Word to the Wise
Friday, July 20, 2007 - Fifteenth Friday in Ordinary Time
[Exodus 11:10-12:14 and Matthew 12:1-8]This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all your generations shall celebrate with pilgrimage to the Lord, as a perpetual institution.
The lectionary deprives us of all the fun of Moses arguing further with God, then teaming up with his brother Aaron and then hitting Pharoah and Egypt with various plagues. It cuts to the chase and sets the stage for the Passover! Moses is told how to instruct the people in the final meal before they leave Egypt because they are going to celebrate this same meal for the rest of time - the Passover meal. What's more, Pharoah is going to get a taste of his own medicine in that it is the firstborn male of the Egyptians that will be killed instead of the male children of the Hebrews! The blood of the lamb of sacrifice will be smeared on the doorposts of the Hebrews to protect them from the angel of death. Can you see where all this is going to wind up eventually? Yep! Holy Thursday and a new deliverance - the blood of the new covenant "which will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me!" There's more to come since we haven't gotten to the Red Sea (Hit the pause button if you're watching THE TEN COMMANDMENTS!). This narrative of deliverance is an example of the way in which our own lives are impacted. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, we are not only celebrating what Jesus asked us to do in his memory, we are celebrating the memory of all that God has done for us in history. Therefore we read the Old Testament at our celebrations and we recognize the blood of the covenant and our deliverance through the waters of baptism. (But you'll have to wait till Monday for Moses - played in so many imaginations by Charleton Heston - to divide the waters of the Red Sea and complete the symbolism.) AMEN
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