Plagues and Passover

When Israel was in Egypt’s land,

Let my people go!

Oppressed so hard they could not stand,

Let my people go!

Go down, Moses,

Way down in Egypt’s land;

Tell old Pharaoh

To let my people go!

Moses was a reluctant savior.  Oh, once he had been a fiery young radical.  Back in the day when he wore the robes of the Egyptian royalty he snapped at injustice.  One day when he was out among the Pharaoh’s work projects watching the overseers…probably wondering to himself how he could really be a Hebrew and stand by to watch his own people suffer.  What did his mother whisper to him as he nursed from her right under Pharaoh’s nose?  What did his sister say to him about his destiny?

At any rate, as I said, one day Moses was out and about and he saw one of the Egyptians overseers beating a Hebrew slave.  And he was not reluctant to act then.  He was impulsive.  He struck back.  Hard.  Killed that Egyptian and then worried about what he had done.  Hid the body in the sand.  Not such a great place to hide a dead body.  And sure enough his crime doesn’t stay covered up.  But it’s not the Egyptians who know.  It’s the Hebrews.  And they’re not grateful to him.

The next day he’s out and now he sees two Hebrews fighting with each other.  And he confronts one man, who was clearly in the wrong.  “Hey, why are you hitting your companion?”

The man turns on him.  “Who made you a prince and judge over us?  Are you going to kill me like you killed that Egyptian?”  That’s when Moses knew the game was up.  So he fled to Midian.

Years later he was out in the desert tending sheep, long removed from Egypt.  He was married now.  Had a new life now.  Wandered the wilderness with his sheep.  Not the brave young instrument of justice.  An aging man with different priorities.

Then he saw the bush.  That bush that burned but which was not consumed.  That bush that spoke with God’s voice.  Told him to go to Egypt.  Told him that God had experienced the suffering of God’s people.  A new day of liberation was coming.  And who was going to proclaim this new day?

Go down, Moses!

But Moses was now a reluctant savior.  He thought the people would not receive him.  He thought the people would not receive God.  He thought he didn’t have what it took.  He couldn’t speak good.  Finally after God gave him God’s name, after God gave him two nifty tricks to do in front of Pharaoh – the stick into snake trick and the leprous hand trick, after God told him, “I will be with you, Moses,” after God told him, “I will be with your mouth, Moses, and I’ll even give you your brother, Aaron, as a mouthpiece”…finally Moses goes down to Egypt.  A reluctant savior.

The showdown was wonderful.  Moses & Aaron versus the most powerful ruler in the most powerful nation on earth.  Aaron throws down the stick in front of Pharaoh and his servants.  It becomes a stick.  But the magicians of Egypt were there and with their secret arts they can do the same thing.  They throw down their sticks.  They become snakes.  But Aaron’s snake eats up all the other snakes.  Pharaoh was unimpressed.

So the plagues begin.  First there was the plague of water turned to blood.  As Pharaoh went out to the Nile, that great river on which all life in Egypt depended, Moses struck the water with that same staff that had turned to a serpent and the river turned to blood.  All the fish in the river died.  The river stank.  The people couldn’t drink from the river.  Some must have wondered what had happened to the Egyptian gods.  To Khnum, the creator of water and life.  To Hapi, the god of the Nile.  To Osiris for whom the Nile was his very bloodstream.  But Pharaoh did not wonder.  He turned his back on Moses and went back to his palace and God hardened his heart.

Next there were frogs.  Frogs in the beds.  Frogs in the houses.  Frogs in the ovens and the kneading bowls.  People must have pleaded to Heket, the Egyptian goddess of childbirth whose symbol was the frog.  But still they came.  These cursed frogs.  Pharaoh calls in Moses and Aaron and pleads for a respite.  Moses prays to God and the frogs die.  They pile up piles of stinking dead frogs.  And Pharaoh hardened his heart.

It kept on going.  There were gnats and flies.  Then the livestock died.  Then boils broke out, even on the beasts.  Hail.  Locusts.  Darkness.  Even the great Egyptian gods of the sun, Amon-Re, Atum and Horus, could not prevent the darkness.  Each time the plague would affect only the Egyptians, not the Hebrews.  Each time Moses proclaimed the victory of the God of the Hebrews.  Usually Pharaoh pleaded for relief, even promised at times to let the people go, but each time the plague lifted, his heart would harden and the people remained slaves.

Through nine plagues this was the pattern.  Then came the tenth.  And the tenth was a horrible plague.  At midnight on a certain night, the angel of death would come to the house of all who lived in the land.  And this angel of death would kill the firstborn of every house.

Through all of this, God had had a special message for the Egyptians.  Now God had a message for the Hebrews, too.  This night.  This horrible night when so much death would come to Egypt.  This was the night that was going to mark the beginning of a new life for the Hebrew people.  It was a night they would remember even in their calendar.  It was now going to be the first of all the months.  And on the tenth day of that month from now on they were going to remember what they did on this night.

