The Shape Of The Eucharist

“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’” – Matthew 26:26

Four verbs that occur in this verse—took (lambano), bless (eulogeo), broke (klao), gave (didomi)—appear in the same sequence in the feeding of four thousand and five thousand (Mark 6:41, 14:22-24 and parallels), in the supper at Emmaus in Luke (Luke 24:30-31), and in how Paul describes taking communion (1 Cor 11:23-26; final verb not stated but clearly implied). Dom Gregory Dix is perhaps most known for exploring the implications of this in a piece he wrote in 1941 called “The Shape of the Liturgy”—I haven’t read it, but I like that phrase. These words trace out for us the essential movements of the eucharistic meal.

Take: Jesus takes what we offer, which in these passages is always something material, but represents what is personal as well. He does not find fault with what we bring: He receives us as we are. He does not force or coerce, but he extends an invitation.

Bless: “Eucharist” literally means thanksgiving. Jesus thanks God for what we have offered. Don’t we often neglect to do this? We rush from the taking to the doing. But Jesus pauses to bless, and when we follow him, we are present to what we have before us in a posture of thanksgiving.

Break: Jesus changes what we bring. Eugene Peterson writes, “At the Table we are not permitted to be self-enclosed. We are not permitted to be self-sufficient. The breaking of our pride and self-approval is not a bad thing; it opens us to new life, to saving action. We come crusted over, hardened into ourselves. We soon discover that God is working deep within us, beneath our surface lies and poses, to bring new life.”

Give: communion is a back and forth. Jesus takes what we give; then we receive what he gives. And he always gives back more lavishly than we gave.

The mysterious and beautiful thing about these words are that they apply to Jesus himself. He is both the priest who takes what we offer in sacrifice and blesses it, and the sacrifice itself, who was broken so that we can be given salvation. And we follow him by offering ourselves as living sacrifices, losing our lives so that we can receive and spread true life. All of it is done in the context of community, around the table together, in communion, back and forth, this rhythm of the supper, this shape of the eucharist and of the Christian life itself.

For Glory And For Beauty

“And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty.” – Exodus 28:2

The hardest thing about moving here was feeling like I didn’t know who I was anymore. The first year felt like a deconstruction and reconstruction of self: like a vivisection of my identity. It wasn’t until I left the milieu I had lived in my entire life that I realized some ways I saw and felt myself were only true where I used to live. They weren’t true here. And I wasn’t sure yet who I was here. It felt like I was being peeled apart and then trying to grow myself whole again, but feeling tender and fragile all the while. It was a lonely experience.

At points I sort of struggled to go on. One of these times, I was on lunch break during a clinic day at Kaiser. I had managed to finish my morning patients with enough time to sit in the downstairs café. I had let Diane talk me into reading the Bible in 90 days, which basically meant I whipped out my Bible every spare moment I had, so I started reading Exodus over lunch and came to this chapter. Suddenly, I felt like God was speaking to me: “And you shall make holy garments for Esther, for glory and for beauty.” I started weeping as I read about the beautiful colors, the skillfully woven details. The breastpiece with rows of jewels, each one inscribed with the names of his people. I didn’t know how to see myself. Some days it was okay, some days it was bad. But this was how God saw me. If Jesus was my high priest, it was my name jeweled upon his chest; when God saw me, he saw something of great value, beautiful and precious.

In a way, that moment of clarity was a gift. Because I was suspended between cultural worlds, with all the identities we build for ourselves stripped away or not yet formed, I was able to receive a deep spiritual truth: that in the eyes of the only One who matters, I was more precious than all the jewels in the earth. I was loved with great care and attention and skill. God knew exactly who I was.

I love the part in Revelation 21 when John goes high up on a great mountain and is shown the Bride, the new Jerusalem, descending out of heaven, “having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.” Its foundations are adorned with twelve kinds of jewels, nine of which are the same ones that are in the breastpiece of Exodus 28. God not only knows who I am; he will bring me home. All of life is a sojourning until we get there, until we live by the glory and beauty of God himself.

