Bloody Lintels -- Broken Bread
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle A
Two Russian surgeons and an anesthetist took turns lying on an operating table beside a critically-ill patient, according to the then government newspaper, Izvestia, and saved the patient's life with direct transfusions of their own blood. Fresh blood was needed because the patient's own blood had ceased to coagulate. In such a case, conserved blood, would not be effective. The three women practitioners each gave what they could -- a half pint of blood.
A television show depicts a traveler lost in the Sahara Desert and dying of thirst; he removes his dagger from its sheath, cuts the skin on the shoulder of his camel, sucks the blood, and his thirst is quenched and he is saved!
Blood is life. Loss of blood is death.
It is by the blood of a lamb painted on the door lintel of a Hebrew home in Egypt, marking safety -- a safe haven -- that the firstborn Israelite child is saved. The angel of death sees the red mark and passes over.
What has brought this situation to such a drastic event during the Hebrews' enslavement in Egypt? Slavery. No freedom. The mood is somber. A mournful Negro spiritual of today captures the feelings of those early Hebrew slaves:
Sometimes I feel like a moanin' dove,
Sometimes I feel like a moanin' dove,
Sometimes I feel like a moanin' dove,
A long ways, long ways, long ways from home,
A long ways, long ways, long ways from home. Oooo.
Crushed and suffocated by the harsh demands of their Egyptian oppressors, a plaintive lament rises up to the heavens -- a great groaning from the Children of Israel to God:
Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile,
Sometimes I feel like motherless chile,
A long ways, long ways, long ways from home. Oooo.
Those Hebrew yearnings ran deep. "We want to be free -- free at last!"
Moses arrives on the scene, the dust of the desert caking his face, his hair stringy and wild from the wind, the smell of sheep in his robe. He strides into the royal chamber and shakes his staff at mighty Pharaoh, "Let my people go!"
Like two belligerent billy goats on a narrow bridge, stubborn Pharaoh rebuffs Moses who continues to defiantly insist, "Let my people go!"
A mouse and a lion are no match when both seek the same cheese. But when the mouse has God on his side, the lion must one day become but a meek little kitty cat.
Confronting the powers that be has always been the calling of a prophet. The Christian, as salt and leaven and a light in society, must confront powerful policies that oppose the stewardship of the earth's limited resources, or when governments and autocratic systems trample on justice and fairness to the poor, the underdog, and the marginalized.
Ruth Youngdahl Nelson, a National Mother of the Year, takes on a nuclear submarine in a little outboard boat in Puget Sound. This is an act of her faith in Christ and her convictions and concerns about the future of all children of the world in a militarized, nuclear-drunk culture. Here is a mouse staring down a lion.
The tug-of-war between mighty Pharaoh and God's Moses battles through ten terrible plagues. The combatants gain and lose, then lose and gain, back and forth. The first plague is blood as death. A staff, once turned into a serpent and back again, slapped on the River Nile turns the water blood red. Moses cries out, "Let my people go, so that they may worship me [God] in the wilderness!" (Exodus 7:16b).
The fish die and stink. The polluted water is undrinkable. The River Nile, all the other rivers, canals, and ponds turn into blood. But Pharaoh's heart is hardened.
So a second plague appears. Frogs. Frogs everywhere. In houses, cupboards, and beds. Pharaoh relents -- but quickly changes his mind. The intensity of the tug-of-war grows between the two combatants -- the mouse and the lion.
Then it's gnats, then flies, sick livestock, boils, incessant thunder and hail, locusts, and darkness. The tug-of-war gets nasty -- back and forth. "Yes, go. No, you can't. Yes, get out of here. No, you've got to stay."
Finally the time is up. No more games, no more tricks. The final plague comes. It's the plague of death of the firstborn -- the most devastating plague of all. The Pharaoh/Hebrew clash began with the birth of Moses when the Pharaoh did not spare the firstborn of Israel. Now Israel's God will not spare those who opposed and oppressed God's own people.
