Exodus 12:1-14 Sacrificing the Queen to honor the King
Exodus 12:1-14
Sacrificing the Queen to Honor the King
Who of you know the game of Chess? Who of you play chess? You will know that in Chess, a battleground is mimicked with one army of soldiers fighting another. The goal is to capture the King of the opposing side which is called “Checkmate”. Now according to the ability of each piece, a value is assigned to it. Knowing what each piece is worth can help you win a game and prohibit you from trading off pieces that is not of equal value. A bishop and a knight for instance has a value of three points where a pawn has a value of one and a rook has a value of five. You therefore wouldn’t trade off a rook for a Knight unless you have good reason to do so. The queen is the chess piece that can move in most varied kind of way. It makes her a valuable piece. Her value is 9. You protect and hang on to your queen for all you are worth because if you have your queen you have a fighting change.
The queen being the most valuable piece and usually hung onto is what makes one particular chess game played in 1962 between two Chess masters, Nezhmetdinov and Chernikov, one of the most famous games in chess history. Unexpectedly, Nezhmetdinov sacrificed his queen! Everybody thought he blundered but somehow this genius figured out that giving up his queen will give him a positional advantage that will trump the loss of the queen and indeed he won the game!
This man seemed to have forgotten a chess basic-that the queen is very valuable and should be hung onto at all costs. Actually, he did not forget the rule, he just kept in mind an even more important rule. That is that as important and valuable as the queen may be, she is not what chess is about. Chess is about capturing the King and protecting one’s own king. If the sacrifice of a queen can enable you to succeed in capturing the opposing King and thus letting your own king triumph, it is all worth it.
In life we often have to sacrifice a queen if we want to stay in allegiance with our King. Our King is Jesus. It was one of the main reasons Jesus was crucified from a political viewpoint. He claimed to be a King and the Son of God. Our queen is what we attach great value to. As long as these things are utilized in service of God’s Kingdom, they are good but ever so often the queen becomes what the game is all about to us. Our Queen essentially becomes our King causing us to lose in the game of life. Then we either have to reprioritize our lives or sacrifice these queens of us all together.
Our “queens” so easily become idols and addictions. Money can become a too important queen. We should be masters over our monetary resources and channel it in ways that enhances our own lives and that of others, but often it becomes a driving force and a cruel taskmaster leading us to lead unhealthy and unbalanced lives. Patriotism, love for your country is something good. Unless it becomes something that blinds and silences you to injustices of your country. Children is a gift from God, but they so easily become little cruel gods that are mislead into thinking life is all about them when they become more important than God to us. Tabaco and alcohol is something one can use to relax but both become ever so easily something we get addicted to and then steals the quality of life or life itself. Everybody likes to receive appreciation and acknowledgment but if your whole life is aimed at getting it, things go wrong.
Today we read a story of a people who has lost the plot of life’s game. This game plot being that we are the adopted children of a King. Meaning in life is found in grounding your identity in this and serving the kingdom of this king, His ways, in everything you do. Egypt and its Pharaoh started out as a valuable helper in doing this. During a drought, Egypt offered food in exchange for labour and allegiance and all was well but over time Pharaoh and the gods he prayed to became a “queen” more important than the actual King of the Israelites. He asked too much of them. He shrunk their physical and spiritual freedom to the point of oppressing them. In this passage God says to them enough is enough: You don’t only need to re-orientate and reprioritize. You need to break completely. You need to sacrifice the queen to stay vital in this game of life.
To stay and to conquer in the game of life, we all sometimes need to let go of something precious. It is usually something that started out as a helpful walking stick that we started to lean on so heavily that it has become a crutch and numbed healthy parts of our being human beings. Let us see what we can learn from the Israelites as to how one could go about letting go and sacrificing the queen when the time is right…
You sacrifice a queen communally
You must get this picture to understand what is going here. The Israelites are instructed to have what looks like a family feast with good meat on surface value. But what they are actually called to do is an act of risky defiance. Egypt and Pharaoh has become to them the only lifeline they know. Pleasing or at the very least not offending Egypt and its gods was the only way in their minds to ensure food on the table and a roof over their heads.
