EpiscopalCenter at Duke University

This has been an interesting week. I feel like the weatherman is my new best friend, given the amount of time I’ve spent hanging on his every word. I’ve been keeping a very close eye on the weather forecast and on the projected path for Tropical Storm, make that Hurricane, no wait Tropical Storm, no, well, almost a hurricane Hanna. Because we always go on a beach retreat at the beginning of the year and how dare Hanna rain on our parade?

One of my favorite things about our beach retreats is hearing everyone’s stories-both the stories of the people I’m just meeting for the first time, and the stories of the people I’ve gotten to know as we’ve travelled together through the semesters. Because here we all are-new students, feeling like strangers in a strange land (even if you’re glad to be here and even if you’re excited about what you’re doing). Returning students, for whom the landscape has shifted-sometimes literally given the rate at which Duke’s building and renovating, but also in terms of who’s here. This is a new place for all of us.

Going to the beach together is a way of beginning to discover who we are as a community. But, not to worry. All is not lost even if we couldn’t get to the beach. Our texts today go a long way towards helping us understand who we are when we come together as this community called church.

From Exodus: we are a community shaped by the story of God’s liberating love;

From Matthew: which means, among other things, that Jesus is in our midst.

First, the story.

Children’s stories usually begin, “Once upon a time . . .”

The children’s story told in our reading from Exodus today begins, “On the tenth day of this month, many years ago, the Lord passed through the land of Egypt and struck down every firstborn. But the Lord spared us.”

That’s what Moses tells the Israelites to tell their children in years to come during the Passover celebration marking the start of their journey out from slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land.

The story begins when God tells Moses and Aaron, “This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to pass through Egypt and I’m going to strike down every firstborn, human and animal alike. And this is what you need to do to prepare.”

And God gives precise, detailed instructions for what the Israelites are to do. On the tenth of the month, get a lamb, a perfect, unblemished year old male. Keep it until the 14^th, then all of you assemble together at twilight and slaughter the lambs at the same time. Then take some of the blood and wipe it on the doorposts and lintels of the house where the lamb will be eaten. Then cook it exactly as I tell you, and don’t leave any leftovers until the next day. If there are any leftovers, burn them. Oh, and when you do eat, eat with your shoes on and eat fast. Get prepared and be ready to go.

Why all the elaborate instructions? Couldn’t they maybe have grilled the lamb, skipped the messy blood part, sat down to dinner, and packed up the leftovers for lunch the next day?

No, they couldn’t, and here’s why. Because this account in Exodus was written down years and years after it happened. And by then the descendants of the people who ate the first Passover meal had been enacting the story of how God brought them out from slavery in Egypt for a long time. Which is exactly what God tells them to do-celebrate this day throughout the generations. Remember, this month is the beginning of months. This is the beginning of your new life as God’s Chosen People.

The Passover tells and passes on the foundational stories and traditions of Judaism to children and newcomers. The rituals of the meal and the words surrounding it “witness to the living God in. . .a way that [lets] a new generation come to [possess] those stories as their own, [helping them] to know God more truly and love God more deeply.”

It has that in common with the rituals and meals of our own tradition.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all testify that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper during the Passover meal “on the night he was betrayed.” He takes bread and then wine and tells his disciples to eat and drink and to do so “in remembrance of me.” Just as the Israelites were told to observe a ritual Passover meal centered on the story of the Passover, so are the disciples given a ritual meal that embodies the story at the center of our Christian faith, the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

And just as the Passover meal makes the Passover story live in new generations of Israelites, the Lord’s Supper ‘re-members’-makes members of-the Body of Christ-the telling, the hearing, the eating, and the drinking of the Lord’s Supper literally makes us who we are. When two or three or more of us gather in Jesus’ name-when we gather, in other words, as church-Jesus tells us that he will be here, too. We will be re-membered, the Body of Christ with Christ.

And why do we do this week after week? Because we are a story-shaped people. We tell these stories and we do these things over and over so that they become our own. We come together every week to celebrate the Lord’s Supper in order to know God more truly and to love God more deeply. The Passover story and the story of the Lord’s Supper are stories about a people called together by God, coming together around a meal, a ritual, and the words surrounding it, and in that gathering, continuing to live the story of God’s People.

We don’t all know each other’s stories yet. Some of us have only just met. But by gathering here today we have begun the story of our life together as the community of God’s people known as the Episcopal Center. And our very gathering is our ongoing witness to the living God, to the presence of Jesus in this community.

We may have lost our weekend at the beach, but we’ll never lose that. Amen.