One sensitive midrash (the Jewish interpretive storytelling tradition) turns another similar problem—the drowning of Pharaoh’s army—into a teaching moment. In the midrash, as the waters crush the Egyptian soldiers at the parting of the Red Sea, the angels in heaven begin rejoicing in the destruction of Israel’s tormentors. God chastises them, saying, “Are you to sing while my children are destroyed?” Even the evildoers of Egypt were human, and God will not tolerate the celebration of human suffering, no matter how deserving the sufferers. For this reason, at our Passover seders, we remove one drop of wine from our glass as we name the ten plagues, reducing our joy in acknowledgment that our freedom was won at the cost of great suffering of others.

It was a costly liberation that freed the Israelites from the chains of Egyptian oppression, and on this Maundy Thursday we are reminded of the terrible price Jesus paid for our own deliverance as well. Even so, the violent imagery of atonement theology is hard for many congregations to enter. It is therefore all too tempting to tone down the blood, to reduce the Easter story to the existential level, presenting Jesus as a wise teacher who became so politically subversive that he was silenced quickly amid a raucous crowd that jammed the city for the holiday. That story, we can buy into.

As we reread, we may admit to inner turmoil over the violent tenor of the story. Modern Christians often struggle with ancient Israel’s portrayals of God as a jealous and angry purveyor of violent justice and brutal retribution. As depicted in the story of the Passover, God is a bit bloodthirsty for our twenty-first-century tastes. And if we share once-enslaved Israel’s gratitude for their safe passage, we cannot help but wonder about the utter destruction of Egypt’s armies—many of whom were likely oppressed slaves themselves, forced into Egypt’s defense. The challenge in this reading—and other violent biblical texts—is to resist standing in too modern a remove from the text and its violence. We too live in a violent age, and we share complicity in the tangled web of connection that leads to violence and oppression. Our reading of this and every blood-soaked biblical text may be best performed in a humble spirit of sorrow and penitence.

If the blood of a lamb protects the people of God from death, how much more will the Lamb of God conquer death on behalf of God’s people (e.g., Rev. 21:3–4, 20:13–14)?

Although Christ’s death is the once-for-all atoning sacrifice for sin, one might ask, what are the markers of the church today that should protect us from wrath, analogous to the blood on the lintels? Paul calls for his hearers to imitate Christ by offering their bodies “as a living sacrifice,” that is, by being transformed and following the will of God (Rom. 12:1–2). Being freed from judgment by Christ’s sacrifice, the church has been made free to distinguish itself in this way.

Believers today might ask themselves, Are we prepared to move with God when we receive the command? Are we free to follow God? Or are we weighed down by our possessions and by responsibilities of dubious importance? The festival effectively celebrates things that humans generally find stressful: transience, flight, the absence of possessions. It is a most surprising foundation for a festival. For all that, Passover finds clear analogies in the message of Jesus.

Then Jesus knelt before them with a pail of water. “You must love one another,” Jesus commanded (“maundy,” from Latin mandatum, commandment), as he tenderly dried the dirty water from their feet. In this one startling turn, an unexpected door scraped open, revealing an exodus reinterpreted by Jesus that made sense only in a brokenhearted future.

The patina of thousands of years of ritual and the retelling of the old, old story can lull believers into regarding Holy Week with passive awe, as an iconic work of art, instead of the electric, world-turning force that it is.

The Passover framework reminds us that what is at stake at Easter is not just a beautiful liturgy or a time of joy, but the very crux of life and death itself. Liberation is the point. Christ wants to roll away the stone upon our chests. What is suffocating and killing us? What imprisons us? What do we need to be freed from? Is it the death grip of a culture that perpetuates at every turn a soul-destroying acquisitiveness? Is it the habits of mind that chain us to distractions and hungers that keep our souls bowed to the ground?

What would it mean for each of us to comprehend that we are trapped without a hope in Egypt, toiling in bitter service with no escape? My cantor friend says that the Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, based on a root akin to the word tzar, which means “a narrow place.” In our narrow places, what would it be like to witness again the signs and wonders of YHWH, working dazzling power while Pharaoh’s magicians flounder? What would it mean for us to finally understand that God’s longing for us is so great that God will do anything, going out beyond the limits of human imagination, out to the place of Abraham’s homemade altar, to wrest us away from the suffocation of our slavery?

One sensitive midrash (the Jewish interpretive storytelling tradition) turns another similar problem—the drowning of Pharaoh’s army—into a teaching moment. In the midrash, as the waters crush the Egyptian soldiers at the parting of the Red Sea, the angels in heaven begin rejoicing in the destruction of Israel’s tormentors. God chastises them, saying, “Are you to sing while my children are destroyed?” Even the evildoers of Egypt were human, and God will not tolerate the celebration of human suffering, no matter how deserving the sufferers. For this reason, at our Passover seders, we remove one drop of wine from our glass as we name the ten plagues, reducing our joy in acknowledgment that our freedom was won at the cost of great suffering of others.

