Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Exodus 16:2-15 "Whiners and Provider"


 You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 
         And the tale of Moses continues to continue – for the fifth week now – each Bible story taking us further into Moses’ life and delving more deeply into his character and psyche, but even more so giving us opportunities to explore the covenant, or relationship, that God/Yahweh/The Great I Am had with the Hebrew people and that they, in turn, had with the Holy One. Let’s look back and see how far we have come.
         Week #1:  a wailing three month old Moses is set afloat in a basket on the mighty Nile River, only to be found by an Egyptian princess who was delighted to have a son to raise even knowing that, by her father the Pharaoh’s command, the infant should have been a doomed Hebrew child.  “Every boy that is born, drown him in the Nile.”
         Week #2:  Moses, well past the age to claim his social security, follows an errant lamb to the heights of Mt. Sinai and there finds himself conversing with the voice of God that seemed to be emanating from a burning bush.  “I am Yahweh, Moses.  I am the Great I Am.  Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.”
         Week #3:  Moses, with his knees knocking, is standing before the Pharaoh pleading his case to the stubborn ruler, trying to negotiate a deal for freedom as disaster after disaster rains down on the Egyptian people.  “Let me people go.”
         Week #4:  Moses, the reluctant leader of the Israelites, is journeying with the freed slaves not overland but toward the sea until the waters that seemed to go on forever lap about his ankles, and he has no choice but to raise his hand and his staff as God had instructed him to do – “Split the sea, Moses, split the sea” – and, on a wing and a prayer, he walks before the Israelites into the brine, ever deeper into the waters of faith.
       And now they are on the other side of the sea, and the Egyptian army that had relentlessly pursued them is crushed.  The Hebrew women have sung and danced on the beach in celebration: 
Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.
         However, the Israelites are not yet in this so-called Promised Land.  Though they had a bit of a respite at an oasis that seemed to them to be close to paradise, an oasis called Elim where God had provided cool, clear, and much needed water to drink, there is still no fertile land in sight to call their own.  They have walked for two months now, and the scenery is not at what they had expected.  It is not one bit like the travel brochures. It is not Club Med.
         The weather is hot, the sun shines unmercifully during the day, and the land is arid.  Drinkable water is scarce, and they are faced here in the wilderness with ongoing food insecurity.  It will be 40 years before they reach the land that God/Yahweh/The Great I Am has set aside for them, but they do not know that fact, which is probably a good thing.
         All they are concerned about is the present, today, and today they are hungry.  And so they are doing what they seem to do best.  They are whining (or murmuring as one translation calls it).  They are grumbling, complaining. 
         "Why us?" "Life isn’t fair." "Where is this Great I Am when you need such a Holy One?”  “If only we had…”  “If only, if only, if only….”
       As Lutheran pastor Vern Christopherson imagines, “They march up to Moses and say: ‘Why didn’t we die in the land of Egypt? At least there we had bread and meat to our hearts’ content. As it is now, you’ve brought us into the wilderness to starve us to death.’
         The facts, of course, don’t quite bear this out. The people have conveniently forgotten that they complained in Egypt too. They complained about Pharaoh’s harsh taskmasters. They complained about having to make bricks without straw. They complained about not being free.
         But now that they are free—sad to say—the complaining continues.”  The Israelites are emphatic that this – all this wilderness business, all this walking, all this not having enough food to eat and water to drink – all this is NOT what they had signed up for!
         Complain, complain, complain!  One might have thought that God/Yahweh/The Great I Am would be pretty frustrated with the Israelites right about now.  First, there was all that grumbling about having to get their feet wet in the Red Sea.  Then there was the issue with the potable water that forced a detour to the Elim oasis. Now they were complaining about not enough food – their bread was gone, and their mouths watered for meat – not that they had seen much of either while enslaved in Egypt.  However, it seems they had conveniently forgotten that fact now too. 
         If I had been God/Yahweh/The Great I Am, I might have been tempted to throw in the sponge and send a few well-placed lightening bolts to finish off this experiment in freedom – or at least initiate a much-needed attitude adjustment.  However, the Holy One did not respond out of anger and frustration. 
