1.  Citing from the Bible

a.  The phrase “When God began to create” (Gen 1:1, NRSV) indicates that God is continuing to create.

Use the book, chapter and verse, along with the translation.  You do not need to put a page number or name the publisher of the Bible. In other words, you would note that the phrase is from the NRSV, but you do not need to say that it is from the Harper-Collins Study Bible.

2.  Citing from a commentary or other book:

a. Direct quote:

Westermann points out that “there is no creation story that is arranged in a succession of days” (Westermann, 89).

b.  Paraphrase:

Westermann points out that the creation story in Genesis is unique in its ordering of creation into seven days (Westermann, 89).

 Doing a bibliography

Westermann

1994                            Genesis 1-11.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Include in your bibliography a list of all the Biblical versions that you used. (You may list them by their abbreviation, i.e. NRSV, NIV, etc.)

Tal vez por eso me identifico con Jacob. Mi madre me dice que a los tres años mi frase favorita era “yo primero”. Yo también lucho: con la gente, las situaciones, con Dios. Cuando lo digo así- “luchar”, casi suena noble. Pero cuando me acuerdo de Jacob, “agarrar, apoderarse,” luchar suena menos noble.

Jacob agarró, se apoderó de la primogenitura de Esaú. agarró la bendición de Esaú. Dios prometió que la familia de Abraham y de Isaac iba a ser medio de bendición para todas las familias de la tierra. Pero Jacob ni siquiera fue capaz de compartir la hospitalidad y la bendición con su propio hermano hambriento.

No es la persona adecuada para ser portador del pacto.

Y por eso, porque él es el que agarra, Jacob es apartado de su hermano. Jacob es un “ niño de mamá”. Muy apegado a su madre. Pero porque su madre le ayudó en la maniobra de arrebatar, Jacob es separado de ella y hasta de su padre.

Más tarde, Jacob llega a conseguir cuatro esposas. Pero se casa con tres de ellas porque su suegro lo engaña. Él ama a Raquel y trabaja duro para ganarla. Pero así como Jacob engañó a su propio padre, Labán engaña a Jacob. Y de este engaño viene de una relación amarga y contenciosa entre las dos hermanas.

Asimismo, Jacob también engaña al suegro. Este engaño lo lleva a la necesidad de salir y volver a casa. Así, él se encuentra separado de la familia con quien ha vivido durante 21 años. Y sus mujeres son separadas de sus familiares.

Al regresar a casa Jacob siente miedo de su hermano…y con razón. Hace planes para sobornarlo; para la posibilidad de que Esaú le ataque. Le recuerda a Dios su promesa y presume ante Dios de que posee mucho más ahora que la última vez de encontrarse con Dios. Le implora a Dios que lo salve de su hermano. Y al mismo tiempo hace planes para salvarse a sí mismo.

Y finalmente llegamos al texto de hoy. Nos encontramos con que en este momento, Jacob no tiene ni hermano, ni padre, ni madre, ni esposas, ni hijos. Jacob se ha quedado solo

Todo lo que Jacob ha agarrado, arrebatado, ha desaparecido y es en aquel momento que este hombre (¿será Dios misma?) viene y lucha con el luchador.

Jacob arrebató todo lo que tenía. Pero ahora se agarra a la única cosa que realmente necesita: se agarra a Dios. La ironía es que la bendición que tan desesperadamente quiere arrebatarle a Dios ya es suya. Ha sido suya todo el tiempo. Él nunca necesitó arrebatar nada.

Al final, aunque Jacob ganó la pelea, Dios ganó la batalla.

Jacob logra recibir el perdón de su hermano y por fin entiende que este perdón es un regalo. Es restaurado: con su hermano, con la madre y el padre, con sus esposas e hijos.

Queridos amigos y amigas, cuando tratamos de agarrar bendición no podemos cumplir con nuestro llamado de ser bendición nosotras y nosotros mismos. Al contrario, destruimos las relaciones con nuestros seres queridos. Nos encontramos solos y solas. Nos sentimos hostigados y hostigadas por nuestras congregaciones. Creemos que tenemos que luchar con la persona superintendente del distrito o con “el sistema”. Pero es preciso recordar la historia de Jacob.

No es necesario recordarle a Dios de sus promesas. No tenemos que agarrar o arrebatar lo que Dios ha dado gratuitamente: su Hijo por nosotros. Podemos dejar de luchar porque, en la cruz, Dios ya luchó con el pecado y el sufrimiento y la muerte. Y en la resurrección de Jesús, Dios ganó la victoria sobre todos ellos.

Jacob recibió un nuevo nombre. Y también nosotros y nosotras. 1 Pedro 2:9 dice: Pero vosotros sois linaje escogido, real sacerdocio, nación santa, pueblo adquirido por Dios, para que anunciéis las virtudes de aquel que os llamó de las tinieblas a su luz admirable.

Y así, Pueblo de Dios, hoy mi reto para ustedes es el siguiente: Renunciar al arrebatamiento. Dejar de luchar. Reclamar el nombre de Jesús y proclamar las maravillas de Dios.

En el nombre del Padre y del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo. Amén.

Before he was even born, Jacob was a wrestler. He wrestled with his brother, his twin, in his mother’s womb. His very name “Jacob” means “he grabs.”  Bill Power like to call Esau and Jacob, “Hairy” and “Grabby.”  As Jacob is born he is holding on to his brother’s heel, as if to say “me first.”

Maybe that is why I identify with Jacob; my mother tells me that my favorite phrase as a three year old was “me first.”  And I struggle with things. I wrestle with people, with situations, with God.

When I say it that way—that I wrestle—it almost sounds noble. But when I remember that Jacob, the wrestler,  is “Grabby” it sounds less noble.

Jacob grabbed brother Esau’s birthright, he grabbed Esau’s blessing.  Abraham and Isaac’s family was to be the avenue through which God would bring blessing to all the families of the earth.  But Jacob couldn’t even share hospitality and blessing with his own hungry brother.  He is not a fitting person to carry the covenant.

And so, because he is one who grabs, Jacob is separated from his brother.  Jacob is a “momma’s boy.” He is very close to his mother.  But because his mother aided him in his grabbing, he is separated from her and from his father as well.

Over time, Jacob gains four wives.  But he is tricked by his father-in-law into marrying 3 of them.  He loves Rachel and works hard for her. But just as Jacob has deceived his own father, Laban deceives Jacob. And out of this deceit comes a bitter and competitive relationship between the sisters.

Eventually the deceit practiced by Jacob against his father-in-law leads to Jacob needing to leave and go back home.  So he is separated from the family that he has lived with for 21 years.  And his wives are separated from their family as well.

Jacob is coming back home and he is afraid of his brother—with good reason.  He makes plans to bribe his brother.  He plans for the possibility that Esau will attack him.  He reminds God of God’s promise and he brags to God that he has much more than when he last met God.  He begs God to save him from his brother.  And then he makes plans to save himself.

And finally we come to the text for today.  And we find that in this moment, Jacob no longer has a brother, no longer has father and mother, no longer has wives, no longer has children. Jacob is alone.

Everything Jacob has grabbed is gone and it is in that moment that this man (is it God?) comes and wrestles with the wrestler.

Jacob has grabbed for everything he has.  But now he grabs for the one thing that he really needs—he grabs for God.  And yet the irony is that the blessing he so desperately wants to grab from God is already his.  It has been his all along.  He has not needed to grab for anything.

And in the end, though Jacob won the wrestling match, God has won the battle.  Jacob is able to receive the forgiveness of his brother and finally understands that this is a gift.  He is restored to his brother, restored to his mother and father, restored to his wives and children.

My dear friends, when we try to grab blessing for ourselves we are not able to fulfill our calling to be a blessing.  Instead we destroy relationships with those we love.  We find ourselves alone.    We feel embattled by our congregations, we think we have to wrestle with the district superintendent or “the system”.   But we need to remember the story of Jacob.

We do not have to remind God of God’s promises to us.  God reminds us that we don’t have to grab what God has freely given—his Son for our sake.  We can stop wrestling because on the cross, God has wrestled with sin and suffering and death.  And in the resurrection of Jesus, God has won the victory over them all.

Jacob received a new name.  And so have we.  1 Peter 2:9   But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

And so, People of God, my challenge today for you is this:  Give up grabbing, stop wrestling, claim the name of Jesus and proclaim the mighty acts of God.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When God created the universe and all things in it, God created humankind in the image of God.  And God gave humankind a task that was as much a promise as it was a command.  Be fruitful and multiply, fill the land and subdue it.

In due course,  God chose a man and a woman and said, you will be a family special to me.  And God gave to this family a task that was as much a command as it was a promise.  “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be blessing.”

The story of Genesis is the story of that family struggling with those promises and commands; struggling to be fruitful and to bring blessing.

Eventually the family of God, the children of Israel wind up in Egypt, where one of their own, Joseph, has brought a kind of blessing to both Egyptian people and the Canaanite people by providing food in times of famine.  But the family of God, the people of Israel didn’t return to the promised land; they stayed in Egypt and at the beginning of the book of Exodus we find that they have been there for 400 years.

