Exodus 12:1 13, 13:1 8 Matt Mardis-LeCroy Des Moines, IA October 2, 2016 History, Written by the Losers I. History is written by the victors. That s what Walter Benjamin said. And at most times, in most places, I imagine that is true. But not here. Not in the church. In the church, we do things a little differently. The stories that we share in this place tell another kind of history. It is history written by the other side; history written by the losers. And that is a dangerous business. I ll be the first to admit it: our text for today is something less than spellbinding. No story really; no character development, no plot. Just instructions for the first Passover meal. The instructions are detailed; you get the sense that this is important. But why? Why does this meal matter so much? That is a dangerous question. Last week we left off almost at the end of Genesis, and things were looking pretty good for the people of God. Remember, Genesis tells the story of one family: the descendants of Sarah and Abraham. Last week we heard how, after the death of their father, Joseph and his feuding brothers finally reconcile. They get to hug and cry and learn and grown. Now the whole family
has settled safely in Egypt. With brother Joseph as a high-level official in Pharaoh s administration, they feel secure. Safe as houses. And they are safe. Until they aren t. The Book of Exodus the second book in our Bible the Book of Exodus opens with ominous news: a new pharaoh comes to power in Egypt, a ruler who does not remember Joseph. So much for safety and security. What had been a very large family now kind of looks like a small nation. They have their own customs, they speak their own language, they pray to their own God. Looking at these foreigners in the midst of his empire, the new pharaoh senses a threat to his power. So, in short order, the Hebrew people are enslaved set to work building big cities, Pithom and Ramses. The work is hard and harsh and cruel. But it isn t enough to break them. So when oppression and slavery will not suffice to quell Pharaoh s fears, he turns to genocide; he orders the death of every Hebrew baby born a boy. And this is when things take an interesting turn. This is when the story becomes dangerous. Two midwives Shiphrah and Puah will not do Pharaoh s bidding. They let the boys live. And when they are challenged for their failure to follow orders, these brave midwives these feisty women just lie. They straight up lie to Pharaoh s face: Oh, the Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women. They are vigorous and they give birth before the midwives even arrive. Pharaoh does not have the stomach for an extended conversation about obstetrics, so he lets the matter drop. Midwives: 1, Pharaoh: Nothing. Do you see why I said these stories are dangerous? The rest of the narrative leading up to our text for today is far more familiar. Another brave woman resists the edict of Pharaoh; she hides her baby boy in a basket. By an unlikely series of events, the boy is raised as a prince of Egypt and then exiled to the wilderness; until, in his 80 th year, Moses hears the call of God to go to Pharaoh and say, Let my people go! So he goes and a great contest ensues. Call it the Prizefight by the Pyramids. In one corner,
we have Pharaoh, the undefeated heavyweight champion, uncontested ruler of the mightiest Empire on the face of the earth. In the other corner, the unranked amateur contenders, an enslaved people and their eccentric God. Moses and Pharaoh go round and round: the River Nile turned to blood, frogs, ice, boils, locusts. And slowly, as punishing round gives way to punishing round, Pharaoh s resolve begins to crack. He is just about ready to let these losers go. That is where we are when we take up the story today. It s a break in the action for these incredibly thorough instructions about the Passover meal, like something straight out of Cook s Illustrated. Why does this meal matter so much? Because God is about to win one for the losers. And that is something we will want to remember. II. Memory matters. The stories we choose to tell the way we choose to tell them memory matters more than we may know. i It has been three months three whole months! since I have said anything in a sermon about Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda s much celebrated Broadway musical about the ten dollar founding father, our first treasury secretary: Alexander Hamilton. But one song from the musical seems so apt this morning. (Relax. I m not going to sing). On the eve of the Battle of Yorktown, Alexander Hamilton is poised at long last to have his own command; to seek glory on the field of battle. But before Hamilton takes his command, George Washington offers a sobering dose of perspective: Let me tell you what I wish I d known. When I was young and dreamed of glory. You have no control: Who lives, who dies, who tells your story. ii