         Instead, God did something to help the Israelites remember the most important facts they would ever be called to remember:  Who brought you out of Egypt? Who set Pharaoh back a notch or two? Who controlled the Red Sea when you walked across it? Who found you clear, cool water to drink?  Who loves you?
         And so, as one blogger wrote, “God’s deal is this; the Israelites have quail at night and in the morning the ground is covered with a white flaky substance ‘as fine as frost’ that could be baked or boiled. But it’s only there for a short time after the dew has evaporated and before the heat of the midday sun melts it. The Israelites called it manna, man hu literally translated as ‘what is it?’ or ‘what do you call it?’”
         The quail and manna are not given, however, free and clear, with no strings attached.  You see, God/Yahweh/The Great I Am instructed the Israelites to only take what is needed for their family for that one day.  They are not to store up treasures of manna and quail.  They are not to horde.  (Of course, some of them tried anyway but discovered the following day that the leftover manna only filled their backpacks with worms and emitted a terrible rotten stench.) 
         And on the sixth day, they are to take enough of the dewy gooey substance to last for two days – and a quail or two extra as well.  After all, the seventh day is the Sabbath, a day of rest. 
         It is a nice story, don’t you think?  However, like all Biblical narratives, it is not time bound, but so has something to say to us here today as well.
         So - let’s pick the passage apart for a moment or two – and see what relevance this tale might have for you and me.  After all, it is an ancient story filled with a couple of those old-time religion type miracles that are hard to make sense of:  manna from heaven, quail from the skies, a daily all-you-can-eat buffet.  But might we look beyond our penchant for literalism?  Might there be a truth – a deeper truth – that lies at the heart of this tale that has nothing to do with whether or not the details are literally true?
         I think there is such a truth, but we need to begin with the assumption that this story is not about miracles – though manna from heaven is a wonderful image of a God who always provides.  This story is about the relationship – or the covenant – that existed between God/Yahweh/The Great I Am and the Hebrew people – a covenant that still exists today between God and we as Christians who claim to be sons and daughters of the Almighty through Jesus. Covenant is not just a Jewish thing; we too are covenant people. 
       So let’s talk a bit about this relationship.  Relationships or covenants involve two entities.  So, in this case, on the one hand, we have the Israelites who are always complaining.  On the other hand, we have God/Yahweh/The Great I Am who is providing for their needs. 
       It is pretty simple at first glance – and, OK, pretty easy to have a “holier than thou” attitude, point fingers, and diss the Israelites and their bad attitude.  However, let’s not be so hard on them as complaining seems to be part and parcel of simply being human. 
       I mean, take the true story of a 27-year- old woman who walked into a McDonald's restaurant and ordered a 10-piece McNuggets meal.  The employee behind the counter took the order and received payment, only to discover that the restaurant was out of McNuggets.
       The employee told the customer that she would have to get something else from the menu, which prompted the customer to ask for her money back. The employee told her that all sales are final, but that she could have anything - even have a larger priced item - from the menu.
       The customer got angry. She wanted McNuggets—not a Big Mac, not a Quarter Pounder. For her, this situation was clearly an emergency, and she knew what to do in an emergency.  She called 911 to complain. Actually, she called three times.  She never got her McNuggets that night, but she did later get a ticket from the police for misusing 911.
       Face it.  At some point or another, we are all whiners.  If we are not complaining about the McNuggets, we are grumbling about the weather – or the news or that the sermon was too long or that church is not what it used to be.  Responding as the Israelites responded to their less-than-ideal circumstances is not a characteristic unique to them.  So that is one half of the covenant relationship – the whiners (that would be us).
       And then there is the God part.  God is the provider, but God demands something in return.  God demands trust.  God demands faith in Yahweh, faith in the Great I Am. 
       For the Israelites, that meant trusting enough not to take more manna and quail than they needed for a single day.  It meant trusting that God would provide not only today but also tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come.  It meant affirming in their actions that God would not abandon them, that God would not give up on them.
