On Judgement Day Will We Remember That We Are Delivered On The Journey By Love’s Severe Mercy Not The Law?

Good Morning Friends,

 
Well, we are still a little jet lagged but back from walking a hundred miles along World Heritage sites traveling from Paris (Airport) to Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Amsterdam (Airport) and experiencing the history of the Hapsburgs who once ruled a nation on which the sun never set. It was a classic journey in a place once called the Holy Roman Empire but was honestly neither Holy nor Roman with the more recent scars of the effects of war and the iron curtain and the horror of the mass killing of Jews staring us in the face at the sites where children and families took off their shoes and were shot to fall into the watery graves of the cold Danube during World War II. We toured the places where the reformation was occuring before Martin Luther and the places where Good King Wensenslaws, Straus, Beethoven, Litz, Motzart, Vivaldi, Hitler, and Freud once walked. We saw the artwork of Picasso, Monet, and more at the Albertina and Kunsthistorisches Museums, and walked along the Elbe and Danube rivers seeing royal palaces and castles, one of which was where King Richard the Lionhearted was held prisoner for ransom. We slept in sites of old monasteries, saw monks practicing the violin in places where the acoustics were amazing, heard a million dollar piano being played in our hotel in Vienna and the bells and organ in Saint Stephen’s Cathedral. And yes we ate the food from the wild blueberries, cherries and apricots picked along our rural walks to the local cuisines at amazing restaurants with live music to entertain us. But we also made new friends and had great guides in a journey which has returned us home to reestablish routines which includes putting together today’s devotional that follows today’s liturgical calendar of scripture. So switch gears with me now as we connect the dots between Moses’ confrontation with Pharaoh and Jesus’ confrontations with the Pharisees. And I acknowledge that this makes for some interesting reading to return home to. The Gospel reading relates to the challenge of following laws that are no longer helpful and moving the cultural needle toward healthier communities. In the reading from Exodus, we see the means of salvation being formed through the measuring unit of families celebrating a meal at Passover. And it is instructive for us in understanding the purpose of what was exacted then as a demonstration of this same powerful love that reflects the light of Christ on the Cross and the salvation of our souls when we share communion. Here we get a taste of how God works to accomplish the desired results. Still, we ask, On Judgement Day Will We Remember That We Are Delivered On The Journey By Love’s Severe Mercy Not The Law?

Scripture: Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh; but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land. 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. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 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.

Exodus 11:10—12:14 (NRSV)

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”

Matthew 12:1-8 (NRSV)

Message: From the day Moses looked at the burning bush he contemplated the culmination of a day of deliverance that for us now clearly foreshadows a type of sacrifice like Christ at Calvary and the justice God requires satisfied. It is a symbol of a new life for the Hebrews but also a newness of life for us as well. It is clearly a deliverance with blood that provides safety for the first born of this new creation and for us who believe in Christ, a rebirth.  Yes, the death of Christ on the Cross and the first Passover were dark events that clearly need the light of Jesus to be redeemed. There is a beauty in them that is not pretty but inspiring. Moses and Aaron were given the LORD’s instructions for the perpetual commemoration of Israel’s one-off Passover event. The timing was to be exact. It took faith for them to believe that Israel would be commemorating an event which had not happened yet. What was about to happen was a time-defining moment in the history of the people of God. They were to count their life as a nation as having begun at this point. In like manner, we who have been saved may reckon the day of our conversion to Christianity, whether we remember the exact date or not, as the beginning of our new life in Jesus.

And So, as the Hebrews at Passover appropriated the blood of a lamb for a specific purpose so too, we are redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus, the sacrifice of a lamb without blemish. Here Christ is our Passover and Sabbath sacrificed for us so that we might have love. On that first Passover, the LORD would pass through all the land of Egypt, executing judgment against all the firstborn of Egypt, and upon the false gods of Egypt. So, know that you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s’ the remembrance of the Passover in the New Covenant is experienced at the Communion Table. There is a connection to that first Passover each time we break bread in remembrance of Christ dying for our sins. The remembrance of this event was to single out the children of Israel throughout all generations. It was upon one such Passover commemoration that the Lord Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, to be kept in perpetuity until He comes again.

Pray we are delivered. Pray that we are sanctified for the journey of life. Pray we believe that Jesus is Lord not just of the Sabbath and Passover but of all creation. Pray we avoid the wrath of God. Pray we repent by directing our heart to God. Pray we are Spirit-filled. Pray we spend time alone with God. Pray we are obedient in small things so we might be prepared to be used by God for divine purposes. Pray we realize that God’s laws were made for humans not humans for the law. Pray we develop spiritual integrity. Pray we realize that in our fighting, praying, loving, and sinning, God is still at work molding us. Pray we better understand each day what God is looking for in our behavior. Pray we are a people that have a heart for God’s heart. Pray our individual and collective heart is a home for God. Pray we are inspired by the great invitation and realize its reward is what we all are to seek. Pray we honor Christ in our relationships and love with abandon. Pray we discover the rewards of hospitality and endurance and quality and faithfulness. Pray that our pattern of prayer helps us to remember the love of Jesus. Pray that as we return to the rhythm of activities of our home that the nomadic experience of our ancient ancestors for whom walking was the main means of travel, in which we have shared, enable our minds to muse upon the things our senses bring, connected to the ultimate journey of life enabling our Spirit to wander as freely as our legs. Pray we have been freed in our walk in the Light to absorb the texture of someone else’s world like our own but different so we might expand the circle of love in the covenant of love that is our lives.

Blessings,

John Lawson