God’s mighty acts
SERMON SEPTEMBER 6, 2026 – FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST YEAR A
EXODUS 12:1-14, PSALM 149, MARK 14:22-26
From the Old Testament: This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations…
Our reading this morning from the Book of Exodus is powerful and memorable. It begins the telling of the mighty act of God in liberating the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. The Israelites have been an alien, oppressed people there for generation upon generation. This is the story of the Passover, which is told and enacted as a sacred meal, the seder, in every observant Jewish household across the world down to this day.
Some Episcopal parishes celebrate Passover on Maundy Thursday by sharing a Passover meal. Why engage in a Jewish ritual? This will become clear as I walk us through the similarities of Passover and Easter in a moment. Now, returning to the Exodus story:
God’s people are told to slaughter a perfect young, male lamb and roast it. One per household, or a shared lamb if the family is small. They are instructed to eat the meal dressed ready to travel. God told Moses and Aaron: This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. Any leftovers are to be burned. The lamb is accompanied by unleavened bread, which can be prepared quickly, and bitter herbs signifying the bitterness of their life in Egypt.
This was not to be a leisurely table meal, because when they were finished, overnight God would visit every dwelling in all the land of Egypt. God would pass over any Israelite house where the seder had been eaten. God would know which ones to skip, because the Israelites had been told to smear some lamb’s blood on the two doorposts and the lintel of their houses.
Then in all of the unmarked houses God would strike dead every firstborn Egyptian male, both human and animal. This would create an uproar in Egypt, and the rulers would assemble an army to capture or kill the Israelites, who had been the instrument of God’s wrath. Ready for action, God’s people were immediately led by Moses out of Egypt ahead of Pharoah’s army, through the Red Sea to safety, to a redeemed life.
In Luke’s gospel we learn that the last Supper, on Maundy Thursday, was the Passover meal. Jesus tells the disciples at table, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. (Luke 22:15). For Christians, Jesus is the lamb without blemish who is sacrificed to effect the redemption of the world. Soon, in the Eucharistic prayer I will break the bread, and say, Alleluia, Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. And you will reply, Therefore let us keep the feast, alleluia. Let’s consider a side-by-side comparison of the liturgies for Passover and for the Eucharist.
Passover – Exodus 12 The Last Supper – Mark 14 & BCP
Israel is in bondage Humanity is under the bondage of sin and death
God initiates a mighty act Jesus the Son of God initiates a mighty act
A lamb is sacrificed Jesus is the sacrificial lamb, going to his death
Blood signifies deliverance Jesus says, this is “my blood of the new covenant”
Unleavened bread is eaten Jesus takes, blesses breaks and gives bread, his body
Families eat together Jesus and the disciples eat together
The meal interprets God’s saving act Jesus interprets his death through the meal
Israel is constituted as God’s The disciples are constituted around Jesus’ new covenant
delivered & covenanted people
The people are charged with The disciples are charged with observing the Eucharist
observing Passover annually whenever they gather in Jesus’ name
Notice that neither the Israelites nor the disciples understand yet what they are participating in. It will become clear to the Israelites during their desert sojourn, when they receive the Ten Commandments, and God shows them the promised land. The disciples do not understand the meaning of the bread and the cup, and will not until they experience Gethsemane, Jesus’ passion and death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension.
Notice that these two mighty acts of God rest one within the other. In the Passover, God forms a people whom Jesus then saves as the Paschal lamb. In both cases, liturgical remembrance places the worshiping community within God’s saving story. At the deepest level, God acts and the people eat.
But in the case of the Eucharist, eating brings Jesus to abide in us and we in him. We are forever changed by Jesus’ mighty act of self-giving love. The Eucharist makes us new and redeemed people, and gathers us together with every single person who ever shares or in past times shared the Body and Blood of Christ.
We notice also, that these mighty acts of God come down to homely, physical things: blood, bread, eating, drinking, gathering, blessing and sending. Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit created all things, becomes God incarnate. He spent a human life within Creation, enfleshed and in a material world to save a material world.
Knowing that human beings need to see, hear, touch, taste and smell, God created us sensate beings, and gives us what our senses clamor for. In a few minutes, each of us will hold and see the Body of Christ, the bread of heaven, taste and smell the Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation. Each of us will have heard the words of institution, and will have joined in with words of praise and thanksgiving. Faith, As Jesus told Thomas, who needed to see and touch the wounds of his passion, blessed are you Thomas, and blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. That’s us Jesus is talking about. We participate in the Eucharist and know that it is the self-giving love and truth of God, because we have faith, the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)
After both the seder and Holy Eucharist the gathered people are sent out to do God’s work in the world, strengthened by having eaten what God provides. The Israelites go out to obey God’s leading into the wilderness and eventually into the promised land. Christians go out to obey God’s leading into the kingdom of God, and eventually into heaven.
What I have told you is stepping us back from the close-up we normally have of the Holy Eucharist. We now have a perspective on how God has formed and provided for a holy people. We now recognize God’s mighty acts in the world: long ago freeing Israel from slavery, and only two thousand years ago freeing the whole world from sin and death.
The Christian story is not intelligible without the Hebrew story. And the Hebrew story is, as Christians understand it, unfinished without the Christian story. Our great and good and loving God has been working in history from the very glimmer of Creation until now and into the future, world without end.
May we faithfully take our place within God’s story, with the help of the Father and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
THANKS BE TO GOD. Amen.