In days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.’ – Exodus 13:14

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 23, 2018): Exodus 13

Australian novelist Helen Garner wrote “The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfillment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.” Rain is like that. It falls. We may say that the sky looks angry as a storm gathers, but there is no actual anger in the clouds. We may predict the future action of the weather, but there is no intention. Someone once asked why tornadoes seem to hate trailer parks. But there is no hate, just a storm. Rain does what it is designed to do. It falls.

And it is not just the weather that happens without meaning. The truth is that much of our actions, and many of our beliefs are actually without meaning. We do what we do because we have always done it that way, and often because we watched our parents do it that way. There is no mistaking the power of “I have always done it this way” thinking. So the rain continues to fall in many areas of our lives. Even in the area of religion, too often we lose sight of meaning. We do things because it is what we are told to do, and what we have always done. We react to outsiders in a way that does not reflect what we say we believe because we have always done it that way. We never ask the question “why.” And the question why, while annoying when we don’t have an answer, is important. If we are to live our lives with purpose and with meaning, that purpose begins with asking “why.”

God was about to lead Israel out of slavery. And with the deliverance of Israel, we find the beginnings of a system of sacrifice. The firstborn of every animal and human belonged to God. This was God’s price for the deliverance that the people were about to receive. Maybe this system of sacrifice was God’s idea, although I am not convinced of that fact. Sacrifice to God had existed long before this moment.

The first murder that the Bible tells of, the killing of Abel by his brother Cain, was a direct result of an argument over sacrifice. Job, a contemporary of Abraham, made sacrifices to God on behalf of both himself and his children. Abraham made sacrifices and paid a tithe. So there is nothing new about the idea of making a sacrifice to God or the gods.

But maybe what is lacking is an answer to the question why. What is lacking is meaning. Why would God care if I killed a bull and gave it to him? Up until this moment in time, the Bible does not give us an answer to that question. Here, God gives a reason for the question of why, at least to some of the sacrifices. I am not convinced that the sacrificial system was not something that we thought was right and God that accepted and ordained. We started the act of sacrifice, and God decided that sacrifice was something that he would accept, but for which we needed to have a meaning. So he instructs Israel that when your children ask why we need to sacrifice, tell them that we sacrifice because we remember what God has done for us. After all, without him, we would still be slaves.

The reasoning hasn’t changed. Why do we worship God; why do we gather and sing praises and offer our tithes and our sacrifices? Because we recognize that without him we would still be slaves to our pasts; we would be slaves to all of the wrong that we have committed. There is a reason why for our worship. And we should never allow our worship to take place in a space that is without purpose or intention.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Exodus 14