The Veil And The Cherubim

“He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” – Genesis 3:24

“And you shall make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen. It shall be made with cherubim skillfully worked into it… and bring the ark of the testimony in there within the veil.” – Exodus 26:31, 33b

“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” – Matthew 27:51

I’ve always had a visual memory. I can remember what Dave or I were wearing at most important moments in our lives. For example, the first time we met in person after months of writing letters, I recall Dave striding towards me clad in a yellow visor, white logo T-shirt, khaki shorts, ankle socks and worn sneakers. Back then, my East Coast sensibilities were somewhat appalled at his casual attire (after hours of deliberation, I had chosen for myself pressed khaki pants and a V-neck black top)—I now realize he was pretty much dressed like everyone in California dresses, but either way, the image is stuck in my head.

In this section of Exodus, God speaks through images crafted in wood, metal, and fabric. Almond blossoms, loops of blue, clasps of bronze—in every detail, he is showing us something about Himself, about how he relates with us. He is telling us a story.

Take the veil. One of its colors was purple. Apparently it took twelve thousand murex snails (carnivorous tropical sea snails) to yield only 1.4 grams of pure violet dye, which was why the color was associated with both divinity and royalty. Worked into the veil are cherubim, which remind us of the first time they are mentioned in Genesis, guarding the tree of life, separating sinful man from the holy presence of God in the garden. Here too, the cherubim separate us from the Most Holy Place, the presence of God at the mercy seat above the ark of testimony, a place only one person could enter only one day a year after elaborate preparations (more on that in Leviticus). When Solomon built the temple, he also worked cherubim into the veil (2 Chronicles 3:14).

Fast-forward to Jesus’ death: the very first thing that happens after he breathes his last is a completely startling event. Behold! Matthew says. The curtain is torn in two! Something happens to an inanimate object in a completely unrelated location! The word for curtain used here (katapetasma) can refer to three different hangings in the tabernacle and temple, but the syntax points to the inner veil. There is the image: the cherubim, torn apart, a way made through. This, spelled out in fabric and dye, is what the death of Jesus meant: a way made for us back into Eden, into the holy presence of God.

Even more fascinating is how the author of Hebrews describes it: “We have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (Hebrews 10:19-20)—the curtain is Jesus’ flesh. A way was made only through a breaking apart. The flesh that was perfect, divine, and royal—just as the curtain was made of the finest twined linen and the rarest of dyes—that flesh was torn just as the curtain was.

I imagine the image of those cherubim in the veil, both a masterpiece of art and a familiar fixture, and I imagine seeing them destroyed. I imagine the unbelievability of a placed shrouded in unattainable mystery for hundreds and hundreds of years, at the threat of death, now laid open. That is a story I would tell and an image I would remember. 

Pondering Our Paths

“Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it; do not go on it; turn away from it and pass on.” – Proverbs 4:14-15

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth…

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.”

- Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken’

I like what Keller writes about this verse in Proverbs: “Life is likened to a path because every action takes you somewhere.” We like to think we are completely in charge of every choice we make, but on some level, each action changes us in a way that affects the next action we take, and the one after that, and eventually the direction in which we go. It’s like that saying about how thoughts lead to actions, which lead to habits, which lead to character.

This plays out in lots of ways. Our actions place us in environments where subconscious cues and cultural mores affect how we act and think, what we buy and do, more than we realize. It’s no accident that, after moving to the Bay Area, I’ve started working out, wearing joggers, and buying organic (sometimes, like at Costco, I feel like I don’t have a choice). The culture and value system at our workplaces, sports teams, schools, local neighborhoods all affect us more than we think, not to mention advertisements, phone notifications, and more. 

Our actions inform our feelings. In our Disneyfied, be-true-to-your-heart culture, we like to think that our feelings should drive what we do, but the Bible commands us often to do things, not feel up to them first. I always thought that part of the reason I loved our kids as newborns, even though they basically only cried, pooped, and slept at that stage, was because I sacrificed so profusely to care for them. C.S. Lewis writes, “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” The same could be said of acting in dislike towards someone.

Our actions inform our thoughts. Romans 8:5 says, “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” Wouldn’t we tend to write that the other way around? If you set your mind on the flesh, then you live according to the flesh—that seems more logical. But that’s not how the sequence goes here. Our actions determine what we set our minds upon.

The wisdom here is simple. Realize that you tread a path in life. And “knowing how way leads on to way,” be careful with each step. The tone of this section is one of extreme vigilance: keep hold, don’t let go, avoid, turn away, let them not escape, look directly forward, do not swerve. Obviously this does not come effortlessly: it is much easier to discount our actions, to tell ourselves they don’t matter, or that we can always go back. But the truth is, every action takes you one step farther in one direction or another. “Ponder the path of your feet” (Proverbs 4:26).