But God provides a way of escape. Blood. "Paint the blood of a lamb on your doorpost and the angel of death will pass over and the firstborn will be saved in your household." God institutes the first Passover. This Passover would have two purposes: to ward off the death of the firstborn plague and to commemorate the coming Exodus redemption.
The instructions were clear: "Take an unblemished year-old male lamb on the tenth of Nisan, the seventh month, which is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:27), keep it until the fourteenth of Nisan, slaughter it, roast it, and eat it. Take its blood to mark the lintels of the household. The blood will secure that home as a safe haven -- a place of safety from the angel of death who comes at midnight."
Night comes. A terrible wail is heard throughout Egypt. The firstborn are killed, even the cattle. But every household who observes the instructions and paints blood on the doorpost is saved. The angel of death passes over.
Then God instructs the Israelites through Moses, "This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival of the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance" (Exodus 12:14).
Exodus 12 provides the manual of a consensus for the right practice of blood and broken unleavened bread. Jews everywhere today celebrate the Passover by sharing a family meal called the Seder. The menu hasn't changed in 3,300 years. The Seder is a festival of freedom and an expression of God's love. The Seder is a harvest festival of thanksgiving (Eucharist). It is a pilgrim's festival for a people on the move. It is a festival of remembrance reminding Jews of anguished moments of trial and suffering; that life mingles sadness with serenity.
Each of the components of the meal depict a teaching: The apple mixture (haroseth) represents the harshness of the mortar the people had to find and mix. Salt water represents the tears shed under slavery. In the Seder, there is the blessing of the feast (Kid-dush); the telling the story of deliverance (Haggadah); the prayer of thanksgiving (Hallel); the four questions, and the Pascal Lamb.
Since sheep were an expensive, precious commodity, a shared lamb with other families was appropriate. Then (vv. 11-12) those who share in this meal must be ready to go, to travel, to leave in a hurry. Leaving Egypt would be a dangerous, anxiety-ridden business. The unleavened broken bread would forever be a sign of the quick departure.
But it is the lamb which takes center stage. Centuries later, John the Baptist would look up and see Jesus coming down the hill and cry out, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29b). The image of the lamb would take on a new meaning as would Passover when on the night of the Passover Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper. Jesus, the unblemished lamb, would be sacrificed for the sins of the world and be a guarantor of salvation for all who believe. Paul, the Apostle, writes in Ephesians 2:13, "But now in Christ Jesus you who were once afar off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." Jesus, the Lamb whose blood sets us free, saves and brings redemption to all.
A story from Norway dramatizes this truth. There is a church in Norway that has a lamb on its steeple. It's known as the lamb Church. It got its name and notoriety because of a simple but profound incident. Workmen were repairing the roof and steeple when suddenly one workman fell and would have been killed except at that very moment a flock of sheep were being driven by the church. The workman fell on a lamb and killed it, but the cushioning effect saved his life.1
Jesus' role, as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, serves a vicarious role for us. Jesus' death saves our lives, not from physical death, but from spiritual and eternal death. Jesus pays the price. Jesus takes on the penalty.
When eighteen-year-old Michael Peter Fay was arrested in Singapore and accused of 53 acts of vandalism, including spray-painting cars, his father urged him to plead guilty. But his father did not realize that pleading guilty for reduced penalties, would still entail penalties of four months in prison, a fine of $2,230, and six strokes of a split bamboo cane. Caning in Singapore consists of six lashes on the bare buttocks with a water-soaked rattan rod wielded by a martial-arts expert. The lashes can tear the flesh, bloody the buttocks, and leave scars. The father, George Fay, wracked by guilt, offered to trade places with his son and face the six strokes of the lash.
The lamb takes our place. In 1 Peter 2:24 it says, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds (stripes) you have been healed."
Each morning during World War II, King Christian X of Denmark would ride through the streets of occupied Copenhagen. One morning he saw a Nazi flag flying from one of the Danish governmental buildings. This violated the surrender treaty that the Danes had been forced to accept by Hitler's government. The king's car pulled over to the curb in front of the building where a German officer was standing, "Take it down!" the king demanded.
