Exodus 12

Fretheim makes an excellent point that the plagues of Egypt are an anti-creation epic, as chaos replaces the order of creation. Also, this last plague is a self-curse, as Egypt’s killing of Hebrew males is now turned back on it.

When I was in seminary, at the time of the introduction of the electric light, our textbook started with Exodus, since it is the creation of a people. Indeed, in v. 3, the people are now less a collection of families/tribes, but a congregation. Note that Passover is a family gathering, but each family is linked by the same ritual to every other family. this is the time that the children pose questions at the table about the meaning of the ritual.

One could use Passover as a way to examine the depth of meaning of the Lord’s Supper. Embedded with Passover’s blood is a feat of unleavened bread. So the bread and blood of Communion are properly linked, as the synoptic gospels have Jesus having the Lord Supper on Passover. (John links him explicitly to the Passover lamb and pushes the date back a bit)

One could use this reading to explor ritual, its pitfalls and its promise. we fall into calling things ritualistic but do not help matters by examining ritual seriously and lookign at when it is powerful or not. For instance, I find most of contemporary worship banal and flat. In part this is due to little consideration for ritual. Already much contemproary worship ahs hardened into aritual framework as ossified as the rituals it often decries.

Liberals would shrink form this, but it could be a time to look at the symbol of blood. here the blood of egypt runs cold, but the blood of a slain animal, its lifeblood serves as a sign for life. In similar ways, we speak of the blood of christ as lifegiving.

I may be mistaken but in post-exilic times, Passover started the year. In that sense Passover redeems time. It is a good example of our arbitrary designations for time and that God's time need not coincide with ours. One could do a kairos (critical tme) and chronos (clock time). Time has become a pressing concern for us. Family life is under the siege of a clock too filled with activities and work.

Finally, Passover has a hurried quality for people on the run, people on the move.All of us are on the run as we await of Passover from old life to new life, from death to life.

In modern campaigns, media expectations drive candidates. Obama complied with their demands to sound tougher and have more policy proposals in his speech. In our passage from Romans, Paul provides a set of expectations for us to act as elected Christians, elected by God. Paul is giving us a sense of what virtues and actions are needed for Christian community. It is a list that often differs dramatically from candidate expectations or the list of hopes when employers are listing job qualifications. It is a far cry form the often contradictory desires we have for our presidential candidates.

It’s quite a daunting list. I’d like to highlight a few. Outdo one another in showing honor. Human nature loves to receive honors and recognition. Here Paul says that instead of having a fire in the belly for the ambition to become president, it is to be in a competition to show honor to others. This is more than the overused word, respect of r others. This is a competition to try to think up new and better ways to honor people as brother and sisters in Christ. What difference would it make in our families if we had a competition for the best compliments. Senator Biden spoke of the basis of the American experience as seeing no one as better than any one else. This goes a different way. Knowing that we are temples of the Holy Spirit allows us to treat everyone as if they were better.

Rejoice in your hope. Complaint comes easier than rejoicing. It is an odd thing to say: to rejoice in hope. Usually, we rejoice in something accomplished. To rejoice in hope is an indication of the full-throated confidence the Christian has in the purposes of god due to the life of Jesus Christ. Rejoice with those who rejoice. This is a sign of real character advancement. When someone is hurting, we feel pity and compassion rise. Often when someone is rejoicing, we get envious of the good fortune. The sense of it seems to be that Christian community aims at making the lives of others as important to us as our own. It places the Golden Rule into a broader frame. Not only do we treat others as we would like to be treated, but we even come to share in their feelings: weeping or rejoicing.

Repay no one evil for evil. We could call this the core of Christian ethics. With just a few exceptions the 10 commandments are basic prohibitions, but this is difficult for most of us. Our natural tendency is to get revenge, to pay someone back and then some for hurting us. If we repay no one evil for evil, then we bless that person. We are told clearly that Christians are not in the revenge business. We are in the business of showing love, even to the enemy. Could you imagine the reaction in politics, if people took the arrows of their opponents and did not fight back, did not play the game of retaliation?

Darrell Guider of Princeton Seminary in a lecture at Fuller said “ we are called to walk worthily of our calling as Christians. I would say we are called to live in a way worthy of the name Christian, worthy of carrying the name of Jesus Christ in our very lives. At the burning bush, Moses was given a name for God. In our baptism, under the burning presence of the Holy spirit, we all bear the name of God: Father, son, Holy Spirit. Senator Obama is the change candidate this year. His nomination is a testament to how much change can happen in a little over a generation. If one is interested in fundamental change, change that touches the very heart of the human condition, we look beyond politics, as important as that is for our common life. Paul’s words are a blueprint, a platform for the Christian life. With God’s grace, we can live it.

