You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
And,
for the fourth week now, this wonderful story of Moses continues. We have come a long way this past month in
our reflecting upon, not the literal truth but rather the deeper truth, of this
pivotal story that Jews have told and retold down through the ages until it
became part of who they were as a people – and, of course, who Jesus was as a
devout Jew.
We
began with a desperate Hebrew mother fearing for the life of her son, who put
the baby afloat in a watertight basket on the Nile River. Then we fast-forwarded 80 or so years to a senior
citizen Moses who stood before a burning bush on the heights of Mt. Sinai where
God/Yahweh/the Great I Am assigned him the overwhelming task of getting the
enslaved Hebrew people out of Egypt. We
learned about the disasters that befell their Egyptian oppressors, the worst
being the deaths of all the Egyptian firstborn sons, and about the celebration
of the Festival of Passover that emerged from that terrifying night.
We
imagined how the Hebrew people must have cowered in their huts and houses. Their doorframes had been painted with the
blood of a yearling lamb as God had required.
Families and friends had shared its roasted meat among themselves along
with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
And
through it all, the Israelites could not help but hear the keening of Egyptian
mothers holding their dead and dying sons.
They shuddered as the sounds of agony and despair emanating from the
Pharaoh’s palace came to them on the nighttime air as even “he who had been the
most powerful” wept over the death of his little prince.
And
over the crying and wailing, they heard voices filled with fear and anger. “Go, get out of here. What with all these plagues and disasters,
you will kill us all! Get out!”
And
then, there was nothing, no more voices, no more keening. And the Israelites sat in that deep silence,
listening. And out of the silence came a
whisper and the soft knock on doors. The
word was spreading – not the word of death, but the word of impending
freedom. “Come. Now.
This is the time. We are
leaving.”
And
they did. They left their homes, their
cooking pots, and the cracked mug that always held their morning coffee. They left their clothes and that box of old
photos and mementos.
They left toy dump trucks, their pint-sized
beds still filled with sand, and faded, much loved ragdolls. They left their entire lives behind and
followed this man, Moses, whom they scarcely knew.
They
could not travel overland toward Canaan as that would require passing through
six Egyptian military outposts, and face it, a bunch of overworked and underfed
Hebrew laborer slaves – not to mention all the women and children – were no
match for the Egyptian military complex.
And so, as ludicrous as it seemed, they followed Moses instead toward
the sea – with a thick cloud ahead of them by day and a pillar of fire to lead
them at night.
They
were not long into their escape, however, when the Pharaoh realized that he had
made an enormous mistake. Who would
build his pyramids and glorious cities?
Who would make the bricks to fashion the architectural wonders and
monuments to memorialize his reign?
“What
have we done? We have no slaves. We have no work force. The economy will go to
hell in a hand basket.” And so the
Pharaoh, feeling that he had no choice (“It’s the economy, stupid!”), gathered
some 600 chariots and horses and military officers and relentlessly pursued the
Hebrews.
It
did not take long before our slaves saw the approaching army, and they did then
for the first time what they would do countless more times in the next 40 years
before they reached their Promised Land.
They complained.
“Oh,
come on, Moses. Weren’t the cemeteries
large enough in Egypt so that you had to take us out here in the wilderness to
die? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt?...Didn’t we tell you,
‘Leave us alone here in Egypt—we’re better off as slaves in Egypt than as
corpses in the wilderness.’ Here we are
– caught between a rock and hard place.
The Egyptians are closing in behind us
- and there is only water – as far as we can see – ahead of us. We’re trapped. We’re goners.
And it’s all your fault.” Not an
impressive way to start leading!
However,
let’s give Moses credit at this point of despair and near rebellion. Moses rose to the occasion and tried his best
to be the kind of leader God had called him to be. After all, he thought, they had come this
far, and God/Yahweh/The Great I Am did seem to be taking an interest in their
plight.
So
Moses spoke to the people – though maybe his knees were knocking a bit even as
he proclaimed: “Don’t be afraid. Stand your ground, and God will fight the
battle for you. And for now – just keep
your mouths shut!”
