(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.



[i] Exodus 12:30b
[ii] Matthew 26:26-28

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