Sept. 4, 2011 – Exodus 12:1-14
Exodus 12:1-14
The Freedom to Love
12th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 23) – September 4, 2011
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
I still remember watching Cecil B. DeMille’s film of
The Ten Commandments when I was a child.
Of the many scenes that made an impression I remember especially
the one recounted for us today in the book of Exodus: the getting ready for
the coming of the 10th plague and leaving Egypt.
I remember the weird depiction of the angel of the angel of death whooshing
past the Israelite houses with the blood on their doorposts but
entering the Egyptian houses.
I remember the death visited to each Egyptian household, even Pharaoh, his son lying dead.
And then, as the people of Israel carried out God’s instructions about the Passover meal,
you could hear the wailing and crying in the background of the Egyptians
bemoaning their dead children, some of whom, of course,
would have been first-born adults:
mothers and fathers, even grandparents.
Even as a kid it was tough to cheer the liberation of the slaves when it came at such a cost.
And it’s still tough.
Like don’t we get enough violence on television –
don’t we see the innocent suffer enough already –
so that we have to hear about it in church?
But we have to deal with this, because of all the stories in the Old Testament,
this one of liberation is probably the most central, most important one.
And it’s central not just for Jews, but for Christians as well.
The story of how God hears the cries of the enslaved Israelites and promises to save them.
The story of how God does not desire a societal arrangement in which a few prosper at
the expense of the many.
The story of how God acts so the people have the freedom to live in a way that God desires.
This is worth celebrating – that we have a God who is interested in justice –
but the celebration is tempered by the knowledge that, in this story anyway,
the justice comes at a terrific cost: 1000s of innocent lives.
I guess it’s good news, but it’s tough to sing about it.
I recalled this week that this story is shared not only by Christians and Jews,
but by Muslims as well.
The story of the Exodus in the Qur’an shares many features of its Biblical counterpart.
Except that in the Qur’an, as Pharaoh is drowning, he actually has a conversion and repents:
here’s what he says: “I believe there is no god but He in whom the Children of Israel believe; I am of those that surrender.” (Surah 10:90-92) In other words, he becomes a Muslim!
Perhaps there is in his confession the recognition that ultimately the responsibility for
the plagues is his.
Sometimes tragedy does lead to self-evaluation and a recognition of the part one has played in
that tragedy and, perhaps, to repentance: surely we are all familiar with this.
And it is true – right? – that sometimes God can bring something good from something bad:
that is, after all, the truth of the resurrection.
But does that mean God is responsible for the bad in the first place?
Did God really need to make 1000s die so one man could repent?
Is this really the best way to soften Pharaoh’s hardened heart?
The Jewish tradition, on the other hand, went in a slightly different direction.
In the biblical story the exodus is celebrated with singing and dancing of a warlike character.
But in an old tradition, not included in the Bible but passed down orally,
the angels begin to sing as the Egyptians drown.
God immediately turns to them and chastises them, saying:
How can you sing as my children are destroyed?
Every year, the Jewish people still celebrate the Passover with a meal modelled on this text.
But as the 10 plagues are named during the meal, a drop of wine is removed from the wineglass,
to show that their joy is reduced in knowing that their freedom came at
the cost of suffering. (Feasting on the Word, Commentary on Holy Thursday, Year B)
God never rejoices in the suffering of anyone, not even his enemies, and neither should we.
Perhaps, in this view, the end justifies the means, but the means should never be celebrated.
Which finally brings us to Jesus.
It is likely that Jesus himself saw his own death as somehow participating in the Passover and
that in his death God was doing something new, finding a new way to bring people
from deathly ways to life-giving ways, finding a new way to soften hardened
hearts besides threatening them with violence and death.
Jesus’s death happens at Passover, after all, and Jesus claims that his blood will be the blood of
a new covenant, the start of a new way of being saved for a new way of living.
Jesus doesn’t visit destruction on anybody: he takes it on himself, and he forgives it.
It’s often noted by commentators that the plagues and the Exodus are not models for how
we human beings should act: we are not to take retribution into our own hands:
in the plagues and the parting of the sea it is God alone who acts and
takes responsibility.