         As United Church of Christ pastor Jennifer Whipple writes, “God was not going to just give them their provisions. God is a God of relationship, of covenant, and he had called these folks…to be faithful, to take their relationship with God seriously – to be willing to follow what God called them to do….We don’t just get to sit idly by and wait for God’s provision to land in our laps. We are in this together with God, and merely grumbling and complaining does not get us anywhere near as far as actual steps toward bettering our relationship with God and others.”
         Whiners and Provider:  that is the essence of the covenant, and what cements the relationship is the demand for trust and faith, on the one hand, and the affirmation that, because this is a covenant, a relationship, we are in this with God together.  It played out that way for the Israelites, and it plays out that way for us too.
         Take a look at the modern church as an example.  Like the Israelites, we do our share of grumbling and complaining – mainly reminiscing about the days of yore.
          Remember, we murmur, when all the pews were filled on Sunday morning, and every church had a capital campaign to construct a new educational wing?  Remember, we grumble, when every child was in Sunday School, and no one would think of scheduling a voice lesson or Little League game on a Sunday morning?  Remember, we opine, when there were blue laws and stores were closed on Sunday? Remember, we complain, when the organ reigned supreme and every baby boomer wore those perfect attendance pins dangling from his or her Sunday best?  Remember when church was really church?
         Complain, complain, complain.  We are so good at our part of the covenant.  However, when it comes to something as important as the survival of our church, perhaps we need to remember the other entity of the covenant – the Provider.  Maybe we need to not ally ourselves only with the Whiners, but look to the Provider with the trust, and in the faith, that the Provider demands.
         Maybe, we need to remember, as Methodist pastor, Geoff McElroy wrote, “The God of Israel is not a God of the past.  This God is a God of the present and future, one who calls us to new places and new ways of being in relationship with God and with each other.”  
         Maybe we need to trust the Provider when it comes to the modern church, to our church.  And maybe that needs to begin by trusting what God has provided already in this small gathering.  Maybe we need to stop longing for the times when unemployed volunteer Moms ran our fairs and countless potluck suppers and when families were all intact.  Maybe we need to quit whining about the lack of resources and volunteers we think we face. 
         Maybe we need to be thankful for the men and women among us who are willing to risk exploring what the church might be, who are willing to risk their time and energy and financial resources to create a vision for this church.  Maybe each one of us needs to risk a bit more of our time and energy and financial resources to activate that vision.
         Some people believe that the church will be only a memory 30, 40, 50 years from now.  I am not one of those people. I do not believe that the church will ever be irrelevant. 
         However, I do believe that who we will be as the church – what our faith community will look like – will most likely not end up being something we would recognize today.  The church will look and be and behave differently, and it is up to us to usher in that transformation. 
         Young families - and especially children - are not the future of the church, as we so cavalierly like to say.  We are the future of the church. And I believe that, in whatever form we end up, God still has work for the church to do.  God still has work for this church to do. 
         It is an awesome responsibility that God has given us, and so, going forward, we need to trust that God has already provided us with the people (that would be us – no exceptions!) and the resources (for surely we are generous people when it comes to the church we say we love) that are necessary for us to change and grow – and God will continue to provide those people and resources.  But, in the end, it is up to us.  And so we need to listen for the Spirit and be willing to follow where it leads us, be willing to walk ever deeper into the waters of faith.  If we do that, then we will be living – and this church will be living – truly in covenant with the Holy One.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church (U.C.C.)

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Exodus 14:19-31 "Waters of Faith"


 You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 
         And, for the fourth week now, this wonderful story of Moses continues.  We have come a long way this past month in our reflecting upon, not the literal truth but rather the deeper truth, of this pivotal story that Jews have told and retold down through the ages until it became part of who they were as a people – and, of course, who Jesus was as a devout Jew. 
