Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on April 1, 2021
It’s not very often that Maundy Thursday falls on April Fool’s day as it does this year. In fact, the next time Maundy Thursday falls on the first day of April won’t be until the year 2083; and by then, I will be 83 years old since I just turned 21 this year (in case you’re wondering my age). The origin of April Fool’s is somewhat mysterious, but the day likely has roots in the shifting of calendars. In the year 1582, Western Europe began to shift from using the Julian calendar which celebrated the new year in early April to using the Gregorian calendar which celebrates the new year in January. So those who didn’t get the memo about the adoption of the Gregorian calendar were still celebrating the new year in April and thus looking like fools in April: April fools. Others argue that this day of pranks derives its meaning from the prank that Mother Nature plays on all of us this time of year as it teases us with warm, sunny days that seduce into thinking that Spring has fully arrived only to then make us look like fools when the cold, rainy days drench us while we’re still dressed in our favorite Spring attire. Whatever the origin of April Fool’s might be, it has become known as a day for light-hearted playfulness, teasing, and pranks, including fabrications about one’s age.
So, on this once-in-a-lifetime April Fool’s Maundy Thursday, I feel invited to highlight the divine prank that undergirds the events of Holy Week, the prank that God played on the devil and death. In order to understand this holy prank, we need to take a close look at this evening’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, the passage from Exodus chapter 12. This passage describes the symbol of the Passover Lamb, which is central to our identity as Christians and also central to our identity as members of Christ Church Eureka, where we use the Lamb of God as our church logo. On Easter, you will see the Paschal Lamb portrayed on the pulpit hanging and the altar frontal; and you should also see our Lamb of God logo right now as a water mark on the lower righthand corner of this video. And our beloved sister in Christ Brenda Glyn-Williams, who passed on to glory on Holy Monday, created a gorgeous Lamb of God banner for us that now hangs in the hall at Trinity Cathedral in Sacramento. So what does this Lamb of God symbol mean?
You’ve heard me talk and preach about it before, but because I believe in beneficial redundancy, I’m going to preach about it again so that you can explain it to your friends when they ask. I interpret this Exodus passage about the Lamb in light of my conviction that our God is a God of life and love and liberation (as revealed clearly through Christ) and not a bloodthirsty deity of death and destruction.
In this passage, when God first speaks to Moses and Aaron, he tells them to obverse this time of year (April) as the New Year, which makes sense since newness and new life blossom and bloom all around us during the Spring. This ancient Jewish calendar informed the Julian calendar, which remained dominant in the West until about 400 years ago (as I said), but the ancient Israelites were not “April fools” because they were following the divinely ordained calendar at the time. The ancient Egyptians, however, who were enslaving the Israelites, were starting to look pretty foolish after being pummeled by nine disastrous plagues, which were doing a number on their economy and their sense of stability and wellbeing. According to anthropologists, what do communities often resort to doing during times of crisis and catastrophe? Today, we often scapegoat others, but in ancient times, communities resorted to a blunter force of scapegoating known as human sacrifice. The ancient Egyptians likely believed that the plagues were evidence that their gods were upset with them and needed to be appeased through bloody sacrifice. So, the high priests of Egypt likely reverted to the worst kind of human sacrifice: child sacrifice, which is not hard to imagine since the first chapter of Exodus describes the Pharaoh’s orders to drown every Hebrew boy in the Nile river (see Ex 1:22). But now it appears that everyone in Egypt (including the Pharaoh himself) was required to sacrifice their firstborn son in order to appease the angry gods. And so, in order to ensure that every house obeyed this dreadful ordinance, I imagine that the Egyptian priests required each family to show proof of their obedience by wiping the blood of their firstborn son on the lintel of their door. If there was no blood seen on the door, the Egyptians priests would have to perform the dreadful ritual themselves, thus functioning collectively as what the Book of Deuteronomy calls the “Destroyer” or the “Angel of Death” or the “Devil of Death.”