Manna For The Day

“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not.” – Exodus 16:4

“And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” – Deuteronomy 8:3

“Give us this day our daily bread.” – Matthew 6:11

For forty years, the Israelites went to bed six days out of the week with their stomachs full and their cupboards empty. Can you imagine that? Never being able to keep more than what you finish that day? Not having any other way of getting anything to eat? This is so absurdly outside our own experience that it requires some imagination, but I feel like a few things would become clear. One’s utter dependence on God for daily survival. God’s unfailing, individually-tailored, provision (verse 18 in particular is magical, particularly for anyone who has tried to estimate food amounts for large groups).

The manna itself is magical. The word “manna” literally means “what is it?” The first time the Israelites saw it, they didn’t know what to do with it, a scene which strikes me as comical. It looked like coriander seed, the seed of the cilantro plant; white, fine as frost, tasting like honey wafers. 

God provides his people with something completely novel, that vanishes by the day, to illustrate the spiritual truth that we need sustenance from the Word that only he can provide—it can come from nowhere else—and that it comes in a daily portion. Have you ever wondered why it’s important to read the Bible every day? Why not just read the entire weeks’ worth at once? For the same reason, I suppose, that we can’t only eat once a week. Spiritual growth is like physical growth: life, change, depends on regular daily intake. The word is meant to be lived in and meditated upon, and that just doesn’t happen if your intake is limited to the occasional binge. 

As James Cordeiro writes, “When you miss your devotions one day, you notice. When you miss them two days, your spouse and kids notice. And when you miss them three days, the world notices.” The more we read daily, the more we realize that we really do depend on the Word to give us wisdom, perspective, strength for that day. And when we read with the expectation that God will provide, that he can speak to us through a verse from that day’s reading, we often find that he does. 

There is also a kind of lived-out faith and freedom in this daily rhythm. There is the sweetness of knowing God desires me to come to him each day, that Jesus taught us to ask for what we need this way. If I was reading to efficiently canvass content, I wouldn’t do it like this, but the less I read the Bible like a textbook, the more I read it like a love letter, the slower I go, the more constantly I want to savor it. And by giving me only enough for each day, God is giving me permission not to worry about the future. He is extending an invitation to live by faith. As Ian Duguid writes, “God has not promised to give us the grace to face all of the desperate situations that we might imagine finding ourselves in. He has promised to sustain us only in the ones that he actually brings us into. He therefore doesn’t promise that we will imagine how we could go through the fire for his sake, but he does promise that if he leads us through the fire, he will give us sufficient grace at that time. Like manna, grace is not something that can be stored up for later use; each day receives its own supply.”

Ascribing Glory

“Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.” – Psalm 29:1

“Just as the eighth Psalm is to be read by moonlight, when the stars are bright, as the nineteenth needs the rays of the rising sun to bring out its beauty, so this can be best rehearsed beneath the black wing of tempest, by the flare of the lightening, or amid that dubious dusk which heralds the war of elements. The verses march to the tune of thunderbolts.” – Charles Spurgeon

We just got back from a four-day family vacation, which was unquestionably worthwhile but has given me a new appreciation for the effort my parents made to take us on family vacations each year. My favorite was the year we went to Yellowstone National Park. I remember one moment when a sudden storm descended upon the Teton mountains we were driving towards. We pulled over, got out of the car, and stood speechless before the most amazing lightening show we had ever seen, jagged streaks lighting up the sky behind the mountain peaks. 

I can’t help but think we in the Bay Area are a bit handicapped in reading Psalm 29, stuck as we are in our time capsule of meteorological perfection. You can read about storms, but it’s another thing to experience one, to hear thunder so loud and close you feel afraid, to huddle in a bathtub during a hurricane, powerless until it passes. There is a kind of fearful glory in that, isn’t there? A weightiness of power, a splendor of might and reach, an inescapable transcendence that reaches past your mind into the core of your being and feelings. It isn’t anything you can conjure, or argue against: it simply is, and we can only cry, “glory!”