         We began with a desperate Hebrew mother fearing for the life of her son, who put the baby afloat in a watertight basket on the Nile River.  Then we fast-forwarded 80 or so years to a senior citizen Moses who stood before a burning bush on the heights of Mt. Sinai where God/Yahweh/the Great I Am assigned him the overwhelming task of getting the enslaved Hebrew people out of Egypt.  We learned about the disasters that befell their Egyptian oppressors, the worst being the deaths of all the Egyptian firstborn sons, and about the celebration of the Festival of Passover that emerged from that terrifying night.
         We imagined how the Hebrew people must have cowered in their huts and houses.  Their doorframes had been painted with the blood of a yearling lamb as God had required.  Families and friends had shared its roasted meat among themselves along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 
         And through it all, the Israelites could not help but hear the keening of Egyptian mothers holding their dead and dying sons.  They shuddered as the sounds of agony and despair emanating from the Pharaoh’s palace came to them on the nighttime air as even “he who had been the most powerful” wept over the death of his little prince. 
         And over the crying and wailing, they heard voices filled with fear and anger.  “Go, get out of here.  What with all these plagues and disasters, you will kill us all!  Get out!”
         And then, there was nothing, no more voices, no more keening.  And the Israelites sat in that deep silence, listening.  And out of the silence came a whisper and the soft knock on doors.  The word was spreading – not the word of death, but the word of impending freedom.  “Come.  Now.  This is the time.  We are leaving.” 
         And they did.  They left their homes, their cooking pots, and the cracked mug that always held their morning coffee.  They left their clothes and that box of old photos and mementos. 
They left toy dump trucks, their pint-sized beds still filled with sand, and faded, much loved ragdolls.  They left their entire lives behind and followed this man, Moses, whom they scarcely knew.
         They could not travel overland toward Canaan as that would require passing through six Egyptian military outposts, and face it, a bunch of overworked and underfed Hebrew laborer slaves – not to mention all the women and children – were no match for the Egyptian military complex.  And so, as ludicrous as it seemed, they followed Moses instead toward the sea – with a thick cloud ahead of them by day and a pillar of fire to lead them at night. 
         They were not long into their escape, however, when the Pharaoh realized that he had made an enormous mistake.  Who would build his pyramids and glorious cities?  Who would make the bricks to fashion the architectural wonders and monuments to memorialize his reign? 
         “What have we done?  We have no slaves.  We have no work force. The economy will go to hell in a hand basket.”  And so the Pharaoh, feeling that he had no choice (“It’s the economy, stupid!”), gathered some 600 chariots and horses and military officers and relentlessly pursued the Hebrews.
         It did not take long before our slaves saw the approaching army, and they did then for the first time what they would do countless more times in the next 40 years before they reached their Promised Land.  They complained. 
         “Oh, come on, Moses.  Weren’t the cemeteries large enough in Egypt so that you had to take us out here in the wilderness to die? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt?...Didn’t we tell you, ‘Leave us alone here in Egypt—we’re better off as slaves in Egypt than as corpses in the wilderness.’  Here we are – caught between a rock and hard place.  The Egyptians are closing in behind us  - and there is only water – as far as we can see – ahead of us.  We’re trapped.  We’re goners.  And it’s all your fault.”  Not an impressive way to start leading!
         However, let’s give Moses credit at this point of despair and near rebellion.  Moses rose to the occasion and tried his best to be the kind of leader God had called him to be.  After all, he thought, they had come this far, and God/Yahweh/The Great I Am did seem to be taking an interest in their plight. 
         So Moses spoke to the people – though maybe his knees were knocking a bit even as he proclaimed: “Don’t be afraid. Stand your ground, and God will fight the battle for you.  And for now – just keep your mouths shut!”
         “There,” Moses said to himself, wiping his hands on his robe.  “That should keep them quiet.  And now, God/Yahweh/The Great I Am, the ball is in your court.”
         Moses, oh Moses!  You got it all wrong.  You see, God threw a curve ball then and said to him: “Why are you crying out to me? Speak to the Israelites, the Hebrews. Order them to get going, to move forward.  Hold your staff high and stretch your hand out over the sea: Split the sea, Moses, split the sea!”
