Exodus 12:1-14 Commentary

Comments, Questions and Observations:

Of all the strange details of this strange meal, isn’t it a bit odd that God tells the people of Israel, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.” As though the all-knowing GOD of the universe needs a visual cue to remember who lives in which house. God doesn’t need flares or flags to indicate which houses to smite and which to relieve. This “lasting ordinance” – the celebration of Passover – isn’t for God. It is for God’s people. God is clear in his instruction to Moses & Aaron: “The blood shall be a sign for you. What is it, in the celebration of the Passover Feast, that God’s people need enough for God to institute it as a “lasting ordinance”? There may be many answers to that question but here are three:

1. Ritual is identity formation

We become who we are through the practices that we undertake. And it starts when we are children. We mimic the actions of our grown-ups. We become like them, part of a family, before we understand doctrinal propositions. And as we grow, we can lean into our identity formation, choosing these practices for ourselves or we can set ourselves apart from these practices and observances and refuse the identity that they create for us.

A friend who is an observant Jew once told me about the questions of the four sons in the Passover Haggadah (liturgy). For the wise and innocent sons as well as the son who doesn’t yet know to ask, the Passover is explained gently, in age and ability appropriate language to each. But there is also a wicked son and he asks: “What is this worship to you?” Very explicitly, to you — not to me, not to us. The Haggadah goes on to explain: “And since he excluded himself from the collective, he denied a principle [of the Jewish faith].”

The most wicked thing the son can do is deny his identity, deny his place in this story, deny that these people are His people, that their God is his God.

Ellen Davis elaborates this point when she writes, “The biblical story points to a profound irony and an acute danger of the spiritual life. God seeks to be known, showing up in the world in perceptible ways. However, if the divine desire to be known is not met with the human desire to know God, then the result is that the human heart is hardened in opposition to God.”

2. A time to reflect on oppression

When the human heart is hardened in opposition to God — as Pharaoh’s heart was hardened — oppression and bondage are the result. And so, in the Passover meal, observant Jews will dip a finger in their wine to leave a drop of wine for each of the plagues. As Ellen Davis again observes: “One of the poignant elements of the book is that the Egyptian people, and even the elite circle around Pharaoh, are not portrayed as evil or personally hostile to the Israelites. Like enslaved Israel, they, too, are victims of Pharaoh’s moral blindness.”

While the Exodus story focuses our attention on the oppression and bondage of the Israelites in Egypt, these themes of oppression and bondage don’t just trickle, they run like high water, overflowing their banks throughout human history. And so the Passover becomes a time to reflect: where do I see bondage and oppression in the world? What are the oppressions in my own life? And in what ways do I contribute to the oppression of others?

3. A connection with the past, present and future.

The Passover functions as what theologian NT Wright calls “a thin place”, where the veil between heaven and earth, the veil between past, present and future grows sheer. Observant Jews who celebrate the Passover find themselves connected back to the slaves fleeing Egypt as well as everyone else who has ever, is everywhere and will one day celebrate this remembrance. The Passover Seder doesn’t just tell the story of something that happened a long time ago to some distant relations. By celebrating the meal, observant Jews experience a strange — timeless, mysterious, transcendent — notion that they belong to this story too.

So we might also imagine another observant Jew, Jesus, celebrating this lasting ordinance. The words and actions of Judaism — and of this Feast of Unleavened Bread — shaped his earthly identity. He learned to see and understand the conditions of oppression and bondage that harmed the people of Israel and all the people of the earth, created in the Divine Image. And when he sat at supper with his disciples, it was this meal they ate together. How was it — in that moment — that Jesus held the past, the present and the future together as his people had taught him to do? How does he belong to this story? And how does it belong to him?

As Christians, we can — and SHOULD — learn with and from the Jewish practice of the Passover Seder. When we celebrate at table together, we call the meal a means of grace, a timeless, intergenerational, global event where the veil between heaven and earth grows sheer and we celebrate with all those who have celebrated before us and all who will celebrate after us. We celebrate with Christians around the world. We remember our sin at this table — though perhaps we would do well to think of sin not just as individual, discrete acts but as our participation in oppression and bondage. Our participation as both victim and perpetrator. And we remember who we are. These are wonderful commonalities.

But, of course, we celebrate with Jesus as our host and so, through our participation in the Lord’s Supper, we will necessarily interact with this story differently, letting Jesus’ story shape our understanding of the Passover story. We don’t just need the ritual, though in so many deep and beautiful ways we need that too. We need Jesus. God didn’t need the blood on the doorposts and lintels.  God’s people need the blood. WE need the blood.

We need a sacrificial Lamb to cover over our sin, so that God will not count us guilty forever for our perpetuation of violence, oppression and bondage. We need a sacrificial Lamb to cover over the sin that is done against us and so that God may heal us in all the ways that we have been wounded by violence, oppression and bondage. As Christians, we believe that in Christ, God provides His own blood for that purpose. When John the Baptist sees Jesus he cries out, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” When Jesus celebrates the Passover with his disciples he tells them, “This is MY body” and “This is MY blood.”

At this table, we celebrate Jesus in the Passover — a substitutionary Lamb, the consecrated first-born of Mary & Joseph, God’s only Son — whose blood remains – like that painted on the doorframes of houses in Egypt — as an eternal sign for you. In the blood of Christ we are sheltered from oppression, we are forgiven our sin, we are liberated from bondage, we are equipped with a story of redemption and we are set free to pursue works of reconciliation.

Illustration Ideas:

Invite people to reflect on their favorite holidays: thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and all the special foods on the table. You might ask for everyone’s fond memories. But you might also ask the cooks, hosts and hostesses of these meals what goes into the effort behind the scenes.

Even simple dinner parties are complicated for me — all the fiddly details, fussing over a menu, ironing napkins — I’d rather write sermons for a month full of Sundays. And the meal we learn about in this chapter is anything but simple. You have to get your lamb on a special day, it has to be perfect — 1 year old male without defect — slaughter it *at twilight* on another specific day. Meanwhile you have to clean the pantry and cupboards of every crumb of leaven. You have to figure out how much you can eat because leftovers are not allowed. The food is meant to be prepared in a specific fashion. The side-dishes are not arbitrary. Each is specified for a purpose. Even the way you are dressed as you eat is prescribed: shoes on, cloak ready, walking stick at hand.