It was a costly liberation that freed the Israelites from the chains of Egyptian oppression, and on this Maundy Thursday we are reminded of the terrible price Jesus paid for our own deliverance as well. Even so, the violent imagery of atonement theology is hard for many congregations to enter. It is therefore all too tempting to tone down the blood, to reduce the Easter story to the existential level, presenting Jesus as a wise teacher who became so politically subversive that he was silenced quickly amid a raucous crowd that jammed the city for the holiday. That story, we can buy into.

The Passover framework reminds us that what is at stake at Easter is not just a beautiful liturgy or a time of joy, but the very crux of life and death itself. Liberation is the point. Christ wants to roll away the stone upon our chests. What is suffocating and killing us? What imprisons us? What do we need to be freed from? Is it the death grip of a culture that perpetuates at every turn a soul-destroying acquisitiveness? Is it the habits of mind that chain us to distractions and hungers that keep our souls bowed to the ground?

What would it mean for each of us to comprehend that we are trapped without a hope in Egypt, toiling in bitter service with no escape? My cantor friend says that the Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, based on a root akin to the word tzar, which means “a narrow place.” In our narrow places, what would it be like to witness again the signs and wonders of YHWH, working dazzling power while Pharaoh’s magicians flounder? What would it mean for us to finally understand that God’s longing for us is so great that God will do anything, going out beyond the limits of human imagination, out to the place of Abraham’s homemade altar, to wrest us away from the suffocation of our slavery?

Give these instructions to the “whole congregation,” God says. Everyone in Israel is told the news and handed the details. Families too small to consume a lamb on their own are told to join another household in the neighborhood. A place is set for everyone. No one is to dine alone. No doubt, the “whole congregation” includes those who would prefer to stay in Egypt, those who have grown so used to the way things are that they cannot imagine anything different. They look at the recipe and realize they can’t cook. Their reticence will find voice later in the grumblings of the Hebrew people who grow tired of wandering in the wilderness and long for the predictability of their more familiar life. For now, however, God sweeps up everyone in the drama, even those who may be hesitant or critical, insisting that every person be included in the feast and enter the new way God will reveal.

Through this collective experience, God is working to change Israel. A people who had been bonded by tribal bloodlines and by the shared suffering of slavery, is becoming a congregation brought together by something far more promising. At Passover, God unites Israel by the common experience of God’s protection, God’s provision, and God’s deliverance. God protects the people from the forces of death, fills them with food for the journey, and prepares to bring them out of slavery into freedom.

Here are some possible responses. God killed the firstborn of Egypt, which was a just but far from equal retaliation for what Pharaoh did when he ordered, at the beginning of the exodus story, the death of all male Hebrew children.2 Pharaoh was genocidal. He was attempting to eliminate the whole people of the Hebrews; and to the extent that God is in a contest with Pharaoh for the rule of the earth, God is not trying to obliterate the Egyptians, but merely, we might say, to bring them to heel. What, after all the plagues and the pleadings of Moses and Aaron, will get the Egyptian’s attention?

Further, the Passover ritual includes no rejoicing over the death of the firstborn.3 It is only after God has brought Israel safely through the Red Sea waters and their Egyptian pursuers are destroyed that shouts of victory and thanksgiving are raised up to heaven.

Finally, there is simply a reality about human life that bears recounting with honesty and humility: no human community exists without violence and bloodshed. This understanding frames human and holy history: Cain murdered his brother Abel and was the founder of cities, and Romulus killed his brother Remus (the two were orphans—orphans!) and founded Rome. We do well to remember this as we proclaim the gospel of God’s grace, or else that grace is cheapened into positive feelings—and communities so constituted never abide.

Perhaps the reason for so much intractable conflict in the church is God’s reminder that those on opposite sides of “holy church wars” may be humbled only by the cross. Jesus willingly gave up his life for the sake of the church

At the end of his life, Jesus met with his best friends, commemorating the event of the Passover as an observance in perpetuity for what would turn out to be the emerging community of Christians. In a world that is busy keeping up with movement, technical communication, long-distance family, and changing global realities, the invitation to keep rituals that sustain faith and community becomes a requirement for churches that wish to survive.

So that everyone understands this to be their Last Supper in Egypt, the Hebrews are also told to keep shoes on their feet and a walking stick in hand. Though they are to eat their fill, they are also to eat quickly—standing over the kitchen sink, not lounging around the dining room. The devastation brought on Egypt, including the death of Pharaoh’s own son, will finally soften his hard heart—but not for long. Having prepared the meat at dusk, eaten the meal at night, and burned the remains at dawn, Israel is to be ready to flee first thing in the morning.

As we reread, we may admit to inner turmoil over the violent tenor of the story. Modern Christians often struggle with ancient Israel’s portrayals of God as a jealous and angry purveyor of violent justice and brutal retribution. As depicted in the story of the Passover, God is a bit bloodthirsty for our twenty-first-century tastes. And if we share once-enslaved Israel’s gratitude for their safe passage, we cannot help but wonder about the utter destruction of Egypt’s armies—many of whom were likely oppressed slaves themselves, forced into Egypt’s defense. The challenge in this reading—and other violent biblical texts—is to resist standing in too modern a remove from the text and its violence. We too live in a violent age, and we share complicity in the tangled web of connection that leads to violence and oppression. Our reading of this and every blood-soaked biblical text may be best performed in a humble spirit of sorrow and penitence.