         “What?” Moses mumbled.  “Split the sea? What are you talking about?  I got them out of Egypt.  I thought YOU were taking over from here?”
         Yahweh/God/The Great I Am chose not to dignify his remark with a reply.  Having no recourse then, Moses, shaking his head, feeling particularly old and very frustrated – and more than a wee bit silly – stepped into the water.  It sloshed about his ankles, and the hem of his robe got wet. 
         He took a deep breath, raised his staff high over his head, and held his other hand over the water, hoping no one would laugh at him.  Nothing much seemed to happen at first, but, with his back to the Israelites, he shouted in the most commanding voice he could muster, “Come on.  Follow me.”  And he began to walk – step by soggy step – into the waters.  And the people followed. 
         In a Jewish commentary on this story, the writer imagines that the water got deeper and deeper as Moses and the Israelites waded further and further from shore.  First the water covered their ankles and then climbed to their knees.  They tied their robes up to keep them from getting heavy and wet.  Children had to be picked up and carried. 
         When the water reached their waists, those who were not carrying children hoisted meager belongings onto shoulders and heads.  The water continued to rise, and still they continued to walk forward.  It was not until the water had reached their chins that, in a miraculous rush, it subsided, and the Israelites walked on dry land to the other side. 
       The Egyptians, of course, were not so blessed.  Their chariot wheels became mired in mud.  Horses floundered, and the sea swept back, leaving in its wake corpses – 600 human corpses.  As Baptist pastor Thomas McKibbens writes, “We find an image of waves lapping up on dead soldiers, dead horses, and broken chariots, symbolic of dead power and dead arrogance.
       And if we listen closely in reading the scripture, we hear the eerie sound of a woman’s voice on the sand dune overlooking the beach… And from her lips comes a song that has come down to us in a form of Hebrew so archaic that (some) scholars have concluded that it is the oldest hymn in the entire Bible, maybe even coming from that very time. She keens out the words of the song:
Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.
         The Israelites are safe.  They are free.  What a story!
         A boy was sitting on a park bench with one hand resting on an open Bible. He was loudly exclaiming his praise to God. "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God is great!" he yelled without worrying whether anyone heard him or not.
         Along came a man who had recently completed his studies at a local university. Feeling himself very enlightened in the ways of truth and very eager to show this enlightenment, he asked the boy about the source of his joy.
         "Hey" asked the boy in return with a bright laugh, "Don't you have any idea what God is able to do? I just read that God opened up the waves of the Red Sea and led the whole nation of Israel right through the middle."
         The enlightened man laughed lightly, sat down next to the boy, and began to explain the "realities" of the miracles of the Bible. "That can all be very easily explained,” he lectured. Modern scholarship has shown that the Red Sea in that area was only 10-inches deep at that time. It was no problem for the Israelites to wade across."
         The boy was stumped. His eyes wandered from the man back to the Bible laying open in his lap. The man, content that he had enlightened a poor, naive young person, turned to go.  Scarcely had he taken two steps when the boy began to rejoice and praise God louder than before. The man turned to ask the reason for this resumed jubilation.
         "Wow!" exclaimed the boy happily, "God is greater than I thought! Not only did God lead the whole nation of Israel through the Red Sea, God topped it off by drowning the whole Egyptian army in only 10 inches of water!"      
         This story, which we often call “The Parting of the Red Sea,” is one of those Biblical tales where we can so easily become hung up on what exactly are the literal facts of the narrative.  We argue about how deep the water really was.  We debate whether the Israelites crossed the Red Sea – or the Reed Sea – or a tributary of one or the other.  We try to cram the story into a logical, rational, historical box – convincing ourselves that its truth is found in whether there was 10 inches of water or 20 foot waves. 
         However, this story is not about history – as we understand history today.  This story is about God/Yahweh/The Great I Am.  This story is about faith, about faith in God’s love and protective caring.  This story is about how far we will go, how deep into the waters we will travel on what seems like only a wing and a prayer.  This story that is so central to the Jewish psyche and therefore so central to Jesus is about faith, faith in the power and abiding presence of God.