"Orders from Berlin," the officer responded.
"The flag must be taken down before noon," the king continued, "otherwise I will send a soldier to do it."
The Nazi officer warned, "The soldier will be shot!"
"I am the soldier," said the king. The flag was removed by noon. The king had won the day.2
The redemptive work of Christ is a wondrous work that sets free from bondage, sin, and the power of the devil. There are those who see the shed blood of Christ as a repulsive teaching and believe it is time to discard the imagery of blood that was entirely satisfactory to Paul, Augustine, and Moses. Some suggest there are nobler ways to express the vicarious sacrifice of Christ ... yet the symbolism of shed blood is still very precious in Christian tradition. Repulsed and attracted, we admit this is a great mystery.
They gathered in a Minnesota church, as they do every year just before Lent -- families of fifth graders. Both parents and children had been instructed in the meaning of Holy Communion and now were making the final connection between Passover and the Lord's Supper. They gathered around tables to take a journey from Seder to the Eucharist. They prayed the Hallel, heard the Haggadah, ate the Horoseth, and tasted the salt water to remind them of the tears of the Hebrew and the tears of all sufferers of oppression and slavery. Before them was the shank of a lamb. They tasted the sweet mutton and then they ate the bitter herbs. Bitter herbs according to the Mishnah consisted of lettuce, chicory, pepperwort, snakeroot, and dandelion. In this Seder replica, horseradish was substituted for the bitter herbs.
Four questions were asked, a seat was left vacant for Elijah, and the door left open for his coming.
The learning journey from the Seder to the Lord's supper continued that evening. Twenty feet away was another scene. Leonardo da Vinci's last supper backdrop with table and vessels provided a visual for parents and children alike to experience and make connections. The actual first communion was celebrated on Ash Wednesday for the youth as they participated in the Lenten journey toward Holy Week.
Christians come to the table to remember, and to eat and to drink. "This is my body; this is my blood," Jesus said, and we believe it. In trusting Christ's word, we are forgiven, loved, chosen, accepted, and emboldened.
And in believing, we are never the same.
____________
1. Source unknown.
2. Source unknown.
A television show depicts a traveler lost in the Sahara Desert and dying of thirst; he removes his dagger from its sheath, cuts the skin on the shoulder of his camel, sucks the blood, and his thirst is quenched and he is saved!
Blood is life. Loss of blood is death.
It is by the blood of a lamb painted on the door lintel of a Hebrew home in Egypt, marking safety -- a safe haven -- that the firstborn Israelite child is saved. The angel of death sees the red mark and passes over.
What has brought this situation to such a drastic event during the Hebrews' enslavement in Egypt? Slavery. No freedom. The mood is somber. A mournful Negro spiritual of today captures the feelings of those early Hebrew slaves:
Sometimes I feel like a moanin' dove,
Sometimes I feel like a moanin' dove,
Sometimes I feel like a moanin' dove,
A long ways, long ways, long ways from home,
A long ways, long ways, long ways from home. Oooo.
Crushed and suffocated by the harsh demands of their Egyptian oppressors, a plaintive lament rises up to the heavens -- a great groaning from the Children of Israel to God:
Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile,
Sometimes I feel like motherless chile,
A long ways, long ways, long ways from home. Oooo.
Those Hebrew yearnings ran deep. "We want to be free -- free at last!"
Moses arrives on the scene, the dust of the desert caking his face, his hair stringy and wild from the wind, the smell of sheep in his robe. He strides into the royal chamber and shakes his staff at mighty Pharaoh, "Let my people go!"
Like two belligerent billy goats on a narrow bridge, stubborn Pharaoh rebuffs Moses who continues to defiantly insist, "Let my people go!"
A mouse and a lion are no match when both seek the same cheese. But when the mouse has God on his side, the lion must one day become but a meek little kitty cat.