David describes the voice of God flashing fire, stripping trees, shaking and breaking. But the most striking sign of power is that whatever God’s voice does, He does. That is the cadence, the echo, in verses five and six: “The voice of the Lord breaks… The Lord breaks… The voice of the Lord shakes… the Lord shakes...” And of course we see this throughout all scripture: what he speaks, is created (Genesis 1:3); what he speaks, happens (Matthew 5:18); what he speaks, became flesh (John 1:14), the temple in verse nine made alive. 

Don’t we all long for this kind of glory? Sometimes I think what I’m really searching for in entertainment, in movies and sports and novels, is just that kind of transcendent stirring to lift me out of my mundane daily life. We are all created for glory. How mysterious, then, that David says, “ascribe.” The two words translated “heavenly beings” literally mean “sons of God”—he may be addressing beings in heaven, or us on earth, or both. Why must we be commanded to ascribe? Because so often we are blind to the glory of God. It is literally around us, all the time: but when was the last time you consciously saw the glory of God? When was the last time you credited God what he is due, what he is worth? This is what it means to worship (verse 2): simply to acknowledge the reality of God’s glory, until it rises up in a cry within us (verse 9), until we find in it our rest (verse 11).

Two Masters

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life.” – Matthew 6:24-25

I’ve been thinking about this particular “therefore.” In the original text, of course, there is no separation between verses 24 and 25, but because we often start reading the more-popular section on anxiety starting with verse 25, we often miss the link: that anxiety is related to trying to serve two masters. 

That’s hardly a popular concept in a place where we like to think we can “have it all.” Hasn’t that belief seeped in some way into how we all think? But Jesus is uncomfortably black-and-white, either-or, about this. He speaks in absolute terms: “no one,” “cannot,” love, devotion, hatred and contempt. “Money” here is Greek mamonas, meaning “riches, possessions,” akin to a Hebrew word signifying “to be firm, steadfast” (from which we get our word “Amen”), and thus meaning also “that which is to be trusted.”

Jesus is saying, when it comes down to it, your heart can only trust and serve one or the other: God, or the currency of this world. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “God and the world, God and its goods are incompatible, because the world and its goods make a bid for our hearts, and only when they have won them do they become what they really are. That is how they thrive, and that is why they are incompatible with allegiance to God.” The currency of this world is a master; it owns us, and we serve it, whether we deliberately choose to or not. In fact, Jesus’ point here is not that we should serve God, but rather that we cannot serve both God and the world. If we think we can, we are already turning our love for God into hatred. We have already made the choice.

Therefore—for this reason—do not be anxious about your life. Anxiety is both a road to, and a symptom of, serving worldly currency. One could read the subsequent section as a contrast between the two masters, one the way of anxiety, that focuses on the trappings of life, the other the way of faith, that seeks first the God who gives true life and will provide all that we need. The question is, which master are we serving?

Being Silent

“The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” – Exodus 14:14

Why does Moses say, “you have only to be silent”? Words matter. The Israelites’ fear, bracing as they were for a brutal massacre, was understandable, but what comes out of their mouths is not a confession of fear or a plea for help. What comes out is disparaging sarcasm (“is there because there were no graves in Egypt…?”), vitriolic accusation (“what you have done…?”), self-justification (“is this not what we said… leave us alone?”), and distorted perception (“it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians…”). Jumping to conclusions about outcomes and motives, laying blame on others, feeling the grass is greener on the other side.

It’s so easy to grumble in these ways, in marriage struggles, when depleted from childcare, when angry or fearful or tired. Be quiet! Moses says. I wrote in my journal: “When I reach the end of my rope, I need wisdom to not speak.” To just hold my tongue, which I will probably never regret, whereas my complaints can do serious damage and be sin against God. “I tell you,” Jesus says in Matthew 12:36, “on the day of judgement people will give account for every careless word they speak.”

But it is a particular kind of silence that Moses refers to here. In Hebrew, this verse has only three words: YHWH [The Lord] lacham [shall fight] charash [for you, and you have only to be silent—or in other translations, be still, hold your peace]. There are over thirty Hebrew words for the absence of speech, for the particular kind of stillness or silence being referred to, and the one Moses uses here is charash. It literally means “to engrave,” as a craftsman etches in wood, or a farmer plows into the ground—in fact, charash is translated “plow” or “craftsman” elsewhere. This is a silence that happens in the context of a carefully-wrought, skillfully-devised plan. This is a silence that sees, mysteriously, that sometimes one must hold back from speaking or acting for that plan to come about. This is an expectant silence.

