Thought For The Week 10 September 2023

This week our reading picks up in chapter 12 of Exodus, skipping over nine chapters of the conflict between Pharaoh and God that plays out in the form of 10 plagues on the land of Egypt. There are some especially intriguing passages in there that give us much food for contemplation. They are also chapters packed with action. But chapter 12 seems like we’ve shifted gears. All of a sudden we get 28 verses describing what is to be the first Passover meal. A meal that continues to this day to shape the thought and practice of the Jewish people worldwide.

The Passover lamb (which could also be a goat kid) was not a sacrifice for sin, it was an offering to God for ‘passing over’ the household when he afflicted Egypt with plagues. The blood the Israelites smeared on their doorposts was a sign that this household was marked as belonging to the people of God.

In the New Testament, Jesus saw the Passover as a foreshadowing of his own liberating work. He reinterprets the Passover tradition with his disciples, giving us the Lord’s supper, or communion. The bread is his body and the wine is his blood, symbols of our exodus from slavery to sin and death. An outward sign, a marker of that of grace we have received. As Christians, we participate in the meal of communion,     proclaiming all God has done, is doing and will do. Declaring that we are marked by Christ’s blood, counted as one of the family of God, giving thanks for his promise of deliverance from death and trusting in the hope of life with God as a restored humanity in a renewed creation.

Luke