Confronting the powers that be has always been the calling of a prophet. The Christian, as salt and leaven and a light in society, must confront powerful policies that oppose the stewardship of the earth's limited resources, or when governments and autocratic systems trample on justice and fairness to the poor, the underdog, and the marginalized.
Ruth Youngdahl Nelson, a National Mother of the Year, takes on a nuclear submarine in a little outboard boat in Puget Sound. This is an act of her faith in Christ and her convictions and concerns about the future of all children of the world in a militarized, nuclear-drunk culture. Here is a mouse staring down a lion.
The tug-of-war between mighty Pharaoh and God's Moses battles through ten terrible plagues. The combatants gain and lose, then lose and gain, back and forth. The first plague is blood as death. A staff, once turned into a serpent and back again, slapped on the River Nile turns the water blood red. Moses cries out, "Let my people go, so that they may worship me [God] in the wilderness!" (Exodus 7:16b).
The fish die and stink. The polluted water is undrinkable. The River Nile, all the other rivers, canals, and ponds turn into blood. But Pharaoh's heart is hardened.
So a second plague appears. Frogs. Frogs everywhere. In houses, cupboards, and beds. Pharaoh relents -- but quickly changes his mind. The intensity of the tug-of-war grows between the two combatants -- the mouse and the lion.
Then it's gnats, then flies, sick livestock, boils, incessant thunder and hail, locusts, and darkness. The tug-of-war gets nasty -- back and forth. "Yes, go. No, you can't. Yes, get out of here. No, you've got to stay."
Finally the time is up. No more games, no more tricks. The final plague comes. It's the plague of death of the firstborn -- the most devastating plague of all. The Pharaoh/Hebrew clash began with the birth of Moses when the Pharaoh did not spare the firstborn of Israel. Now Israel's God will not spare those who opposed and oppressed God's own people.
But God provides a way of escape. Blood. "Paint the blood of a lamb on your doorpost and the angel of death will pass over and the firstborn will be saved in your household." God institutes the first Passover. This Passover would have two purposes: to ward off the death of the firstborn plague and to commemorate the coming Exodus redemption.
The instructions were clear: "Take an unblemished year-old male lamb on the tenth of Nisan, the seventh month, which is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:27), keep it until the fourteenth of Nisan, slaughter it, roast it, and eat it. Take its blood to mark the lintels of the household. The blood will secure that home as a safe haven -- a place of safety from the angel of death who comes at midnight."
Night comes. A terrible wail is heard throughout Egypt. The firstborn are killed, even the cattle. But every household who observes the instructions and paints blood on the doorpost is saved. The angel of death passes over.
Then God instructs the Israelites through Moses, "This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival of the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance" (Exodus 12:14).
Exodus 12 provides the manual of a consensus for the right practice of blood and broken unleavened bread. Jews everywhere today celebrate the Passover by sharing a family meal called the Seder. The menu hasn't changed in 3,300 years. The Seder is a festival of freedom and an expression of God's love. The Seder is a harvest festival of thanksgiving (Eucharist). It is a pilgrim's festival for a people on the move. It is a festival of remembrance reminding Jews of anguished moments of trial and suffering; that life mingles sadness with serenity.
Each of the components of the meal depict a teaching: The apple mixture (haroseth) represents the harshness of the mortar the people had to find and mix. Salt water represents the tears shed under slavery. In the Seder, there is the blessing of the feast (Kid-dush); the telling the story of deliverance (Haggadah); the prayer of thanksgiving (Hallel); the four questions, and the Pascal Lamb.
Since sheep were an expensive, precious commodity, a shared lamb with other families was appropriate. Then (vv. 11-12) those who share in this meal must be ready to go, to travel, to leave in a hurry. Leaving Egypt would be a dangerous, anxiety-ridden business. The unleavened broken bread would forever be a sign of the quick departure.