During that time they have prospered.  They have fulfilled the promise.  They are numerous and strong and fill the land.  In fact they are so numerous and strong that the Pharaoh, a new Pharaoh, who didn’t remember that Joseph was a friend, that Joseph had saved them all, a new Pharaoh is afraid that they will “subdue” the land, with the help of his other enemies, of course.

And because he is afraid, because the Israelites have become so numerous and so mighty, because they have swarmed over the land, Pharaoh sets over this people taskmasters and oppressors.  But the more they are oppressed, the more they multiply until the Egyptians come to dread them.

I think I know how the Egyptians felt.  I lived in Mesquite Texas for 17 years and in Mesquite, after a soaking rain (which, believe it or not we do get occasionally) there would appear in my yard a series of mounds of dirt.  I don’t know what it means where you live when you see mounds of dirt pop up overnight in your yard, but in Texas what it means is fire ants.  The first year that we lived in our new house in Mesquite I decided I wanted to be organic; and so when the ant hills would pop up, I would try the organic solution to getting rid of them.  I tried simply drowning them out.  This required that I stand aways away and hold the hose . . .

The next year, we decided we would try something like Amdro, bait that you sprinkle on the mound and let the ants come and get it.  It was supposed to be taken to the queen and the queen would die and the ants would die.

Our yard became as poisoned as a toxic waste dump, but we never got rid of the ants.  17 years we fought the battle and we never won.  The more we would oppress those ants, the more they would mulitply.  I know why the Egyptians dreaded the swarming Israelites.

But what I don’t quite understand is this:

If the Israelites were so mighty, then why were they oppressed.  I don’t want to be accused of blaming the victims here, but the fact is that God was clearly with them, clearly blessing them, so what’s up.

In preparing for this sermon,  I watched that wonderful old film, The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston.  It had been a long time since I had seen that movie and several things struck me this time.  For one thing, I noticed that in the movie there is a prophecy of a deliverer.  However, in the biblical text, that promise is not there, though the promise of God made in covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is intact.

In fact, in the biblical text, the people of God have forgotten about that covenant.  Forgotten who they are and whose they are.  The stated reason that they are being oppressed is that Pharaoh has forgotten Joseph.    But the implied reason is that the people have forgotten the God  of their fathers.

When the people forget that they are the mighty people of the living God, they become the miserable slaves of the current Pharaoh.  The Pharaoh no longer knew Joseph but the sin of the people was greater:  They no longer knew God. When they cry out in pain, they cry to no one in particular.

Brothers and sisters, we are the mighty people of God.  We spread over this land.  Methodist circuit riders went out and spread the gospel over the land.  Sometimes they were there before the settlers. We have been fruitful, we have multiplied.  We have built the kingdom.

Then why have we succumbed to slavery?    You don’t think we have?  Maybe it’s different in your conference, maybe you don’t have the problems we do in North Texas.  But what we sometimes hear is the groaning of slaves.  Groaning about losing members and falling attendance.  Some groan about being slaves to culture and how the church is just catering to the whims of current fashion.  Some groan about being slaves to the past and how hard it is to bring people into the 21^st century.

Maybe the groaning is justified but maybe the real problem is that we have forgotten who we are and whose we are.  Maybe we are more interested in maintaining the country club than in building the kingdom.  And yes, this is true even of small, country churches.  For five months, I served two churches in rural Arkansas.  In the larger church the people lamented the fact that “there are no more children in this town.”  The fact was that there were probably 15 children within walking distance of that church, but they did not belong to the members of the church.  Some of those children were of a different cultural or ethnic background from the church members and from a different socio-economic stratum.  So to the members of the church they were “no children”.  However, the other church that I served, in an even smaller town had a completely different attitude.  They opened the doors to any and all the children in the town.  They worked with the other churches and opened their new fellowship hall to boy scouts and girl scouts.  They were free from the blindness of the larger church and so they became the church that built the kingdom.

Maybe we are more interested in serving Pharaoh than in making disciples.  You can tell who the current Pharaoh is by the way people respond to challenges.  I don’t know about your congregation, but in my last congregation we were all but enslaved to a very nice man named Ken Lamb.  Now Ken Lamb had not tried to enslave us, he would probably be horrified if he heard me saying this, we had enslaved ourselves to Mr. Lamb.  Why?  Because Ken Lamb was our insurance agent.  The first question people asked about any new project or ministry that we though about was not: will this build the kingdom of God, but will our insurance cover it.  The solution that was often proposed was not: get more insurance, but stop the program.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t consider insurance issues.   We would be poor stewards if we didn’t.  But it shouldn’t be the first question we ask.

For some the Pharaoh is tolerance.  They do not ask the question: will my words or actions reveal Christ to this person, but “will my words or actions offend someone?” And so we become enslaved to people who are more interested in power and position than in proclaiming the Gospel.   We also have trouble with that Pharaoh “King relevance”  We are more likely to ask “Is it relevant” than “Is it the truth?”   Forgetting of course, that truth is always relevant!).  I’ve noticed that Youth pastors are particularly prone to serve this Pharaoh.

When the people of Israel forgot God, they forgot to whom it was that they cried out.  But the wonderful is that God did not forget the People of Israel.  The text says that they groaned under their slavery and cried out, not that they cried out to God, but simply that they cried out.  And then it says that their cry rose up to God and God heard.

When I was 15 my5 year old sister died.  I thought I had to be strong.  So I didn’t cry, I kept in the pain and the tears and I was strong and brave.  But one night in the dark the pain became too much.  I started crying and I cried quietly so that no one would hear.  Except that after just a little while I looked up and my father had come into the room.. He came over and sat on the bed and talked with me and comforted me.  I was not crying out to my father.  But my father was also in pain and he was listening.  He heard the sound of my cries and he came.

We have a God who hears.  We have a God who knows our pain.  And we have a God who through God’s own suffering has set us free.

Galatians 5:1 For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

I say again: We are the mighty people of God, Why are we afraid?  We have the greatest good news in the history of world.  We serve the one who is master of the universe.  Who has untold power.  We serve the one who hears the cry of his people.  And unlike the Israelite people, we do not have to wait for a deliverer.  We have already been delivered.  We say in our baptismal vows that we accept the freedom that God gives to resist evil and injustice.  We don’t have to do this alone.

The story of Exodus is the story of the New Testament.  God gives the people a name, a gift, a journey and a task.  The name is the name of God, Yahweh.  The gift is the gift of the law/Jesus.  The journey is to the promised land/Jerusalem. And the task is to bless the nations by showing them how this mighty God is a life-giving God. The task in the New Testament is to make disciples of the nations.

We are the mighty people of God, not the miserable slaves of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh delt in death, God deals in life.  Pharaoh dealt in slavery, God deals in freedom.  The people served Pharaoh thru forced labor and building Pharaoh’s supply cities.  The people served God by worshiping God and building God’s tabernacle.  The contrast could not be more clear.  [Insert modern day contrasts]

We are the mighty people of God.  We are not to be satisfied to a get-by, get-on-with-it, get-through-it life, not just a “life’s a bitch and then you die” kind of life, not just a we’ll be satisfied with slavery kind of life, but we are called to a life of freedom and power, a life of wholeness and health, a life of joy and redemption.  We aren’t just going down the road to the next job, we are going on to the promised land of kingdom life.  Why are we so scared?  We are the mighty people of God.  And when we return to our homes and our congregations, pray God that we will not forget, and pray God we will never let our congregations forget either.

Let us pray . . .

Abbreviated Exegesis of Exodus 1:1-14

No significant differences between translations.

Questions:

Why did the Egyptians fear the Israelites?

Why were the Egyptians able to oppress the Israelites if they were so numerous?

Sources:

1-7 and 13-14 are Priestly and 8-12 is Jahwist.

In both the fruitfulness is followed by the oppression.  In the J source, this is explained more; the king is oppressing the Israelites because he is afraid of them.  The issue of fear is not there in the P source.  Interestingly however, both sources refer to the Israelites multiplying, which is initially a P source commandment in Gen 1.

Form Criticism:

A.  Structure:  What are the boundaries of the text?

This seems to be both an introduction to the book of Exodus and a bridge from Genesis to Exodus.  The P source material in particular could be considered an editorial comment to set the stage for what is to come.

B.  Genre.  This is an introductory narrative; past that, can’t say much about genre

C.  Sitz im Leben  Certainly the J source material could be considered a story that explains why the Egyptians wanted to enslave the Israelite people.  The P source, once again seems to be bridge material.

D.  Purpose: this seems to be connecting the oppression of the Israelites with the fulfillment of the promise, since the wording is so much like the language in Gen 1.  The people are being fruitful and prolific, spreading out as they have been told to do.

V. Literary considerations:

What comes before is, of course, Genesis.  Important points:  the command of God to be fruitful and multiply, the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the story of Joseph and why the people are in Egypt in the first place.  The story of Abraham and Sarah in Egypt.

What comes after is the book of Exodus:  the story of how the people cry out; the story of the plagues, etc.

Narrative:  In one sense, this is only the introduction to the story.  However, the one with the problem here is Pharaoh, and the solution is oppression.  The only character that speaks is the Pharaoh.  The Israelite people as a whole could also be considered as a character.

Need to look into the words: fruitful, multiply, etc.

