Exodus 12:29-42 29 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30 Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his officials and all the Egyptians; and there was a loud cry in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. 31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron in the night, and said, Rise up, go away from my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord, as you said. 32 Take your flocks and your herds, as you said, and be gone. And bring a blessing on me too! 33 The Egyptians urged the people to hasten their departure from the land, for they said, We shall all be dead. 34 So the people took their dough before it was leavened, with their kneading bowls wrapped up in their cloaks on their shoulders. 35 The Israelites had done as Moses told them; they had asked the Egyptians for jewelry of silver and gold, and for clothing, 36 and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. And so they plundered the Egyptians. 37 The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children. 38 A mixed crowd also went up with them, and livestock in great numbers, both flocks and herds. 39 They baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt; it was not leavened, because they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves. 40 The time that the Israelites had lived in Egypt was four hundred thirty years. 41 At the end of four hundred thirty years, on that very day, all the companies of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. 42 That was for the Lord a 1
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. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Wanting God to Pass Over This week we watched another world leader, who had spent decades using violence and fear to remain in power, meet a violent and bloody end. The news of Muammar Gadhafi s capture and murder raced across the headlines, and even though he had held control for over 40 years, I don t think many of us were surprised at how things ended. Though Gadhafi had been in hiding and his loyalist soldiers had fended off rebels and international attacks for the past few months, I think it s fair to say most of us knew how it would end. We d probably say it was inevitable. Last week Macbeth helped us to understand the utter hopelessness of Pharaoh s situation, and this week, a few more lines help to make sense of both Gadhafi s end, as well as the death of the first born in Egypt. Before Macbeth follows through on his wife s plan and murders the king, while he is still weighing the rewards and the (most likely bloody) consequence, on the evening of the murder, Macbeth hesitates. He knows, if he kills the king, he s probably inviting his own destruction. In one of his few moments of clarity, even if he kills the king, he says: 2
We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague th inventor: this even-handed Justice Commends th ingredience of our poison d chalice To our own lips. (I.vii.6-12) Macbeth knows that if he murders the king, he is teaching others to use that same violence against him. The poison he dishes out will most likely come back to him. This is Gadhafi teaching the world how to end his reign through the violence he unleashed on his own people and people throughout the world in officially sanctioned acts of terrorism. And in our scripture today, this is Pharaoh, in a sense teaching God what methods to use to free the Israelites. In other words: what goes around, comes around. One of my favorite radio programs, which I don t listen to often enough, is This American Life, produced by WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, and airing across the country on NPR. I mention this because my sermons normally follow just one train of thought I ve half joking said to some of you before that this is primarily because I have a hard time keeping more than that in my mind, so why should I expect more of anyone else. Well, there s too much in the Passover and the death of the first born for that this week. So, like This American Life, I ve divided my sermon up into three acts. 3
Act I: No Child Left Behind I said we d come back to it. At the start of Exodus, the first Pharaoh commanded his soldiers to go house to house and seize all Hebrew sons and throw them into the Nile, seeking to keep the Israelite population under control. We get this story in just a few verses, but I have tried to help us linger on this over the past few weeks because out of everything that sealed Egypt s fate, I don t think anything was as condemning as the wide-spread infanticide of the Hebrews. I think, above all, that s what sealed Egypt s fate because, when we look at the bible as a whole, there are few things scripture says are as utterly reprehensible as the murder of children. Even when God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his only son whom he loved which is one of the most difficult stories in the bible if we really stop to think about it it s believed that one of the reasons this story was passed on is because it told Israel that, even though there may have been a time in the past when people believed worshiping God included child sacrifice, the death of children is, in fact, the exact opposite of what God calls for. God calls for faith which leads to life for all, not the death of children. In fact, we find that some of the most sobering and terrifying passages in scripture are condemnations spoken against the people of Israel during times when they turned to foreign gods with foreign worship practices, particularly child sacrifice. Like Jeremiah 19: 4
Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to bring such disaster upon this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they, nor their ancestors, nor the kings of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent, and gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command, or decree, nor did it [even] enter my mind; therefore the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, [or ge-hinnom, Gehenna] but the valley of Slaughter. And Isaiah the great prophet Isaiah, whose words became so important for the early church in understanding who Jesus is as the Son of God the book of Isaiah nearly ends with a beautiful description of the eternal peace given to those who rightly worship God, but then the final verse says: And they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. What Isaiah is talking about here is the result of God s wrath at in Topheth the valley of the Son of Hinnom, or ge-hinnom, Gehenna exactly what Jeremiah warned would happen. And it s the imagery Jesus picks up in Mark 9: 5
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to where? Gehenna where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched. Of course, the really sobering part for us is that Jesus links all of this to denying anyone entrance to the church denying anyone to come to him. That, Jesus says, is as despicable as sacrificing children. (But that s another sermon.) All of this is to say, that it is this God, the Lord, who will go on to enact such terrible punishment on Israel, God s own people, for their misguided child sacrifices it s this God that the original Pharaoh righteously infuriated by slaughtering the Hebrew children. Not. Wise. Act II: Egypt to Jerusalem Ever since God tried to send Moses back to Egypt, and then wound up sending Moses and Aaron because Moses was too insecure to go on his own, this whole time, God has only been asking Pharaoh to let the Israelites go so that they can have a festival. That s it. But even though that s all Pharaoh has been asked to do, he s consistently said no. So God comes to Moses and Aaron in the passage Susan read for us, and tells them, You know what? If Pharaoh hasn t let you go to have a festival, then you ll have one right here in Egypt. Each household is to slaughter a lamb if a family is too small, they can join with another and once the lamb is slaughtered, mark your doorway with the blood because, and here s the kicker, when I see the blood, I will pass over you, because now I am coming to kill all 6
the first born in the land. Egypt is about to know the pain they put you through. When I see the blood on your doorway, I will pass over you and no plague shall destroy you. If you ve ever wondered where the Jewish festival of Passover came from, this is it. In its yearly celebration, the yearly reminder, that salvation is not cheap. It is to remember how God passed over the Israelites to cripple their captors in a very mind numbing way what goes around comes around and set them free. And now for us, this is the meal that Jesus reinterprets for his disciples in the last supper. As they gathered in the upper room to celebrate the Passover and remember God s mighty acts in delivering the people of Israel from Egypt, Jesus says, in the same way, it s now his body that will be broken and his blood that will be shed he will become the Passover lamb whose blood will bring salvation, he will become all the first born of Egypt and will give his life to open the way to freedom. So we see the Spirit of God passing over the people of Israel, passing over all of us, and landing on the first born of Egypt, landing at the cross, to bring the tragic death which will bring new life. And when it happens, all of Egypt cries out, Pharaoh summons Moses, and his brother Aaron, and he tells them, Rise up, go away from my people, both you and the Israelites. Take your flocks and your herds, as you said, and bless me too simply by being rid of you! 7
After four-hundred thirty years of growing oppression and violence against the Hebrews whose presence, you ll remember, at the end of Genesis is actually what helped Egypt skyrocket to power through Joseph s administration after so many generations, the people are free. They leave with I guess gifts would probably be a bit euphemistic from the Egyptians, but the really amazing thing is that they don t leave by themselves. We re told a mixed crowd went out with them. There were Egyptians who left with them. There were Egyptians who were so fed up with the way their own leader s insurmountable arrogance had led to their nation s destruction, that they said enough was enough. They would rather live with their former slaves, than remain in the place they used to call home. Act III: Cleaning up the Vomit This whole time, just beneath the surface, undergirding this whole story has been the three blessings God promised Abraham: descendants, land and the promise that all peoples would be blessed through them. This whole time, the fulfillment of one of those promises descendants has threatened the other two. The larger the people grew, the more Pharaoh tried to keep them down, and in everything that happened, it sure didn t seem like any other nation was being blessed in fact, it really looks like the opposite. But now as the Israelites leave Egypt, we re reminded of all three blessings. God promised descendants, and now, from what started as Abraham and Sarah we are told the Hebrews number over six-hundred-thousand, in addition to children; God 8
promised they would have a land of their own, and now they are leaving Egypt with the promise that that is exactly where God is taking them; and God promised that they would be a blessing to all nations of the earth, and after all that Egypt had done to them, the Israelites were able to do something we often have a hard time doing they were able to see a difference between Egypt and the Egyptians and they allowed those who so chose to unite with them and be at peace. And with that, I hate to end on a downer. I wish, for Pharaoh s sake, we could say this was it and they all lived happily ever after. But, as the Book of Proverbs says, a fool repeats his folly like what? Anyone know? Like a dog returns to his vomit, and Pharaoh isn t quite through playing the fool. And that s where we ll pick up next week. Thanks for listening, and don t forget to support public radio. - Nick Preuninger 9