Cherith Fee Nordling—Year A Proper 18

Anthony: Let’s do this. Let’s move to the lectionary passages of the month. Our first text is going to be Exodus 12:1–14. I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, the updated edition. It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 18 in Ordinary Time on September 6.

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 with fire. 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 I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and 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.^*

So Cherith, what does this text reveal about the God of Israel, and how could a preacher proclaim this text in a Christocentric way?

Cherith: I think one of the first things that we always have to be recalled to is that there is only one God, and that God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who looks exactly like his self-revealing Son and the Spirit of the Father and the Son, and that we look to him revealed in Jesus, incarnate forever.

And in that revelation, we not only see God, but we see what is true about what it means to be a human being in his resurrected image. Everything begins and ends with him. And so. when we read his scriptures, which ― these are his ― it’s to imagine, like our friend Bradley Jersak invites us to do, it’s to sit down and read them in the company of Jesus, as he would read them in the company of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, and let him tell us what it is that is true about God in these scriptures as that truth will finally be revealed in Jesus.

So, we ask him, “Where are you here?” And that would mean we have to look for him in the dying, and the suffering, and the promise, and the presence, and the humility, and the response to the crankiness, and look for how he will gather up everything that’s happening in these people that isn’t of God and will cleanse it.

And to watch for that through here, the consuming fire of his ascension. So, we just have to orient ourselves there, right? And then suddenly we go, oh, the God of Israel is the one who Jesus says you may call him Abba, because he is your Abba, and he is not just the God of Israel, he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But that covenant with them is the God who will bring every nation to himself and every tongue and tribe to proclaim. And so, it just stops us reading the othering that we do, and the retribution and vengeance as if these are God’s ways of being God instead of the ways that we want to construct an orientation.

So, that’s just my very big overview for reading all of these Old Testament texts. We just can never read them apart from the gospel. I guess that’s the simplest way to say it, is read them as on-ramps to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then ask your questions from there.

Anthony: Yeah, it’s like seeing the end of a movie, so once you know how it ends, then that reshapes, if you go back and watch it, everything.

Cherith: Yep.

Anthony: There are all the clues all along, like this is pointing toward an end, to tell us it’s going somewhere, and now we know.

Cherith: Yep.

Anthony: And that going somewhere is the person and work of Jesus.

I don’t know that this question’s really as much about the calendar, though I’m curious, God does establish a new calendar for Israel in connection with Passover. But really what I want to get to: tell us about redemption and how it reshapes Israel’s identity, history, and understanding of time. And I think in some ways you’ve already answered it, but help us to understand Israel’s redemption.

Cherith: Yeah. I think this passage, and certainly the section leading up to it and then the section that will lead up to the next one and the next one that we don’t get to read in the weeks. And so, hopefully people are reading through the week to catch them.

But I’m always amazed at how reluctant we are to be the people of God’s redemption. And then …

Anthony: Tell me more.

Cherith: When I think about, like almost every single passage where God is going to do something that actually really reveals the goodness of God in ways that cannot be mistaken for anybody or anything else, or just the ways that we would manage our own salvation and redemption and get ourselves out of our own trouble, because he knows we really can’t except to keep doing it in the ways that got us into the trouble in the first place, every time we resist and say, “God, it would’ve just been better to be back in Egypt,” with what we were familiar with. And we would control our lives or complain about our situation and put the blame where it goes and blah, blah, blah.

And so, I just think there’s something to be marked about the fact that God’s redemption is never based on our readiness. It’s never based on, or at least our awareness of our readiness, or our bringing ourselves or our doing something in order for God to respond with salvation. It is God from first to last. And to watch him in this, as your initial questions are even around time, is watch him, enter this time ― which is all his, because he is all and in all ― but to mark it as a way that reorients them and us as part of them, to see that it is God who makes time for us, and he makes the time that we need to work on us to help us become who we are in relationship.

And without that time, and the ways that he helps us remember it and mark it and see it, and get it into all of our senses so that we actually enact it, instead of coming to church and thinking it for 20 minutes, and then going about our lives and enacting completely different narratives all the time.

Anthony: Yeah, come on.

Cherith: When God says, like you can have something that enacts, which is what the liturgy is doing, or ways that we can create liturgies in the lives that may not be part of the formal tradition, that help us enact, because God knows we need our bodies will hold the memory, and keep the score and taste and see and smell, and remember that God is good, that we need this kind of liturgy, like do this, and I am doing this in this big overarching way, and I will be moving through all of these pieces.

And they don’t love it, but I do love that, like going through the text really quickly, is that the simple like obvious things, like it’s available to everybody, right? And equally you’re going to share it, and if somebody can’t afford it, then the neighbor next door, you get that sheep together. And it’s both for quickness and ease and necessity, but it’s also, man, it’s your next-door neighbor, and they might be the person who you really trust, and it might be the person who drives you nuts. But God’s like, this is who you’re going to be entrusted with so that it’s not just Egypt who is the other. Your neighbor doesn’t get to be your other. This, I am making up people for my name, like boom.

And then, oh, by the way, you don’t even get to just privatize this. Everybody’s offering is going to be consumed together so that you receive this as gift from me, right? This is a communal act. It’s not a privatized act. It’s not a privilege act. It’s not an earned act, and it leaves nobody out, right? They get, everybody gets marked by the blood of the lamb as a testimony, not to their obedience, but to God’s action, and it’s God’s prior …

Anthony: Wow.

Cherith: … and promised action. And suddenly they become witnesses to the presence of Jesus already, right? If you do this, it doesn’t just save you from this moment, but the Son of God will be recognized, because when he comes, he will tell this story with himself as the blood on that doorpost, and as the blood at this table and this Passover meal. And if you do this, it will mark the world, right? It will mark time for a new world.

And so, just seeing how many beautiful ways that he creates our Eucharistic Thanksgiving table of the Lord, communion, Lord’s supper, all the ways that he’s like, “I want you to remember,” reconnect as members of the body of Christ, not just memory looking back.

I don’t think this is a memory exercise. If in fact in time, all time is God’s time now, that he makes time for us to move through to grow. But for God, everything is already finished. He’s seen us finished, so he’s not stressed. And our becoming at the same time is the place where we learn how beloved we are, and we learn what trust looks like, and we learn how to be his witnesses in the world because we have seen him and know him, right?

And so, to say that God loves both to make our time and to remark our time is then to also go, oh man, he is going to execute judgment as the Passover lamb, but that means every Egyptian Hebrew among us, which is every one of us, as both every Egyptian heart and every Hebrew heart is our heart. And he will become the judgment that actually says, “I will burn up in that consuming fire as the lamb everything that is not of God, and make something new that is neither Egyptian nor Hebrew in you, but that is Christ in you.”

And to make these waters, the waters of our baptism, into his death, I’m like, okay, every single thing that is the redemptive story is going to be this story if we’re just paying attention. And he’s going to do it in the company of our Abba. So, lest we think God is against Egypt and for Israel, as if we aren’t both the grumblers and the oppressors …

Anthony: Right. Right.

Cherith: … he’s like, “No, I’m just for my beloved children, and I will redeem all of them,” because the one who is the first and the last holds the keys of Hades. And that means whatever has to die, his last word is life, right? So, we’re going to see that in the next section, so I shouldn’t go too far ahead. But it’s a big gospel, and we are very reluctant to let him have his way in it most of the time. But it’s his story, and he’s graciously let it be our own

Anthony: Wow. Have your way, Lord. That is brilliant what you just said. Ah, I want to package that up and share it with the world, that all in all, our Lord.