In the sixties, institutions were called the establishment, and youth were not going to conform to their dictates. Of course, long hair, blue jeans, and work shirts became the new uniform against the uniform of thin ties and dresses and coiffed hair. We expended so much energy on the trivia of appearance, as if the clothes do make the person. So many forces conspire to have us conform to different social expectations. We like to think of ourselves as individuals, willing to think and act for ourselves, but we do feel the pressure to fit into the mainstream.

After some years, hospitality turns into feeling threatened. The new king wants to deal shrewdly, literally wisely, with them. This is a good example of cynical worldly wisdom being juxtaposed against human wisdom. We go from oppression (the same word is used of Sarah to Hagar) and then to infanticide of males. Power moves to coercion quickly and ratchets up the force quickly. Still, the great Egyptian king is left unnamed as his daughter. We do get the names of two midwives of the Hebrews, possibly relate to an Egyptian name for the underclass. Shiphrah is related to a word for brightness. Puah is related to glittering, brilliance. They both demonstrate courage in defying the king but also in coming up with a believable lie to the king about the survival of the boys. Of course, the king then enlists the populace to kill the boys themselves.

Moses is an Egyptian name (Thutmose for instance) meaning child, son. But it is close in Hebrew to a word, to draw out. He is drawn from the water, but he will draw the people from slavery to freedom through he waters of the Red Sea, called a sea of reeds, just as his life was drawn from the reeds as a baby. His life is a story of the luck of the underclass, as his mother still gets to nurse the boy. Note; the basket is the same word as ark with Noah. Still, the daughter of the murderous king shows compassion and adopts the child. This story does not make cardboard enemies. Whenever we consider conformity, it’s easy to make cardboard cutouts of real people who make decisions about fitting in, not making trouble, and doing their best just to get through life.

All of the women conspire to protect life. All of them refuse to conform to the roles assigned to them. Refusal is a weapon against conformity. Second, they are clever. They outwit the masters. I love how the mother of Moses follows the letter of the law; she throws her child in the river. Nobody said anything about putting him in an ark. One could read the story as she placed the basket in the reeds where she knew the princess bathed.

We all love stories of the underdog getting a victory. Michael Phelps goers from a gawky bullied youngster to an Olympic champion. So many sports movies are about the Davids fighting the Goliaths. They refuse to conform to the role expected of them and are transformed. The decision to examine when to conform and when to refuse is the seedbed for transformation. Sometimes it is rediscovering a part of ourselves that we thought was long gone. At other times, it opens up a dimension of the self that we scarcely imagined could exist. God’s Sprit is constantly at work in us to bring about a transformed self, less bout the outside and much more about the inside. God works with us, on us, to have us become living examples of the name, Christian.

Yahweh linked to verb to be (ehyeh) as in cause to be, a play on creator. In the Septuagint it is given a metaphysical sense, the one who is. Some think it came from a title for the god El as a form of El who creates the hosts. Some think it a form of Yah as in Elijah. Some think it has a different root that would have a storm god image of striking like lightning. It is linked to the old Canaanite word for God, El.

Many think the name is deliberately mysterious.

Here is a great illustration of being in the presence of the holy, the sacred v. the profane.

This is a picture of a responsive God who hears the cries of an afflicted people.

The burning bush is a fairly unimpressive theophany, not a sacred tree, not a burning mountain, a burning bush. God works with what is available. . The fire that does not consume has a sense of the spirit to it, no?

One could go through the humor door or the counseling door on the objections that Moses raises and God’s responses. It continues in chapter 4. Israel did not trust people who did not resist leadership thrust upon them

One could use the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey as a dream of the future we share in different respects.

After some years, hospitality turns into feeling threatened. The new king wants to deal shrewdly, literally wisely, with them. This is a good example of cynical wordly wisdom being juxtaposed against human wisdom.

We go from oppression (the same word is used of Sarah to Hagar) and then to infanticide of males. Power moves to coercion quickly and ratchets up the force quickly. We may feel akin to Israel, but many people see our country as closer to Egypt. What inistituions seem oppressive to you in our time and place?

Shiphrah is related to a word for brightness

Puah is related to glittering, brilliance. They both demonstrate courage in defying the king but also in coming up with a believable lie to the king about the survival of the boys. Of course, the king then enlists the populace to kill the boys themselves.

Supply cities Pithom and Ramses are Egyptian names. In biblical Studies much argument goes about how much precise historical value we can have in these accounts, as they are making theological and cultural points as well as being in a narrative. Dates vary as to the Exodus often around 1200BCE at the center point with the dates going back or forward.

