Paul Harvey tells the story of an old man and the gulls:
“It is gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October, 1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an unexpected detour which would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life.
Somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean... For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was nine by five. The biggest shark...ten feet long.
But of all their enemies at sea, one proved most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them. And a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie’s own words, “Cherry,” that was the B- 17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, “read the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off.”
Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. Everyone else knew too. No one said a word, but peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at that gull. The gull meant food...if I could catch it.”
Paul Harvey concludes:
“And the rest, as they say, is history. Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice. You know that Captain Eddie made it. And now you also know...that he never forgot. Because every Friday evening, about sunset...on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast...you could see an old man walking...white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, slightly bent. His bucket filled with shrimp was to feed the gulls...to remember that one which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle...like manna in the wilderness.
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An unknown author once wrote:
Sometimes we as Christians need to stop along life’s road and look back. Although it might have been winding and steep, we can see how God directed us by His faithfulness. Here’s how F.E. Marsh described what the Christian can see when he looks back:
The deliverances the Lord has wrought (Deut. 5:15).
The way He has led (Deut. 8:2)
The blessings He has bestowed (Deut. 32:7-12).
The victories He has won (Deut. ll:2-7).
The encouragements He has given (Josh. 23:14).
When we face difficulties, we sometimes forget God’s past faithfulness. We see only the detours and the dangerous path. But look back and you will also see the joy of victory, the challenge of the climb, and the presence of your traveling Companion who has promised never to leave you nor forsake you.
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Tonight we read of the greatest event in the history of the jewish faith. For 430 years the Israelites have lived as forgieners in Egypt. They have become enslaved by Pharoah, the king of Egypt. They have been mistreated and oppressed by forced and obsessive labor.
Their leader, Moses, has come to Pharoah time and time again to ask for their freedom and time and time again, the king has refused to set them free. Each time, something terrible has happened. Nine different times God has inflicted consequences upon the Egyptians for their failure to release the Israelites and the continued explotation of them. These consequences have come in the form of plagues in which every home of the Egyptians has been affected. Now, the tenth and final time has come. Moses will again ask the king to set the Israelites free, and again, the king will say no.
This time the plague will be the worst plague of all. This time the firstborn child of every Egyptian home would be killed from the firstborn of the prisoners in the dungeon to the first born the royal household. The Bible tells us that there was not one home in all of Egypt without someone dead.
Finally, because of this tremendous and costly event, Pharoah will set the Israelites free to worship and follow God.
To commemorate this loss of life that freed life, God gives to Moses and the Israelites the Passover. It is a service of worship and a festival. It is a time of remembering and a time of celebrating.
Moses instructed the Hebrew people in what to do in preparation for what God was about to do in the lives of both the Hebrew people and the Egyptians.
From this day forward, this month will be the beginning of their year, as this day is the beginning of their new life as children of the living God, free to worship and follow him.
Walter Brueggemann speaks of three elements of this new tradition God has given the Israelites.
First, the Israelites must prepare. Here before the first Passover the Israelites are to prepare for what is to come and from this day forward that preparation is to be commemorated, a celeberation, a festival in honor of what God has done.
It revolves around the importance of the lamb, its distribution and use. It is about the lamb in terms of sustenance. Each house is to prepare a lamb to eat with none of it left until morning and none of the lamb discarded, indicating a complete and total separation from the life of the past. No part of them shall be left behind. Nothing of what God offers is discarded and not needed.
Every member of the community is to have access to the lamb. No one is to be left out. If a lamb is too much for one household, then families are instructed to share with their neighbors so that no one within the fold is left out and cut away.
It is about the lamb in terms of sacrifice.
Its the mark between life and death. Each household is to take the blood shed by the lamb and put it around the door frames of their homes. In this manner, each household is covered by the blood of the lamb. The angel of death shall not enter here, and the followers of God receive life and freedom.
It is about the significance of the unleavened bread. Bread without yeast will be eaten for 7 days during this time of commemoration from this day forward to mark the manner in which the Hebrews left in haste their enslavement.
There is an urgency and anxiousness about fleeing slavery from the Egyptians to freedom in the Lord. Brueggemann writes, “Such a casualness - speaking of their departure from captivity - may have suggested being at ease in Egypt, where the faithful people of God must never be at ease.”
It is about the manner in which one participates in the festival. Each one is to eat it dressed in traveling clothes, ready to depart with staff in hand, and eat in a hurry.
Leaving Egypt is a dangerous, anxiety-ridden business not to be taken lightly. One cannot be caught unprepared. The consequences would be being left behind and ultimately death.
One must prepare and be ready.
The second element involves the promptness of action without hesitancy. In the 29th verse of the 12th chapter of the Exodus we are told that at midnight the Lord struck down all the first born of Egypt. Pharoah did not wait. During the night, Pharoah summoned Moses and his brother Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites. Go, worship the Lord as you have requested.” And we are told the Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country “For otherwise,” they said, “we will all die!”
