(How ironic that one of the church's most ardent vegetarians ends up preaching on a text that details how to cook lamb!)
The Exodus story is full of examples of God dealing directly with the Hebrew people; the plagues over Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and God's appearances - firstly in the form of a burning bush…and then here as Delia Smith.
Just like with Delia, the preparation instructions are exact - dealing with proportion and timing; and today I'm going to try and delve a little deeper into this recipe and see what makes the ingredients so special.
'This month shall be your beginning of months'. The first instruction is that they are to see their liberation as a new beginning - their very calendar will be structured around this act, leaving behind what they worked to while in captivity.
Every household was told to take a lamb, and the lamb was to live with the family for the four days until the angel of death appeared. If we think about what this would have meant - for a few short days the lamb became part of the family. It wasn't a farmyard animal anymore or a beast kept for ritual offering, it was a creature that had lived in their household. By the time it was sacrificed on the fourteenth it was cherished and mourned: the children would have become fond of it, maybe given it a name. The sacrifice God was calling for was of something precious. Late last year a TV food programme followed the journey of a cow from field to the plate, and I remember the presenter weeping in the slaughterhouse. Somehow I don't think it would have been so different for those Hebrew slaves.
Back to Delia again, and there are instructions for how to select the correct animal: it should be without defect, still had to be young, but big enough to feed a household of about 10. God was impressing on them that the sacrifice needed to be as perfect as it could be and it stressed the communal nature of this particular meal.
God was to share in this sacrificial meal, but the only part of this sacrifice given to God was the blood. From the time of Noah, the Hebrews were forbidden to eat anything which had been strangled or that still had it's blood, or to take the blood itself. The Hebrews viewed blood as the life force of the being. And only God had the right to that.
They were told to take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses before the Passover lamb could be eaten. As the blood was applied to the top and each side of the doorway, this blood would have dripped down, forming a figure of a cross in the doorway. Then and only then the lamb could be eaten - but only if it had been prepared in the appointed way, if it had been roasted in fire, with the lamb itself coming into contact with the fire. They are literally to barbecue it. There were to be bitter herbs and unleavened bread accompanying the meal. Each family had to totally consume the sacrifice so the Passover lamb was eaten completely and if anything remained it had to be burnt. In antiquity yeast was made from sour dough, which was taken from last year's crop. Hence by eating unleavened bread the families did not mix last year's crop with the first results of the new crop.
They were told to eat it quickly. The Passover was to be eaten by people dressed for a quick departure and ready to leave Egypt in haste. Eat it like this: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and you staff in your hand. They had to eat it prepared for instant departure. They had to be ready to go. The particular dress of the men would have been a long sort of night-shirt-like-looking outfit and when you needed to run, or be more manoeuvrable, you just pulled it up and wrapped it around your waist; you tied it with a sash and that way you could sprint better. This is the origin of the phrase "loins girded".
The Passover meal instructions reappear later on in the bible, but this time they are given to indicate how to celebrate and commemorate their liberation from slavery. And so it becomes tradition, and a very special tradition within the lives of the people of Israel and the Jewish nation all over the world down the centuries. Each year re-telling the story to the children, but with the very food they were eating being both symbols and part of the celebration, years before the idea of "Virtual Reality" - this was exactly what they were creating, telling the story with elements that ignited the senses, the sound of cook telling the story, the warmth of the fire, the smell of the meat cooking the taste of the bitter herbs dancing on your tongue. Virtual Reality indeed.
And so for us, as we approach Easter, it is hard not to see the parallels between the Passover story and the Passion of Christ which we too tell out and share with our family each year at Easter.
The story ends with a departure on a journey, for the Hebrews it was the journey to the Promised Land…. for us the journey begins to go out and make disciples of all the nations.
Amen.
(Dan Joseph)
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.