Eat And Run
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
At some time or another, we've all had to hurry through a meal and hurry away from the table. And so, at some time or another, we've all found ourselves saying, "I hate to eat and run, but...."
Everybody has done it. Everybody knows what it's like.
But even though everyone says he hates to eat and run, the truth is that not everyone does hate it. Some folks rather like it.
As a little boy, I liked to eat and run in the summertime. When the weather is warm and it stays light later, dinner is just an interruption for a young boy. And so I'd be reluctant to come in from playing when my mother would call me for dinner; and as soon as I was finished, I would look for the first opportunity to be excused so that I could go back outside and play some more.
As a boy, I liked to eat and run.
Children so often do, you know. Parents are forever telling their children not to wolf it down, to chew their food properly, and not to eat so fast. I think of my three young daughters as rather civilized eaters, and yet the first one to finish dinner on a given evening is likely to call out, "I won!" Children like to eat and run.
And there are a good many of us adults who like to eat and run, too. We feel so busy, or so pressured, or so involved in our work that stopping to eat feels like an interruption. Consequently, some folks stop working just long enough to sit down and eat, and then they go right back to work. There are still others who do not even stop to eat: They eat while they work, and they work while they eat. They don't so much "eat and run" as they do "eat on the run."
Truth be told: We live in a culture that likes to eat and run. We are surrounded by fast-food restaurants, drive-thru windows, restaurants that promise speedy delivery, and microwaveable food. It's an eat-and-run culture.
I suspect that that's not best for us. I'm not an expert on either digestion or nutrition, but I do suspect that eating and running -- or eating on the run -- is not the healthiest way to do it. Rather, I imagine that it's healthier to take time to eat, and time to digest. And I suspect that the eat-and-run approach of our culture is partly to blame for our indigestion, our heartburn, our overeating, and our fat.
Still, for all of that, God wants his people to eat and run. Or at least he did one night some 3,000 years ago.
That night -- and that meal -- was the occasion we know as Passover. That was Israel's night to eat and run.
The children of Israel had been slaves in Egypt since the generation after Joseph. By this point in the story, their bondage had lasted 400 years, with no end in sight. But on this particular night, Moses gave the people specific and unusual instructions from God. There was a certain menu that they were to prepare: lamb, bread, and bitter herbs. There was a specified way of preparing it, as well: the lamb was to be roasted, and the bread unleavened. And, too, there was a certain way that they were supposed to eat this prescribed meal: "This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly."
See the picture in your mind's eye of elegant dining. You arrive at a fine restaurant where you get out of your car at the front door, leaving your vehicle to be parked by the valet. Just inside the door, an attendant checks your coat. You are greeted and seated. You sit comfortably, perusing a menu of select delicacies. And, as your server graciously brings course after course, you enjoy a leisurely dining experience.
By contrast, see this Passover. No valet will park your car; instead, you'll need to keep your keys in hand as you eat so that you'll be prepared to make a hasty exit. Your coat is not checked, either. On the contrary, you'd better keep it on while you eat, for you may have to leave at any minute. It's not a broad menu to peruse: There's just one dish we're serving. There's certainly no time for enjoying a leisurely meal: shovel it in, eat it quickly, and wolf it down, for you may need to be out the door in a matter of moments.
The hurry-up feel of that evening meal was in stark contrast to all that had come before. The children of Israel had been in bondage there in Egypt for four centuries. Imagine that: the equivalent of continuous slavery from the time of Rembrandt's birth to the present! Four hundred years of the descendants of Jacob sitting down, night after night, year after year, to their meager evening meals in bondage. The pain and drudgery of living and dying in slavery; and night after night passed without relief; generation after generation passed without deliverance.
But now, suddenly, they had to hurry?
It's possible, too, that the people were feeling more despairing than hopeful that night. After all, even when it seemed that deliverance finally arrived, it became an exercise in patience and waiting.