         And this story is about more than simply trusting.  It is about what you do when you have your back to the sea, when you have run out of options, when there seems to be no way.  “And then God opens a way that was not there. God opens a path that did not exist. Up to this point it has been about trusting God. Up to this point it has been about accepting that God will fulfill (God’s) promises. Now it is just about following the path.”  (Pastor Gavin)
         So it was for the Israelites, and so it is for us.  If we have not already, someday we will all face impossible situations, with nowhere to go.  Do you treat the cancer?  What do you do with the son whom you suspect is gay, or the daughter whose marriage is falling apart?  What do you do when your life – or the life of someone you love – turns on a dime – and there seems to be no way forward, no way out of the horror, the dislocation, and the pain? 
         As Baptist pastor Amy Butler writes, “In the hardest moments of your life and mine there are decisions that need to be made, decisions about whether or not we will lift our feet and take the next step, even though we have no idea what’s ahead, or we’re scared beyond belief or both.”
         This story about Moses leading the Hebrew people to freedom is about those moments when you have to decide whether or not you will step out into the waters of faith.  It is about those times when you have to come clean and decide just how powerful, how loving, how protective this God you worship here every Sunday really is. 
         But understand that the question is not, as Amy Butler points out, “will God bail us out?” It is rather “will we have the courage to step out in faith?”
         No one said that living faithfully is easy.  Even Moses realized that God was not going to do it all.  What did God say to Moses? “ Why are you crying out to me? … Split the sea, Moses, split the sea!”
          Moses had to raise that stick, had to stretch those 80 year old gnarled hands out over the waters that seemed to have no end, had to take that first step into the brine, had to screw up all his courage and beckon the Israelites to follow.  As seminary professor John Holbert noted, “God's biblical promise is not that God will forever save us from ourselves and our stupidity. The promise is rather that God will stand with us, urging us” on.
          And when we embrace that promise, when we make that statement of faith central to who we are, when we take that deep breath and step out into the waters of faith, not knowing where it will lead us, but trusting that in the end it will be to a good place, that is when the waters part, revealing a path, a plan, a way when there seemed to be no way.  That is when we know that we are not in this crazy life alone. That is when we can see dry land ahead of us when before it was only the roiling and chaotic sea. 
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, U.C.C., Raymond, Maine

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Exodus 12:1-14 "Remember"


 You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 
         And the story of Moses continues.  We first met this greatest of Israel’s leaders two weeks ago as an infant floating down the Nile River in Egypt.  Saved from certain death by the King (Pharaoh’s) princess daughter, the babe grew to be a man and was forced to flee his adopted homeland as a middle-aged adult.  He settled in a foreign country, and the years went comfortably by.  However, when he was long into his retirement, Moses was tapped on the shoulder by God/Yahweh/the Great I Am.  When Moses thought that only golf and the Golden Years lay ahead of him, the Almighty called him into service. 
         God told Moses that his job was to get the enslaved Hebrews out of Egypt.  His task was to lead them on a journey (which would turn out to be a long and frequently dispiriting 40 year trek) to the Promised Land, to the land bequeathed to their ancestor, Abraham, in the dim reaches of pre-history. 
         Moses was not particularly excited by the thought of such an immense responsibility.  He hemmed and hawed before that burning bush on the heights of Mt. Sinai as God made his demand. 
Moses agreed to it, but only very tentatively and with a glaring lack of self-confidence.  However, God had assured Moses that the Holy One would be there to guide and protect him in his dealings with the Pharaoh – and what more could he ask for?
         And so Moses returned to Egypt, this place that had once been his home – where, as a child, he had swum in the river, played hide-and-seek in the olive groves, and laughed with all his princeling buddies.  Egypt had not changed all that much over the years. 
