I meant to post this yesterday but I didn't manage to gather any thought or energy together, so here it is today. And now that I read it over, of course it would have been better for last week. But maybe we all need a few more days to absorb the lessons of the week.
Day Eight
Exodus 12:11
In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover.
It always seems to me, as I'm scrubbing my house for the next holiday, planning menus, figuring out what people are going to wear, wondering if I need to cook extra food for people who might just appear, so tired at the end of the day that I can't think straight, that if I were God and I was planning a great momentous theological moment, I wouldn't include any material work. I would consign my soul to some glorious gnostic enlightened rest. But God–so many true things begin with the words
But God
we would do things one way and it seems right
But God
would do them another way, showing our way to be shadowy and wrong–but God works out the salvation of his people in the dust and the details. Fasten your belt, he says, which means you have to have one. Put your sandals on. Which ones? Not the sparkly ones that will tip you over as you run the length of the Red Sea. No, the good solid ones that won't wear out for the next forty years. The ones that you will both love every day you wear them but weary so so much of strapping them on and walking some more. Eat it in haste, God says, which is never hard. Standing next to your pokey child helping with the rice and broccoli so that you can move on with life.
But this isn't rice and broccoli. This is lamb, slaughtered lamb. The blood of this lamb is smeared over the doorway of your packed and swept house. The table and hearth you will never see again. Your bundles are stacked by the door, ready to be distributed and tied ahead of your flight. This is bread, unleavened bread, bread without the sign of sin. It's not just that it's quick because you don't have time for leaven, it's that the leaven represents all the rebellion and hardness in your heart. You're supposed to leave it behind in your meager hut. You won't be able to, of course, but the sign over the door, and the sign in the bread, and the chunk of lamb in your fingers point out a way of hope, a path through the grave into life.
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