“You shall eat (the lamb) with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly, you shall gobble it. It is the passover of the Lord.”
Who says God’s timing is slower than ours? That we wish God would get on with it already, that God would accomplish that which is promised, or even that for which we pray? Is watching God work really like watching grass grow, or watching paint dry? Is God so slow to act that we wonder if God maybe isn’t so concerned with this world and most especially with us? We hear that God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, but what about when it comes to giving us a blessing? What about when it comes to giving us direction in life? Or healing our sickness?
What we hear tonight in Exodus is something very different from that. We hear that God is going to act swiftly, and that the terrible last plague is going to come like an evening breeze, out of no-where, and that it is going to be silent. Unless you make a certain mark on your front door, people of Israel, the oldest child in your family will die.
Get ready, people of God! Roast the lamb that I command you to get. Roast it will all its innards still there. And eat it all in the same night. If there’s anything left over, throw it away in the morning. This is a meal eaten in haste. It’s a meal that’s meant to be inhaled, (like the way I eat breakfast most mornings) not savored. In fact, says God, I want you to eat one-handed, with your other hand holding your walking stick.
So when God is ready to make a move, and this a very dramatic and invasive move, God wants the people to be ready to get outta Dodge whenever God says, Go.
There’s an old Gospel song called Travelin’ Shoes.
Death came knockin’ on that sinner’s door... Said old sinner are you ready to go? He said no no no no no no no because I ain’t got on my travelin’ shoes, ain’t paid my dues.
God is saying today to the Israelites, gird up your loins, in other words, bend down, grab past you ankles to the back hem of your robes, and bunch it all up so you can run! Run at a sprint if you have to! Run and get out of that place of slavery. Don’t you mind how it looks, your mission is to not be here anymore, but to be in a new place, in a place that I will show you, says God.
Could they have had unfinished business? Could there have been more packing to do? Could it be they wanted to take more time putting on those travelin’ shoes? But there was going to be no extra time to get things packed in an orderly way. No time to tie up loose ends. God was going to open the door of that jail cell, and he was about to do it sooner than later.
Sometimes it’s better to have a whole lot of change all at once than to have a little change, a little at a time. God was about to create a new nation of people. God was about to define a particular family of earth with a promise, with God’s own Word, with God’s direct involvement. God was getting his hands dirty with the particular story of a particular people, in a particular place in time.
Those travelin’ shoes had to last, because God was going to lead them up and down, hither and yon, on a serpentine path to a new land. And those travelin’ shoes that the people wear are not the reward for faithful living, for pious praying, for righteous singing. They are a sign that God has begun pulling, pushing and walking alongside them, creating a new people by doing so.
That Gospel song tries with all its might to get the Christian and even the non-Christian ready for meeting their own end. It’s a “if you die tonight where are you headed” kind of song. It’s a “come to Jesus” song that really makes the singer and the hearer want to check their own spiritual health, to ask themselves the deep question of whether they have the right shoes for that final hike up the mountain to see their Lord.
Oh yes, this is something I wonder about. Did I think about Jesus enough today? Do I thank him enough for what he’s done for me? Am I courageous enough to speak about my Lord in the home and in my neighbor’s yard? Do I have a strong enough, a deep enough, a solid enough foundation of faith so that I will last on that last day and be welcomed into the arms of my Savior? If I ever prayed the sinner’s prayer I don’t remember. Since I can’t remember, then I guess I better pray it again and see if it sticks this time. See if I can time-stamp my rebirth as a child of God.
Or is there more that I can do? Maybe spending a few more minutes in prayer, maybe reading a bit more out of my Bible?
This conscience of mine can run as fast as an Israelite through the Red Sea. Do I have my travelin’ shoes on? Do you?
But now, when we come to Jesus, that is to say the words of Jesus and the story of his last night in this world, he is not on a stump somewhere, or in a pulpit, or on a soapbox preaching to us and stirring us up to be fervent in faith. Tonight, he’s not girding up his loins, but he’s instead taking off his outer robe and putting on a towel, nearly naked.
And he’s bending down to us. He’s removing our socks and shoes. He’s taking the water and pouring it over our feet. In fact, he’s taking off our travelin’ shoes because he is the end of our journey. Jesus is the end of our journey. Even before it really got started, Jesus is anointing us with simple water, anointing us with his love for us. Anointing us as sinners, christening us as dirty-footed people, and it is he who brings us back to him. While we sit.
Parker Palmer is a writer and teacher who was for a time in the bottom-most territory of a severe depression. He wanted to end his own life but couldn’t find the energy to do it. He had already been quite successful. And so people would show up and try to pull him out of his funk. Here’s how he put it.
People would say 'You're so successful, and you've written so well.' And that would leave me feeling more depressed, because I would feel, 'I've just defrauded another person who, if they really knew what a schmuck I was, would cast me into the darkness where I already am.'
There was this one friend who came to me, after asking permission to do so, every afternoon about four o'clock, sat me down in a chair in the living room, took off my shoes and socks and massaged my feet. He hardly ever said anything. He was a Quaker elder. And yet out of his intuitive sense, from time to time would say a very brief word like, 'I can feel your struggle today,' or farther down the road, 'I feel that you're a little stronger at this moment, and I'm glad for that.'
But beyond that, he wouldn’t say hardly anything. He would give no advice. He would simply report from time to time what he was sort of intuiting about my condition. Somehow he found the one place in my body, namely the soles of my feet, where I could experience some sort of connection to another human being. And the act of massaging just, you know, in a way that I really don't have words for, kept me connected with the human race.
But in this act, where Jesus comes to his own followers, those whom he loved to the end (as John puts ), we are much more than connected with the human race. The human race just goes in circles, heading for the grave. As Christ removes our travelin’ shoes and serves us, we are connected with our creator, who has decided that no amount of dirt, no sin, no depression, no illness, no abuse is so dirty as to stick to our feet forever, for Jesus is the one who in his own body makes all things new, who in his own death declares to you, “you have arrived, and you are holy.”
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