Moses is an Egyptian name (Thutmose for instance) meaning child, son. But it is close in Hebrew to a word, to draw out. He is drawn from the His life is a story of the luck of the underclass, as his mother still gets to nurse the boy. Note; the basket is the same word as ark with Noah. Still, the daughter of the murderous king shows compassion and adopts the child. This story does not make cardboard enemies.

When we plot revenge, we need a situation where we are in the superior position. Joseph is a prime minister of Egypt, and his policies saved a nation. His brothers, unaware of his identity, come begging for food. Joseph has tested the brothers to look for a change in them. Notice that Reuben and Judah are again important actors. He wants to see if they are capable of self-sacrifice, for the new favored brother. He is as skilled deception as their father, with his tricks. After seeing it in Judah’s speech, he can contain himself no longer. The great man weeps. What causes the tears; memory, joy, regrets over lost years, Benjamin, a father lost but still alive?

In v. 8 we have a great view of God’s providence working even through human evil. Notice that we are not puppets in this view. It appears that God can work through even human evil toward a different design, or weave our wrongs into a larger right. It takes an enlarged perspective to take this view. Joseph has found forgiveness, in part, because he sees the hand of God behind events. Joseph is even able to tell them that they need not be upset with themselves, as God wove their evil into a design for the salvation of many lives.

As a sign of reconciliation, everyone gets a new garment. Is this a reminder of the coat he once had? If so, it is a good example that forgiving does not equal forgetting. Here forgiving is restoring relationship. Notice that he doesn’t just let their wrong go. He teaches them empathy with his tricks, to glimpse what they did to him. How did he arrive at this point without succumbing to bitterness and resentment? He was able to envision that our relationships are in triads, always with God involved.

Joretta Marshall in her little book, How Shall I Forgive, speaks to the need for mutuality in forgiveness. Joseph wants to see his brothers realize the harm they caused. He is looking for signs of change in them. Forgiving cannot always achieve a restoration of relationship; after all that takes all the parties involved.

Lewis Smedes speaks of forgiveness helping the one who forgives. In Bible Study, Judy said that no being able to forgive stymies the life of the person who has been hurt. I let her use of the word stymies as it has a sense of being blocked in the progress of one’s path in life. Refusing to let go of the desire for revenge for a wrong locks us into the world of being a permanent victim. Joseph could have allowed himself to become consumed with a desire for revenge, always blaming his brothers for his plight. Instead, he chose to rise above their wrongs.

In our story, Joseph is able to forgive his brothers who wanted to kill him and then sold him into slavery. How much more so can we forgive those close to us who have done so much less? Maybe it’s high time to let go of the expression forgive and forget, as it is often beyond our capacity and even imagination. Let’s lift up the old expression “to err is human, to forgive divine.” Human imperfections cause many of our wrongs. We come to expect them. To move past the blame and shame game is a spark of the divine. That divine spark allows us to discover forgiveness as a welcome gift as we go down its long road. Like Joseph, one day we will even be able to wish those who have harmed us well. Then we live out the Lord’s Prayer.

As a fundraiser for the youth group, a pious member of the church planted some swee corn in a corner of a field. Around the same time, a different group of young people planted a patch of marijuana in the same field. They grew up together, and the young people were caught. When the police tested their product, all for research purposes, no THC was in the offending material, but it did sound like Jiffy Pop when lit. Apparently, a genetic transfer moved into the corn.

The corn ended up being part of a big barbeque supper for the church and the leftover corn was sold to individuals. Always hearty eaters, the members of the church outdid themselves that night. Whole pies disappeared; cakes were gobbled up, even the lesser cooks had people begging for more. The crabbiest woman in the church, the type that will give everyone the business but never a kind word, became the essence of sweetness.

The next day, the pastor cooked up some of the corn for the church board. For the first time ever, the board agreed with every one of the minister’s proposals for change. A man who lived to try to shoot down every idea seconded every motion. People who made sure that they always voted on opposite sides then volunteered to work together on a committee.

Defying tradition, the church had a pitch-in meal before the Sunday worship service. During the service, people stared at the stained glass lit by the sunlight. They laughed at little jokes. They filled the baskets with money for the poor. They took Communion as if it were their last meal. After it, people tearfully thanked the pastor for the most spiritually uplifting service they could ever remember.

Wheat and weed grow together, so Jesus almost said in am illustration of God’s way in the world, the kingdom of heaven on earth. In other words, God’s way in the world is in the everyday, but it exists all mixed together. At times, it seems that the weeds threaten to choke off the tender shoots of faith, but they persist and sometimes thrive in the midst of all the weeds.

