In Exodus 5:1 Moses records what he as a prophet and Aaron as the chief priest were commanded to do in the name of the Lord.
And afterwards went Moses and Aaron and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says Yahweh, God of Israel, “Let go the People of Me that they may gather for a feast to Me in the wilderness.””
The word for “gather for a feast” is a word for circling around something. As slaves in Egypt, under the oppression of the Pharaoh, the people of Israel were not able to gather together in the name of the Lord. They were not free to go out from their captors to eat the sacrifices of the Lord. The blessings of the divine service were kept from them by their enslavement by the Egyptians. The control over the people was so complete that even the sons were demanded to be given. Infanticide was being forced upon the people for political reasons.
For those who are awake enough to see what is happening in America, the same kind of enslavement is being forced upon the people of this nation. The land of the free, to which people fled in order to be able to gather unto the Lord according to what they understood to be the way to which He called them, over the last hundred years or so has been turned little by little into a land where the only form of faith-life and worship that is hindered is the gathering unto the Lord. Moreover, the economic freedom that allowed for free exercise of faith and speech has been stripped away. The point of having to gather straw for bricks has not quite come upon us, but it is not far away.
The US Constitution was written to protect the people from those who would enslave them and dictate to them how they may earn their living and how they may use their incomes and how they may exercise their devotion to the Lord.
The American people need to elect leaders who truly recognize this so that their freedom to gather to eat the feast of the Lord is not taken from them.
On this, a deeper theological note is worthy of observance. After this first approach to the Pharaoh, where the worship-life of Yahweh’s people was declared, afterwards the demand was that they be let go to serve the Lord. Sadly, most who gather for worship have entirely ignored what Moses and Aaron clearly gave as the true definition of serving God.
The divine service is the gathering to feast in the presence of the Lord in the purity of the administration of the Word and the Sacraments. The service to which God calls us to be gathered is His service, where He is served to the people for their feasting. His blessings are to be feasted upon, served to us as He has ordained. The ultimate blessing that He serves us is the Holy Communion, through which we feast upon His very body and blood and receive the forgiveness and life of His blood and are renewed in the unity of His body.
When people begin to grasp the fullness of this, they begin to realize the extent of God’s grace in Christ, given and shed for God’s people in order that they may be truly free to live as His people.
For a time we have enjoyed the political freedom to acknowledge this openly. Those who acted to insure this freedom acted together, even though they were not truly united in their understanding of the faith. Nevertheless, they knew that in order for religious freedom to exist in this nation that they had to act together to insure that freedom not only for themselves, but for all. If we act together, perhaps this freedom may be extended for a while longer. However, whether the political freedom is extended or not, those who know the true freedom of God’s service will continue to gather to feast in His presence, even if it costs everything that this world has to offer.
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