Who Am I?

This series starts with a difficult word. There should be a warning label attached to this sermon—something that draws attention to the danger to our safe security and comfort of faith that doesn’t demand much of us; that doesn’t threaten us. The violence in both texts must be handled delicately, for both have been abused over the millennia to turn the faith into something it never should have been, and from which it still struggles to emerge. The crusader mentality, implicit in verses like “let the high praises of God be in their throats and the two-edged swords in their hands,” still breathes through our church on too many levels and in too many corners.

So, why even bother? Why not leave these ideas and images in the dust of history and focus on the kinder and gentler aspects of the faith? Simply because our time calls for an urgency like what is in these texts and a passion that is necessary to drive the transformation needed in our church and in our world. That there are things worth killing, things that need to die for truth to live is a harsh reality that we cannot avoid. And some of those things are like firstborn children to those who hold on to them.

The Exodus text is about the establishment of a ritual, a call to a life of worship. But it is also a call to transformation: from slavery to freedom, from oppression to liberation. It is a call to risk a new life and to embrace change. All this is in the ritual and the words and ideas that the Passover has come to represent.

Notice, for example, the meal itself. There is the sacrificial lamb, whose blood brings redemption and whose body provides sustenance. But there are the bitter herbs, reminders of the suffering already endured and the suffering yet to come. This transformation will not be pain free and will not be blood free. This is a part we tend to forget, or we want to forget. Without suffering, there is no transformation.

Look, too, at how the meal is to be eaten. First there is the call to be ready to move, the first fast-food meal described. Eat it with your shoes on; eat it with your coats buttoned up; eat it with your car keys in your hand, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Yes, this isn’t an every-man-for-himself kind of proposition, not every woman on her own. There is a sense of unity, of family. And if one family is too small, or too poor, then gather with others; be the bigger family; be joined together. Even in this crisis moment, there is a call to care for one another, to look out for those who might be on the margins. Come together to prepare yourselves for this moment, this flight toward freedom.

But what do we fight? What do we stand against? Who is the enemy here? This text (we’ll get to the Psalm later) isn’t about fighting. It is about preparing to run, about going from this place of slavery to a new place of freedom. It is about acknowledging the suffering endured and preparing for more suffering to come; the road to freedom isn’t an easy or a quick one. It calls for preparation and unity, and it calls for setting some things aside.

Some argue that the call for unleavened bread is a time issue. There isn’t time for the bread to rise, so eat it flat. Certainly, time is of the essence here. But there is something more. Fermentation, yeast rising, has a reputation of something wrong, something spoiling, something going bad. There are habits and attitudes and behaviors that must be set aside for the journey to be made.

This is more than finding and vanquishing enemies. Pay attention to the text; there is what appears to be classic hyperbole when the Lord passes through Egypt. First the text says, “I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals.” Really, animals? Bearing the weight of the sins of the nation, now the animals have to suffer? It seems over the top. The text doesn’t end there, however: “on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord!”

What if a literal reading of this text isn’t the best way to read it? What if what needs to be destroyed are the closely held beliefs in supremacy, racial superiority, and religious bigotry? What if the sacrifice that is demanded here is a worldview that oppresses and dehumanizes? These are the firstborn of a people of oppression and as hard to surrender as our own children. Look at the faces of those shouting at Ruby Bridges as she became the first African American student in an all-white elementary school in Louisiana. The photos from that time reveal a people who want to cling to their racism as if it were their firstborn child. What gods did the Egyptians worship? What gods did the people outside the steps of William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1960 cling to? What gods do we worship today? What gods that we are holding as sacrosanct, as precious to our self-identity, does our God want to execute judgement upon?

This is not to claim that there was no shedding of blood on this night the Hebrew people remember as Passover. Such an event might have occurred, as we have come to understand it traditionally. But how does that serve us today? We who have sheltered under the blood of the Lamb, are we protected from the Spirit of death that will lay waste to our enemies’ children, human and animal alike? Or is there something else we ought to be looking for?

Psalm 149 begins like many of the praise psalms with which we are familiar. We sing new songs of praise again and again; we praise with music and dance; we praise with joy from our couches – who doesn’t like that? Not only that, but God takes pleasure in us. The first five verses of this psalm could begin any act of joyous worship.

Then it all changes in verse six. That’s where the praises in our throats and swords in our hands come in. Double edged swords, no less. And it seems to go downhill from there. Vengeance, which is normally left up to God, and punishment and binding in fetters and chains, executing justice. This is glory for all God’s faithful ones. We’d feel better if there was a question mark at the end of that sentence.

Here again, there is great danger in the literal interpretation of these verses. The psalm seems to call for a crusading mentality that vanquishes foes, no matter how high they might be in the political system. What if the two-edged sword is not a literal sword, however, but the Word of the Lord as described in the Letter to the Hebrews, or in Paul’s armor of God image in Ephesians? Psalm 149 doesn’t need to be a call to violence. In fact, to hear it as such goes against Christian understanding from the beginning of the faith. It does, however, call us to not cower before rulers who contravene the ordinances of God. We “attack” with righteousness and with a passion for God’s truth, and we persist until God’s glory is revealed in the world in which we live, not just the one we hope for.

What is also obvious from the harsh language of our texts for this week is that this is not an easy or safe calling. This is not about keeping silent and hoping for the best. This is about rising up and being ready to move toward the transformation of self and society until the kin-dom of God is evident in us and around us. That word until is a wilderness word. It is a reminder that we are on the way and that there will be times when it seems as if we are moving farther from God’s kin-dom instead of drawing nearer. There will be times when the wilderness seems to be winning the day and that God and God’s people are lost, merely whistling in the darkness. That is where faith carries us through. We have come this far by faith, as the gospel song proclaims, and there is still a way to go. But we go, with staff in hand and coats buttoned up, with high praise in our throats and the sword of the Word in our hand, we go. Through the wilderness, we go.