Living the Story: Exodus 13:3-8 - 19th Sunday after Pentecost

It may be my job to teach our confirmation class, but the students teach me, too.

Last week’s class tackled the question “How do you know that God exists?”

Unfortunately, there is no physical or scientific proof of God’s existence. This was one of the biggest reasons why many people do not believe in him. But the students provided another reason I hadn’t thought of: the bible happened a long time ago.

Christianity and Judaism are thousands of years old.  So, too, are Hinduism and Buddhism.

So how is it, then, that our faith has outlasted the world’s greatest empires? How can we still call ourselves the children of Abraham and Sarah, when they lived almost 4,500 years ago? How is it that Jesus remains the most famous person in human history?

The answer can be found in our Old Testament reading for today. In it, God establishes the Feast of the Passover, which is the most important annual festival in Judaism. It’s also the basis of our celebration of Holy Week and Easter, as well as our Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

Click here to read the Scripture text

For four centuries, God’s people were brutally enslaved in Egypt. But God heard their cries and raised up Moses to lead them out of slavery to the Promised Land. God institutes the Passover Feast so that future generations will remember God’s liberation from Egypt, when God’s angel struck down the first born of every family in Egypt, but passed over the homes whose doorposts were marked with lambs’ blood.

God’s instructions for celebrating the Passover are extremely specific: a one-year-old male lamb is to be selected by each household and slaughtered at twilight. It is then to be roasted with unleavened bread and bitter herbs and eaten that very night. Whatever remains uneaten is to be burned in the fire the next morning. If a household cannot afford to purchase a lamb, it is to join a neighboring household in obtaining one, so that no one is excluded from the feast.

When the children ask what all this is about, you are to tell them that we do this to remember “what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.”

So, you’re not just telling a story. You are living the story. The festivals of Judaism and our Church Year base our lives in the remembrance of God’s saving activity. Our Sunday liturgy tells God’s story.

God’s people would not have survived the forty years in the wilderness, the precarious years of the judges, the centuries of corrupt kings, the exile, the return, the persecutions, the destruction of the temple, not to mention the pogroms and the Holocaust had they not kept the story of God’s salvation alive by keeping the Passover Feast.

God’s Passover mandate and the example of our Jewish neighbors are especially important for us today, given the fact that the institutional church is declining rapidly, and emerging generations are leaving the Christian faith behind.

I firmly believe that if Christianity were to disappear from our society, it would not be through government efforts to eradicate it. That’s been tried and it always fails. Rather, Christianity would disappear when forget God’s story. As the children suggested, when people decide God’s story is no longer relevant.

I fear that we are already there. Biblical illiteracy is rampant even among regular churchgoers. Many more believe that you don’t need the church to be a Christian and have a relationship with God. But a private faith is also a lonely faith. If we’re being honest, the Christian life is just too difficult to be lived alone. Ours is a relational faith, and cutting others out of it diminishes it.

God has given you a story to tell. We help each other to discover the ways God works in our lives by telling and listening to each other’s stories. Jesus sends you out into the world to tell God’s story by how you live and by how you treat others.

Don’t sell yourself or your spiritual gifts short. People will come to Jesus because of you. God puts people in your life for a reason: so that you can be part of their stories, and they can be part of yours, and so that together, you live out the story of Christ. Life takes on a whole meaning when you begin each day by praying, “how can I tell the story of Jesus to the people I will encounter today?”

As you parents and grandparents live the story of Jesus, your children will want to follow him too. My parents and grandparents set a fine example of living the Christian life. Most of the time, I wanted to go to church, and when I didn’t, I’m glad they made me. I don’t remember what the sermons were about or what lessons were taught in Sunday school, but I remember the people. Those experiences and those memories bless me to this day.

We aren’t here because believe in God. We are here because God is active in our world and involved even in the minute details of daily life. Yes, Jesus has given you a story to tell. If you don’t know what that story is, today is chapter one, and the rest will be there for you to discover: a story about a God who had you in mind at the beginning of time, who gave his only Son for your redemption, who’s been with you all life long, and who will be there always, both in this life and the next. Rest assured; you will have much to talk about.