The word sharatz is used in Genesis 1 of the creatures swarming over the earth.  That image of swarming is also used in Exodus 7 where the frogs swarm over the land.  Deut 14:19 it is used of swarming insects.  Used in Leviticus a number of times of crawling things that will make one unclean.  Psalm 105:30 is also about the frogs swarming over the land.  Obviously this word brings up images of creepy, crawly things spreading over the land, like fire ants in Texas

God is not mentioned in this passage.  Not mentioned until word about the midwives.

Thesis:  The blessing of God is contrasted with the oppression of Pharaoh, setting up the conflict between God and Pharaoh that is to come in the book of Exodus.

The beginning of the book of Exodus makes a bridge between the book of Genesis and the book of Exodus.  The book of Genesis has been the story of the relationship between God and the family of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.  Joseph himself is a bridge figure, comfortable in both the Israelite and Egyptian worlds.  In Exodus, we have the story of the creation of the people of God, broadening the covenant from one family to an entire people.  Moses is the bridge figure here, once again comfortable in both the Egyptian and Israelite worlds.  The book of Exodus is also the story of the battle between Pharaoh and God.  In this introductory passage, the blessing of God is contrasted with the oppression of Pharaoh, setting up the conflict between God and Pharaoh over whether or not the people will be the mighty people of God or the miserable slaves of Pharaoh.

This passage is compiled from two sources:  P in 1-7 and 13-14 and J source in 8-12.  However, both speak of both the blessing of God.  In 1:7 the P source uses the words from Gen 1:28: “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth.”  It adds a word from Gen 1:21:  “prolific” or “swarming,” which is used in Gen 1:20 of the living creatures teeming in the seas.  The J source also uses the wording of multiplying and spreading, which actually sounds more like the language of E in the covenant renewal with Jacob in Gen 28.  In any case, in both sources, the Israelite people are seeing the fulfillment of the blessing.  Clearly, God is with the people, as God has promised.  And the implication is that God is continuing the covenant.

In both sources, however, the fulfillment of the blessing seems to be linked to the oppression of the Egyptians.  The links to the Genesis texts that precede this text give us an idea of why the Pharaoh would be afraid of the Israelites.  Certainly, in a previous encounter, that of Abraham and Pharaoh in Genesis 12, Pharaoh came out the loser.  In addition, the story of Joseph is not promising for the Egyptians.  Not only does an Israelite rise to be almost as powerful as Pharaoh himself, but Joseph is responsible for the enslavement of the entire people of Egypt.  In exchange for the grain that keeps them alive, the people of Egypt must give up their money, their cattle, their land and their lives.

Not only are the people portrayed in Genesis as being potentially more powerful than the Egyptians, the fear of the Pharaoh that the Israelites will escape the land does come true.  However, this foreshadowing is fulfilled, not through the agency of joining with other enemies, but by the hand of God.  The fear of Pharaoh leads to oppressing the people, which paradoxically leads to further multiplication of the people and the dread of the Egyptians.  This multiplication in the face of the Egyptian oppression emphasizes that the blessing of God is not dependent on good conditions, but solely on the promise of God.

Three parts to this:  Winning the hearts and minds:

signs, wonders, and plagues.

Creating connections: giving of the law at Sinai

Forming a center:  the building of tabernacle

I am a very concrete person.  I can deal with abstractions if I have to; but I would rather have concrete images to get my brain around.  I think that I am not alone in this.   A few days ago my family and I were watching a show on the Da Vinci Code and the Holy Grail legend.  We began to speculate why the grail legend has been so popular throughout the ages.  It occurred to me that the reason is that people need  concrete, visible representations of sacred, holy moments.  Incarnational theology makes deep sense to me because of this. In Christ, we have the incarnation of God, the one who walks and talks with us, the one who shares our existence.

But incarnational theology is not limited to the New Testament.  Incarnational theology is alive and well in the book of Exodus, if you will forgive the pun.  The book of Exodus can be seen as a three-part plan using the concrete and the visible to form and shape the descendants of Jacob/Israel into the people that will fulfill the covenant that God has made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.   

The first part of the plan, the signs and wonders, is intended to give the people a reason to follow this virtually unknown God and show the people God’s power.

The people descended from Jacob/Israel find themselves in a strange place.  They are in a foreign land, where they have been for about 400 years.  They have been “fruitful and prolific,” living out the command that God has given in the first chapter.  But then a new king arises who didn’t know Joseph and trouble comes.  Note the irony here:

The king didn’t know Joseph

Therefore the king didn’t know God

But the people have also forgotten God

Is this because Joseph stood so thoroughly between God and the people, that they had little chance to know God in the first place?  Looking at the story of Joseph, we see that God never speaks directly to Joseph the way God speaks to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  According to Joseph, God speaks to him and through him.  But the reader never sees and hears God speaking to Joseph, so have just have to trust that Joseph is telling us the truth about God.

With Joseph so firmly between God and the rest of the family, it seems that, except for his father Jacob, no one but Joseph ever hears God’s voice.  We have no sense that God has been speaking to them during this time in Egypt either.   It is no wonder then, that the people forget.

In addition to being the one that stands between the Israelite people and God, Joseph stands between the Egyptian people and Pharaoh.  He collects the grain and saves the people of Egypt from starvation, but he also is responsible for enslaving the people to Pharaoh.  Genesis 47:13-22.

Genesis 47:13-22  ¹³ Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe. The land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished because of the famine.  ¹⁴ Joseph collected all the money to be found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought; and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house.  ¹⁵ When the money from the land of Egypt and from the land of Canaan was spent, all the Egyptians came to Joseph, and said, “Give us food! Why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone.”  ¹⁶ And Joseph answered, “Give me your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for your livestock, if your money is gone.”  ¹⁷ So they brought their livestock to Joseph; and Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses, the flocks, the herds, and the donkeys. That year he supplied them with food in exchange for all their livestock.  ¹⁸ When that year was ended, they came to him the following year, and said to him, “We can not hide from my lord that our money is all spent; and the herds of cattle are my lord’s. There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our lands.  ¹⁹ Shall we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land in exchange for food. We with our land will become slaves to Pharaoh; just give us seed, so that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become desolate.”  ²⁰ So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them; and the land became Pharaoh’s.  ²¹ As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.  ²² Only the land of the priests he did not buy; for the priests had a fixed allowance from Pharaoh, and lived on the allowance that Pharaoh gave them; therefore they did not sell their land.

Why is this important?  Because in the context of this passage, all the people of Israel are slaves to Pharaoh, not just the Israelites.  The contrast here, then is not between the Egyptians who are the free people of Egypt and the Israelites who are the slaves of Egypt, but between those who are the people of Pharaoh and those who are the people of Yahweh.  In this context we have the contrast between the saving God and the enslaving Pharaoh.

As I said before, the Israelites have forgotten God.  When they “groan under their slavery and cry out”  they have no direction to their cries; no one to whom they are crying.  But even though they have no knowledge of God, God is the one who hears their cries.  God experiences the pain that they are suffering. And God remembers the covenant.

Here’s the dilemna:  In order for God to save these people, they have to trust God and God’s messenger.  But, they don’t think of themselves as God’s people, they think of themselves as Pharaoh’s people.  [5:15-16] Exodus 5:15-16  ⁵ Then the Israelite supervisors came to Pharaoh and cried, “Why do you treat your servants like this?  ¹⁶ No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, ‘Make bricks!’ Look how your servants are beaten! You are unjust to your own people.”

It was one thing for God to call Abraham and have him get up and go.  It is another thing for an entire people to do the same. God has to prove Godself to the people.

Once again the dilemna for God:  in order to save his people, the people have to be willing to turn toward him.  Thus the signs and wonders.  Moses turns aside because of such a sign.  The family of Jacob was willing to listen to Joseph’s voice in the place of God, but the people of Israel will need more than simply the word of Moses.  They are no longer so trusting, they are no longer a closeknit family willing to listen to a revered Patriarch.  Now they are a motley crew of slaves.  Moses knows these people well and so he asks: Why should they trust me?  And Why should they trust you?

In order for the people to know God, they need a sign, a concrete sign.  God provides abundantly.  The signs and wonders are God’s gracious attempt to show the people that they can trust in God’s power. [provision, plan ,presence

Neither the people, nor Moses is an easy sell for God.  When Moses and Aaron first go to Pharaoh and Pharaoh makes the Israelites work harder, Moses blames God, not the Pharaoh.  Ex 5:22 “Then Moses turned again to the LORD and said, “O LORD, why have you mistreated this people?”  God clearly has a long way to go in inspiring the trust of the people.

Exodus 6:1-9   Then the LORD said to Moses, "Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh: Indeed, by a mighty hand he will let them go; by a mighty hand he will drive them out of his land."  ² God also spoke to Moses and said to him: "I am the LORD.  ³ I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name 'The LORD' I did not make myself known to them.  ⁴ I also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they resided as aliens.  ⁵ I have also heard the groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians are holding as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.  ⁶ Say therefore to the Israelites, 'I am the LORD, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.  ⁷ I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians.  ⁸ I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.'"  ⁹ Moses told this to the Israelites; but they would not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery.

But the first step is to establish the authority of God’s messenger.

