Upcoming Sunday
Old Testament Readings
Sunday 10 September
2017
Exodus
12:1-14
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.
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The
account of the Passover feels a bit odd in September. But this flows in succession to our
consecutive readings that we have heard in recent weeks in this Time of the
Church. Only, as with previous accounts
first of Jacob and Esau and then of Joseph and his brothers, there is so much
that is skipped over between the call of Moses and the deliverance of the
People of God by God through Moses’ leadership.
This has been a struggle. But at
last out of the struggle, deliverance comes.
Perhaps this is the message that we should focus on. This is especially fitting given that we know
that the Passover does not eliminate the struggles and hardships of the
people. The only thing that changes is
the location of the people of God. There
is a wilderness that awaits them after the Passover. It will take some time to reach the Promised
Land. And even when they reach the
Promised Land, the people will still struggle, mostly because of their own
stubbornness and unfaithfulness that rears its ugly head at the worst possible
times again and again. For us, we do
well to remember that in this life we are in the wilderness. The Passover holds before us both the promise
of the enduring presence of God and of the Promised Land that shall not be
taken away from us, not because we have made it irrevocable, but rather because
God in faithfulness holds before us the promised of eternal rest that none can
take away, not even us, perhaps especially not even us.
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Father Timothy
Alleman
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