         The architectural wonders built with human hands still glittered in the glare of the afternoon sun.  The Hebrew slaves whose human hands were doing that building still groaned under the hard labor set before them day in and day out.  The Egyptian taskmasters were still grim and often violent.  After all, to give the Israelites even so much as a taste of freedom was to potentially set the stage for mutiny and rebellion, and the Pharaoh would most definitely frown at that.
         Moses saw all this – and remembered.  Then, shaking his tired head, he made his way to Pharaoh’s palace, that place that had once been his home, where he knew all the secret passageways and staircases, where he had climbed into his grandfather Pharaoh’s lap at night and listened to stories of Ra, the powerful Egyptian sun god, and Isis his wife, and her consort, Osiris. 
         And it was there in the Pharaoh’s royal court that God/Yahweh/the Great I Am and Moses (accompanied by his brother Aaron) made their case.  “Let my people go.”
         But the Pharaoh was a stubborn man – and did not want to give up his enslaved labor force on a whim.  So there was a certain amount of boasting and trash talking before God got down to business. 
         Aaron threw down his walking stick, which turned into a snake.  “What do you think of THAT, Pharaoh?”  Then Pharaoh’s magicians turned their walking sticks into snakes as well.  “Take THAT, Moses!”  But Aaron’s snake ate the other snakes.  “Put THAT into your pipe and smoke it!”
         However, the Pharaoh was a stubborn man – and perhaps that was his downfall because God/Yahweh/the Great I Am had little patience for stubbornness and soon got serious about freedom for the Hebrews. A series of disasters befell Egypt, some of which the Pharaoh’s magicians could match, but many that were beyond their parlor tricks. 
         The Nile River turned to blood, and all the fish died, and the stench was unbearable.  Then frogs turned up everywhere, leaping from the river by the thousands to make their homes in beds and ovens and cooking pans.  Then a zillion gnats were formed from the dust and buzzed and bit unmercifully – followed by a plague of flies. 
         All the animals died, leaving the Egyptian people to starve, and then men, women, and children were beset with boils and open sores.  Infection was rampant, and the death statistics soared. 
         In spite of the toll being taken on his own people, still the Pharaoh did not relent.   Hail beat down on his subjects and their crops - precious harvests like flax and barley - were ruined.  The wheat harvest survived the hail, but it too was destroyed when locusts swarmed across the land and ate everything in their path.  Not a green leaf was left on any tree or plant.
         Pharaoh was worried as he watched his fellow Egyptians suffer, but he remained a stubborn ruler.  At times, he seemed to relent but always went back on his word. 
         Then God sent darkness, a thick blackness that covered both the land and a people who had been born into never-failing, brilliant sunshine.  Pharaoh tried to broker a deal with Moses then : Take your people but leave your animals.  Not a chance, and so negotiations broke down, and God/Yahweh/the Great I Am, through Moses, announced the worst punishment of all: Death to the firstborn males of all Egyptians and the firstborn of whatever might still remain of their animals.
         And it is at that dreadful moment that our Scripture reading picks up today – but perhaps not in a way we might have expected.  In the midst of the drama of boils and frogs, locusts and darkness, the author seems to take a step back and relates a series of detailed and extremely precise instructions about the formation of the Jewish calendar, the slaughter of unblemished lambs, and how and what to eat for this last meal before the Hebrew slaves flee. 
         Have your bags all packed, eat with your sandals on and with your walking stick in your hand, and, by the way, this last supper is to be a religious festival celebrated year in and year out until the end of time.  Do not forget.  Do this always in remembrance of me, Yahweh/God/the Great I Am who delivered you out of Egypt and into freedom. 
         Do this to remember me, to remember this experience because it is like no other you will ever have.  Do this to remember your exodus to freedom, to remember my power and my love for you.  Do this to remember me. 
         As Christian blogger, Rick Morley wrote, “This meal would begin to form them into a new kind of people, almost like a group process exercise on a high ropes course. And, the fact that God would ask them to have this meal over and over again into perpetuity would solidify their new identity.” 
