7 September 2008                                   
Carolyn L Roberts
Exodus 12.1-14

            A number of years ago, I heard the Rev. Yvonne Delk preach out of her own experience of growing up Black and female in the United States, of her pre-Civil Rights years of going to school in segregated districts, of her mother’s rock-solid faith, of being fiercely embraced every morning before she left for school while her mother sent her off with a blessing and a charge: always remember who you are and whose you are. It is a charge I’ve remembered ever since, a charge that we live out with each baptism, each celebration of communion. It is the charge to which we recommit each Rally Sunday. As we tell and re-tell our story, we define who we are and whose we are.

            Remembering lies at the center of that charge. Within the past couple of weeks, I heard the story of a man from Guatemala who was smuggled by van into the United States by a ‘coyote.’ As I recall, the van broke down, and several of the immigrants died of dehydration and lack of food; others were hospitalized. The man featured in the story had fallen into a coma. When he woke up, he had complete amnesia– but kept repeating a word that sounded a bit like a woman’s name. The hospital staff nursed him back to health but were anxious about his future. They didn’t want to nurse someone to health only to see them languish in prison. But what were the options? If he was taken by Immigration, how would they know where to return him? How would they know where he was from? The staff published a picture of him, and somehow he was recognized; he was from a village in Guatemala. A picture of his wife and five children was shown to him. It was the memory aid he needed–he recognized them, and in short order they were reunited–back in Guatemala.

            I was struck–again–by the direct connection between memory and restoration, memory and renewal, memory and identity...and the sobering reality that we can’t remember something we never learn in the first place. Yvonne Delk knows who she is and whose she is; for a time, the man from Guatemala did not. His brush with amnesia robbed him of his name, his country, his family, his past and his future, his identity, his story.

            The same is true of faith. Our faith is always one generation away from extinction...which is why church school for all ages is such a critical part of our faith. I know that some of you will believe it’s the teacher in me, but I swear it’s more than that. Look at verse 14, “This shall be a day of remembrance for you.” The writer has just shared instructions for the first passover, the story of God’s active participation in the Hebrew’s release from slavery...instructions for choosing a lamb to be killed and prepared for eating; instructions that the blood of the lamb is to be spread on the lintel, the top of the doorway, and on the two sides of the doorway to the Hebrew homes.

            The story doesn’t say that Moses just up and decides that the tenth day of the first month of the year is as good a day as any for the Hebrew people to walk away from the systems of slavery that dictate the routines of their lives from childbirthing to brickmaking. The systems that slaughter infants and leave mothers keening in grief and fathers stooped in numb despair. The story says that God is executing judgment on all the gods of Egypt; executing judgment on the whole notion that freedom belongs only to those who rule. The story says that God is telling Moses and Aaron that even though the time is now, they must commit to the re-telling of this story every year on the tenth day of the first month. Even though God is doing the heavy lifting, the Hebrew people must make it clear that they are on board by killing the lamb and marking their doorways and by telling their story.

            Notice: Pharoah is not, not, not telling this story. The story we hear doesn’t justify enslaving the Hebrew people because they are too numerous for Egypt to control. The story we hear is not a how-to manual about controlling the labor force by keeping them so exhausted they have no energy to organize. Who is telling us the story? The story is told by the people who have made the journey from slavery to freedom. But it’s not just a heroic story of moving from bondage to freedom. That’s the heroic story of George Washington crossing the Delaware, surprising the German mercenaries on Christmas day with his own cunning. But the way that story is told, God is at best a bit player whose son was the incidental cause of excessive drinking on the part of the German troops.

            So here we are with our story, a story about Moses, true, but even more, a story about God. It isn’t in Moses’ hands to challenge the gods of Egypt; that is in God’s hands. The journey out of Egypt is not of the Hebrews’ own volition, but God’s. So the story we hear, the story the Exodus, is a story about God and God’s partnership with Moses and Aaron and Miriam and Jocabed and Shiprah and Puah, and all the Hebrew people who left their slavery behind them in Egypt. And it is they who tell the story. After all, if it’s left up to Pharoah, that story, the story of the liberation of the Hebrew people, will never be told. And so we return to verse 14. “This shall be a day of remembrance for you.” The early Hebrews took that solemn responsibility so very seriously that even today, some thirty-six hundred years later, the story of the Passover is remembered.

            As we gather on this Rally Sunday, we also gather around this table, central to our particular story. We tell our story every time we celebrate communion to help us remember Jesus, and in remembering Jesus, we remember who we are and whose we are. It is a story we remember because early Christians took up their solemn responsibility to remember Jesus when they ate the bread and shared the cup. At the very heart of that story, we tell of a God whose redeeming love is stronger than all the hatred, all the violence, all the power-grabbing in all the world. We tell of a God whose redeeming love overcomes even death. Surely this Good News is as vital to us and our children as it was to the early Christians. We can’t leave the story to Pharoah; it isn’t his story. Neither can we leave the story just to Moses. It belongs to every one of us. So how will you tell the story? How will you tell others who you are and whose you are?