Baptismal meditation

Exodus 12:43, 45, 48: This is the ordinance of the Passover: no son of a stranger is to eat of it. A sojourner or hired servant shall not eat of it. But if a stranger sojourns with you, and celebrates the Passover to Yahweh, let all his males be circumcised.

Passover is for Israel and for Israel alone. Non-Israelites are all allowed to participate in the other feasts of Israel, but not Passover. No strangers, no sons of strangers, no hired servants are allowed to share the meal. Passover makes the assembly of Israel, and the feast that commemorates the event is for Israel.

As Pastor Sumpter has pointed out, though, the thrust of the final verses of Exodus 12 is to explain how strangers can join in the festivities. No stranger or son of a stranger can share in the feast that makes the assembly, but if a stranger or a servant wants to share in the celebration, he can become an Israelite by circumcision. Long before Jesus comes along to tear down boundaries between Jew and Gentile, Israel is already punching holes in the wall that divided insider and outsider, stranger and native.

In fact, for Israel the wall of division is porous from the beginning. Yahweh tells Abram that his seed will be enslaved in a foreign land before they receive a land of their own. Before they ever become natives, Abram’s seed dwells for centuries as strangers in a strange land. At Sinai Yahweh commands them to treat strangers with kindness because “you were strangers in the land of Egypt” and therefore “know the feelings of a stranger.”

According to the regulations of Exodus 12, circumcision brings the hired servant and the stranger near to celebrate Passover. That’s what circumcision has always done. Abram starts out as a Gentile until circumcision marks him with the sign of the covenant. Abraham too was a stranger who had to be brought near, so that he could become the father of Israel, a nation of strangers, a nation of sojourners.

Jesus comes as the Seed of Abraham the stranger. He is sent from His Father’s house into a far country, has no place to lay His head, dies outside the gate, is laid in another man’s tomb. Jesus comes to His own as One unknown, as the Ultimate Stranger, and it’s no surprise that the New Testament describes the church, the new Israel, as sojourners and aliens.

Your adopted is a stranger. At the moment, he is still a stranger to your family, still settling in. He is a stranger to this town, a stranger to this church, a stranger to your race. He is in every natural way an outsider. But that means he’s right where he belongs, right at home here. He is just like the rest of us, because we are all sons of Abraham the stranger.

Today at his baptism, Jesus the alien welcomes your son to His table to share in the new Passover feast. And we strangers and aliens who have been brought near by the blood of Jesus and the water of the Spirit join with Jesus to welcome our son into this household of strangers, this family of aliens.