In this case, the plan is for God to show his people a great truth about salvation: it is what God does, not what we do. Salvation begins with hundreds of chariots thundering towards you and the sea at your back. Stop imagining what went wrong, how you would have done it better, whose fault it is, because it was never a human project to begin with. How easily we miss what God wants us to see when we fail to be silent. 

Keeping Our Hearts

“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” - Proverbs 4:23

“Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. Taking responsibility for my life opens up many different options. Boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences.” – Cloud and Townsend

“For from it flow the springs” is one word in Hebrew: towtsa’ah. Which is mysterious, because the vast majority of the other 23 times it’s used in the old testament, it appears in verses like this:

“And your border shall turn south of the ascent of Akrabbim, and cross to Zin, and its limit shall be south of Kadesh-barnea. Then it shall go on to Hazar-addar, and pass along to Azmon” (Numbers 34:4).

Spot it? Yeah, hardly. There it’s translated “and its limit.” With only three exceptions, towtsa’ah is used exclusively in describing boundary lines, throughout Numbers, Joshua, and 1 Chronicles. It can mean “the place from which anything goes forth”—the other two exceptions are translated “deliverance” (Psalm 68:20) and “exits” (Ezekiel 48:30)—but that’s not how it usually appears.

Which lends a strange kind of sense to two other words in this verse. “Vigilance” is the Hebrew mishmar, which actually means “prison.” “Keep” is the Hebrew natsar, which means “watchman.” This verse is not saying “keep” as in how you “keep” food in your pantry or a pet in your house, but “keep” as in how you “keep” a watchman on the city walls or a guard at the prison door. What’s the difference? You realize the centrality, the high value, of what you guard: your inner self is the place from which everything issues, your speech (Matthew 15:18), behavior (Jeremiah 17:10), outward appearance (1 Peter 3:4), physical health (Proverbs 17:22). If you picture your life as many streams, the imagery here is that they all come from a single source: if your inner life is not healthy, it may affect even a seemingly-unrelated area of your downstream life.

You also realize the fragility or volatility of what you guard: its tendency to be easily influenced, or stray off-center. And so we have to know where the boundary lines fall. Freedom, this verse suggests, the freedom of true life, comes not from lack of boundaries, but drawing the right ones. We must examine our inner lives and know what to let in, what to keep out. This may mean being intentional in the choices we make about media we consume, or relationships we have. It may mean following a rule of life in how we arrange the rhythm of our days, weeks, or months. It may mean pursuing life-giving leisure instead of mindless entertainment. It may mean getting more sleep. Any number of things. Where are your boundaries, and how do you live them out?

The Ten Plagues

“Thus says the Lord, ‘By this you shall know that I am the Lord.’” – Exodus 7:17

To understand the ten plagues, we have to understand some things about ancient Egypt around 1250 B.C. Religion was then so much a part of life that the Egyptian language did not have a word for “religion”: it was simply their reality. The divine and natural worlds were inextricably linked; natural phenomena were considered divine forces. Life revolved around sustaining and placating gods that were involved in all aspects of nature and society. But of the over 2,000 deities in the Egyptian pantheon, one of the greatest gods was Pharaoh himself, who alone upheld ma’at, the order of the cosmos. And uphold it he did: Egypt was a world power at that time, enthroned in splendor, home to the pyramids.

The Israelites had been living for over four centuries in this totalitarian culture, an empire built on cruelty, superstition and abuse. True salvation for them was not merely being physically removed from the state of slavery: it was to incontrovertibly expose all the beauty, success, and power of Egypt for the evil and emptiness that it was. Eugene Peterson points out that otherwise, it would have been all too easy for the Israelites to repeat “the Egyptian way of success” for themselves in the promised land: “as far as they knew, this is what worked, and had worked for at least a thousand years.” They needed a freeing, a cleansing, of their imagination, of their conception of reality, so they would be able to hear and follow God. 