Memory matters. And the dead have no control over their story. So who tells it? And how do they tell it? The task of managing memory falls to us. Pharaoh knows that memory matters. I think it keeps him up at night. I think that is why he builds all those monuments to himself, all the pyramids and statues and stuff in the desert. Pharaoh knows that memory matters and he wants to spin the story his way; to make history into one unbroken record of his glories and triumphs. Every empire does it; every victor spins a story from Rome to London to Washington DC, the architects of empire will always make monuments to their own achievements. Doesn t seem like the best use of resources, but: they do it because they are anxious. The powers-that-be have a vested interest in telling certain stories. They want to make sure we know that Pharaoh always comes out on top. But there is more than one history, more than one side, more than one story. Have you ever been to a Passover meal? Ever heard the Haggadah recited? It is a kind of counter narrative, an alternative telling of Pharaoh s story. Pharaoh would have you think that he always wins; but a Passover people know better. A Passover people know that sometimes Pharaoh goes too far. And those are the times when the God of compassion gets involved: hearing the cries of all who are oppressed, rolling up her sleeves and resolving to do something about it, coming into the story on the side of the oppressed and enslaved; the least, the last, the losers. That is what God did in Egypt all those years ago. That is God might do again. The meal reminds us that there is another side to the story. And the practice of Passover creates the people of God constitutes the people of God as a people of dangerous memory. Pharaoh better learn how to sleep with one eye open.
In their book The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan offer a little historical nugget, a bit of context for Jesus triumphant entry into Jerusalem. iii The historical record suggests that, every year, on the first day of Passover, the Roman governor would ride into town in an awesome display of military might chariots and horses, soldiers and swords, all the intimidation that Rome might muster. Why would the governor feel the need to do such a thing? Because Passover is a dangerous time; because God s people tell a dangerous story. If God got up in Pharaoh s face, maybe Caesar shouldn t look so smug. Caesar better beware when God s people share a dangerous memory. III. Today is World Communion Sunday. Today the people of Plymouth Church gather with Christians all across our world to break the bread, to bless the cup, to share in this meal and remember that we are one. But I know communion can be kind of fraught for some of us. There has been a lot of theological malpractice on the topic of this table. Somehow the theologians took the table fellowship of Jesus and turned into something grotesque, something terrifying, something about a wrathful God who craves blood atonement; something about a ritual of sacred cannibalism. I want you to forget about all of that this morning. Just set it aside. I was thinking about the recently, because of a conversation I had with Brittany Hanlin. She got me thinking about communion in a whole different way. What does this meal mean? It s inscribed on the silver: Do this in remembrance of me. Communion began in the practice of Passover. And I wonder what would happen if the people of Plymouth Church came to this table to remember. I wonder what would happen if this story would start to shape us. I wonder what it might mean for us to remember that Jesus posed a perfect threat to the powers-that-be. Because he welcomed outcasts and ate with sinners. Because he healed the hurting and touched the untouchable. Because he defied religious rules for the sake of showing compassion. Because he dared to speak God s judgment on injustice in high places.
Jesus Christ his life and his teaching, his religiously endorsed and state sanctioned execution, his rising again in power and great glory Jesus Christ is the dangerous memory at the heart of Plymouth Church. If we really start sharing his story if we let this table remind us who Jesus is and what Jesus wants to do in us if we nurture the dangerous memory of Jesus, I don t know exactly what will happen. But Pharaoh better get that look off his face. Plymouth Congregational Church United Church of Christ 4126 Ingersoll Avenue Des Moines, Iowa 50312 Phone: (515) 255-3149 Fax: (515) 255-8667 E-mail: mmardis-lecroy@plymouthchurch.com Notes i A great deal of this sermon is rooted in John D. Caputo s work on Derrida. For example: Political power requires control of the archive, the monitoring of memory, while democratization requires open access to the archives and the ii Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hamilton. Original Broadway Cast Recording. Atlantic, 2016, CD. iii Borg, Marcus and Crossan, John Dominic. The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem. (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2007).