Blogging Exodus 12
Times change.
The increments by which we measure hours, days, weeks, months, and
years are invented things which we alter according to need and import. In the world before fast-moving trains, international
shipping lanes, and global communication forced standardization with Western
time-keeping, a major cultural change, like a new king, a new religion, or a
natural disaster was frequently commemorated by changing the calendar. God participated
in that tradition, marking the emancipation
of the Old Testament Hebrews by changing the count of time.
Freedom is revolutionary, so God cleverly ordained that the Jews
should equate their national liberation as a new year, a new “revolution”
around the sun.
This month shall be your
beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you (Exodus 12:2).
But, at the beginning of Exodus chapter 12, freedom for Israel did not
feel imminent. Pharaoh had resisted Moses, Moses’ God, and their radical
progressive agenda of liberation and ethnic self-determination. Through 10 rounds of negotiation, Pharaoh
had refused to let God’s people go. When last Moses had approached Pharaoh, the
king ended talks by threatening to have the prophet executed.
Then Pharaoh said to him,
“Get away from me! Take heed to yourself and see my face no more! For in the
day you see my face you shall die!” (Exodus 10:28)
Yet, God promised that within 2 weeks of the beginning of their new,
new year Pharaoh Pharaoh will let you go
from here. When he lets you go, he will surely drive you out of here altogether
(Exodus 11:1).
Pharaoh had grown more and more hard-hearted with each cataclysm God sent
upon Egypt. Why would he change his mind
now? How could the times change THAT
quickly?
Why did the United States of America abolish slavery after a century
of protecting the wicked institution? It wasn’t because the leaders of the
United States suddenly felt morally convicted by the abolitionist sermons
they’d ignored all their lives.
America freed its slaves because the Civil War killed or wounded more
than 5% of the population (1.5 million
reported casualties, not counting civilians, of an 1860 population of 31
million people). The Civil War was the great
plague necessary to force the liberation of God’s Black people in America.
Some times only change because the times are made so brutally hard
that the powers at the time are forced to change.
At midnight on the 14th
day of the first month of their changed time, God would send a final plague
upon the Egyptian slaveholders. A deliberate,
intelligent spirit, an angel from God, would kill every man, woman, child, and
domesticated animal in Egypt that was the firstborn of its family. The
casualties would be so high that Egypt, like 1860’s America, would let God’s
people go.
Some times only change because the times are made so brutally hard
that the powers at the time are forced to change.
Without the great plague that was the Civil War, American abolition
would have been delayed indefinitely.
Without the horrors of the first Passover, Pharaoh would not have let God’s
people go.
PASSOVER is the celebration, the sanctification of blood shed in the
revolution of liberation. On the
10th of their new, new year’s month, the descendants of Israel held in Goshen were to gather as families and eat
their LAST SUPPER as slaves.
Speak to all the
congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall
take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a
household. . . Your lamb shall be
without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or
from the goats (Exodus
12: 3 - 5).
PASSOVER was offered to every member of God’s community. No one, no matter their socioeconomic
condition was to be excluded from the table.
And if the household is
too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it
according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall
make your count for the lamb (Exodus 12:4).
The enslaved community came together, pooling their resources around
the Lord’s table as a united community.
A community union. A COMMUNION.
PASSOVER, COMMUNION, THE LAST SUPPER of a people in bondage took place
under THE BLOOD.
And they shall take some
of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses
where they eat it
(Exodus 12:7).
People who prefer their steaks and chops rare claim that the meat is
“juicy.” That’s not juice, though. That’s blood.
In our “civilized” era, most people are far removed from the bloody process
of taking an animal and turning it into meat.
Ancient people couldn’t delude themselves about the ugliness required to
provide for their families. Israel’s new
ritual required them to take a sheep (representing innocence) or a goat (representing
mean guilt) slit its throat, drain the blood into a basin, take that blood, and put it on the two doorposts and on the
lintel of the houses where they eat it (Exodus 12: 8).
Up-and-down and then across, every Hebrew home was marked with THE
BLOOD. The blood of the innocent who
took upon Him the guilt of a people.
Up-and-down and then across, the people of God marked the change in the
revolutionary change in their times by coming under THE BLOOD of the Innocent
who was killed like the guilty are killed; who gave body and blood to His
people to set the people free. On a night of wrath, and death, and
revolution, the blood of the lamb purchased mercy for those in a believing
household.
Redemption is freedom from sin and the condemnation of eternal death. All freedom is revolutionary, and every
revolution is an ugly, brutal thing. The
Civil War, the death of the firstborn in Egypt, the Cross.
Jesus, as God manifest, transcends time. He is “I am.” He is present, future, and past;
so His death as the innocent lamb of God was the revolutionary sacrifice that liberates
believers across time from the slave wages of sin. The judgment of God passes over us who are
under the blood of Christ. It is a new
birth. A new life. A new beginning that extends into all time.
Times change, but more importantly, Christ changes ---- everything.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME
Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word
to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves
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