We look for ecstatic religious experience. At times, we receive it, but then we keep a quest for that experience and lose sight of the point of honoring God. We want a rarity to become the familiar and predictable, so we substitute forced, ersatz energy. We often look for faith to move us out of ordinary life, but the Christian faith is incarnational faith, one rooted in the soil of real life. We carry so many problems between each other and within. Instead of momentary forgetting, the church, at its best, offers forgiveness. On NPR recently, a woman spoke of her new book about her strained relationship with her brother. They were able to reconcile only before his death. She cited research that most families have strained relationships with brothers and sisters that persist well into adulthood, if not throughout the life span. She said that the secret to better family relationships was letting go of the childhood roles and accepting one’s family members as themselves, without judging them according to our expectations or demands, to set aside out ego and to look and listen to each other. In other words, we learn to forgive for the sake of restoring our relationships. After all, God forgives us, wheat and weeds together.

Joseph has tested the brothers to look for a change in them. Notice that Reuben and Judah are again important actors. He wants to see if they are capable of se4lf-sacrifice, for the new favored brother. He is as skilled deception as their father, with his tricks. After seeing it in Judah’s speech, he can contain himself no longer. The great man weeps. What causes the tears; memory, joy, regrets over lost years, Benjamin?

In v. 8 we have a great view of god’s providence working even through human evil. Notice that we are not puppets in this view. It appears that God can work through even human evil toward a different design, or weave our wrongs into a larger right. It takes an enlarged perspective to take this view.

As a sign of reconciliation, everyone gets a new garment. Is this a reminder of the coat he once had? If so, it is a good example that forgiving does not equal forgetting. Here forgiving is restoring relationship. Notice that he doesn’t just let their wrong go. He teaches them empathy with his tricks, to glimpse what they did to him. How did he arrive at this point without succumbing to bitterness and resentment?

One of my beefs with the church is we don’t give many clues on forgiveness as process.

See Marshall’s How Shall I Forgive? Or Is Human Forgiveness Possible. My favorite is David Augsburger’s Caring Enough to Forgive/Not Forgive.

We are deep in the season of Vacation Bible School. Publishers spend much on preparing complete packets of material to help set these up. Churches can easily spend thousands of dollars for the materials. Already, the ads will start coming in for next summer. Even with all of the research and expense, the format is similar: music, crafts, snacks, sun, and a daily Bible story, all centered on a theme. The addition, to many of us, is video, where we follow amusing characters through scenes to underscore the theme. In its way VBS was ahead of the curve on multiple intelligence, as it tries to engage a number of a child’s resources toward grasping the themes.

My sense is that VBS emerged from the Sunday School movement of the 19^th century. After the Civil War, a Methodist bishop instituted a summer Bible program for young people. Most credit a teacher, Mrs. D.T. Miles, in Illinois, as the pioneer of the movement. Unhappy with the amount of time she could teach Bible in Sunday School, she ran a daily Bible program to get more depth during the summer. A few years later, summer Bible programs were in New York, where they focused on poor children. Within a generation, the movement organized, so the Baptists had a Vacation Bible School organization for global reach. If Mrs. Miles could see contemporary VBS, she would be concerned that depth has been sacrificed for accessibility and “fun.” Maybe she’d note that the music divide in regular worship appears in VBS. The songs on the CDs are based on popular beats, and are written for the program, but the teachers also introduce the children’s songs that they remember from their own VBS experience, stirring hymns such Arky, Arky, and Hallelu, where an antiphon style becomes a war of volume.

It is moving to see adults spending at least ten hours during a summer week to produce VBS. Without knowing how much reaches the children, they work to help share a Christian message. Teens, often self-involved or peer-segregated, give hours of their time to spend with young children. I’m always amazed at how much the children pick up in a short period of time. Even in the middle of climbing under pews, sugared with cookies and sweet drink, smeared with Elmer’s glue, they can remember the theme and the Bible lessons.

In some ways, VBS is the church at its best, exerting time and effort to touch the heart sand mind’s of young people, all for free. Tired from a day at work, they labor without knowing the outcome. As this is being posted to the paper, our VBS will be working on the parable of the mustard seed. Presbyterians believe that God plants the seed of faith within us. It is the work of the church to help that seed to take root and grow. VBS seems like a small facet of Christian education, but it touches millions of lives every year. We can’t be certain what will take root. We don’t know if the faith that will emerge will turn into an oak tree or a shrub. Whatever happens, heaven itself respects and loves the result. VBS shows us that God respects a Rodin sculpture but also takes delight in a tree made of elbow macaroni on a paper plate. Noah nods and smiles at Arky, Arky, and Joshua relives the battle of Jericho. Jesus remembers his own childhood and watches the video with the children.