But it is the lamb which takes center stage. Centuries later, John the Baptist would look up and see Jesus coming down the hill and cry out, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29b). The image of the lamb would take on a new meaning as would Passover when on the night of the Passover Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper. Jesus, the unblemished lamb, would be sacrificed for the sins of the world and be a guarantor of salvation for all who believe. Paul, the Apostle, writes in Ephesians 2:13, "But now in Christ Jesus you who were once afar off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." Jesus, the Lamb whose blood sets us free, saves and brings redemption to all.
A story from Norway dramatizes this truth. There is a church in Norway that has a lamb on its steeple. It's known as the lamb Church. It got its name and notoriety because of a simple but profound incident. Workmen were repairing the roof and steeple when suddenly one workman fell and would have been killed except at that very moment a flock of sheep were being driven by the church. The workman fell on a lamb and killed it, but the cushioning effect saved his life.1
Jesus' role, as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, serves a vicarious role for us. Jesus' death saves our lives, not from physical death, but from spiritual and eternal death. Jesus pays the price. Jesus takes on the penalty.
When eighteen-year-old Michael Peter Fay was arrested in Singapore and accused of 53 acts of vandalism, including spray-painting cars, his father urged him to plead guilty. But his father did not realize that pleading guilty for reduced penalties, would still entail penalties of four months in prison, a fine of $2,230, and six strokes of a split bamboo cane. Caning in Singapore consists of six lashes on the bare buttocks with a water-soaked rattan rod wielded by a martial-arts expert. The lashes can tear the flesh, bloody the buttocks, and leave scars. The father, George Fay, wracked by guilt, offered to trade places with his son and face the six strokes of the lash.
The lamb takes our place. In 1 Peter 2:24 it says, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds (stripes) you have been healed."
Each morning during World War II, King Christian X of Denmark would ride through the streets of occupied Copenhagen. One morning he saw a Nazi flag flying from one of the Danish governmental buildings. This violated the surrender treaty that the Danes had been forced to accept by Hitler's government. The king's car pulled over to the curb in front of the building where a German officer was standing, "Take it down!" the king demanded.
"Orders from Berlin," the officer responded.
"The flag must be taken down before noon," the king continued, "otherwise I will send a soldier to do it."
The Nazi officer warned, "The soldier will be shot!"
"I am the soldier," said the king. The flag was removed by noon. The king had won the day.2
The redemptive work of Christ is a wondrous work that sets free from bondage, sin, and the power of the devil. There are those who see the shed blood of Christ as a repulsive teaching and believe it is time to discard the imagery of blood that was entirely satisfactory to Paul, Augustine, and Moses. Some suggest there are nobler ways to express the vicarious sacrifice of Christ ... yet the symbolism of shed blood is still very precious in Christian tradition. Repulsed and attracted, we admit this is a great mystery.
They gathered in a Minnesota church, as they do every year just before Lent -- families of fifth graders. Both parents and children had been instructed in the meaning of Holy Communion and now were making the final connection between Passover and the Lord's Supper. They gathered around tables to take a journey from Seder to the Eucharist. They prayed the Hallel, heard the Haggadah, ate the Horoseth, and tasted the salt water to remind them of the tears of the Hebrew and the tears of all sufferers of oppression and slavery. Before them was the shank of a lamb. They tasted the sweet mutton and then they ate the bitter herbs. Bitter herbs according to the Mishnah consisted of lettuce, chicory, pepperwort, snakeroot, and dandelion. In this Seder replica, horseradish was substituted for the bitter herbs.
Four questions were asked, a seat was left vacant for Elijah, and the door left open for his coming.
The learning journey from the Seder to the Lord's supper continued that evening. Twenty feet away was another scene. Leonardo da Vinci's last supper backdrop with table and vessels provided a visual for parents and children alike to experience and make connections. The actual first communion was celebrated on Ash Wednesday for the youth as they participated in the Lenten journey toward Holy Week.
Christians come to the table to remember, and to eat and to drink. "This is my body; this is my blood," Jesus said, and we believe it. In trusting Christ's word, we are forgiven, loved, chosen, accepted, and emboldened.
And in believing, we are never the same.
____________
1. Source unknown.
2. Source unknown.