The Israelites, however, believed in a God of liberation and love and life; and they knew that God was already using the plagues to work out their liberation from slavery and oppression in Egypt. And they knew that God was not a bloodthirsty deity who needed to be appeased by child sacrifice or any human sacrifice for that matter. They had learned that truth from their great father Abraham, who was about to sacrifice his son Isaac when God intervened and said, “No, stop! Do not lay a hand on the boy (Gen 22:12) because I’m not a bloodthirsty god who wants to destroy an innocent life or make you destroy an innocent life.” And that’s when Abraham looked up and saw what? He saw a lamb caught in the thicket and he sacrificed the lamb instead of his son; and he thanked God for providing the lamb and saving his son.
So, the ancient Israelites remembered that story and decided, in a stroke of divine inspiration, to play a prank on the high priests of Egypt, to dupe the Angel of Death. Instead of sacrificing their firstborn sons, they decided to sacrifice a lamb and wipe the lamb’s blood on the lintel of their doors to make the priests think that they sacrificed their firstborn. Just like their father Abraham, they sacrificed a lamb instead of their son. So, when the high priests of death approached the houses of the Israelites, they saw the blood on the door and they said, “Well, it looks like they’ve paid the price here. They’ve made the sacrifice. Let’s move on to the next house.” And they passed over the house, which is why the Lamb is called the Passover Lamb.
These high priests of death ended up looking like real April fools because the Hebrew families were actually inside not grieving over the loss of their firstborn son, sacrificed to appease a bloodthirsty god. No, the Hebrew families were enjoying a delicious lamb dinner with their beloved children because they believed in a God of life and liberation and love. They were enjoying the lamb of God, whose sacrifice and whose blood saved thousands of lives. The Lamb is a symbol of God’s love and life overcoming and pranking death. And to this day, families gather to enjoy a lamb dinner at Easter time, a tradition that originates from this event, this prank that God’s people played on death.
Also, the meal that we share at this altar, the meal that Jesus Christ instituted on this night of Maundy Thursday derives its meaning from the same Passover meal described in Exodus. That’s why we call Holy Communion “the Supper of the Lamb.” And that’s why we lift up the consecrated bread and wine and say, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus made the sacred meal even less violent by replacing the lamb with bread and the lamb’s blood with wine and thus removing all bloodshed whatsoever.
Just as the blood of the Passover Lamb protected the Hebrews from death so too does the blood of Jesus Christ the Lamb of God protect us from death. Just as the high priests of death were duped by the blood of the Lamb so too was the devil of death duped by the blood of Jesus Christ, which was shed not to appease God, but to expose us the devil as foolish; and to show us the ways that we ourselves can get caught up in the devil’s foolish ways of violence and destruction, and to repent. This was actually the most ancient understanding of the Cross: Christ playing a trick on the devil, who thought he was getting away with the murder of yet another innocent victim, but who failed to see that this victim was divine and would be raised from the dead to liberate us all from the clutches of the devil and death. Fourth-century theologian St. Gregory of Nyssa said that the devil took the bait, but then the bait took the devil and exposed him as a fool. And now whenever the devil comes knocking on our door to destroy what’s most important to us, we just need to show him the blood of the lamb that covers us and then tell him to move along. [1]
After the Passover, God delivered the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and gave them the Torah. In much the same way, Jesus liberated us from death and gave us the new commandment, the Maundatum of Maundy Thursday, the mandate to love one another, to take care of each other, to wash each other’s feet, and to protect those who remain vulnerable to the many manifestations of the Angel of Death in our world today, because the God revealed in Christ and the Hebrew Scriptures is not a bloodthirsty god of death and destruction, but a God of life, liberation, and love for all, who exposes the devil as the most pathetic April Fool. That’s what the Lamb of God is all about. Amen.
[1] According to the Very Rev. Don Brown, who grew up in this congregation and preached here a couple years ago, one of my predecessors, the Right Rev. Jack Thompson, said, “God does not punish us for our sins. We are punished by our sins.” God doesn’t punish sin.; sin punishes sin. So, Christ did not die to endure God’s punishment for us. Christ died to endure sin’s punishment for us, and to expose the devil and sin as foolish.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 