Empire Always Strikes Back

Empire Always Strikes Back

This Sunday we will be taking a big turn of the page out of the Book of Genesis and into the Book of Exodus. Stuff’s about to really heat up. Which is a serous understatement! This week we will looking at a portion of the story of Israel’s exodus out of Egypt. The story is too big and too multifaceted to ever be covered all at once, so we will be taking a peak into it and how we still see elements of it today in our national and geopolitical world. Yes, we need the separation of “Church and State”, but at the same time, our spiritual identity and the political realm sometimes intersect. Some times it is indeed our religion or spirituality that compels us to social action. Such is this week’s story in the narrative. -Pastor Paul Baudhuin


SCRIPTURE: Exodus 12:1-7, 11-13 (NRSVUE)

12 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.


11 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. It is the Passover of the Lord. 12 I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.