The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: 2 This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. 4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 7 They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. 10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14 This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.
Exodus 12:1-13:16 deals with the Passover tradition. Exodus 12:1-20, 28, 40-51, 13:1-2, 20, present the Priestly account of the Passover.[1] The festival is like the Canaanite New Year Spring Festival. It relates to the semi-nomadic life of the area. Yet, the specificity of the Hebrew rite at its most essential levels does not reduce to these festivals. Further, the P Document has united it with the plague tradition that was an early part of the story of the liberation from Egypt with the Passover. The larger narrative context for the institution of Passover is the struggle of Moses and Aaron to free the Hebrew people from Egyptian slavery (Exodus 1:8-22; 3:7-12; 6:28–7:7) and into the liberation of the Promised Land. The climax of that struggle is a series of plagues inflicted on the Egyptian people, livestock, grain, land, and water, culminating in the 10th and most horrific plague, the death of Egypt’s firstborn children and livestock (11:4-5). The Passover is both the apotropaic (evil-averting) and commemorative ritual of that grim event. I will discuss both aspects. Passover recalls the way the Lord saved a particular people. Interestingly, Jewish exegesis focused upon how this account of the Passover was different from how Jews came to practice it in their homes. One could also suggest that too much emphasis upon Passover would lead to an overemphasis upon liberation as only political. Human beings also need liberation from evil and sin, and thus need a transformed human life. In the New Testament, both John and Paul connect the crucifixion with Passover themes. There was also the Quartodeciman controversy in the history of the church, in which the churches divided over the date to celebrate Easter. Some (Orthodox churches) wanted to connect it closely to the Jewish celebration of Passover; others wanted it celebrated on a different calendar so that Easter was always Sunday. Church rites through the Reformation continued to use the Passover as an allegory of Christian teaching on baptism, Eucharist, and the death and resurrection of Jesus.[2]
I will focus on Exodus 12:1-14. 1The Lord said to Moses the liberator and Aaron the leader of worship life, giving them instructions regarding the observance of the Passover. The Lord instructed them in the land of Egypt. 2 This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. The Jewish calendar will beginin March-April in the Gregorian calendar because of the event of the coming redemption of Israel, Abib in Hebrew, and Nisan in the ancient Babylonian calendar. Even today, the Jewish calendar begins the new year on this date, although that fact does not receive emphasis. 3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel, the frequent use of the term in contexts involving the worship life of the people (e.g., Exodus 12:3, 6, 19, 47; Leviticus 4:13; Numbers 16:9) suggests that the term applied to adult male heads of households, the core of Israel as a religious entity. They are to tell the congregation that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. 4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one, this act of sharing such a meal is to remind them of the costliness of this sacrifice. They shall divide the lamb in proportion to the number of people who eat it. The lamb will come from among the flock they have. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a standard requirement of sacrificial animals, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, keeping it four days to verify it does not have a blemish. This requirement is common among religions in which sacrifice is part of their practice. The logic of sacrifice to deity demands one offers the best of what one has. The firstborn of the year from the flock was the healthiest, fittest, and strongest. A healthy year-old lamb, sheep, goat, or even calf in Deuteronomy 16:2 was a considerable investment of labor and resources on the part of the shepherd. The logic of sacrifice to deity would not settle for “sacrifice” of surplus or leftovers, but only a sacrifice that represented its cost to the one who sacrifices. Then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 7 They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. At this point, Passover becomes an apotropaic (evil-averting) ritual. Using a blood marker to ward off evil appears elsewhere in the Bible. Exodus 4:24-26 relates the strange incident of the Lord attacking the son of Moses, and Zipporah using the severed foreskin of the son to protect him. Blood was the life force of living creatures in Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:11, and 14. One was to return the blood to the deity from whence it came. 8 They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. 10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. This act avoids any possibility of profaning the elements of the sacrifice. In contrast to other sacrifices in which families were to share with the priests, the family is to consume the Passover sacrifice completely. They will eat it prepared for a journey. 