How high were their hopes when Moses first appeared on the scene: when he went to Pharaoh on their behalf, speaking God's word and performing God's wonders? Yet, Pharaoh was unmoved, and their situation was unchanged. Except that, initially, it actually changed for the worse.
The treadmill continued, plague after plague. Egypt and her king were like a boxer who kept taking body blows but refused to go down. And while you and I know how the story turned out, for the people who were living it, the prospect of freedom must have seemed more and more remote with every setback into Pharaoh's stubbornness and hard-heartedness. So often the people had had their hopes up; and so often those hopes had been dashed, as their ball-and-chain reality persisted.
But now, after so much fruitless waiting, suddenly the Hebrews were put on high alert. After an eternity on the tarmac, now the captain wants us to fasten our seat belts and believe that we're actually going to take off?
Across their slave ghetto in Egypt that night, the Hebrews slaughtered their lambs and slathered the blood on their doors. With coats on and walking sticks in hand, they ate their meal in haste. Outside, the wails of grief could be heard from Egyptian households, and in the middle of the night, Moses was summoned to Pharaoh's presence. It was over. The king of Egypt surrendered to the singular God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Israelites were finally free.
For us as Christians, the occasion of the Passover meal naturally reminds us of Jesus' Last Supper and, by extension, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Jesus and his disciples were in the midst of celebrating that commemorative holiday meal, when Jesus embarked on words and actions so familiar to us, but undoubtedly strange and troubling to the disciples.
The Jewish observance of the Passover meal had acquired layers of symbolic elements and practices, and from its inception it was clearly understood as a teaching tool -- "When your children ask you, 'What do you mean by this observance?' " (Exodus 12:26). But in Jesus' association of the bread with his body and the cup with his blood, the old Jewish Passover meal took on new meaning for us as Christians. For us, it is not the symbolism of unleavened bread that is meaningful but rather the symbolism of broken bread. We do not partake of the lamb and the bitter herbs, but only the bread and the cup.
The Lord specified to Moses and the people that "this day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance." And we are reminded likewise of the ordinance of Christ at the Last Supper: "Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:25).
Meanwhile, the symbolism of the original Passover event plainly reminds us of our salvation. The central role of a male lamb without blemish and the idea of being saved by "the blood of the Lamb" is part of our gospel vocabulary as Christians. Even in New Testament times, the earliest Christians had already begun to identify Jesus as "our paschal lamb" (1 Corinthians 5:7).
While the occasion of the Passover meal reminds us of Jesus' Last Supper, and the symbolism of the Passover event reminds us of our salvation, the style of the Passover meal should prompt us to think of something else. Something future, not past.
You and I do not await our deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Neither do we need to wait for the salvation that is offered in Christ. Yet we do wait. Night after night, generation after generation, century after century, we wait.
One day, Jesus told his disciples what would happen to him in Jerusalem, and within a few months it had occurred. Jesus told them that he would rise again, and within three days of his death he had. Jesus told the disciples to tarry in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high, and within two months came the Day of Pentecost.
Jesus also told his followers that he would return.
It did not happen as quickly as they expected.
Soon the apostles needed to begin answering the churches' questions about the believers who had died, about Christ's delay, and about life in the meantime.
After so long a wait, it would be an easy thing -- natural, really -- for us to live with diminished expectations. To let one day flow mindlessly into the next, with no real hope that today might be the day.
Jesus anticipated that possibility, that risk. He noted that the servant might observe, "My master is delayed in coming" (Luke 12:45), and consequently neglect his duties. But scripture warns us again and again that his coming will be sudden and unexpected (see Matthew 24:44; Mark 13:36; 1 Thessalonians 5:2). And so we are exhorted to "be ready" (Luke 12:40), "keep awake" (Matthew 25:13), and "be alert" (Luke 21:36).
The ancient Israelites were told, on the night of Passover, to eat the bread of haste, to dine with coat on and staff in hand, and to eat quickly, for they needed to be ready to leave. You and I, today, are not told to eat like that; we are instructed to live like that. To live each day with a posture of readiness, "because your redemption is drawing near" (Luke 21:28). Amen.
