(Holy Thursday) A Night To Remember - Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; 1st Corinthians 11:23-26
She began active duty 103
years ago today. However, within two
weeks, her service was over forever.
Many movies have marked the night 103 years ago this month that was
wrought with death. A Night To Remember offered to the world an interpretation of the 1st
hand account of 2nd Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller—the highest ranking
offer to survive that dark night. It is
a night that has been etched into many memories even though those who were
living at the time are far and few between.
However, we don’t go many years without a resurgence of interest in the
night that over 1,500 passengers went to a watery grave as the Titanic went
down.
There are other “nights
to remember” that go back even further, much further, which are marked by
death.
We don’t know how many
died that night, but we do know that “there was a loud cry in Egypt, for there
was not a house without someone dead.”[i] Pharaoh’s sin…Pharaoh’s hard heart had led to
the Hebrew people continuing to be enslaved in Egypt…despite Moses’ plea for
their release and despite nine plagues which had been visited upon the nation
in the region their along the Nile River.
Before that night came, though, God gave a command that the Hebrew
people were to remember that night…not like the Titanic, though, for all the
death that would befall the Egyptians, but because God gave them a
lifeboat. God provided a means for their
salvation to escape the ravages of death that would be descending. Remember the words our sister read tonight:
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in
the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it
shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of
Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family,
a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it
shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in
proportion to the number of people who eat of it… This is how you shall eat it:
your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and
you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. For I will pass
through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in
the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I
will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the
houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no
plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be a day of remembrance for
you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your
generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.
God instructed His people
to gather together and remember, remember that very night, the night in which
the blood of the lamb painted over their doorposts brought them life. They would gather for a meal, feasting on the
lamb, and remember. They would remember
that though they faced death each day, though they faced the loss of their
firstborn alongside the Egyptians, God provided a way, God provided a means of
salvation. God provided life…not just
continued life in slavery, but new life, free from the bondages of slavery. That night became a night to remember as more
than six thousand men and their families were granted freedom through the blood
of a lamb.
Thousands of years later,
one of those Hebrew descendants gathered with His closest friends to share that
very meal of remembrance, recalling how God had brought their freedom from
slavery through the blood of a lamb.
However, as He led His friends through this night of remembrance, He
slightly altered the ritual they had always known. He took the bread, and after blessing it,
broke it, and said, “take eat, this is my body broken for you.” Puzzled, they took the bread and ate it. It was not the first time that He had said
things that had confused them—they had declared that He was the Messiah, and He
confirmed that affirmation, but then started talking about being arrested,
tortured, and put to death, that was not supposed to be what happened with the
Messiah, but they continued to follow Him.
After receiving the bread, they continued their time of remembering
God’s salvation through the blood of the lamb as they dined on roast lamb. Soon it was time to share the last Passover
cup of wine. However, as their rabbi
lifted the cup and gave thanks to God for it, He then turned to them and said,
“Drink from this, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is
poured out for the forgiveness of sins.”[ii]
Later, Paul calls that
meal to the attention of the folks in Corinth, for that bread and that cup
became the new meal of remembrance. Paul
reminds those in Corinth and those of us here tonight that a new night of
remembrance is upon us. We gather
tonight, and receive this bread, we receive this cup, and we remember how the
Messiah was arrested. He was tortured
and his flesh broken and torn for us. He
was crucified and His blood flowed freely for us. We are called to remember this night and every
time we share this meal how that set into motion the event that would not just free thousands
from slavery, but that would free millions, trillions, that would free all
people from their bondage, their, our, slavery to sin and death. Not through the death a lamb were we brought
freedom, but through the slaughter The Lamb of God, Jesus, upon the cross of
Calvary, we were freed, not from Pharaoh, but from sin. Sin which had bound us in shackles and
demanded our all, paying, as Paul tells us elsewhere, wages of death, found
itself defeated and the people of God freed.
We gather tonight as a
Night to Remember—to remember that God has freed us—that through His Son all
our sins have been nailed to the cross and removed from us. We have been granted freedom to live a life
forever freed from all that has bound us.
My brothers and sisters…it is a Night to Remember…
In the Name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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