Whenever I read the account of God’s instructions to Moses and Aaron in preparation for the tenth and final plague to come upon the Egyptians so that Pharaoh will free the Israelites, . . . I am always impressed by the deliberate and exacting care given to those preparations.  Central to all of it is a lamb.  The lamb provides the final large meal before the Israelites begin their journey out of captivity.  . . . While Egyptians die, . . . the Israelites feast.  But it is a curious kind of feast; for, it is not merry but solemn; it is not boisterous but discreet; . . . it is not giddy but recollected.  The lamb is skinned but not dressed, and it is hastily roasted on an open fire; it is eaten with bitter herbs and hastily prepared bread -- bread which does not even have the luxury of yeast so as not to waste time waiting for it to rise; . . . herbs that are not savory but unpleasant, lest the people forget what a bitter thing slavery is.  But the lamb is also more than food.  It is not only the substance of the feast, but it is also redemption from death for those who eat of it.  For, outside the door, on the doorposts and lintel of every Israelite house, is painted a portion of the blood of the lamb that has been slain for the feast.  It is there to serve as a sign to the Angel of Death without . . . that there is faith and hope in God within.

    This deliberate care with which the Lord God Almighty charges Aaron and Moses to prepare for the passage of the Angel of Death is instructive.  It is instructive for our own grasp the great and momentous and holy thing we remember and celebrate today.

    First, there is the matter of the Lamb.  God instructs the Israelites that the lamb they choose “shall be without blemish, a male a year old.”  God requires that each family surrender for sacrifice the tenderest and very best of the flock.  Not any old useless, aged, and stringy cripple that is past its prime will do, . . . but a tender lamb:  the one which would fetch the highest price in the market . . . or improve the flock that much more so as to provide many high priced, marketable lambs.  By this, God teaches His people that they are making a break with the ordinary business of their lives.  And God is teaching them that there is a price to be paid for this freedom; that in order to receive life from God . . . you must surrender to His service that which the world accounts as the object of life:  the accumulation of personal advantage.  And where else have we heard this very same teaching?  Why, from the Son of God!

He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life  . . . if any one serves me, the Father will honor him.

These things which were first done in Egypt . . . were later spoken of by Jesus in order to show us and to teach us the very dear price that God Himself had to pay for our freedom -- for our redemption.  For, just as there was a cost to the Israelites in sacrificing the best of their flock to God for their release from captivity in Egypt,  so there is a cost to God in the sacrifice of the best of humanity created in His Image -- in the sacrifice of His Incarnate Son -- for the sake of our release from captivity in sin and death.  And so, at the time of the Passover, Jesus substitutes Himself for the lamb, taking bread and breaking it . . . and saying, “This is my body which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.”

    As God instructed the Israelite families to await the passage of the Angel of Death by breaking off from their usual business and making a meal of the lamb that was slain in fearful hope of God’s protection and as fortification for the journey to freedom the Angel’s visitation would give them release to begin, . . . so Jesus has instructed us to “Do this in remembrance of me.”  We too gather as a family in Christ to receive the bread that is the sign of the Lamb that was slain for our protection from death and to purchase our release from the power of sin.  Whenever we gather to offer our heavenly Father our sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving for the redemption which the Lamb of God has accomplished for us, it is a break with our past -- a break with business as usual -- and we offer ourselves -- our souls and our bodies -- to be a holy and reasonable and living surrender of our personal advantage in order to receive God’s redemption . . . and to faithfully continue the journey toward our complete freedom from sin which the Lamb’s sacrifice has purchased for us.

    Then, . . . there is the matter of the Blood.  In the Eleventh Chapter of the Book of Exodus, when Moses announces the tenth and final plague to befall Egypt, he says:

Thus says the Lord:  About midnight I will go forth in the midst of Egypt; and all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, . . . But against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, not a dog shall growl; that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel.

The sign of that distinction, of course, was the blood of the Passover Lamb painted on the doorposts and lintel of each of the Israelite homes.  The blood was an outward and public confession of the identity of the people within.  It was public ownership of the heritage of the Children of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel to live by faith in God alone:  to live trusting in God’s good will for His people; to live trusting in His love for them; and to live according to faith in God’s promise of life in a land of good.  By that faith the Children of Israel belonged to the God of Life -- the one, true God.  The blood of the lamb was an outward sign of that faith and that life and of its consequent submission to God’s possession and protection.