And so God doesn’t just kill Pharaoh outright and get the Israelites out. Over a period of eight months, he systemically destroys the natural order Pharaoh claims to keep. He rips open a curtain to reveal true reality, the reality that Yahweh alone is sovereign. As commentators have pointed out, each plague subverts various Egyptian gods: water to blood the gods of the Nile (Hapi, Apsi, Isis, Khnum), frogs the goddess of fertility who had the head of a frog (Heqet), gnats the gods of desert and dust (Set, Geb), flies the god of flies (Uatchit) and the god of creation who had the head of a fly (Khepri), death of livestock the bull gods (Hathor, Apsi, Mnevis) and the ram god (Khnum), boils the gods of health and disease (Isis, Sekhmet, Sunu), hail the goddess of the sky (Nut) and gods of grain (Min, Nepri, Anubis, Senehem), locusts the god of storms and disorder (Seth) and gods of grain. Darkness defeated Ra, the god of the sun, and finally, death of the firstborn defeated Ra’s son, Pharaoh. 

God is revealing himself as the one who alone is sovereign. In Genesis 1, God speaks (“and God said…”) ten times in creation; here again he speaks ten times through the workings of creation, so that we shall “know,” a word that appears like a thread running through the story (6:7; 7:5, 17; 8:10, 22; 9:14, 29; 10:2; 11:7; 14:4, 18). We come to know a God who does not work through prestige or power, but through, as Peterson writes, “an eighty-year-old desert shepherd and his brother, their only weapon a stick.” He uses the oppressed and despised to ultimately bring salvation, true spiritual salvation, to the world.

In Revelation chapters 8, 9, and 16, events like the plague recur in a much more cosmic and escalatory scale: hail and fire, sea becoming blood, darkness, locusts, sores, “unclean spirits like frogs.” There, we see the spiritual battle exposed for what it is. But sandwiched right in the middle of these events is a song, the song of Moses, which is also the song of Jesus, the Lamb. They sing of a God who is the true Sovereign, and this is how it ends: “All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed” (Revelation 15:4). In what ways are we still captives to our culture? What spiritual strongholds do we need to ask God to be sovereign over in our lives? How can we pray for God’s sovereignty among the nations? How is God revealing himself to us?

The Four-Day Lamb

“Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household… and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.” – Exodus 12:3, 6

Ellie joined student council this year, and apparently their first item of business is to carry out a school-wide vote on the names for the two new baby goats the school farm acquired this year (top contenders: Salt and Pepper). All the kids know about this, from Elijah in kinder, to Eric in second grade, to Ellie in fifth grade, because all the classes visit the farm every week, where they take care of and get to know the various livestock.

I’ve always found it interesting that God asks the Israelites to keep the one year-old, unblemished lamb or goat (the Hebrew seh here can refer to either) in their own homes for a period of four days before killing it. Livestock were surely not normally kept in a house, much less crowded slave quarters. Why would he do this?

It would have been a constant symbol of what was to come. Nine plagues had happened by this time, but Pharaoh still had not let them go. Had the people lost heart? Or grown in hope? This bleating lamb or goat, wandering the house nibbling on clothing, pooping on floors, surfing the counters, would have been a reminder—salvation is coming, this time we really will be set free, have faith and believe. It was a promise they could touch, see, smell, hear, and later on, taste. 

But it was a promise that would come at a cost. Four days were probably long enough to start to see the lamb as a pet, particularly for the children. Can you imagine explaining to your kids that they would have to watch you kill it? Can you imagine how Abraham felt for the days it took him to walk up the mountain with Isaac to the altar? I don’t even really want to imagine any of that. But God wants his people to know—the sacrifice comes not just at a material cost, but an emotional one. The lamb is not just any lamb: it is a beloved one. It helps us understand what it meant that God was a God who “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). 

This was done as a household. As a parent, I think about the significance of that: the lamb was to be brought into the family. All of it a story, a lesson, for everyone, from the smallest to the oldest. All of it a journey to be walked through together, as each family did the same thing, killed at the same time, ate the same flesh. I think about what it means to live with the gospel so centric in our family lives that it cannot be avoided. That it would be obvious to the neighbors. I think about how it looks to live as a congregation of families. I picture our last community group meeting, where folks in their sixties sat in the same circle as five year-olds, everyone sharing and listening to each other. The lamb was not for each individual, or just for the pertinent individual, the first-born son. It was for every household, and neighbors were to come together as needed. This is how growing in understanding salvation happens, how the journey is meant to be taken.