Everybody has done it. Everybody knows what it's like.
But even though everyone says he hates to eat and run, the truth is that not everyone does hate it. Some folks rather like it.
As a little boy, I liked to eat and run in the summertime. When the weather is warm and it stays light later, dinner is just an interruption for a young boy. And so I'd be reluctant to come in from playing when my mother would call me for dinner; and as soon as I was finished, I would look for the first opportunity to be excused so that I could go back outside and play some more.
As a boy, I liked to eat and run.
Children so often do, you know. Parents are forever telling their children not to wolf it down, to chew their food properly, and not to eat so fast. I think of my three young daughters as rather civilized eaters, and yet the first one to finish dinner on a given evening is likely to call out, "I won!" Children like to eat and run.
And there are a good many of us adults who like to eat and run, too. We feel so busy, or so pressured, or so involved in our work that stopping to eat feels like an interruption. Consequently, some folks stop working just long enough to sit down and eat, and then they go right back to work. There are still others who do not even stop to eat: They eat while they work, and they work while they eat. They don't so much "eat and run" as they do "eat on the run."
Truth be told: We live in a culture that likes to eat and run. We are surrounded by fast-food restaurants, drive-thru windows, restaurants that promise speedy delivery, and microwaveable food. It's an eat-and-run culture.
I suspect that that's not best for us. I'm not an expert on either digestion or nutrition, but I do suspect that eating and running -- or eating on the run -- is not the healthiest way to do it. Rather, I imagine that it's healthier to take time to eat, and time to digest. And I suspect that the eat-and-run approach of our culture is partly to blame for our indigestion, our heartburn, our overeating, and our fat.
Still, for all of that, God wants his people to eat and run. Or at least he did one night some 3,000 years ago.
That night -- and that meal -- was the occasion we know as Passover. That was Israel's night to eat and run.
The children of Israel had been slaves in Egypt since the generation after Joseph. By this point in the story, their bondage had lasted 400 years, with no end in sight. But on this particular night, Moses gave the people specific and unusual instructions from God. There was a certain menu that they were to prepare: lamb, bread, and bitter herbs. There was a specified way of preparing it, as well: the lamb was to be roasted, and the bread unleavened. And, too, there was a certain way that they were supposed to eat this prescribed meal: "This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly."
See the picture in your mind's eye of elegant dining. You arrive at a fine restaurant where you get out of your car at the front door, leaving your vehicle to be parked by the valet. Just inside the door, an attendant checks your coat. You are greeted and seated. You sit comfortably, perusing a menu of select delicacies. And, as your server graciously brings course after course, you enjoy a leisurely dining experience.
By contrast, see this Passover. No valet will park your car; instead, you'll need to keep your keys in hand as you eat so that you'll be prepared to make a hasty exit. Your coat is not checked, either. On the contrary, you'd better keep it on while you eat, for you may have to leave at any minute. It's not a broad menu to peruse: There's just one dish we're serving. There's certainly no time for enjoying a leisurely meal: shovel it in, eat it quickly, and wolf it down, for you may need to be out the door in a matter of moments.
The hurry-up feel of that evening meal was in stark contrast to all that had come before. The children of Israel had been in bondage there in Egypt for four centuries. Imagine that: the equivalent of continuous slavery from the time of Rembrandt's birth to the present! Four hundred years of the descendants of Jacob sitting down, night after night, year after year, to their meager evening meals in bondage. The pain and drudgery of living and dying in slavery; and night after night passed without relief; generation after generation passed without deliverance.
But now, suddenly, they had to hurry?
It's possible, too, that the people were feeling more despairing than hopeful that night. After all, even when it seemed that deliverance finally arrived, it became an exercise in patience and waiting.
How high were their hopes when Moses first appeared on the scene: when he went to Pharaoh on their behalf, speaking God's word and performing God's wonders? Yet, Pharaoh was unmoved, and their situation was unchanged. Except that, initially, it actually changed for the worse.
