Signs of Love
A Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 10, 2023
The Rev. Robin Teasley
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 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. 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. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 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. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 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. 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. 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. 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 12:1-14
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Romans 13:8-14
There are troubles in the world right now. Things like earthquakes, storms, fires, political trials, disease, violence. We would all prefer to come to church for some respite, not to hear about blood on doorposts, and killing of all the firstborn. We come to reconnect to God and to make some sense out of life and find hope. The thing is, we can’t always ignore what is going on in the world, but we can look at what is happening, and find ways to connect the scriptures to our lives. It’s also good to gather here and find ways in which we can do tangible things to spread the love of God beyond our walls. And, as with every part of life, doing the work of the kingdom is going to bring challenges, conflict, and struggle.
I don’t think there is any way we can hear the Exodus passage about the Passover and just move on without comment. It’s a story of bloodshed and violence, a story that portrays a God who does something I cannot understand. So, what are we to make of this story, one that horrifies us with an image of an angry Old Testament God? It seems we can’t ignore the violence and judgment in scripture any more than we can ignore the violence and judgment in the world.
We began this story two weeks ago with the birth of Moses, where there was another killing of the firstborn, that one commanded by Pharaoh. The baby Moses escaped Pharaoh’s death sentence when his mother placed him in a basket and put him in the river.
Last week we heard of Moses’ encounter with a burning bush and his call to lead the people of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt. Between last week and today there are nine chapters of Exodus gone missing, and in those nine chapters, God sends Moses and his brother Aaron to convince Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go. God sends nine plagues upon the Egyptians, each one worse than the one before as Pharaoh and his gods go head to head with Moses and his God – the great I AM.
Our reading today recounts the tenth and final plague sent to convince Pharaoh to let the people go – a plague to kill all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals. Pharaoh, it seems, gets a dose of his own medicine. Pharaoh is judged by God for his harsh treatment of the Israelites. And there are casualties. There are always casualties on both sides of violence and judgment.
While we may not have heard the more disturbing details of the stories in the book of Exodus when we were children in Sunday school, the larger story, the narrative arc, has been told over and over since the beginning. It is a story about how a people chosen by God journeyed through all the disappointments and trials of life; a story about how these people became a community and were able to remain a community, even when things were at their worst. It’s a story about how God loves and forgives these people over and over. This story is full of twists and turns and surprises, sorrows and joys, judgment and death, life and salvation; and this story includes us.
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Before we get too caught up in the bloody events of today’s passage, it may be helpful to know that the Hebrew people saw blood as something sacred, as the life force of a living being. Blood was a sign for life, for salvation. The first time we hear of blood being spilled, is in chapter four of Genesis when Cain kills Abel. In the Hebrew text, God asks, “What have you done? The voice of the blood of your brother cries out to me from the ground.” Cain is cursed and can no longer till the earth; he becomes a fugitive and a wanderer. Even then, God protects Cain by marking him with a sign so that when he is in exile he will be recognized as belonging to God.
This idea of being marked with a sign is what we see in today’s reading. The doorposts of the children of Israel are marked with blood, with the sign of life, the sign of God’s protection and love.
There are many signs throughout the biblical stories of God and God’s people. We have signs in our life with God as well. One sign we are familiar with is the sign we are marked with at our baptism. After we are baptized with water, we are marked on our forehead with the sign of the cross, sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. We see another sign on Ash Wednesday, as we are marked with a cross made out of ashes, and reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return.
Through leaders like Moses, God showed the people how to live in community and care for one another. When the people forgot, God became Incarnate, made man, to remind us what it looks like to be the people of God, living together in love.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul reminds them again that all the laws can be distilled down into one word – love. All our actions are to be founded in love. Not in our own selfish love of idols, but in God’s love. God’s love becomes alive in us as we put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus showed us the signs of love, what it looks like to be marked by love. In the Exodus story, blood was the life force, a symbol, a sign of God’s love. Now the life force is love as received from God through Jesus Christ.
1 Cor. 5:7b-8
Maybe we find parts of the Exodus story uncomfortable because, deep inside, we know that we are all too capable of such action, or because we ourselves have experienced some pretty horrendous things in life. When we hear the news headlines each day, we are reminded that humans are all too capable of horrible things. The unspeakable acts occurring in the world right now are no more egregious than some of the stories in scripture. We may wonder how much worse it might get; when we see the poverty, the rage, the lust for power, the weather extremes, and the violence in our own day, we may think things look hopeless.
But our hope is in the love of God. It is this love that has marked us as Christ’s own forever at our baptism. No longer marked by blood, we are marked by love, a love that becomes a visible sign as we fulfill our baptismal promises. The promises to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers; to persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord; to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as our self; to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. That is what it looks like to live as a community marked by love.
As Paul tells the Romans, now is the moment for us to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. And so we put on the armor of light, we put on the Lord Jesus Christ. We gather as a community to hear the story, to remember God’s works of love and mercy and to remember who we are, whose we are.
We come to the table, where Christ serves love in the signs of bread and wine, and we receive the strength we need to take that love out into a world that is looking for the sign. A sign that life can be about abundance, equality, kindness, and peace.
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