The first sign, the staff is the sign that makes Moses [or Aaron ] an authority figure.  The staff is the symbol of the Patriarch’s authority and the symbol of the Pharaoh’s authority.  This is a case of my staff’s better than your staff.  This is really the first of the signs and wonders and they clearly start small.  Just as clearly, Pharaoh is not impressed. We are still in the realm of things that the magicians can do.  For now, God just looks like a bigger magician.

Now a Note:  The signs and wonders are just that.  They are not natural phenomena.   They are presented as miracles, not just good timing.  You can choose to believe the miracles or not, but resist the temptation to find a natural basis for what is clearly intended to be a series of supernatural events.

[point for reflection:  People often ask whether or not God is still sending plagues.  They point at AIDS or at the attack on the World Trade Centers or at the Tsunamis and hurricanes as evidence of God’s wrath.  However, in the Exodus text we should be clear that the signs are always preceded by a direct warning from God and a chance for Pharaoh to turn from sin and turn toward the right.  The signs are very specific, and very limited.  They are turned off just as quickly as they are turned on.  In addition, in the later signs, God makes a distinction, first between the Egyptians and the Israelites and then between those who listen and those who do not.]

[Another point for reflection:  There seems to be a contrast between the strength of God, portrayed favorable as the saving strength of God’s hand and the strength of  Pharaoh, portrayed negatively as the stiffened heart of Pharaoh.  Even Pharaoh’s ‘strength’ is not fully his own; God is responsible for stiffening Pharaoh’s heart once it becomes clear that Pharaoh wishes to go that direction.]

Hitting the Nile is more of a blow.  The Nile brings life to Egypt, but Pharaoh has tried to make the life-giving Nile the instrument of death for the Israelite people.  The attack on the Nile is God’s claim over life and death.  Blood or life belongs to God.  This sign asserts authority over life

Pharaoh tried to make the Nile run red with blood in an attempt to take life

God turns the life-giving Nile into blood

The sign of blood may not completely establish God’s authority, but it begins to call into question the authority of Pharaoh’s magicians.  Once again the magicians are able to recreate the sign, but note the irony:  Instead of using their dubious powers to make fresh water, they simply make more blood.  Doesn’t that seem a bit stupid?  Not only does God have authority over life and death, but the magicians are unable to counter God’s authority.

From here the conflict rachets up a little.  God sends frogs, flies, and gnats.  Pharaoh was fearful of the Israelites swarming over the land, so God sends swarms of frogs, flies and gnats. I went out walking by the water on Monday afternoon and was surrounded by swarms of leaping, flying insects.  I thought immediately of this text.  After the frogs, the magicians are no longer able to recreate the signs and so they, at least,  become convinced of the reality of the God of Moses. 

God has no success with Pharaoh, so the next set of signs and wonders touches the livestock, the crops, the land, and the people, all of which are possesions of Pharaoh. (Remember that under Joseph, the Egyptians sold their cattle, their land, and eventually themselves to Pharaoh in order to obtain the food that Joseph had stored.)   And more importantly God distinguishes between the Egyptians and the Israelites.

^NRS Exodus 8:23 Thus I will make a distinction between my people and your people. This sign shall appear tomorrow.’”

(Distinction here means ransom or redemption)

All of these signs and wonders come against the people of Pharaoh, but none of them touch the people of God.

Exodus 9:14-16   ¹⁴ For this time I will send all my plagues upon you yourself, and upon your officials, and upon your people, so that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth.  ¹⁵ For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth.  ¹⁶ But this is why I have let you live: to show you my power, and to make my name resound through all the earth.

Eventually the signs and wonders become a demonstration of the God of creation, the one who redeems by bringing order out of chaos.  Hail and darkness, the sky and the light.  Think how this goes back to that first creation:  God separates the water from the land, hear that water comes back with a vengeance.  God separates the dark from the light, here the dark comes back for three days.

An interesting note at this point:  God seems to be getting through to someone.  The people of Egypt who listened to the word of the Lord were able to save their livestock from the hail, just as the Israelites did.

Finally, the last sign is actually labeled a plague.  This is the sign that establishes completely God’s power.  God has said to Moses that only because of a mighty hand would Pharaoh let God’s people go.  Remember 6:6, “I will redeem you with an outstretched hand and mighty acts of judgement”  Well, here it is.

One aim of God has been accomplished.  The people of Egypt now believe in the power and authority of God and of God’s servant Moses.  We see this is the plundering of the Egyptians and in

^NRS Exodus 11:3 The LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, Moses himself was a man of great importance in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s officials and in the sight of the people.

Plague=direct touch of God.  In this plague, God is personally involved.  It is the mighty hand of God that touches the Egyptians and smites their firstborn.  The mighty hand of God that convinces both the Egyptians and the Israelites that God’s power could be trusted.

The purpose of the signs and wonders has been to get the people’s attention, to convince them to leave.  Also has the purpose of forcing Pharaoh and the people of Egypt to acknowledge God.

One would think that the signs and wonders would convince the Israelite people of the power and loving care of God.  One would think that being saved by the parting of the sea would convince them. But the moment the people get into the wilderness they once again become afraid.  The are not yet truly a people, they have not yet been formed.

Once the people are in the wilderness, the sign of God’s might and the sign of God’s presence becomes the same.  The cloud by day and fire by night leads the people to the holy mountain of Sinai.  Note that God does not come upon Sinai because it is a holy place, but that it is a holy place because God chooses to use it for a time.

The second stage of creation is the giving of the law, the purpose of which is to show God’s plan for the people, to establish boundaries and shape for the people, to separate the people of God from the people of the land.  The giving of the law is God bringing order out of chaos, redemption through creation, just as we see in the first chapter of Genesis.  Just as God redeemed the chaos by creating boundaries between light from dark, boundaries holding back the waters above from the waters below, God will redeem the people by creating boundaries between them and the people of the land, boundaries between holy behavior and unholy behavior.

The first way in which God creates order and boundaries for the people is in giving the law in the midst of a covenant ceremony, basically a worship service.  The message is so clear we almost miss it:  The point of your life is to worship God, all the laws are given to help you become a people of worship.  A covenant community is a worshiping community.  Conversely, it means that the heart of worship is loving God and loving neighbor.  We worship God by staying in unbroken covenant with our community by respecting elders, not murdering, not stealing, not coveting.

The ten words.  Everything rooted in the nature and worship of God.  The identity of the people starts with the identity of God.  The character of the people starts with the character of God.

[insert a part about the character of God:

1.  God hears the cries of the people and remembers the covenant.  God is a God of remembering and perhaps a God of not forgetting.  But what God chooses to remember is the covenant love and the covenant promises that God has given to the people.

]

We are so used to thinking of the law as restrictive that we forget that the law is a source of freedom for these people who have been slaves.  No longer will they be judged arbitrarily by their masters; now they must learn to judge themselves in accordance with God’s rule.  They must take responsibility for themselves.  We see this in the “ox-goring” text, Exodus 21:28ff

Exodus 21:28 -22:1  ²⁸ When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall not be liable.  ²⁹ If the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not restrained it, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.  ³⁰ If a ransom is imposed on the owner, then the owner shall pay whatever is imposed for the redemption of the victim’s life.  ³¹ If it gores a boy or a girl, the owner shall be dealt with according to this same rule.  ³² If the ox gores a male or female slave, the owner shall pay to the slaveowner thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.  ³³ If someone leaves a pit open, or digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it,  ³⁴ the owner of the pit shall make restitution, giving money to its owner, but keeping the dead animal.  ³⁵ If someone’s ox hurts the ox of another, so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and divide the price of it; and the dead animal they shall also divide.  ³⁶ But if it was known that the ox was accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has not restrained it, the owner shall restore ox for ox, but keep the dead animal.

This is a passage that shows us how God is shaping the values of the people:

• Life is precious, not just the life of a man or of an adult or even of a free person, but the life of man, woman, boy, girl, or servant.
• The ox is subject to the penalty of death, but no one can benefit from the death of the ox, thus no one can benefit from the death of the one the ox has gored.  Death should not bring benefit, even if unintended.
• Owners must take responsibility for their own oxen.  If you know that you are in possession of something harmful, you must take responsibility for keeping others in the community safe.
• It is not necessary to impose the death penalty on the owner.  Life is precious; a ransom may be imposed instead.

What other values do we see?

• Exodus 22:14-15   ¹⁴ When someone borrows an animal from another and it is injured or dies, the owner not being present, full restitution shall be made.  ¹⁵ If the owner was present, there shall be no restitution; if it was hired, only the hiring fee is due.     Take care of others things as you would your own.
• Exodus 22:21-23   ²¹ You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.  ²² You shall not abuse any widow or orphan.  ²³ If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry;      You need to remember where you came from.
• Exodus 23:2-6   ² You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing; [Experiment with college students; civil disobedience ]  when you bear witness in a lawsuit, you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice;  ³ nor shall you be partial to the poor in a lawsuit.  ⁴ When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back.  ⁵ When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free.  ⁶ You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits.      You must act with justice, and justice does not depend on whether or not you like the person or not.  In fact your enemy is as deserving of justice as your friend.
• Finally, remember that worship is first.  Observe the festivals and offer the best to God.