    And so, Saint Paul writes to the Church at Corinth, saying

when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

Like the blood on the doorposts and lintels of the houses of the Israelites in Egypt … in Christ Jesus there is a distinction between the world and the Redeemed.  And the sign of that distinction and the source of the life it conveys is to be found particularly in the Blood of the Lamb -- the Blood of the New Covenant which has been shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.

    The most ancient and fundamental significance of blood, which survives even into our own day, is that it is equated with life.  Blood is life.  And the great joy and profound gift of the Sacrament whose institution we remember and rejoice in today is that the Blood of Christ, which is conveyed to you in this Sacrament, is life which is distinct from any other.  The Blood of Christ which is conveyed to you in this Sacrament is God’s life that is in you in a particular and unique way; in a way which requires a particular public and outward way of living which confesses your identity . . . and communicates God’s life to the world.  It is a life which is focused upon God’s things, and which conveys them to the world.  For, the world’s things are hostile and valueless without God’s love and discipline infusing His life and His peace into them.  And only by the Blood of the Lamb can the real purpose of the world’s things be revealed -- the purpose God intended when He created the things of this world by His Word.  Without the revelation and sanctification received in Jesus -- in the Blood of the Lamb -- all things and all people are as good as dead.  In other words, there is a distinction between the world and Jesus.  By the sign of the Cup, you belong to Jesus; . . . everything and everyone else belongs to the Angel of Death.

    Which brings me to the final matter relevant to this day.  Saint John says that at this same meal in which the Lamb of God gave us bread and wine as a sign of His divine power to purchase our redemption and as a sign of God’s irresistible Will that we be distinct from the world which is perishing, Jesus also washed the feet of His disciples.  This too is a sign by which God will judge between the quick and the dead -- between those who are alive in Christ and those who are Egyptians -- who have no life in them.  Because, you see, when Jesus had done this prophetic act -- the washing of the disciples’ feet -- Saint John tells us that He said

Do you know what I have done to you?  You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to was one another’s feet.  For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

These words of Jesus are as deliberate and as exacting as God’s Passover warnings spoken to Moses and Aaron.  For, Jesus is telling us that the Redeemed of Christ within the household of God, marked by the Blood of the Lamb and fed by His Flesh, . . . are obligated to receive His nature; . . . not only conducting themselves in the world as distinct from the world, . . . but also treating one another in ways that are distinct from the ways in which the world that is perishing treats its own.  We who bear the name of “Christian” do not have a hierarchy of privilege.  We have a “lowerarchy”:  those among us who are weakest are treated with the greatest regard.  Those among us who are entrusted with the greater responsibilities have the honor to kneel nearest to Christ in their patient and faithful and humble servanthood to the rest of the household.  Moreover, if there is someone among us whose faulty steps along the Christian Way annoy you, . . . well, here in John’s Gospel our Lord has told you what is required:  to wash the offending feet so that the flaw is invisible to you; . . . to forgive it utterly.  And if you wake up tomorrow and the fault is still there, then you have been given an astonishing gift!  For, think how pleased your heavenly Father will be with you to have all that bestowal of forgiveness to a Christian brother or to a Christian sister, day after day, to your credit!  Of course, this is not license to be careless in your own life.  You must always be striving after the example given to you in your Lord and Teacher, Who was not accounted as a gossip or a complainer or a fault finder or a backbiter or a glutton or a sloth; but Who was patient, simple, and merciful; Who was always busy to be mindful of what the Father sent Him to do; Who often rose early to pray and occupied Himself with the same far into the night.  This is the significance of your Lord’s washing His disciples’ feet.  And when Peter objected to see his Master do such a pedestrian thing to him, Jesus said, “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.”  Indeed, if we do not keep to the example which our Lord has given us, we truly have no part in Him.  We are no better than Egyptians, whose meanness and pride were the instruments of their sorrow.

    But the Lord your God -- your heavenly Father Who loves you -- has taken deliberate and exacting care to bestow upon you the life and joy of Heaven.  He has given you the Lamb of God to feast upon so that you become the transfigured flesh of Heaven; He has given you His Blood to quicken you with eternal life; . . . and He has washed your feet as a sign that the Way to Heaven is not high and lofty, but nearest when you are upon your knees.