And there is truth in that: we can safely leave judgment to God and not engage in the
judgment of others that leads to so much pain in our world.
But you can see in Jesus’s story something else going on:
God’s warrior angels are somehow on hand at the crucifixion,
even as they were on hand at his birth: the heavenly hosts are never far away.
But as a disciple strikes off the ear of the high priest’s slave in the garden,
Jesus rebukes him and says, “Don’t you know that even now I could ask my Father and
he would send 12 legions of warrior angels to save me and destroy the Romans?”
But of course he doesn’t. (Matthew 26:51-54)
In Jesus we have the strange spectacle of God absorbing sinfulness rather than dispensing it.
In Jesus we have a God who takes on our suffering and suffers it with us.
A God who identifies with the suffering and has compassion even on his enemies.
Jesus elicits from his enemy not a deathbed confession from a Pharaoh about to die at his hands,
but a heartfelt confession from a Roman Centurion whose
heart has been changed by grace: Truly this man was God’s son, he says.
Truly this man incarnated and showed forth the mercy and love that God truly is. (Mt. 27:54)
This is how Jesus set one man free from a life of violence.
This is how Jesus loved his enemy.
And this is how Jesus loves us. This is very good news. This is something to sing about.
The story of the Exodus from Egypt reminds us that we are all on a journey.
The Israelites are on a journey that is not only physical but spiritual.
Yes: they’re going to sing as the Egyptians are drowned.
and so they won’t be able to overhear God chastising the angels.
They’ll have forgotten that as descendants of Abraham they are called to be a blessing
to all the peoples of the earth, not just themselves and their allies. (Genesis 12:2-4)
But eventually they’ll remember that call, and they’ll come to understand that
they are to love their neighbours as themselves and they’ll enshrine it in Leviticus.(19:18)
They’ll come to understand that all human beings are beloved of God,
even the wicked pagan Ninevites in the story of Jonah.
In the book of Job they’ll come to rethink the easy identification of suffering with sinfulness.
Paul the former Pharisee and violent persecutor of Christian will come to this conclusion:
Owe no one anything, except to love them. (Romans 13:8)
And Jesus will ultimately offer this advice in dealing with those who have wronged you and
who consistently refuse to reconcile with you:
let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:17)
Far from the shunning that we imagine this advice to be, Jesus is rather inviting us in those
difficult situations in which we find ourselves, to find a way to love all the more.
After all, how did Jesus deal with Gentiles and tax collectors?
He sought them out and lavished them with grace and forgiveness, as Matthew,
who was himself a tax collector, knew full well.
In some way we are to Jesus as Gentiles and tax collectors, and that is good news.
In Jesus we come to see that, as the writer Daniel Clendenin observes,
“we shouldn’t wish divine judgment on any person or any nation,
even if it appears good and necessary. We should wish them God’s shalom.”
The Lutheran German pastor Martin Niemoller was imprisoned by Hitler for 8 long years during
World War II, and eventually he came to this insight:
It took me a long time to learn that God is not the enemy of my enemies;
he’s not even the enemy of his own enemies.
(http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20110829JJ.shtml)
But this is hard. Grace like this can only come from God. But God wants to give it to us.
I’ve told the story of Dirk Willems before, but it bears repeating again.
Dirk Willems is a well-known hero to our Mennonite friends.
He lived in the Netherlands during the tumultuous time of the Reformation and
was imprisoned by the Roman Catholics for his anabaptist faith.
One winter night, while his guard was sleeping,
he escaped and fled over a lake thinly covered with ice adjacent to the prison.
Because he’d been nearly starved in prison, Willems was thin and easily passed over the thin ice.
But his jailer who woke and pursued him, had grown fat with ease,
and halfway across plunged through the ice and into the deadly waters.
Hearing his cries for help, Willems – so close to freedom – made a decision based in Christ:
he hurried back, extended his arm to his jailer, and saved him from death.
He was taken back to jail, and a short time later, executed.
The freedom Willems experienced in Christ was the true and total freedom that
allowed him to love his neighbour.
It’s this we’re set free for by Christ’s endless love for us, and it’s this we can surely sing about.
This is a liberation we can cheer. And this is a liberation we can live.
So let us say together, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
