Waiting For The Midnight Train

September 04, 2011

by John Partridge Scripture: Exodus 12:1-14 Romans 13:8-14

Have you ever had to get somewhere and it didnt matter to you how you got there or when your ride left, just so long as they could take you to the place that you were going? Have you ever taken a trip on short notice? Sometimes college students find themselves without a car and they want to go home for the weekend. What they often do is look for another student who attends their university that also lives nearby to their hometown, or who will pass their hometown on their way home. If one of those students is also travelling home that weekend and has room in their car, the person in need doesnt really care what time the ride is leaving or whether their driver owns a Volkswagen Beetle, a pickup truck or a limousine all they really need is to get home. There were a few times in my travels that my schedule required some really inconvenient departure times. I have taken the famous redeye flight that departed San Francisco, California at three AM and Patti and I have both sat out some layovers that were incredibly long and terribly uncomfortable. A generation ago, before air travel became the standard, many people did the same thing when they waited to take the midnight train. Sometimes you dont care about convenience or comfort; you only care about getting to your destination. Likewise, there are times when you dont even really know (or care) what your departure time will be. There are sometimes huge travel discounts available to people who can be flexible and take their vacation with only day or two notice. Cruise ships are known for this. If a ship is nearly ready to sail and has vacant rooms, the cruise lines are often willing to discount the cost by 50 or even 75 percent simply because a discounted room earns them more than an empty one. The only problem with this is that to benefit from such a program, you need to be prepared to take a cruise with 48 hours notice (or less). In the military, service members and their families can often travel for free (or for the cost of your sack lunch) if you can travel space available. What that means is that you go to the airfield where military cargo flights are departing for your destination and if there is space available when the flight is departing, then you can get a seat. If not, you have to wait for the next flight. It works if you can be flexible. If you understand all that, then you are ready to get into the minds of the Hebrew people in Exodus 12:1-14. We enter the story as God prepares to send the twelfth and last plague upon Egypt and as God explains to Moses and Aaron how the people of God are to survive it
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The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. 4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. 5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 1

That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9 Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a firewith the head, legs and internal organs. 10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORDs Passover. On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORDa lasting ordinance. God himself will pass through Egypt and kill the firstborn of every creature but the people of God will be spared if they sacrifice a lamb, paint their doorposts with its blood and eat as if they were waiting expectantly for the call to travel. The picture that God paints is for the people celebrating Passover to be prepared to travel at a moments notice. The people of Israel have been praying for rescue for generations. As Moses has arrived and as the eleven previous plagues have afflicted them (and all of Egypt) many began to hope that God would answer their prayer but many also had begun to despair that Pharaoh would never let them go and the plagues of God would only make the abuse they suffered worse. In this way, God tells the people that they will not only survive the plague that is coming, but that they should be prepared to leave Egypt immediately. In this way, God tells the people that freedom is right around the corner. The people of Israel are called to live expectantly. As they celebrate Passover, it is as if the people of God are waiting for the midnight train, a train that could depart at any moment. This is an image that we see again several times in the New Testament and if we keep this story in mind we will understand better the sense of expectancy and urgency that is found there. One of these places is in Pauls letter to the church in Rome (Romans 13:8-14) where he says,
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Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet, and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself. 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

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Paul says, Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another and later we hear words like, The hour has already come, and The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. The image that Paul is creating here is similar to the picture that God drew for 2

the Hebrew people before the Exodus. Paul says that we should not be in debt to one another because there may not be time to pay it back, that we should love one another because there may not be time to say goodbyes and to make apologies. We should obey the commandments because there may not be time to ask for forgiveness. This gives us an entirely different understanding of our need to stop doing evil, of our need to do good for one another and our need to show others the love of Jesus Christ. A significant part of Pauls emphasis is not that we should obey for the sake of obedience and it is not that we should obey because of our fear of judgment but simply that we should do these things because there isnt much time. When families say goodbye to one another and know that it may be their last time together, they know that this isnt the time to argue over petty things but instead is the time to tell (and to show) how much they love one another. The reason that we put aside the indecent things that we once did is not only because we have a new life in Christ but because there simply isnt much time left. We know that the return of Christ could happen at any moment and so we behave as we would in the daytime, we behave as if we were being watched day and night, because we are rightly concerned that Christ may return at any moment and we do not wish for him to find us doing evil, behaving indecently, arguing foolishly among ourselves or being jealous of one another. We should live like the Hebrew people were called to live during the Passover. We are called to live as if we were waiting for the midnight train. We must live as if we may never see one another again in the world of the living. We must allow the intensity of that thought drive us to love one another, to do justice, to resist evil, to behave decently, and to tell others how they can take that midnight train with us. We must clothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and change our way of thinking so that we do not focus on ourselves and on satisfying our own needs, but focus instead on loving others, and satisfying the needs of others. Paul reminds us that Christ may return at any moment. We are called to live as if there is no tomorrow. We are called to remember that there simply isnt much time left. We are called to live expectantly as if we are waiting to leave on the midnight train.

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