The TV show, My Name Is Earl, is about a low life who is convinced that life will treat him badly unless he makes amends to the many people whom he has wronged, so he goes around marking people off his list. In the bible Earl would find a kindred spirit in Jacob. Jacob was grasping, greedy, and he gets his comeuppance with Uncle Laban. Laban cheats him out of labor to obtain his daughters as Jacob’s wives. He cheats him out of his share of the herds, but Jacob turns the tables on him with a breeding trick of his own. It would be as if Jacob saw his own future every time he said Good Morning to his Uncle and father-in-law Laban.

Now it is time to go back home, to redeem the promise of God. Then h hears that Easu is coming, with over 400 men. Jacob knows what he and Uncle Laban would do under the circumstances” get revenge and take plunder. Jacob is left alone. All night, he wrestles with a mysterious stranger with no one having an advantage. At daybreak, he is still fighting, but it is time for the stranger to be released. Jacob demands a blessing, but he will carry the wound of a leg injury all of his days, just as Jesus carried the scars of the crucifixion after the resurrection. Perhaps we do well to imagine Jacob wrestling with his old self, wrestling with doubts.

I forgot that it was communion Sunday when I decided on these passages. Upon reflection, it’s OK. We all have some of old Jacob in us. We all wrestle with the old self and the new self struggling to emerge. We all wrestle with greed and ambition, as we try to fill a hole that no goods can fill, because we have internalized the doubts aobut our own selves deep within. Still, God picked Jacob to carry on the seed of Abraham, to be the progenitor for Israel’s tribes. Jacob did not deserve, did not earn such treatment. We do not deserve Communion, as if it is a trophy for the successful Christian.

In Communion, we get a symbol of life that is the opposite of grasping and greedy.

How can we receive Communion and leave a world in so much scarcity? Ron Hunter, the basketball coach at IUPUI has lived with this sense. As a dare, he said he’d coach barefoot to help bring shoes to the needy. He had no idea of the response and the need for footwear in the world. He took his players with NCAA permission to deliver some of the shoes he’s collected. One of his tough players broke down when a little girl asked him if God gave him the shoes. Then she asked if he would ask God for a pair of shoes for her mother.

After the struggle, Jacob said that he saw the face of God. As the hymn says, here o my Lord, I see thee face to face. Here we do not get what we deserve. Here we get more spiritual food than we can possibly imagine. Communion breaks the back of the idea of karma, of life getting us back for the wrongs we do and rewarding us for the good. So much evil emerges from a self that is beset by doubts about our worth. We try to convince ourselves of worth but fight against the feeling itself with the rebellion of evil. Communion fights that sense from the inside by replacing the fear of scarcity with the reality of the abundant love of God. In being a come as you are party, it shows that in God’s eyes we are good enough, in the midst of all of our wrestling with doubts, disease, and even despair. . It points us to a better world, a world sketched by the VBS program, where we give, share, grow, and love.

We have early ambiguity ahs he tattled evil speech about them) or is it evil speecha bout him? In other places in Scripture, it refers to being a victim of a whispering campaign. It could be that he is resented for being the favored son of the favored wife. Jacob has not learned much about playing favorites. He is following in the footsteps of his parents. So the brothers cannot even say hello or even say a kind, peaceful word to him. The increasing hostility is a play on his name, may he increase. Joseph has a dream of being first among the brothers, but Jacob objects that maybe he too will bow to his son. He is asked to seek of the welfare (shalom again) of the brothers who do not bear shalom toward him, Joseph gets lost and a mysterious stranger guides him toward the animosity of his brothers (another wrestling?) Reuben, the oldest, intervenes to spare his life. Later, he will grieve, but for himself. He does not defend him, however. Now Judah figures they can get some cash and get rid of Joseph. They sell him to their cousins, descendants of the man Sarah, their great grandmother wanted to kill off in the desert due to her favoritism of her own son. Recall that Hagar, Ishmael’s mother was an Egyptian slave. Note well: a people who draw their deep memory from slavery realize that their own history contains slavery in it for malicious reasons of family conflict. Now Jacob, blinded by tears, will be fooled as he fooled his father for a blessing.

Jacob’s words are the words of many parents over the loss of a child. I will go down to Sheol, the abode of the dead, mourning all the way for my child. So, this is an ideal opportunity to discuss grief in a pastoral care sermon.