11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover [Pesach] of the Lord. The name derives from a verb that means to “pass over,” but also “to protect” and “to have compassion.” Even in times of danger and haste, there is a place for ritual. The Lord is careful to give specific instructions on how families are to celebrate the first Passover. The symbols of the common objects have divine significance. We now come to the painful reason for all of this. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals. We see the value of the firstborn here as well. It makes this event so devastating. For example, the depleted and scarce resources of most families made them focus on the thriving and surviving firstborn. Although some scholars want to make a connection with the practice of child sacrifice, if it has one the relationship is unclear. In any case, the image is disturbing. It causes us to wonder who the Lord is and to what lengths the Lord will go. How do we understand one who has brought about one disaster after the other, wounding people, animals, and earth? The Israelites will also wonder who the Lord is. One cannot take the Lord for granted. We then learn that the Lord will judge the gods of Egypt in this plague. If we are reading the entire plague tradition contained in Exodus, this statement might surprise us. This severe judgment is not on Pharaoh or the people of Egypt. This severe judgment is upon the gods they worship. The exodus is a matter of theology, the defeat of the deities of Egypt by the newly revealed Yahweh of the Hebrew people. If a modern reporter were present, the news account would look vastly different from the account in the Bible. A newspaper account would describe the human resources involved. The biblical account focuses upon the divine battle that is taking place. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. It might be appropriate to reflect upon a time in our lives when death passed over us and we were spared and given thanks to the Lord for continued life. 14This day, Nisan 15, is a day of remembrance for the Jewish people. Passover is a festival to the Lord. Yet, Tractate Pesachim in the Mishnah, ca. 200, reminded Israelites of the enormous suffering that they commemorated alongside Israel’s deliverance, and instructed Passover participants departing at the conclusion of the meal not to join in revelry.[3] The festival or remembrance itself is a powerful way for the Jewish people to cultivate its relationship with the Lord. We are not to think of simply recalling the fact of a past event, but to actualize its liberating power in the present.[4]
It is significant that God chooses to save Israel. Israel does not earn this salvation. The whole miracle is that such a tiny, insignificant people became the beneficiaries of a great miracle: liberation from slavery to the most powerful empire then on earth. For the rest of Israelite history, this special covenant between Israel and God was invoked to bind the 12 tribes together into a nation; and in these invocations of the covenant, God's saving act in the exodus is always mentioned as the primary action through which God demonstrated faithfulness to the Israelites and worthiness to be worshiped (Joshua 24:5-7; 1 Samuel 12:6-8; 1 Kings 8:44-54).
I want to reflect upon varying ways we experience time. Life is not only about what we do, of course. However, life is, in part, what we do with the time we have.
Here are a few jokes about time from Steven Wright.
I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.
I went to a restaurant that serves “breakfast at any time.” So I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.
I saw a bank that said “24-Hour Banking,” but I don’t have that much time.
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.
Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.
I came across an article that made me think about time. Pope Gregory shifted the calendar from what was then the standard “Julian” calendar, to the Gregorian calendar. However, the change became effective only in Roman Catholic countries. Protestant countries stayed with the older calendar. Finally, in America in 1752, they decided to move to the Gregorian calendar. It has many complications for that year, but what struck me most was that 2 September 1752 was followed by 14 September 1752. They went to bed on the second and woke up on the fourteenth. They lost eleven days. Think of it this way, they missed 11 days that year. Yet, it did not matter. I am not sure what those who had birthdays during that period did, but I am sure they figured it out. It did not matter because it is just a matter of counting time.
I have long been fascinated with time. I first saw it in my appreciation for Science Fiction that plays around with the notion of time. Back to the Future was a big one, of course. For me, Ground Hog Day was another. This fascination led to appreciation of certain writers in theology and philosophy who will explore this notion as well.
However, I think that behind the fascination is a puzzlement. What do I do with my past? What do I do with this moment? I am creating a future self. What do I want him or her to be like? Will my future self be satisfied with what I do today?
Why do we need reminders? Some memories need to be shocked into our memory, like that of the day JFK was shot. Other memories require repetition. We make the commitment on our wedding day to love one another. Yet, it is not enough. We need to hear it repeatedly. Memories of the heart require constant repetition. We hear the message that God loves us. Yet, we need to hear it repeatedly. Why? Because we forget. As Israel sometimes forgot the significance of the Passover, so do Christians forget.
