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Passover, The First Born, Abraham, and You


Israel has been in captivity in Egypt, Moses has completed his contests with Pharaoh, and the People of Israel have been expelled from Egypt. The death of Egyptian firstborn children and livestock has compelled their removal into the wilderness. At the end of Exodus 12, God institutes the Passover in remembrance of the Angel of Death passing by the homes of Jews on the night the Egyptian firstborn children were killed. Notably, they were spared if in a house with blood around the door. 

The Passover is established for Israel herself, including their slaves who have been circumcised. If a sojourner wants to celebrate the Passover with you, he can after he circumcises all males with him. I suspect that pretty much eliminated any visitors participating.

In chapter 13, the protocols include redeeming Israel's firstborn. In this discussion, God says your firstborn belongs to God, and you must redeem your firstborn or you must kill it. God has redeemed Israel's firstborn by the blood of a lamb, and Israel must now remember that in perpetuity. The redemption cost is an unblemished lamb, goat, or sheep. A life for a life. Something valuable for your child's life. This feast marks not only the survival of Israel's firstborn, but of her delivery from captivity and oppression. Jesus will explain the particulars to his disciples. 

Those particulars are that Jesus is the lamb and the Passover meal includes images of his body and blood. Jesus, the Lamb of God, His firstborn, whose blood cleanses and saves first the Jew and then the Gentile. This feast is not to remember the massacre of a nation of Pagans, but what wrought by that massacre: Israel's salvation from oppression and into life with her God. Jesus wants his disciples to grasp the connection. It is not that a lamb is killed; it is that a nation is redeemed, set right, given life. 

We do not hear of this redemption price first in chapter 13. We have seen it before. This is the same act that Abraham experienced, the same price Abraham had to pay. The life of His firstborn (of promise) is required of him. Abraham has not been instructed in redemption and so he takes Isaac and is in the process of killing him when God stops him and provides the sheep as Isaac's redemption. 

Humans no longer need sacrifice their firstborn or redeem them with a valuable asset. The price, it turns out, is both easier and steeper. No longer must we redeem our children. We have all been redeemed in some sense by the life given by Jesus. Not as a payment per se, but as a faithful human follower of God. Jesus has set things right, cosmically, between God and humanity. 

And yet, there is a sense too in which the life we give for our redemption is ourselves. Baptism images the death of the disciple and her rising to life with God. The death she experiences, the life she gives in baptism is her own. Her own ego, her own prerogatives, her own life focus. There is no blood involved and she need not offer her child, but she must become a little Christ, giving herself to God for the world. She must die to herself. 

When we read the stories of lamb sacrifices, realize they are not just Jewish stories. No, they are human stories that God has orchestrated to prepare us to give ourselves for the world, as disciples of Jesus.

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