         An oppressed, dispirited group of slaves are molded into God’s chosen people, people who would be a light to all the nations.  As Episcopal priest Charles Hoffacker notes, “Some three thousand years later, the Exodus experience and the Passover celebration remain at the heart of what it means to be Jewish.  The Jewish people recognize that their God acts in history, liberates (God’s) people from bondage, leads them into freedom.”
         “The Exodus experience and the Passover celebration remain at the heart of what it means to be Jewish.”  Fast-forward now a thousand years to Galilee and to an itinerant rabbi preaching to the peasant masses. The rabbi’s name is Jesus, and because he was devoutly Jewish, the memory of the Exodus experience was ingrained ever so deeply into his soul, and the Passover celebration was part of who he was.
         And it is precisely there that the relationship between who we are Christians and this ancient – much of it mythical but in the very best and truest sense of the word – where who we are as Christians and this ancient story of Moses intersect – in these 12 verses where the author of the Book of Exodus outlines the foundation of the Passover celebration.
          “On the tenth of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one lamb to a house. If the family is too small for a lamb, then share it with a close neighbor, depending on the number of persons involved. Be mindful of how much each person will eat. Your lamb must be a healthy male, one year old…Keep it penned until the fourteenth day of this month and then slaughter it…. You are to eat the meat, roasted in the fire…along with bread, made without yeast, and bitter herbs. Don’t eat any of it raw or boiled in water; make sure it’s roasted—the whole animal, head, legs, and innards.”
         Lamb bone, unleavened bread (we call it matzo), bitter herbs:  If you have been to our Seder meal on Maundy Thursday, then you know what Jesus and his disciples were doing that last night before he was executed a thousand years after the Exodus of the Hebrew slaves. 
         Jesus and his friends ate bread without yeast.  They drank wine, and they talked about the time of slavery in Egypt.  As Baptist pastor Timothy McGhee notes, “The Lord's Supper has ancient roots.  It is steeped in history and symbolism.  They grow deep in the fertile soil of the Old Testament and Judaism.  Indeed, we find the origin of the Lord’s Supper in the Jewish Passover.  The Lord’s Supper was initiated at the close of the Passover meal. “
         We may not all believe quite the same things about the meaning of this last supper.  Some may see it as a memorial meal where we re-enact what Jesus did on that final night of his life.  Others may see Jesus as the one sacrificed.  Still others may see him as symbolic of the unblemished perfect lamb that goes to the slaughter as part of God’s plan to save the Israelite people from death, that goes to the slaughter, to the cross, as part of God’s plan to save us from ourselves. 
         But though our theologies might differ – and many of us may not be quite sure what we believe when it comes to this sacrament (and that is OK) – still we are invited to this table to remember:  To remember that just as God acted in history and brought the Hebrew people to freedom thousands of years ago, so God continues to act in history, offering us freedom from all that enslaves us and binds us to who we are rather than who we might be as sons and daughters of the Holy One. 
         We are invited to this table to remember:  To remember that just as Moses brought to Israel the commandments of God, so Jesus brings to us a new commandment:  “Love one another as I have loved you.” 
         We are invited to this table to remember:  To remember that God was faithful to the Hebrews in spite of how unfaithful they could prove themselves to be to God, and so God is faithful to us even in our times of distraction and unfaithfulness. 
         We are invited to this table to remember:  To remember that God is with us today – and will be for all the tomorrows to come, no matter how dark or beset with plagues those tomorrows may be.  Where there is darkness, our God will bring light.
         We are invited to this table to remember:  To remember that this man, Jesus, devout Jew, presider over the ancient ritual of Passover on the night before he died, embodied everything that God is – powerful and empowering, faithful and calling us to faithfulness, loving and calling us to love.
         A loaf of bread.  A cup of wine.  Do this in remembrance of me.  Come, this is the Passover Meal, made over for us, to prepare us for our own exodus, to prepare us to leave the old behind and seek the new, to nourish us as we walk in the way of the One who first shared the bread and the cup with his family, his friends.  Do this to remember me.  Come, all of you, for the feast is ready.  
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, U.C.C., Raymond, Maine