’m about to do is going to change everything forever… down to the way in which you mark the days and weeks of your lives. It’s going to be the most awesome and terrible night you’ve ever experienced, and there are some things I need you to do if you want live through it.” A lamb, perfect and without blemish… sacrificed, prepared and shared equitably by all, its blood used to anoint the lintel and doorposts of your houses. Be dressed and ready for the long journey that is coming… the journey home. Don’t go outside the door of your houses ‘til morning, for “the LORD will pass through to strike down the Egyptians; when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over that door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you down. You shall observe this as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children. When you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this observance mean to you?’ you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses’” (Exodus 12:23-27a). And so it was… and so it is that the Jews celebrate the feast of Passover (Heb. Pesach) on the 15^th day of the month of Nisan, which typically falls on the first full moon after the spring equinox (normally sometime between March 26 and April 25), in very close proximity to our own feast of Easter. 

So, what does the Jewish Passover have to do with Christ, our Passover? Only this: God gave the Hebrews specific instructions about how they might avoid the catastrophe of death and destruction that was about to descend upon Egypt. There were some things they would have to do, and they did them. They sacrificed the lamb… they spread the blood on their doorways, the Angel of Death “passed over” them and they were saved. Of course, they would then spend forty years wandering in the wilderness of sin before they found their Land of Promise… but that was on them, for their unbelief. God let them wander, but he never left their side.

And friends, the Angel of Death still stalks creation, conforming all mortal life to temporal boundaries. Nobody gets out of this place alive. No one. At least not in the temporal sense. But this earthly life… isn’t life. And neither is earthly death true death. It’s just a change in circumstances. True death only happens when we become separated from God by sin. And since we’re only human—sinful by our very nature—what hope can there be for us? The Hebrews had lamb’s blood they could put on their doorposts… What can we do become atoned (“at-oned”) with our Creator? We’re asking the wrong question. The job’s been done for us. Jesus the Christ, our perfect and spotless Lamb’s blood was shed to reconcile us with the Father, a perfect, once-for-all sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins. God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. All we need do is believe.