What did they do on this night when the angel of death was coming to every house in Egypt?  They were to take a lamb.  Each household was to take a lamb.  A lamb without blemish.  A year-old male in the prime of life.  And on the fourteenth day of the month, just as the sun was setting in the west, the whole assembly would kill the lambs.

Imagine the Egyptians watching this scene.  All those Hebrew slaves simultaneously slaughtering a lamb.  Then they took blood from the slaughter and painted the doorposts of their houses.  They dressed for travel.  Even though it was night, they dressed as if they were ready to leave.  Their belts fastened.  Their sandals on their feet.  Their walking sticks in their hands.  And they ate their roasted lambs in haste as if they were going to be called out at any minute.

Later that night, at midnight, the destroyer came.  And the firstborn of Egypt were struck down, from the captive in the dungeon to the palace of Pharaoh.  But when the destroyer came to the houses of the Hebrews and saw the blood of the lamb on the doorposts, it passed over their houses.  The death that came to all Egypt did not come to them.  Their firstborn were preserved.

Pharaoh called in Moses and Aaron in the middle of that night.  “Leave.  Go.  Serve Yahweh, your god.  Take your flocks and go.”  The reluctant savior went back to tell his people that God had set them free.

O, there was more to come.  Pharaoh had a change of heart one more time.  There was the dramatic crossing of the Red Sea.  The drowning of Pharaoh’s army.  The long journey in the wilderness.  But a new day had come.  And the Hebrews, who became the Israelites, were to remember this day on the fourteenth day of the first month of every new year.

Why do we still tell this story?  As Christians we don’t set aside the fourteenth day of the first month for Passover.  We don’t even use the Jewish calendar.  What happened to this commandment from Exodus?

It is still our story.  And nowadays you hear it just about every week in this service.  A least a hint of it.  When we come to the baptismal font and give thanks over the water we remind God and ourselves that “when you saw your people as slaves in Egypt, you led them to freedom through the sea.”  When we come to the table we often hear in the Great Thanksgiving those words, “you set us free from slavery to sin and death.”  When we say these things we remember what God has done for  God’s people and we count ourselves among those people that God has claimed and loved and freed.  We remember the Passover.

But as Christians we see it through new eyes.  We count time differently because of one particular Passover when Jesus gathered with his disciples probably to eat this meal that is described in Exodus 12.  Only now Jesus says something different about the meal.  We don’t slaughter lambs anymore because Jesus, who was the Lamb of God, laid down his life once for all.  The sacrifice was made once for all. 

It was a perfect lamb in the prime of his life.  Jesus was sinless, in the prime of his life.  Not a bone of it was to be broken.  At his crucifixion the gospel writers are careful to note that not a bone of Jesus’ body was broken.  The lamb’s blood was to be sprinkled on the doorposts so that its benefits could protect the inhabitants from death.  Jesus’ blood is shed for us so that we can find protection form wrath, forgiveness from our sins, and freedom from death.

Christians look back at this story of the Passover and they see Christ all over it.  As First Corinthians 5:17 says, “Christ has become our Passover.”  And we see a much bigger exodus for us every time we come to this table.  We remember God calling that reluctant savior Moses and leading a people to freedom from slavery.  But we also remember that savior who went all the way to the cross to lead us to a freedom that cannot be taken away from us.

All of life is wrapped up in this story.  There is humor as we think about a land overrun with frogs and Pharaoh playing his silly game of “You can go; no, wait, I lied.”  There is wonder as we think about the awesomeness of the plagues and the greatness of God.  There is trauma and death and blood – the tragedies that are part of all of our lives.  There is sacrifice where the strong and the innocent die and those who are unworthy continue on.  And there is deep, deep mystery as we think that something as simple as gathering around a table and sharing a meal can somehow make real for us the kingdom of God.

Yesterday Suzanne and Rachel and I made a trip to Capron in Southampton County.  We were picking up several pieces of furniture that were part of Suzanne’s inheritance from her Aunt Augusta who died earlier this year.  Augusta was the last of her generation and the house seemed very empty and lonely as we left it for the last time.

We stopped to eat in Franklin at the Golden Skillet.  Rachel was not impressed.  It is a fast food restaurant that has seen many better days.  Even I wondered how many extra layers of grease had been added to the walls and ceilings in recent years.  There were flies.

Why did we go there?  We went there because that’s where my grandparents went to eat.  They knew it had great North Carolina-style barbecue.  And it was one of my Grandma’s favorite places to go.  So when I sit down in that place and eat it is a way for me to commune with the saints.  And when I sat there with my wife and daughter I felt that deep, deep mystery of life and death and life beyond life continuing.

This table is where that happens for this family.  At this table we are reminded that whatever has a hold on us, whatever Pharaoh is holding us in his grip…his power is broken by the action of the God of Israel and Jesus Christ.  Whatever temptation we have to linger in slavery is shown up for what it is – a failure to embrace life and the freedom God gives us through God’s mighty works in Jesus.

So, let us all from bondage flee,

Let my people go!

And let us all in Christ be free,

Let my people go!

Go down, Moses,

Way down in Egypt’s land;

Tell old Pharaoh

To let my people go!