Exodus Chapter 12 Sermon:

Ready for the Journey

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?