Again there is the sense of urgency. Its like two lovers who can’t wait to be together. Just as Brueggemann indicated that causalness indicated complaicency, the level of urgency indicates the level of desire to be free from Egpyt and to be with God.
The third element involves keeping watch. Later in the same chapter we read: “Because the Lord kept vigil that night, on this night all God’s people are to keep vigil to honor God for generations to come.”
This night of watching is a time of remembering with thankfulness into the darkness that we cannot control. On one hand it is a reminder that we cannot grow lax and slip into complacency. The watching is also significant of what we receive, not what we give. The Passover is not about what Israel did in commemoration and faithfulness, it is about the gift given by the Lord at midnight - the darkest hour - precisely when nothing seems possible.
We must be careful not to get caught up in what we do that we overlook the real action that is done by God. The act of watching is not about what we do, but is in response to what God has done for us.
And so we have the Passover Feast - beginning with the first one we have read of this evening and continuing down to this day.
Professor E. Segal of Calgary University notes that of course the Passover is a historical celebration of significance, but it has continual contemporary relevance for Jew and Christian alike as a model of understanding current situations of oppression.
The movie Norma Rae, depicts for us modern day “Israelites” enslaved by another establishment. Reuben Warshawsky (Ron Leibman) plays the modern day Moses who speaks to a meeting of poor, unorganized mill workers in the deep South: “On October 4, 1970, my grandfather, Isaac Abraham Warshowsky, aged eighty-seven, died in his sleep in New York City. On the following Friday morning, his funeral was held. My mother and father attended, my two uncles from Brooklyn attended, my Aunt Minnie came up from Florida. Also present were eight hundred and sixty-two members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and Cloth, Hat and Cap Makers’ Union. Also members of his family. In death as in life, they stood at his side. They had fought battles with him, bound the wounds of battle with him, had earned bread together and had broken it together. When they spoke, they spoke in one voice, and they were heard. They were black, they were white, they were Irish, they were Polish, they were Catholic, they were Jews, they were one. That’s what a union is: one ... Ladies and gentlemen, the textile industry, in which you are spending your lives and your substance, and in which your children and their children will spend their lives and their substance, is the only industry in the whole length and breadth of the United States of America that is not unionized. Therefore, they are free to exploit you, to cheat you, to lie to you, and to take away what is rightfully yours — your health, a decent wage, a fit place to work. I would urge you to stop them by coming down to room 207 at the Golden Cherry Motel, to pick up a union card and to sign it .. It comes from the Bible — according to the tribes of your fathers, ye shall inherit. It comes from Reuben Warshowsky — not unless you make it happen.”
Professor Segal goes on to say that the Passover not only speaks to our modern times, but to a part of each of our lives personally. He sites the first century Greek philospher Philo who sees leaving Egypt as an eternal struggle that is waged continually within us.
Philo looked ahead in the Exodus story to the times the Israelites actually cried out to return to captivity in Egypt rather than face the uncertain future ahead as they struggled to follow God. Philo likened this constant battle between longing to be free and clinging to familiar captivity to the personal struggle we each face in our personal life against the pull of old habits, against the pull of sin, wrongdoing and faithlessnes in contrast to being faithful followers of God.
Those same elements of the Passover noted by Brueggemann apply to us today as we try to be faithful followers of God, as we fight against the enslavment of this world that threatens to entrap us and keep us from free and joyful obedience to God.
We too, are called to prepare, urgently and promptly, and to constantly keep watch with God.
Are you prepared? Are you ready to take a journey with God, perhaps a new journey with God?
What is the level of desire in your heart to escape those things in your life which are enslaving you, pulling you down?
Are you earnestly ready to lead a life free from what is oppressing you - from financial struggles to addition, from infidelity to health concerns, from isolation and lonliness to a lack of meaning and purpose to life - are you longing to be free... in need of hope and a Savior?
Let me invite you to begin to keep watch with me. Next week, we begin with a celebration of our own. We begin with Welcome Home weekend. Its a good time to begin preparation for a new journey with God. Its a good time to decide to be different, to have a better life than the past.
Its a good time to set your heart and focus your eyes on what you most desire. Its a good time to discover what you have been searching for - to fill that void, to ease that ache and longing inside.
In a few short weeks, we will turn our attention to 7 different areas of our Christian discipleship, explore 7 different ways in which we can prepare ourselves to be faithful followers of God, make decisions in 7 different aspects of keeping watch in response to the freedom God has given us.
Philo the ancient philosopher points out - as noted by Professor Segal - that, as in the case of the historical Exodus, the spiritual liberation from control of our irrational desires cannot be accomplished in a single moment. According to Philo the very name “Passover” signifies that the lover of God is always practising “passing over from that which threatens to enslave us” and keep us from being all that God created us to be.
I invite you to comemorate and celebrate this “Passover” with me as my brothers and sisters in Christ.
