Skip to main content

Reflections on the Lord's Supper, pt. 3

The birth of the ancient nation of Israel was truly a unique event.

Imagine it from the perspective of an ancient Israelite living in Egypt. You are a slave. You have been your entire life, as have your parents and grandparents before going back several generations. You do not have much of a national identity. All you have ever known is servitude to Egypt and the Pharaohs.

Your entire life has been spent in fear of the Egyptian gods. Clearly they are powerful, otherwise you wouldn't have been enslaved. Your ancestors worshiped a God too, YHWH his name was, but no one seems to have heard from him in a while. You live in abject terror of the horrors they, embodied by the living god-king Pharaoh, might do to you and your family. Thousands of men, women, and even children have been slaughtered at this tyrant's command.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Moses arrives. This man is a Hebrew like you, but he was raised under very different circumstances. He grew up in the house of Pharaoh, living in the palace. Then, after killing a slave driver, he vanished. That was forty years ago. Now he has returned, and he is bearing strange news.

YHWH, the God of your ancestors, has sent Moses to lead you out of Egypt.

As you would expect, Pharaoh doesn't take kindly to this and increases your work load and stops supplying necessary material. Well, so much for that idea. Clearly the gods of Egypt are stronger than this YHWH.

Then the plagues came.

These plagues are not random punishments inflicted upon Egypt by God. They are direct challenges to the most important gods and goddesses of Egypt. YHWH has declared war on them all. Perhaps most surprising to you, a slave who has lived under the "power" of these deities your whole life, YHWH is winning.

The Nile turns to blood. YHWH soundly defeats Hapi, god of the Nile.

Frogs plague the nation, demonstrating YHWH's dominance over Heket, goddess of fertility, who has the head of a frog.

Then the dust of the earth became lice, showing YHWH's authority over Geb, god of the earth.

A plague of flies descended upon Egypt. This shows YHWH's defeat of Khepri, god of creation, who has the head of a fly.

Then the livestock are killed, demonstrating YHWH's superiority over Hathor, goddess of love, who is shown with the head of a cow.

Then boils broke out on the Egyptian people. Clearly Isis, the goddess of healing, could do nothing against the power of YHWH.

Then, in a show of power over the sky god Nut, YHWH takes command of the skies and causes fire and hail to rain down upon Egypt.

After this locusts swarm the country, decimating the Egyptian crops. Clearly YHWH has defeated Seth, god of disorder, by bringing such calamity.

Then darkness covered the land of Egypt. The most important god in the pantheon, Ra the sun god, had been overshadowed by the might of YHWH.

Still, after all of this, Pharaoh would not yield. And so YHWH declared that there would be one final plague. This one would directly challenge Pharaoh, son of Ra and embodiment of Osiris god of death. It is during this time of upheaval for Egypt and the Hebrews that YHWH, through Moses, forges the national identity of Israel.

During this final plague the Hebrews, God's people, will not be simple bystanders. They will instead be gathered at a table, eating the prescribed food, awaiting the promised deliverance. It is simultaneously a celebration of YHWH's victory over their enemies, thanksgiving for God passing over them with his wrath, and a time of looking ahead to freedom.

So, under the blood of a lamb, the people of God gather. They ate the flesh of the lamb that was slain for their deliverance. They celebrate the triumph of God over their enemies. They recognize that they in no way deserve this mercy of being spared, and thank God for his grace. They look ahead to the promise of true liberation and home in the promised land.

Every year since the Jewish people celebrated this same feast with the same intent. This is their identity. They are a people rescued from slavery by the grace of God, by the blood of a lamb, with great purpose towards a promised land.

Sound familiar?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We Need More Images

What is your favorite way to describe God? Is there a particular name of God in scripture that you are drawn to? What images and pictures come to mind when you think of God? These are questions I don't think we ask often enough. We all have an image of God in our heads that we work with. It may not be a literal picture, though it might be, but ideas and concepts we tend to associate with who God is. Some of those images and associations may come from the Bible, but some may not. These things are influenced by our upbringing, Bible reading habits, personalities, relationships, culture, and more. The way we picture God has a dramatic impact on the way we live our lives. For example, if the primary idea you have of God is "Healer," when you hear or read that you are made in God's image you will likely feel called to heal, be it physical ailments or spiritual wounds. But, if your primary image of God is "Judge," that changes things. You very likely might tend to...

Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving, the day that we are supposed to celebrate all the things we are thankful for. It is a time of family reunions, football, and turkey eating. I sincerely pray that each and every one of you has a good day today. I'll admit that being thankful has not been easy for me this year. As pretty much all of you know, my mother passed away December of last year. Though she had been in the hospital for months, we were not expecting it. In fact I was sure she would be finally able to come home within a matter of weeks. Instead she peacefully passed on into the arms of Jesus, whom she loved more dearly than anyone else. As you can imagine, the entire family was heart broken. After what can easily be described as the worst Christmas ever, I returned to home to Illinois. It was here that I finally broke down. I spent the next months doing everything except being thankful. I cursed God, wept, screamed, begged to have her back, and was generally not the nicest person to be...

The Early Middle Ages: Historical Friday

The next segment of history that we are going to overview is the Early Middle Ages. This dates roughly from AD 450 to AD 1100. This is intended to be a very general overview. There are probably historians that would classify some other time period as the "Early Middle Ages" or a more specific time period. For our purposes this will cover the aforementioned time period. This was a very influential period in the history of Christianity. It saw the formation of what we now call the Roman Catholic Church and its separation from what we would now call the Eastern Orthodox Church. Before this time there was only ONE church. There weren't different denominations or groups. It is hard for us to think about in our modern context, but there was a time when Christianity was visibly unified. Brief History The first major thing to happen during this time period is the remaining three ecumenical councils. We discussed the first four several weeks ago. These councils discussed va...