The treadmill continued, plague after plague. Egypt and her king were like a boxer who kept taking body blows but refused to go down. And while you and I know how the story turned out, for the people who were living it, the prospect of freedom must have seemed more and more remote with every setback into Pharaoh's stubbornness and hard-heartedness. So often the people had had their hopes up; and so often those hopes had been dashed, as their ball-and-chain reality persisted.
But now, after so much fruitless waiting, suddenly the Hebrews were put on high alert. After an eternity on the tarmac, now the captain wants us to fasten our seat belts and believe that we're actually going to take off?
Across their slave ghetto in Egypt that night, the Hebrews slaughtered their lambs and slathered the blood on their doors. With coats on and walking sticks in hand, they ate their meal in haste. Outside, the wails of grief could be heard from Egyptian households, and in the middle of the night, Moses was summoned to Pharaoh's presence. It was over. The king of Egypt surrendered to the singular God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Israelites were finally free.
For us as Christians, the occasion of the Passover meal naturally reminds us of Jesus' Last Supper and, by extension, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Jesus and his disciples were in the midst of celebrating that commemorative holiday meal, when Jesus embarked on words and actions so familiar to us, but undoubtedly strange and troubling to the disciples.
The Jewish observance of the Passover meal had acquired layers of symbolic elements and practices, and from its inception it was clearly understood as a teaching tool -- "When your children ask you, 'What do you mean by this observance?' " (Exodus 12:26). But in Jesus' association of the bread with his body and the cup with his blood, the old Jewish Passover meal took on new meaning for us as Christians. For us, it is not the symbolism of unleavened bread that is meaningful but rather the symbolism of broken bread. We do not partake of the lamb and the bitter herbs, but only the bread and the cup.
The Lord specified to Moses and the people that "this day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance." And we are reminded likewise of the ordinance of Christ at the Last Supper: "Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:25).
Meanwhile, the symbolism of the original Passover event plainly reminds us of our salvation. The central role of a male lamb without blemish and the idea of being saved by "the blood of the Lamb" is part of our gospel vocabulary as Christians. Even in New Testament times, the earliest Christians had already begun to identify Jesus as "our paschal lamb" (1 Corinthians 5:7).
While the occasion of the Passover meal reminds us of Jesus' Last Supper, and the symbolism of the Passover event reminds us of our salvation, the style of the Passover meal should prompt us to think of something else. Something future, not past.
You and I do not await our deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Neither do we need to wait for the salvation that is offered in Christ. Yet we do wait. Night after night, generation after generation, century after century, we wait.
One day, Jesus told his disciples what would happen to him in Jerusalem, and within a few months it had occurred. Jesus told them that he would rise again, and within three days of his death he had. Jesus told the disciples to tarry in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high, and within two months came the Day of Pentecost.
Jesus also told his followers that he would return.
It did not happen as quickly as they expected.
Soon the apostles needed to begin answering the churches' questions about the believers who had died, about Christ's delay, and about life in the meantime.
After so long a wait, it would be an easy thing -- natural, really -- for us to live with diminished expectations. To let one day flow mindlessly into the next, with no real hope that today might be the day.
Jesus anticipated that possibility, that risk. He noted that the servant might observe, "My master is delayed in coming" (Luke 12:45), and consequently neglect his duties. But scripture warns us again and again that his coming will be sudden and unexpected (see Matthew 24:44; Mark 13:36; 1 Thessalonians 5:2). And so we are exhorted to "be ready" (Luke 12:40), "keep awake" (Matthew 25:13), and "be alert" (Luke 21:36).
The ancient Israelites were told, on the night of Passover, to eat the bread of haste, to dine with coat on and staff in hand, and to eat quickly, for they needed to be ready to leave. You and I, today, are not told to eat like that; we are instructed to live like that. To live each day with a posture of readiness, "because your redemption is drawing near" (Luke 21:28). Amen.