The laws in Exodus are not restrictions, but statements of core values.  The laws are instructions on how to live out those core values.  The heart of the values is that of worship.  All the laws, all the rules, the whole covenant revolves around that fundamental principle:  loving God by worshiping God.  Worshiping God by living in covenant with God’s people.

The covenant of law is sealed with a meal.  Worship began the giving of the law and worship ends it.  But this time not just Moses, but the elders are invited to participate in the ceremony.

So we see that the final purpose of the law is to make connections between people, to tell them how to relate to one another and how to relate to God.

The law has provided boundaries, shape and form for the people. The third part of the formation of the people is to give them a center.  The Tabernacle is that center.  The description in the book of Exodus gives us a word picture, painting for us picture in our minds.

Exodus 25:1-2  ^NRS Exodus 25:1 The LORD said to Moses:  ² Tell the Israelites to take for me an offering; from all whose hearts prompt them to give you shall receive the offering for me. ³ This is the offering that you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze,  ⁴ blue, purple, and crimson yarns and fine linen, goats’ hair,  ⁵ tanned rams’ skins, fine leather, acacia wood,  ⁶ oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense,  ⁷ onyx stones and gems to be set in the ephod and for the breastpiece.  ⁸ And have them make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them.

While gathered around the mountain of Sinai, the people have this holy  mountain as their center.  It becomes the point of worship and the place they meet God.  However, please notice that God does not meet the people on the mountain of Sinai because it is holy ground.  Sinai becomes holy ground because that is where God meets the people.

In the tabernacle, the gratitude of the people intersects with the presence of the Almighty to form the center of the covenant community.  The tabernacle takes all of the beauty in the offereing of the people, brings it together with the offering of God in the law.  As the law comes into their midst, as the ark is carried, the people themselves become the Holy Ground.

Guided meditaion on the tabernacle.  Exodus 25-26

The account of the tabernacle shows us that multimedia worship has a long history:

          Smell:  myrrh, incense, cinnamon

          Sound:  bells on the robe

          Sight: the beauty of the gold, the blue, crimson, and purple fabric, the cherubim

          Touch:  different textures of linen, goats hair, leather, hammered gold

          Taste:  eating of the sacrificial meal

The explicit instructions show both god’s ordering hand and provides a way for the people in exile to hold on to God in the center.

Everything is movable, everything has poles. [Tabernacle community vs. Temple community; Faith UMC in the school ]

The priests match the place: they are an extension of the tabernacle. (Story about Lynn, who did not match).  Also the priests represent all 12 tribes and carry the weight of the tribes on their heads (28:36-38).  In a real way, the priests take on the image of the tabernacle and thus the image of God.  By extension the people take on the image of God.

Exodus 29:37   ³⁷ Seven days you shall make atonement for the altar, and consecrate it, and the altar shall be most holy; whatever touches the altar shall become holy.

After this beautiful set of directions by God laying out how to create the tabernacle we have a story that proves to us how important it is to have concrete, visible representations of the holy.  As Moses is up on the mountain speaking to God, the people are down in the valley convincing Aaron to make them a golden calf, not necessarily to be a replacement for Yahweh, but to be an image of Yahweh, or at the least, a throne of Yahweh.

Exodus 32:1-5  ^RS Exodus 32:1 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”  ² Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.”  ³ So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron.  ⁴ He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”  ⁵ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD.”

After this interlude, where we have the people failing miserably to abide by the words/commandments that they had been given, we have the account of the actual building of the tabernacle.

Exodus 40:34-38   ³⁴ Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.  ³⁵ Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.  ³⁶ Whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on each stage of their journey;  ³⁷ but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day that it was taken up.  ³⁸ For the cloud of the LORD was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey.

Here the Lord is before the eyes of all the house of Israel.  In case you want to downplay that, remember what happens at the end of Judges when “every man does what is right in his own eyes”

Human beings need the Lord before their eyes.  But the real point of all of the signs, the laws, and especially the tabernacle is this:  to recreate the people into the image of God.  They are to become holy as God is holy.  They are to become the visible, concrete sign of the holy presence of God in the world.

Thesis:  The book of Exodus can be seen as a three-part plan using the concrete and the visible to form and shape the descendants of Jacob/Israel into the people that will fulfill the covenant that God has made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I.      The first part of the plan, the signs and wonders, is intended to give the people a reason to follow this virtually unknown God and show the people God’s power.

A.   The Problem:

1.     The Pharaoh no longer knows Joseph.

2.     The people no longer know God.

B.   All the people in Egypt are enslaved as well as the Israelite people so the contrast is between:

1.     The people of Pharaoh and the people of God.

2.     The enslaving Pharaoh and the liberating God.

C.   The dilemna:  In order for God to save these people, they have to trust God and God’s messenger.   But, they don’t think of themselves as God’s people, they think of themselves as Pharaoh’s people.   Exodus 5:15-16

D.   The solution:  Signs and Wonders

1.     Establishing the authority of God’s messengers:  the staff

2.     Establishing God’s claim over life and death: the attack on the Nile.

3.     Convincing the magicians:  frogs, gnats, flies.

4.     Touching the possessions of Pharaoh: the cattle, land and people.  Distinguishing between the people of God and the people of Pharaoh.

5.     Eventually the signs and wonders become a demonstration of the God of creation, the one who redeems by bringing order out of chaos.

6.     God gets personally involved.  In the last plague it is the mighty hand of God that touches the Egyptians and smites their firstborn.  The mighty hand of God that convinces both the Egyptians and the Israelites that God’s power could be trusted.

II.   The second stage of creation is the giving of the law, the purpose of which is to show God’s plan for the people, to establish boundaries and shape for the people, to separate the people of God from the people of the land.

A.   The first way in which God creates order and boundaries for the people is in giving the law in the midst of a covenant ceremony, basically a worship service.

1.     The ten words.  Everything rooted in the nature and worship of God.

2.     The identity of the people starts with the identity of God.

3.      The character of the people starts with the character of God.

B.   God creates the people by using the law to shape the values of the people:

1.     Exodus 21:28-36  Life is precious and each person must take responsibility for his/her own actions and possessions.

2.      Exodus 22:14-15   Take care of others’ things as you would your own.

3.     Exodus 22:21-23   You need to remember where you came from.

4.     Exodus 23:2-6   You must act with justice, and justice does not depend on whether or not you like the person or not.  In fact your enemy is as deserving of justice as your friend.

5.     Finally, remember that worship is first.  Observe the festivals and offer the best to God.

III.                       The third part of the formation of the people is to give them a center.

A.   While gathered around the mountain of Sinai, the people have this holy  mountain as their center.

B.   In the tabernacle, the gratitude of the people intersects with the presence of the Almighty to form the center of the covenant community.

C.   The account of the tabernacle shows us that multimedia worship has a long history:

1.     Smell:  myrrh, incense, cinnamon

2.     Sound:  bells on the robe

3.     Sight: the beauty of the gold, the blue, crimson, and purple fabric, the cherubim

4.     Touch:  different textures of linen, goats hair, leather, hammered gold

5.     Taste:  eating of the sacrificial meal

D.   The priests take on the image of the tabernacle and thus the image of God.  By extension the people take on the image of God.

E.   After the directions by God laying out how to create the tabernacle we have a story that proves to us how important it is to have concrete, visible representations of the holy.

Human beings need the Lord before their eyes.  But the real point of all of the signs, the laws, and especially the tabernacle is this:  to recreate the people into the image of God.  They are to become holy as God is holy.  They are to become the visible, concrete sign of the holy presence of God in the world. 

A sermon based on Ex12:1-14

Going on a journey requires a lot of preparation.  (Place an opened, empty suitcase on the altar or a nearby table) I never know what to take when I am going on a trip.  What clothes will I need?  Long sleeve, short sleeve, or sleeveless shirts?  Long pants, skirts or jeans? (As each item of clothing is named take it from a box or the front pew and place—not too neatly—in the suitcase)  Or, why not just take them all; just in case the weather changes?   Each outfit needs its own pair of shoes, (add shoes to the suitcase) there are accessories to think about.  Don’t get me started on the makeup (most effective if the makeup or toiletries are simply dumped in from another case) and of course, I have to have my very own pillow (place pillow next to suitcase).  I also need to have my hot tea in the mornings so I take my teabags, my own cup and my hotshot to heat the water.  (Place all of these objects or something similar in and around suitcase; by now the suitcase should be overflowing) Sometimes I even take my own water.   And of course I take books. Have to have the books! (Place bag of books on altar or table, with obvious effort at lifting the heavy bag.)

Going on a trip just requires a lot of preparation.  Though I will say that having a Wal-Mart in every town has helped both the tendency to over pack, and the fear of leaving something behind, because I know that I can just run out to the 24-hour Wal-Mart if I forget anything.

When I have had to journey to a new home, the packing problem gets even worse, the preparation more extensive.  Now I have to pack up the whole house, all 4000 books included.  It seems to take forever; one of those laws of moving is that there is always another drawer and one more closet.