Now the main Egyptian deity was the god Ra. He was intimately linked to Amon, the sheep god. Sheep as well as goats were holy and sacrificial animals. To have a feast where everybody eats a lamb and drape their door posts in its blood, to slaughter and cook it in their own unique way was a dangerous act of defiance, surely a suicide in some people’s minds.
This request from God via Moses put every Israelite at a crossroad. They now had to chose if the game is al about the “queen” or about their King. Are they going to tie their identity and stake their security on God or on Pharaoh? It is a most difficult thing that was asked of them. Much was at stake. And it is notable that they are instructed to go about this as families or one could say, tribally. Everyone is invited to partake. The ritual needed to be planned with the exact number of people in every family in mind. Everyone had to eat and do his share in this lifesaving and life defining ritual. These people needed to go fast and go far from everything dear to them. You can move fast as an individual. You can only get far as part of a group.
It is telling that God started out with a small group of people the Israelites that He divided into even smaller units consisting out of 12 tribes. Also, that Jesus, although reaching some crowds, mainly opted for spending time with a small group of 12 disciples. In Matthew Jesus is sketched along the lines of a second Moses, one that also leads God’s new people out of bondage and into freedom. God knows people need a tribe to sacrifice a queen.
In our day there are two things that leads us into bondage and idolatry. Individualism and group think. Did you know that even the rising addiction crisis in North America can in part be attributed to the fact that people live too individualistically? Where moms and dad used to naturally have a communal support system in raising their children, all is now up to them as a couple or in the case of single parents up to a single individual. And it really does take a village, not an individual to raise a child, like the African proverb goes. Indeed, even in primitive and poor communities with strong social structures, addiction is virtually unheard off. What people do to solve this problem is to build meta families or tribes. They find for instance a small group of other young mothers that advise and support each other. There are even dad groups such as this nowadays which is a hopeful sign.
Group think is just as dangerous. It is where you associate with a group and it’s views without really building a relationship with any of the people associated with this group. It makes you closed to those of another group and their thinking that might have been immensely helpful on your journey. Social media has made it especially easy to fall into the trap of uncritically adopting group think and unwilling to listen to people with other views. That is one of the reasons people seem so divided today.
Don’t go about sacrificing something you have become depended on and something that threatens and damage you all by yourself. Find a tribe. Or, if you already have one…cherish it and invest in it. You might be saving lives as you do so. That of others and your own. Having a sense of belonging and healthy intimacy with a group of people that share a basis of faith, one the one hand but are small and humble enough on the other hand to realize they are not the only ones who holds the truth and can also get things wrong, balances you. It gives you the courage to push ahead with the right thing even when it is difficult. It gives you the humility to not live under the misconception that the way you view things is the only right way to view things. It is the best anecdote to the dangers of both hyper individualism and group think.
Have an eye out for inviting people into community. It is one of the advantages we have as a smaller type of church. Our space might be just the right balance between being not too one-on-one and also not too overwhelmingly big for inviting somebody into a redeeming form of community. Cherish, nature and participate in what we do as a church but also as bible study and service groups. It might be just what you and others need to develop good habits and to break with bad ones.
You sacrifice a queen thoroughly
Thoroughness is another definite trait of the instructions given to the Israelites. Every inch should be cooked over the fire. All should be eaten and all the leftovers should be burnt. Every doorpost should be smeared.
As any recovered alcoholic will tell you, sometimes you have crossed a threshold that requires you to rid of the something that carried you there completely. To some people there is simply not an option to drink moderately that will not let them end up in bondage again. One drink for a person that crossed that threshold of drinking to much is a rabbit hole that leads to a dark place. To not fall in it they need to stay miles away from even one drink. You cannot sacrifice half a queen when it is needed. You have to sacrifice the whole thing!
In 1 Peter it says that only a dog returns to its vomit. It dehumanizes us if we return to the idols that enslaved us, if we do not make a clean break with the things we should. Paul reserved his strongest rebukes not to sinners but to people who turned back to their old ways. The Passover meal in part was to make people remember how far they came so that they would never turn back.