This might remind us of two common ways we think of connecting remembering with the past. We can remember that something happened. This would mark time (chronos). God created such marking of time in creation, so we are to value it. Yet, what we remember is an external fact. We have some horror of the “same old thing,” (C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters). Day after day, time marches on, regardless of the date. We will do anything to break the monotony. Yes, idle hands are the worship of the devil. Boredom provides a warehouse of raw materials for construction. When time holds no meaning for us, we can waste our time on trivial and self-destructive pursuits. When we experience time like this, we do not even realize that our time is passing away. We do not have to experience time like this. The Lord formed us to experience our brief chronological time with fullness and meaning (kairos). Passover is a day of remembrance in this sense. Passover “remembers” the divine act of liberation from slavery. Human flourishing, meaning, and significance derive from the divine presence breaking into “chronos” and making it “kairos.” We have an open mind and heart to the divine in this moment. “Kairos” is the moment of the visitation and intervention of the Lord. A “kairos” moment can offer such significance well beyond its chronological location. Thus, the Passover remembrance contains within it the desire to actualize the liberation brought by the divine presence in communal and personal life. The “kairos” of that event in the past becomes our “kairos” today. Such a time is no longer external to us. We have internalized the “kairos” of that event of that event in the past in such a way that it becomes our “kairos” of today. I hope I do not need to spell out the implication of all this for Christian remembrance in baptism, the Lord’s Supper, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Such remembrances become formative of the life of the people of God. It does not matter who the officiant might be. We allow the act of remembrance to form us.
We can discover a great beauty in the ironic tragedy by which Christ's crucifixion took place during the Jewish festival of Passover. The central feast of the Jewish faith, their affirmation of God's gracious choice for them over all others, their most holy reminder of God's saving power now forever coincides with the central feast of the Christian faith, with our affirmation of God's gracious choice for humanity, our most holy reminder of God's saving power. It is no wonder that the early church found the image of the Lamb of God an irresistible title for our Christ. The blood that saved the Israelites, celebrated during Passover, for us has forever given way to the blood that saved the world. The symbolism of the sacrificial victim, the presence of whose blood diverts the angel of death from the homes of the faithful, has forever become the mystical truth behind our dependence upon Christ and his willingness to forfeit his life to save ours.
[1] Brevard S. Childs wrote a commentary on Exodus that forms such of the historical discussion here. Passover receives mention in only three of the five lists of biblical festivals, in Leviticus 23:1-37, Numbers 28-29, Deuteronomy 16:1-6, in each case associated with the seven-day celebration of unleavened bread. Passover receives no mention in Exodus 24:14-17 (J) and 34:18-25. Wellhausen tried to reconstruct the history of these texts, where the earliest tradition is Exodus 23-24, Deuteronomy 16 is a temporary centralization of the festival, and the account here is a return to the earliest tradition that the P Document recovered in the exile. The reason for the centralization is where scholars differ. Many think the family orientation of the early practice led to syncretism and under the reforms of Josiah such syncretism could not stand. II Kings 23:21-23 hints this direction. The difficulty is the connection between the Spring festival and the Passover. Childs says it seems clear that both are early acts that cultivated the relationship of the Hebrew people with the Lord and later adapted by Israel to its needs. Joshua 5:10-12 suggests an early union of the two festivals. Deuteronomy 16 is a reform designed to re-establish an ancient practice. This suggests a period of neglect. A hint that this might have some truth is that, according to Van Seters, the pre-exilic prophets give meager information about the exodus. The point is that the Passover received its association to this historical event very early.
[2] Another issue related to this is whether the "Feast of Unleavened Bread" was originally separate from the springtime holiday, such that redefining the spring holiday happened specifically because the Feast of Unleavened Bread was combined with it. Most biblical law, however, treats the Passover season as if it always contained both events: the sacrifice of the lamb in remembrance of God passing over the homes of the Israelites, and the eating of unleavened bread in remembrance of the flight from Egypt (Exodus 12:15-20; Deuteronomy 16:1-8; Ezekiel 45:21-25). Another tradition which may have a connection to the Passover story is the practice of putting a mezuzah, or prayer scroll, on the doorposts of one's home. Just as the lamb's blood marked the doorways into Israelite houses on the night God slew the firstborn of the Egyptians, mezuzahs now mark the doorways into Jewish homes as a sign that those inside worship the one God (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).
[3] (Pesach. 10.1-8; cf. J. H. Hayes, “Passover,” The Oxford Companion to the Bible [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 573).
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