Proper 18, Year A

The Rev. Rob Fisher

St. Dunstan’s, Carmel Valley

Texts: Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

A high schooler that I know recently went to the movies with her friends.  She told me that they all wanted to see some horror movie that is out right now, but she didn’t want to see it.  There is a romantic comedy out, too, and they suggested that one instead.  And she said OK.

One of her friends went over to the box office and got all the tickets, and came back.  They went into the theater together and took their seats.

The first trailer came on, and the trailer alone was pretty terrifying, especially for just being a trailer.  My friend asked herself, Why are even the trailers before romantic comedies so scary?  Then the second trailer came on, and it was the same thing.  She was starting to be a little suspicious of her friends.  Had she even seen the ticket stub?

When the actual movie finally started, the first scene was horrendous.  This was not the romantic comedy.  Her friends had duped her.

They all had a good laugh—but since my friend is no shrinking violet, she didn’t just sit there.  She got one of her friends to join her, and they went back to the lobby and switched their tickets for Harry Potter.

Some people love horror movies and some people don’t.  One this is for sure: it’s a huge industry, and the genre seems to be getting more prevalent and more graphic every year.

Contrast this story of the allure of imaginary death and destruction with a story of another young woman of a similar age, but partway across the world in Sudan.

This second young woman is not a personal friend of mine, but is known to Becky Tinsley, whom many of you met here at St. Dunstan’s a few months ago.  Becky has spent a lot of time with survivors of genocide in Sudan.

This woman survived the period of genocide that took the lives of many of her family and friends.  She was then given the chance to learn how to read and write.  Becky’s group has helped give survivors like her tools like literacy.

Can you imagine that the first word she asked to be taught was the word “God”?  From her perspective, she was grateful to be alive.  She wanted to praise God for it, using her brand new ability to write.

***

The story this morning from Exodus is a very challenging one.

If you remember the context of the story, the Israelites are living in slavery in Egypt, and Moses has a very hard time convincing Pharaoh to let them go.  Then God sends ten plagues.

Remember what has happened leading up to this moment.  The Israelites have grown numerous in Egypt, and the Egyptians have treated the Israelites very badly, but then the ten plagues that come are like a horror movie.  The plagues come to convince the Egyptians to finally let the Israelites leave their midst.  You can read about all of these plagues, the frogs and the lice and the boils and the locusts and the darkness, in the first chapters of Exodus.  And finally comes the tenth plague, the one that finishes the process because it is so terrible.  The final plague is the one that takes the life of the firstborn male in every house, and all of the firstborn animals as well.

For me, it’s a challenge to think that God would do that.

God gives the Israelites households instructions to each take a lamb, sacrifice it and roast it intact.  To eat the entire thing as a family at night, and to splatter blood on the door posts and the lintels of the houses.

If any of it remains until morning, it is to be burned.

In doing so, the plague will “pass over” their households that night, and the lives of their children will be saved.  Meanwhile, the plague will come to the Egyptians.  When it is over they will have had enough, and will grant the Israelites their freedom to depart.

The Passover is important to the Jews even to this day, and is practiced as a remembrance.  What happened to the Egyptians is not the focus of it, but rather that it was the moment of deliverance for the people.

***

Still it is a very challenging story, especially for those of us who have seen that God loves all people.

This is the God who inspired St. Paul to write “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law…the commandments are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

I have a hard time imagining God being so harsh to the Egyptians.

I don’t know if it happened exactly as it was told in the story describes it in Exodus, but I do know that the story tells important truths about us and our relation to God.

It is interesting that in the original Hebrew, the entity who comes and brings the death, is at times described as being “the plague.”  So the destruction seems to not be God’s doing, but “the plagues” doing.  In the Hebrew it is actually more pronounced, as the word may better be translated as “the Destroyer.”

I wonder, does that mean it is really in contrast to God, who is “the Creator”?

I wonder if the Destroyer is not so much something sent by God, but is really something else that has already been unleashed in the world, that repeats itself in cycles.

The Destroyer, which comes to kill, seems to be born in the hard-heartedness of the Egyptians, who treat the Jews cruelly.

And at the Passover, God steps in to break the cycle.

The Destroyer is born out of estrangement from God, from love.

The Passover is a break in the chain.

***

Speaking of death, there are two different kinds: physical death, and spiritual death.

Without a doubt, every one of us is one day going to have death in our bodies.

The horror movies don’t help us prepare for this at all, because they play on our very fear of dying, and make it worse.

However, while our bodies will all one day die, we are also people of the Spirit.

The promise of Jesus is not to save us from bodily death, but from spiritual death.  Jesus is the Passover lamb that causes spiritual death to pass over us.

All of us.

Jesus stands in the way of death, and sets us free from all worldly enslavement.

Including even the enslavement of the fear of death.

I was talking with a friend this week about how from an early age, I apprehended that this mortal life must not be all that there is.

And I believe that most of us have had that sense.

We have tasted something more, haven’t we?—a foretaste of what’s in store for us when God’s realm and our lives become one—a foretaste of the Kingdom.

***

So, why the use of blood at all?

Why is it blood that has to take such a central place in affecting deliverance, at least according to the Passover story?

According to a Christian writer from the early 20th century named John Edgar Park, we get our emphasis wrong.

He says that we as Christians should not focus “on dead blood, blood that has been shed,” but rather we should look toward “live blood, blood throbbing in warm heroic life.

“Those who feel most at home with the blood of the martyrs today, would have felt anything but comfortable with the living men [and women themselves].”

Also, he says, “the idea of suffering as the price for all good is only a splendid half-truth; [because] it is even nobler and often harder to live one’s faith than to die for it.”

***

Spending time with devout Jews in New York as a hospital chaplain several years ago, I gained an appreciation for how their faith and their culture still holds the preciousness of life.

You have surely heard the expression “L’Chaim!”—to life!

Life is as incredibly sacred.

And we are free to live.

Jesus’ message is not about death, but about the defeat of death once and for all.

Death cannot kill us, only fear of it can.

So today, you may ask yourself at last, what do you need to be free of so that you can live?

What do you need deliverance from?

What do you need to let go of?

What do you need to let pass over you?

Breaking the cycles that oppress us is hard.  For us it is unnatural.  We have known the Destroyer.  We have seen his work

Thankfully, while breaking the cycle is hard for us, it is natural for God.

Indeed, it is God’s very nature.

***

The Collect this morning takes my breath away.

It is the prayer that we start the service with—which “collects” us together, and collects the themes of the day’s readings.  This morning’s collect says:

“Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy[!]”

It’s a contradiction, almost—to boast in mercy.

Strength is usually what people boast in, not mercy.

But God breaks the cycle, and treats us better than we deserve.

Can we then treat others better than they deserve?

That is mercy to boast in; that is living the Kingdom of God.

In Sudan today—rather than might that has brought death—it is mercy that has preserved life that is truly worth boasting in.

For Jesus to take the place of the Passover lamb, he has become mercy itself.

—Amen.