It is true that our addictions and bad habits doesn’t always involve a substance that is unequivocally bad for us. Sometimes we can simply bring things back to their proper place and healthy level like when you are overeating and then shift to eating the right amount. But allow God to show you with what you should break thoroughly and completely. Otherwise your life will still be trapped in a destructive cycle.
When you sacrifice a queen, you have empathy with those who cannot do it yet
As you know the Passover feast became a Jewish custom that is celebrated to this day. It is preceded by the feast of the unleavened bread beforehand. Bitter herbs and unleavened bread are eaten as a reminder of the suffering Israel endured under slavery and bondage. The so called Hallel Psalms (they are psalms 114-118) are sung during this unleavened bread feast and during Passover but only on Passover are they sung all the way through. During the time before Passover they are sung only halfway through to honor the children and animals that was not passed over. The celebrations make room for a show of empathy for those who couldn’t bring themselves to sacrifice their “queen” and acknowledge God as their King.
To be able to have the courage, the community and the thoroughness to break with an idol, is grace from God. Recipients of grace show themselves to be just that when they don’t look down on those who fell short, even if those people caused them great pain. That is perhaps why Jesus advocated love for one’s enemies. Nothing provides as powerful a testimony as Christians looking out and loving people who have fallen short, missed the mark and suffered consequences. Every time we see somebody who misses the mark, who falls short or is not where we are, the refrain that should sound first in our hearts is; “But by the grace of God…it would have been me”.
Close
In the painting you see on the board a chess match between the devil and a good man is depicted. The good man is down to his last pieces. It looks like the devil one and the title of the painting is indeed: Checkmate!
One day a young man, a chess player himself stood in front of this painting and studied it. Suddenly he cried out: It not over, Its not over! Somebody inquired what he means. His reply was that the title was wrong. The position on the board wasn’t check mate. The man’s King still had a move.
Israel’s people have been in bondage for 400 years. Their very identity was shaped by their captivity. They knew no way out. They didn’t feel like they had any options. Egypt killed them but they felt that this was the only way to live. But the King had one more move for them to make. Quite an expected one. It was to sacrifice their queen, everything that was to them a source of fear and security. They had to eat Egypt’s God and feed of it so that they would have the energy to enter a newly established identity and God’s way.
Don’t get confused in this confused world about what the game is really about. Enjoy the privileges you have in the form of talents, security and opportunities but employ them in service of and in accordance with God’s purposes and will. Consume and sacrifice to live for God. Don’t live to consume for only yourself because that is the surest way to be consumed and to be checkmated in life.
Maybe you feel Covid ended too many things you love. Maybe other things in your life makes you feel your back is against the wall.
Keep heart. Your King has another move!
Amen
Holy One,
God of grace and glory,
Your creative power is beyond imagining.
Your love is wider than the whole universe;
your mercy, greater than the heights of heaven;
your wisdom, deeper than the sea.
Maker of all things,
you became one of us in Jesus Christ,
and through your Spirit you are present with us in every place and every time.
We worship you, Creator, Christ, and Spirit,
one God, now and always,
Amen.
In confidence and honesty, let us confess our sins to God and to one another:
Although Christ is among us as our peace,
We confess we are a people divided,
within ourselves and against each other.
We cling to the values and habits of a broken world.
The profit and pleasures we pursue harm creation and the lives of others.
The fears and jealousies we harbour set neighbour against neighbour,
and nation against nation.
The freedom and abundance we enjoy belong mostly to a few,
when they are God’s gift to all.
Have mercy upon us, O God.
Heal us, forgive us, and set us free to serve you in the world
as agents of your reconciling love in Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Invitation to the Offering
God has provided what we need to enjoy God’s creation, and serve God and neighbour in loving kindness. Our offering will spread the gifts God gives to neighbours in need in the name of Christ, our Lord.
Prayer of Dedication
Lord God, receive these gifts, offered in a spirit of generosity and humility. Bless and use them for the work that you long to do in the world for Jesus’ sake. Amen.