Going on a journey, changing where you will live, even temporarily, requires a lot of preparation.  Going on a journey where everything about your life will be radically altered, requires even more preparation.  The Israelite people are preparing for such a journey.   They have lived for 400 years in Egypt.  They are slaves of Pharaoh, burdened by hard labor.  It is a hard life, but it is the life they know.

Recently, however, their world has undergone a huge upheaval.  The God that Moses calls the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God to whom they are supposed to be faithful; this God has been engaged in a battle of sorts with the Pharaoh.  This God has been performing signs and wonders and overturning the world as they know it.  And now, Moses says that the final sign will come: a plague of death will pass through Egypt, killing all the first-born of the Egyptians.  Moses tells them that the Pharaoh is going to be so angry with them that not only will he “let them go” he will kick them out of Egypt.  And Moses says that they better get ready, because they are going to be starting out on a very long journey.

So how long do you think that would take?  A whole community being moved out.  Those of you from places like Louisiana and Texas have seen something like this in the past few years with the evacuation of the coast in front of the hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  You may have seen close up how hard it is to get people to get packed, get moving, get out while there is still time.  And that’s when the people are assuming they will return.  Can you imagine the chaos if a whole community had to up and move immediately, knowing they would never return?

How long would it take?  How much preparation?  Well, God gave them three days.  Framing the preparation for leaving are, on one side, the instructions to take a lamb and set it aside.  On the other side, three days later, the lamb is to be slaughtered, its blood spread across the lintels and doorposts and the meat roasted over the fire and eaten.  Three days to decide what to take, how to pack.  Three days to decide whether or not you really wanted to go.  Three days to worry that the Egyptians and their Pharaoh would come after you while you pack and strike you down for the audacity of thinking you could leave.  That must have been a nervous three days.

However, God must prepare the people for the journey that they will take because it is not just any journey.  It isn’t a quick trip into the desert and back.   It isn’t just moving to a new home.  This journey will radically alter their lives.  This journey will take them all of their lives.  In fact, very few of them will even see the end of the journey.  This journey will bring them from a land of oppression to a land flowing with milk and honey.  This journey will take a group of Pharaoh’s slaves and make them into the servants of the Living God.

The journey begins with that command to set aside a perfect lamb and then have a time of waiting.  So the people begin not with the chaos of fleeing before the destruction of a hurricane or with fleeing in retreat before the wrath of Pharaoh, but with preparations for the triumphant march of a victory.

This is a journey that cannot be taken alone.  God tells the people that if a household is too small to eat a whole lamb by itself, that household should join with another and share the lamb.  Everyone gets the same portion.  No one can eat the Passover Feast alone; no one gets a whole lamb to themselves.  No one stays alone in the house while the angel of death passes through Egypt. No, this feast brings together families, households, neighbors.  The slaughter of the lambs happens all at the same time, as all the households come together as a whole community.  The salvation that is preparation for this journey, the salvation that is preparation for our own journey comes when we are in community, sharing with our family, our neighbors.  For, you see, the salvation from death, the guarding of life by the blood of the lamb is how the journey begins.

Isn’t this true for us as well?  Our salvation does not set us apart from humanity; it brings us into community with all those who are the body of Christ.  We cannot eat the feast of communion alone.  The point of communion is to make us “one with Christ, one with each other and one in ministry to all the world.”

So many people these days, however, seem to want to have an experience of God by themselves.  They want to go on their own personal quest.  You will hear people say, “I am ‘spiritual’, not ‘religious’,” by which they mean that they want to go off and do their own thing and commune with divinity. Ah, but Exodus teaches us that our experience of the divine, our experience of salvation, our celebration of freedom, has to be shared with others.  We can’t do this alone, my friends.  We have to share the blood of the lamb with those who do not have the family or the community to keep them safe, to guard their lives.  We can’t keep it to ourselves so that our portion will be larger.  We have to enlarge the circle of protection, so that we can take others on the journey.

The second way that God prepares God’s people for the journey is that they are called to proclaim publicly whose side they are on.  That blood on the doorposts that marked them for life could have marked them for death if God had not been faithful to God’s promises.  It could have been Pharaoh’s soldiers passing through the households of Israel and killing all within instead of God’s angel passing through the Egyptians and striking the firstborn.  That blood on the doorposts was, in fact, a kind of Declaration of Independence; a statement that all those within belonged, not to Pharaoh, but to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  In order to go on this journey, the people had to declare openly and publicly that they had set their feet on the path.  The blood on the doorposts was the first step in faith on this journey of faith.

My friends, as we journey in faith, we have to be prepared to declare publicly who we serve.  And if we make that declaration, we have to be prepared to live up to it.  One day I was in the Kroger grocery store. I was at the deli counter getting my weekly portion of sliced ham and turkey, when the young woman slicing the ham looked at me and asked, “Are you a church person?”  I was a little taken aback for a moment, until I realized that I had my “Oak Grove United Methodist Church” shirt on.  There it was embroidered on the front of my shirt, a declaration of where I placed my allegiance.  This young woman needed help—help with an electric bill, help with clothes for three children and care for a terminally ill husband.  And there it was on my shirt: a mark that said, not just that this is an organization to which I belong, but that this is the journey that I am on.  Did we help the young woman?  Of course.  Did we help her enough?  Probably not, her needs were great; we did what we could.   But I found out what it meant to be marked with a sign that meant life, salvation, help to a person in need.

The journey to which God called his people required preparation: preparation to be a community, preparation to be publicly set apart, to be a holy nation, a treasured possession of God.  The journey also would need provisions, food and water to sustain the people.  Now, I don’t know about you, but when I go on a journey, one way I prepare is to eat.  When I know that I am going to be gone for several days, I make sure to eat all my favorite foods at breakfast, so I can “get a good start.”  When our children are about to go on a journey, say, off to college, we make their favorite foods and we feast together.  We send them off with care packages of their favorite cookies, because we know they won’t have an opportunity to have them for a long while.  When a pastor comes to a new church and begins the journey of faith with a new congregation, they hold a potluck, so he or she will be adequately stuffed for the journey.  But the meal that God prepares and commands for his people is not a huge feast.  It is a portion of roasted lamb, a serving of unleavened bread, and some bitter herbs.  Not exactly a meal that would “stick-to-your-ribs” as we used to say in East Texas.  No wonder they were hungry the minute they got across that Reed Sea!

What kind of meal is this?  One that reminds the people of the sacrifice that saves, one that reminds the people that they are always on a journey, one that reminds the people of the slavery that they are leaving.  One that reminds them that on the journey they will have to depend on God for provision.  They will receive bread and meat and drink from God.  They will have to trust completely in God’s abundance.

This is also a meal that reminds us of the meal that we share.  A little wafer or piece of bread and a sip of juice doesn’t leave your tummy satisfied and yet, it fills you up.  We use Hawaiian Bread for communion and it tastes really good.   And we always have leftovers, so after communion the children always come up and want more.  We all want more: more food, more grace, more hope.  But, you see, we really don’t need more.  We have all there is.  We have the lamb of God, willing to offer himself for our salvation.  Willing to take us on a journey towards holiness, towards life.  Do you have bread left over after communion?  Our tendency is to shrink the loaf, or enlarge the portions.  Instead we need to enlarge the community, share our portions with our neighbors, as the Israelites were commanded to do.

We don’t need all this (gesture at suitcase).  What we need on our journey to becoming the people of God is the community with whom we share salvation.  What we need is to have the assurance, the boldness to proclaim our allegiance, to have the courage to witness to the mark of Christ upon our lives and to realize the consequences of that witness.  What we need is to eat the living bread and to drink the cup of grace and to trust all the rest to God.

This is a journey that will radically alter our lives.  Are you ready for the journey, my friends?  Are you ready for the journey?

Every year on the Thursday before Easter in Holy Week, this passage from Exodus (12:1-14) arrives in the lectionary recalling that the last supper that Jesus shared with his disciples was a Passover feast (at least in the synoptics).  At first glance this is simply a straightforward legal/cultic text that records the institution of the Passover feast.  However, a bit of exegetical work reveals that this text provides deep clues into the meaning of sacrifice and salvation.  And for the purposes of sermonizing during Holy Week, this text helps us prepare for the journey that we are set upon as we encounter the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Initially, this passage seems to be out of place, interrupting the narrative of signs and wonders.   As we have seen in a previous chapter, these signs have been performed with the goal of establishing the power and authority of God.  The purpose of the last sign, the death of the firstborn, according to the text, is to cause the Pharaoh to be so angered that “he will let you go from here; indeed, when he lets you go, he will drive you away” (Ex 11:1).  After this text, at verse 21, the narrative resumes, with Moses instructing the people to slaughter the lamb and put the blood on the doorposts.  Moses continues with the injunction to remember and continue this observance, especially when they have entered the land of promise. This passage, then, becomes the link between the salvation offered the Israelite people during the last of the signs and wonders, the one that is name a ‘plague’ (negah), and the institution of a yearly festival that includes sacrifice.

