THE FIRST DAY on any job can be a tough one. You don’t know the people around you yet, and they don’t know you. You’re still learning what you’re responsible for, and how to do it in such a way that keeps your boss happy. And you’re navigating the politics of the environment: who has power and who doesn’t, how newbies are treated, and where the landmines are.

But as bad as you might remember one of your first days being, I bet it was still better than Moses’ first day on the job. It could not have gone worse. He hadn’t wanted the job of standing up to Pharaoh in the first place, and tried to get out of it: Who am I, LORD? I’m not good with words. Please pick someone else! But God had seen the misery of his people and heard their cries for help. Moses was the one he had chosen to free the people from Egyptian slavery, and like it or not, compelled him to go.

Thus, Moses and Aaron went before Pharaoh and spoke the words they had been given: “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness’” (Exod 5:1, NIV). Pharaoh, of course, refused, essentially saying, “Why should I? I don’t know this God of yours. And you lazy bums are keeping the people from their brick-making. Get back to work!” And if that wasn’t bad enough, Pharaoh, in order to punish Moses and Aaron for having the gall to tell him what to do, punished the people by driving them to work even harder.

Poor Moses. Now Pharaoh wasn’t the only one angry with him; the people Moses had been sent to deliver cursed him. He complained to God: “LORD, what’s going on here? I did what you said, but things are worse. Why haven’t you rescued your people?”

Patiently, God reassured Moses that this was all part of the plan: Calm down, Moses. Just wait and see what happens next. Then he gave Moses these words of encouragement to declare to the people:

Therefore, say to the Israelites: “I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.” (Exod 6:6-7, NIV)

Through Moses, God makes a fourfold promise of deliverance: “I will bring you out…I will free you…I will redeem you…I will take you as my own people.” And God would make good on that promise. Through Moses, God sent ten plagues on Egypt to wear Pharaoh down. On the night that would become known as the Passover, God sent the tenth and deadliest of the plagues, and Pharaoh let the people go.

There is, of course, much more to the story, including the flight from Pharaoh’s army and the crossing of the Red Sea. But the Israelites were commanded to commemorate the night of Passover every year thereafter. What we know as the “Last Supper” between Jesus and his twelve disciples was a Passover meal. Nobody knows for certain exactly what was on the menu, but it was likely to have included some or all of the traditional elements: lamb and unleavened bread, as in the first Passover meal in Egypt; something bitter to symbolize their slavery; something sweet to symbolize their freedom.

And, of course, wine: four cups of it, taken at different points during the meal. Wine also represents the people’s freedom from slavery. But why four cups? One theory is that they symbolize the four promises of God to his people given through Moses: again, “I will bring you out…I will free you…I will redeem you…I will take you as my own people.”

If so, then with the fourth cup of wine, Jesus and the disciples would have sung a hymn. And what did they sing? Probably Psalms 115 to 118.

Psalm 116 in particular may have become associated with the Passover celebration because of verse 13:

I will lift up the cup of salvation
    and call on the name of the LORD.

As we’ll see, this probably refers to what’s known as a drink offering or libation, which would have been part of the psalmist’s grateful offering to God. The psalmist had been in some desperate situation which felt, literally or metaphorically, like being at death’s door. The psalmist therefore prayed to be rescued, making a vow to bring an offering to God if only the prayer would be answered.

God, of course, did indeed save the psalmist, and Psalm 116 expresses the psalmist’s love and gratitude.

But in the context of the Passover, we might read the psalm as its own story of liberation. Again, the psalmist was in dire straits:

The cords of death entangled me,
    the anguish of the grave came over me;
    I was overcome by distress and sorrow. (vs. 3)

In Hebrew, what the New International Version translates as “grave” is Sheol, what the ancient Israelites believed to be the shadowy realm of the dead. The psalm pictures the psalmist being bound by the cords or ropes of death itself, as if being surrounded and overcome by tentacles reaching up from the underworld.

But the God of the Passover, the God of the Exodus, liberated the psalmist:

For you, LORD, have delivered me from death,
    my eyes from tears,
    my feet from stumbling,
that I may walk before the LORD
    in the land of the living. (vss. 8-9)

The psalmist was liberated from death, to walk before God among the living, and went to Jerusalem to fulfill his vow. We’ll continue to explore the psalm in the next post.

But for the moment, try to imagine the disciples coming together again at Passover, a year after their Last Supper with Jesus. As they eat the unleavened bread, as they drink the wine, they remember what Jesus said about his body and blood. And as they take their final cup of wine together, they sing: first, Psalm 115, then Psalm 116…

What must have gone through their minds as they sang the words, “For you, LORD, have delivered me from death”? Can you imagine it — the resonance, the feeling of ancient words and longstanding traditions coming together in the present moment with new meaning?

May we as Christians experience some of the same resonance when we take the cup of salvation together.