The Free Side of the Sea--July 22, 2022

The Free Side of the Sea--July 22, 2022

"...For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." [1 Corinthians 5:7b-8]

Every time we start sliding back into the same old mindset of Respectable Religion, a voice like this one reminds us of the shocking truth:  Christianity is not about how we save ourselves from divine punishment by our good behavior, but rather how we live now in light of how God has already saved us.

I have to confess, coming to these verses today kind of caught me off guard when I read them, because Paul really changes direction on us from the flow of his train of thought leading up to this.  Earlier in this chapter, Paul was warning against dangerous sin, and how the community needs to take a caring [but still frank] stand against destructive behavior in the congregation.  We've been hearing direction, in other words, about what WE are supposed to do... and what we are NOT supposed to do.

And sure, being a follower of Jesus orients our lives in a certain direction, which includes a certain way of life--toward Christ's kind of love, courage, truth-telling, and goodness, and away from greed, fear, deception, and apathy.  But it's really easy once we hear that to turn the whole Christian faith into a matter of mere morality--of just improving our good behavior and thereby avoiding hellfire.  And to be honest, that kind of Respectable Religion sure is popular--a lot of folks still basically see their faith as a matter of rules to be obeyed in order to avoid divine punishment, where "getting saved" becomes, for them, a euphemism for "getting better at compliance with those rules."

You might even expect Paul, who has lately been exploring his metaphor of yeast for the pernicious power of sin, to give a warning like, "Beware of consuming that sinful yeast--or it will poison you!"  Or "Those who have eaten the yeast of sin will be cast out from the heavenly banquet, because they hath filled up on bread before it even started!"  Something ominous and threatening, based on our good or bad behavior, right?

But that's not what Paul does.  We expect the old apostle to zig, and then he zags.  We expect more fire and brimstone warnings about the infectious spread of sin, and instead Paul doubles back and reminds us that God has already done the saving in Jesus--the question is whether we will live like it is true or not.  

This is Paul's surprising Gospel move.  Instead of doubling down on the "Be good or else" spiel he's been on, Paul says that Jesus is like our "paschal lamb"--the lamb that was sacrificed for the Passover, the great feast of ancient Israel's deliverance from enslavement in Pharaoh's Egypt.  Calling Jesus the Passover Lamb is a bold move, because in the Passover story, the people don't "do" a thing to earn their deliverance from Pharaoh or their rescue through the Sea.  God insists, "I will fight for you; I will deliver you--you have only to be still and witness it."  The eating of the Passover Lamb was part of Israel's ancient remembrance of how God had done the saving, apart from their earning, achieving, or morality--simply on the basis of God's commitment to keep a promise and to liberate the captive.  The Lamb was sacrificed, and its blood was put on the doorways of all the households in Israel, protecting them when God passed through the land to strike down the firstborn of Egypt.  But the people didn't have to "do" anything to make it happen--it was a gift.  The annual celebration of that deliverance, the festival they came to call the Passover, included eating roast lamb and unleavened bread, to remember their hasty escape from the clutches of Pharaoh that happened so quickly they didn't even have time to wait for dough to rise before baking it.  But commemorating the Passover isn't something you do in order to get God's help--it is a celebration of God's help that has already come.  It is a recognition of your new life on the other side of being delivered.  It is about living joyfully as people who know they already have been rescued.  

That's what Paul is saying here about Jesus--Jesus is the ultimate Passover Lamb, sacrificed for the sake of the whole world.  Like a line of Rob Bell's puts it, "There is blood on the doorposts of the universe."  And because Jesus has already accomplished God's great rescue in the cross and resurrection, like a whole new exodus--not from Pharaoh but from death itself--now, we are called to celebrate in ways that are fitting with that rescue.  In ancient Israel, celebrating freedom from slavery took the form of the Passover meal--the lamb, the unleavened bread, and probably a cup of wine pointing ahead to the sweetness of the Promised Land.  Now, Paul says, celebrating what God has done in Jesus means that our "unleavened bread" takes the form of being people of "sincerity and truth."  

Look at how that turns this whole conversation upside-down:  instead of scolding us to be good in order to escape divine punishment, Paul says, in effect, "God has already done the saving in Jesus, like a whole new Passover and Exodus--I'm just telling you to celebrate that it is already true by being truthful and sincere people."  And just like that, we've been pulled out of the old routines of Respectable Religion that make everything about whether our behavior is good enough to avoid a heaven-sent smiting.  Just in the nick of time, we've been rescued from mildewy moralism and into the story of a God who saves without waiting to ask "if we've been good this year" like a celestial Santa.

Dear ones, this is the Gospel that is worth staking our lives on--not that if we are good enough [or pray hard enough or belief correctly enough or vote a particular party into office consistently enough] we will have proven ourselves worthy so God will then save us, but rather that God has already done the rescuing.  The Passover Lamb has already been offered up, before we did a thing or even knew it had happened, and the Sea is parted at our left and right already.  The only question is whether we will dare to let our lives look like the honest-to-God celebration of people who know they have already been rescued, because there is already blood on the doorposts of the cosmos.

In case you found yourself getting pulled into the dry and deathly regimen of moralism, let Paul's words hit our ears in new ways today.  It's not about how much we have to do [or avoid doing] in order to save ourselves from God's punishment.  It's always been about taking seriously the news that God has already done the saving, and we are living on the free side of the Sea right now.

Lord God, enable us to live as people who know we have already been set free.