Since most of us are not terribly familiar with systems of sacrifice, not to mention those in the bible, we should spend a little time comparing the Passover sacrifice with the sacrifices that are found in the book of Leviticus.  Much like the texts in Leviticus, this passage is couched in “Priestly” language.  These are presented as the words of God, given as a list of commandments about what the people must, may and shall do.  The consequences of failing to follow these commandments are severe:  you will be counted as an Egyptian and struck down. The consequences of succeeding in following these commandments are dramatic as well: you will be saved from death, both the death dealt out by Pharaoh, and the death brought by the hand of God.  These life and death consequences become the pattern for the blessings and curses found in Deuteronomy (see Dt. 28-29).

Though the language is similar, some differences exist between the Levitical sacrificial offerings and this one special sacrifice.  One such difference between the Levitical sacrifices and this one is that the Passover sacrifice is performed by the gathered family unit, not by the priest, in the home, not a temple (though the people perform the sacrifices in unison, at sunset).  The people become the sacred people, both by household and in community, and the home becomes the sacred space.  Those within, protected by the blood, are distinguished from those who are outside such protection.  We have already seen this distinction in some of the previous signs and wonders.  Initially, the difference is more a matter of annoyance and discomfort;[1] now the distinction has escalated to a matter of life and death.

More importantly, however, are the subtle differences in the purpose of the Passover sacrifice when compared to those in Leviticus.  The Levitical system of sacrifice provides for atonement, release of guilt, restoration to the community, etc.  However, the Passover sacrifice is not so much about atonement in the sense of “atonement for sins” but about atonement in the sense of being set apart by and for God and being made one with all those set apart. The sacrifice becomes a way of creating identity, placing oneself under the authority of God instead of the authority of Pharaoh. The placing of the blood on the doorposts and lintels makes a public declaration of one’s allegiance.

A closer look at the literary structure and the theology implications of the text.

The text recording the institution of the Passover begins at 12:1 and continues through verse 20.  The passage is in two parts:

12:1-14 God to Moses: The commandment for institution of the feast of Passover

12:15-20 God to Moses: The institution of the Feast of Unleavened Bread

The lectionary uses only the first part—but we will use the whole chapter in understanding this portion.  One could write off this passage as a Priestly insertion into the basic narrative text that provides an etiology for linking the Passover feast, perhaps originally a springtime harvest festival, with the salvation story of the Exodus.[2]    However, in this case a source critical approach does not provide much fodder for theological reflection.

More useful is a literary approach.  Though in form legal/cultic material, the passage fulfills several narrative functions within the main storyline. From a literary point of view, interrupting the narrative as it does, the text provides a dramatic pause before the last plague.

The first pause comes when the people are told to set aside the lamb and then wait.  Why the wait? Sarna has no explanation for this waiting time other than perhaps as an “act of defiance of the Egyptians” or “a time of testing for Israel” (Sarna, 1991:55).  He adds a note in his book Exploring Exodus, that another scholar suggests this is the amount of time needed to circumcise all the males who had missed this ritual and have them heal (Sarna, 1986: 230, n.16).  It also might be simply a time for the Israelites to pack! However, the waiting might have another more literary purpose—to lengthen the dramatic pause, heighten suspense and tension.  This also might be to suggest that the journey out of Egypt is not a time to run, but a time for ordered journey; not a retreat of the oppressed, but the victory march of the conquerors.

Next we have a list of instructions.

With whom to eat. (Household, join with others if household is small) Exodus 12:3-4

The meal is to be eaten with the whole household.  A small household is to join with others.  Several implications arise from this:  1) the Passover should not be eaten alone.  This is a feast of “communion” with the whole people of God, not a solitary rite.  2) Everyone has equal portions.  No one gets a larger share; no one gets the whole lamb. Those who might have larger portions because of smaller households must join with others.  The latter part of chapter twelve continues instructions as to who may eat:  slaves and aliens are included if and only if they or their households have been circumcised (see Ex 12:43-48).  No one is to be excluded from the mark of salvation if they are willing to take upon themselves the mark of circumcision.  Perhaps this willingness to allow people to self-select accounts for the “mixed multitude” that goes out of Egypt (Ex 12:38).

What to eat (unblemished lamb) Exodus 12:5

Instead of killing the lamb that is the weakest, one who might not even survive a journey into the wilderness, the people are told to slaughter the best.  The Hebrew word used for this: tamin, carries the connotation in other passages of righteous and blameless in a moral sense (see Gn 6:9, 17:1; Dt 18:13).  This perfect lamb represents what the people are to become:  the perfect and righteous people of a perfect and righteous God.  This also fits with other passages about sacrifices: one must always give of the best; the first fruits (see Lv 1:3, 10 and numerous other passages).

When to eat. (Slaughter at twilight on the third day and eat that night)

The people must set aside the lamb and wait; and then eat at the appointed time.  All the people slaughter the lambs at the same time – twilight, making this a community as well as a household action.

How to eat (eat with unleavened bread and bitter herbs; eat hurriedly, dressed for the journey)

This meal is intended as a reminder, both of the oppression that the people have suffered and of the redemption that they have been offered.

Where to eat (in the house that is protected by the blood– must stay there all night)

The house becomes holy space; the holiness extends both inside and out.  This is once again emphasized later in the chapter:  “It shall be eaten in one house: you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house” (Ex 12:46, Tanakh).

Why eat?  (As a new beginning and a perpetual remembrance of God’s saving action, there is a sense in which the journey never really ends; the yearly festival emphasizes that the journey continues)

A further motivation is found later in the passage:

“That was for the LORD a night of vigil, to bring them out of the land of Egypt. That same night is a vigil to be kept for the LORD by all the Israelites throughout their generations.” (Ex 12:42)

This is a celebration of God’s faithfulness, God’s remembering of the covenant promises that God has made.  It becomes in turn a celebration of the faithfulness of the people in remembering what God has done.

These instructions tell us something about the journey itself.  Dressing for the journey is a sign of faith that the journey will indeed take place.  There is a sense that the journey never really ends; the yearly festival emphasizes that the journey continues.  In addition, the waiting mentioned above combined with the urgency of eating hurriedly emphasizes that the timing in all these actions is God’s timing.  Finally, the feast for the journey is minimal – this meal does not prepare them physically for a march into the wilderness. They will become hungry again quite quickly (see chapter 16) and they are not preparing any provisions to take with them (see also Ex 12:39).  In fact they are told to burn all that is left.  This minimalist meal foreshadows the need to depend upon God for their provisioning.

Though it is liturgical text and not simple narrative, this passage functions within the overall narrative by continuing the theme of challenge.  In this text and the one right before it, both the plague and the sign of protection become a direct challenge to Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s gods – the Egyptian king had tried to kill the male children through the agency of first midwives and then the Egyptian people.  But now God will, by his own hand, strike down all the firstborn of the Egyptians. In addition, the loud cry of the Egyptians (predicted in 11:6, fulfilled in 12:30) echoes the loud cry of the Israelite people (3:7, 9), but for the Egyptians there is no god to hear their cry and save them from death.  The unheard cry of the Egyptians becomes the sign of judgment not only upon the hard-hearted Pharaoh, but also upon the unhearing gods of the Egyptians (12:12).

Finally, this text does give the whole of the narrative a larger importance and historical significance.  Just as the six days of creation has its climax in the institution of the Sabbath – a time for remembering and celebrating our connection with God, our relationship as created to Creator – so the Exodus narrative has a climax with the institution of the Passover feast – a time for remembering and celebrating our connection with God and our relationship as saved to Savior.

Summing it up Theologically

In my introduction, I suggested that incarnational theology is at the heart of the book of Exodus.  The thesis of my comments there was that: The book of Exodus can be seen as a three-part plan using the concrete and the visible to form and shape the descendants of Jacob/Israel into the people that will fulfill the covenant that God has made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.   This passage provides a concrete and visible sign of God’s saving actions in the plagues and the Exodus proper.  It both continues the themes of the first part of the book – oppression of the people, conflict with Pharaoh, and foreshadows the themes of the second part of the book – commandments that set the people apart as a holy people of YHWH.

This is the point towards which the signs and wonders are heading, the final showdown between Pharaoh and YHWH.  From this point onward, all who keep the Passover feast participate in the freedom from oppression, the saving moment that the Exodus represents[3]. The only real requirement to participate in this feast and in this salvation is the mark of circumcision and the mark of the blood on your doorposts.  God does not bar the Egyptians from participating, as long as they too fulfill the requirements.  The Passover then, marks one both physically and spiritually as belonging to God.  Thus, in a very real sense the choice involves deciding whether your fear of death at the hand of Pharaoh or your fear of the divine destroyer is more potent.  The mark forces one to choose between service to Pharaoh, and all that Pharaoh represents, and service to the God of Israel.

This is a text that both gives us a new beginning by setting us on a journey toward the promised land and reveals that the journey is one that continues through many generations.  God’s order, God’s timing, God’s commands are emphasized.  Just as the Creation of the world emphasized God’s order and God’s timing, here we find a similar focus. Just as God’s commands place requirements upon and boundaries around the holy people in the covenant at Sinai, so God’s commands in this text speak of requirements and boundaries.  Before this time, the people of Israel were merely slaves in Egypt, now they are a redeemed people, ready to be formed into a holy people[4].

Theological Issues for the Pastor

The issues that face the pastor in preaching from this text are manifold, ranging from its relevance for a Christian audience (after all it institutes a Jewish festival) to its somewhat disturbing portrayal of God (is God the “Destroyer” or the Savior or both at once?).  We will deal with the latter first.

