Moving Day

Proper 22 A 2008
(Exodus 12: 1-14; Ps 149; Rom 13: 8-14; Mt 18: 15-20)


The most important story in the Bible is moving day.

Moves are stressful. Most of us don’t like to move. Most of us pack heavy. We all carry things with us that we are sure we cannot live without. Once we were in such a hurry that we packed our garbage. When we first drove out here, the moving van did not arrive until three weeks later. As the days went on and the house felt airy and open, I dreaded the arrival of the truck and all that stuff that we knew we did not really need.

Moving day Old Testament-style is edgier and scarier than that. The Hebrews were hopeless captives of a cruel and powerful empire and a vicious king. To stay meant slavery. To leave was risking death by the king’s soldiers or death in the desert.

But enslaved people, hopeless people, had heard hope spoken. Trapped people were challenged to believe in a God who wished them alive and free in a new land.

A cost had to be paid. The God who frees struck the enslavers hard. Blood was spilled. The lambs were killed and served for dinner a special way. In fact, the food was served standing up. No time for bread to rise. No time to eat sitting or lying down all cozy with your shoes off. Get your running shoes laced up, your backpack ready. The people of God are on the move.

So if we are the people of God, we are on the move.

Often we come to church or to faith itself expecting a firm place to stand, expecting something solid and predictable, something changeless in a rapidly-changing world, in our rapidly-changing lives. But in a few moments I will say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” and you will hopefully respond, “Let us keep the feast.” Each time we gather for Mass, we celebrate our own Passover, our own moving day from death to life. How can we “keep the feast”?

God may not be predictable, but God can be trusted. We may rely on God for this: God wishes to free us from all our slaveries. God has paid a terrible price by providing the lamb for the Passover himself. The lamb is God’s beloved Son. As we eat the Christian Passover today, we say that we shall keep the feast. So pack up, and pack light. Don’t put off the move. Get ready for the journey and be ready to set out where God will lead. God will be the road, the journey, and the journey’s end. If we’re bored or unimpressed with the invitation of God today, then perhaps we need to listen more deeply. Listen—to the God who calls, to our own hearts which hunger for more, to the voice of the world which needs light-footed pilgrims on the move for God.

I have been away for four months, and I am glad to be back. But if anyone is glad I am back so that “things can go back to normal”, I hope that I will disappoint you. I want the remainder of my life and of my time here as rector of Saints Peter and Paul to be a journey-time, a moving-day. I want to celebrate the Passover of the Lord alert to the new thing that God is doing in our midst and in my own life, and to be light-footed enough to respond. We are called together to marvelous things, things we cannot understand yet but that God has in store for us. We are called to be the free people of God, to sing and to celebrate our freedom and our Liberator in our midst. I am not sure yet what that will mean for us all, but of one thing I am sure. Now is the time, now is our call, now the price paid, now the dinner served in a hurry. Now is the journey, so pack light and don’t put the garbage on the truck.