Throughout the plagues, God is portrayed as willing to cause significant harm to a people whose major fault is being ruled by a “hard-hearted” Pharaoh.  Some in our congregations, perhaps identifying with the Israelites, will consider the Egyptians as complicit with the oppression of the Pharaoh and deserving of punishment. Others will relate more to the Egyptians and wonder at God’s treatment of them. It might be well for a preacher to focus on the fact that the provision for salvation is available for all those who are willing to both place themselves in submission to YHWH and to identify with the slaves who are YHWH’s people.   This might be difficult for those in comfortable churches in middle-class neighborhoods.  As we have seen, the people of Egypt are just as much the slaves of Pharaoh as the Israelite people,[5] even if not oppressed in the same way.   Though it is not in the lectionary portion of the text, verse 23 makes clear the problem:

For the LORD will pass through to strike down the Egyptians; when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over that door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you down.[6]

YHWH is Destroyer and Savior both.  Difficult as this may seem, the fact is that the whole story up to this point has been a contest between Pharaoh and YHWH to determine who has the right to give and take life.  Pharaoh is seen as a taker of life only, whereas YHWH is both.  Perhaps the major difference between the powers of the world and the powers of the divine is that the powers of the world only have the ability to destroy and take life away, whereas the power of God is the power to give and provide for life.  This can, of course, lead to reflections about this passage through the lens of the cross.  The crucifixion and resurrection assure us that the powers of destruction cannot prevail and that the fundamental nature of God is that of Creator, Savior and Preserver.

The issue of the punishment of the innocent Egyptians highlights the problem, certainly relevant in today’s world, that the innocent often suffer because of poor or even evil leadership.  The Israelites are not immune from this problem either: in the books of 1 and 2 Kings we are made aware that Israelite and Judean kings are responsible for either keeping the people in the way of the LORD (which happens only rarely) or leading them towards false gods (which results in their eventual exile).

Perhaps a more pressing problem for the preacher, however, is that of “relevance.”  Many people in the pews (at least the older ones) hear this passage in the voice of Charlton Heston.  They have stopped really listening to what it says.  If they think about it at all they realize that Passover is a Jewish festival; the Exodus is the saving event for the Jewish people.  For those who discount the Hebrew Scriptures altogether, these Jewish narratives are discarded and replaced with the Christian celebration of Communion and the saving event of the cross and resurrection.  Scholars and seminary-trained pastors may see the connection, but those in the pews may need to be led in that direction.

David Buttrick in Homiletic:  Moves and Structures provides this caution:

Obviously we cannot preach passages from the Hebrew scriptures as if Christ were not. Out of a respect for the integrity of the Hebrew scriptures, we cannot preach them by blanking out Christian consciousness and pretending we are a b.c. Hebrew congregation.  Such a let’s-pretend posture, though it may pose as hermeneutical integrity, is ludicrous.  No, instead, the Hebrew scriptures brought to us by Christ must be set within a Christian hermeneutical consciousness, that is, a consciousness in between symbols of revelation and awareness of being-saved-in-the-world.  The Hebrew scriptures were written from such a consciousness—symbols of revelation drawn from stories such as exodus, Sinai, exile, and the like addressed Israel’s sense of being-saved—and, therefore, must be interpreted within such a structural consciousness.  (356-57)

There are many connections between the symbols in Exodus and those in the New Testament institution narratives.  Just as in Exodus, signs and wonders have preceded the eating of the sacred meal, this time not in destructive plagues, but in the life-affirming healings and exorcisms that Jesus and his disciples have performed.  The meal comes before the time of death and salvation.  All three of the synoptic Gospels relate the story of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples as occurring on the eve of the Festival of the Unleavened Bread and the night on which the Passover meal was eaten.  The bread which Jesus breaks is the unleavened bread of the Passover and the wine which he presents as his blood is reminiscent of the blood of the Passover Lamb.  The meal becomes a sign of what is to come and just as in Exodus, the commemorative meal is instituted before the act of salvation.  John, on the other hand indicates that the crucifixion takes place on the first day of the Festival, “a day of great solemnity” (John 19:31).  Not having a record of the institution of the Communion meal, John reveals that the crucifixion itself becomes the Passover sacrifice.  In all of the gospels, Jesus is set aside or marked as the Passover lamb beforehand.  He is marked both by the woman who washes and anoints his feet and by the kiss of the betrayer Judas.  In all of the gospels, the community is bound together by the shared fellowship in the room with Jesus; in the synoptics by the meal, in John by the foot washing of Jesus and by his prayers for his followers.  Thus the original Passover provides the symbolic grounding for Jesus’ message to his disciples.  The Last Supper, as much as the Passover feast, becomes a time to begin forging an identity as the chosen and redeemed people.  In both Exodus and the Gospels, the Passover feast/Last Supper is not enough; it must be followed by the leading and presence of God: in the column of fire and smoke in Exodus; in the fire of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles.  The Last Supper is only a beginning to the journey of the Christian community.  Eventually the mark of baptism becomes a requirement for the celebration of communion, just as circumcision becomes the requirement for the celebration of the Passover.  And the continued commemoration becomes an ongoing part of the journey of the faithful community.  As Christians come to see the connection of the Passover feast with our own Eucharistic celebration, and the symbolism that Jesus made use of, we can hear more fully the Word of God speaking through both Testaments.

Moving Towards the Sermon-Practical problems for the Preacher

In Homiletical Moves and Structures, David Buttrick describes “Preaching in the Mode of Immediacy” with regard to preaching biblical narrative.  While this passage is not strictly narrative, it does play a critical role within the larger narrative.  One of the difficulties for the congregation (or “congregational blocks” in Buttrick’s language) is the talk of sacrifices and blood on doorposts.  This is not worship as we know it!  Buttrick suggests that in analyzing a text we form “structures of understanding in consciousness from which a sermon design may emerge.” (Buttrick, 339)

Since the lectionary gives us this text every Holy Thursday, that is the context to which our “structure of understanding” must relate.  This text also falls early in September during year A of the lectionary cycle.  If this is a sermon in a service which includes communion then the preacher might show the links between the two meals within the sermon.  Paul Ricouer notes in his essay on “The Hermeneutic Question,” that “there is hermeneutics in the Christian order because the kerygma is the rereading of an ancient Scripture.”  He suggests that,

“a contrast is set up between the two Testaments, a contrast which at the same time is a harmony by means of a transfer.  This signifying relation attests that the kerygma, by this detour through the reinterpretation of an ancient Scripture, enters into a network of intelligibility.  The event becomes advent.” (Lischer: 213).

By preaching in the “mode of immediacy” the preacher can help the congregation understand how the “event” of the Passover has become the “advent” of the Eucharist.  Hopefully, as the congregation begins to see that the Christian salvation story is a kind of reinterpretation of the salvation narrative of ancient Israel, they will become more aware that God’s saving actions have a long history stretching both before and after the event of the crucifixion/resurrection.

We have already looked at the theology behind this passage.  Using Buttrick’s pattern, we must also try to predict the blocks that would keep the congregation from understanding.  Probably the major block is the talk of sacrifices and blood on doors.  We are not used to this image of worship!  Already noted is the difficulty in seeing God as the avenging angel of death.  In the analysis we have seen that the structure of understanding that we have built relies on this passage as a turning point in the narrative:  both an ending of one phase of Israelite life and the beginning of a journey.  Thus the sermon will focus on the journey.  If preaching in the mode of immediacy “imitate(s) a consciousness hearing and reacting to a story” (Buttrick, 362), then the sermon will call on the congregation to react to the call to the journey and to enter into the journey.  As the sermon that follows was preached at a Course of Study School worship service held at Perkins School of Theology in the summer of 2007, most of those in attendance were local pastors, along with a sprinkling of faculty, staff, and visitors.  I told the congregation that the sermon was intended to be a model for the preaching of a Holy Thursday service or any service where communion followed.  The notion of preparation for a journey reminds the congregation that Easter is not the endpoint towards which we are moving, but a new beginning in faith every year.  Easter, as well as Passover represents not just a minor relocation, but a radical break with our past.

The visuals used in preaching the sermon, as well as the examples used are helpful in concretizing the aspect of this ritual as the beginning of a journey and relating the ancient story to the context of the congregation.  This was particularly true for the congregation of local pastors at COSS, for they had come on a journey to the school and were about to pack up to go back home.  However, this would also be true for a congregation hearing this sermon in Holy Week, with summer vacations only a month or so away.  The hope is that when they are packing for travel, they will remember the visual of the suitcase and thus remember the message of the sermon.

Bibliography

Brueggeman, Walter

1994                            “The Book of Exodus: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume I.

Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Buttrick, David

1987                            Homiletic: Moves and Structures. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Childs, Brevard S.

1974                            The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary.

                                                The Old Testament Library. Louisville: Westminster Press.

Lischer, Richard, Ed

2002                            The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Propp, William H. C.

1998                            Exodus 1-18: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary.   The Anchor Bible Series, Volume 2. New York: Doubleday.

Sarna, Nahum M.

1991                            The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus.  Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.

1986                            Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel.  New York: Schocken Books.