“There,”
Moses said to himself, wiping his hands on his robe. “That should keep them quiet. And now, God/Yahweh/The Great I Am, the ball
is in your court.”
Moses,
oh Moses! You got it all wrong. You see, God threw a curve ball then and said
to him: “Why are you crying out to me? Speak to the Israelites, the Hebrews.
Order them to get going, to move forward.
Hold your staff high and stretch your hand out over the sea: Split the
sea, Moses, split the sea!”
“What?”
Moses mumbled. “Split the sea? What are
you talking about? I got them out of
Egypt. I thought YOU were taking over
from here?”
Yahweh/God/The
Great I Am chose not to dignify his remark with a reply. Having no recourse then, Moses, shaking his
head, feeling particularly old and very frustrated – and more than a wee bit
silly – stepped into the water. It sloshed about his ankles, and the
hem of his robe got wet.
He
took a deep breath, raised his staff high over his head, and held his other
hand over the water, hoping no one would laugh at him. Nothing much seemed to happen at first, but,
with his back to the Israelites, he shouted in the most commanding voice he
could muster, “Come on. Follow me.” And he began to walk – step by soggy step –
into the waters. And the people
followed.
In
a Jewish commentary on this story, the writer imagines that the water got
deeper and deeper as Moses and the Israelites waded further and further from
shore. First the water covered their
ankles and then climbed to their knees.
They tied their robes up to keep them from getting heavy and wet. Children had to be picked up and carried.
When
the water reached their waists, those who were not carrying children hoisted
meager belongings onto shoulders and heads.
The water continued to rise, and still they continued to walk
forward. It was not until the water had
reached their chins that, in a miraculous rush, it subsided, and the Israelites
walked on dry land to the other side.
The
Egyptians, of course, were not so blessed.
Their chariot wheels became mired in mud. Horses floundered, and the sea swept back,
leaving in its wake corpses – 600 human corpses. As Baptist pastor Thomas McKibbens writes, “We find an image of waves lapping up on dead soldiers, dead
horses, and broken chariots, symbolic of dead power and dead arrogance.
And if we listen closely in reading the scripture, we hear the
eerie sound of a woman’s voice on the sand dune overlooking the beach… And from
her lips comes a song that has come down to us in a form of Hebrew so archaic
that (some) scholars have concluded that it is the oldest hymn in the entire
Bible, maybe even coming from that very time. She keens out the words of the
song:
Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed
gloriously;
horse
and rider he has thrown into the sea.
The
Israelites are safe. They are free. What a story!
A boy was sitting on a park bench with one
hand resting on an open Bible. He was loudly exclaiming his praise to God.
"Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God is great!" he yelled without worrying
whether anyone heard him or not.
Along
came a man who had recently completed his studies at a local university.
Feeling himself very enlightened in the ways of truth and very eager to show
this enlightenment, he asked the boy about the source of his joy.
"Hey"
asked the boy in return with a bright laugh, "Don't you have any idea what
God is able to do? I just read that God opened up the waves of the Red Sea and
led the whole nation of Israel right through the middle."
The
enlightened man laughed lightly, sat down next to the boy, and began to explain
the "realities" of the miracles of the Bible. "That can all be
very easily explained,” he lectured. Modern scholarship has shown that the Red
Sea in that area was only 10-inches deep at that time. It was no problem for
the Israelites to wade across."
The
boy was stumped. His eyes wandered from the man back to the Bible laying open
in his lap. The man, content that he had enlightened a poor, naive young
person, turned to go. Scarcely had he
taken two steps when the boy began to rejoice and praise God louder than
before. The man turned to ask the reason for this resumed jubilation.
"Wow!"
exclaimed the boy happily, "God is greater than I thought! Not only did
God lead the whole nation of Israel through the Red Sea, God topped it off by
drowning the whole Egyptian army in only 10 inches of water!"
This
story, which we often call “The Parting of the Red Sea,” is one of those Biblical
tales where we can so easily become hung up on what exactly are the literal
facts of the narrative. We argue about
how deep the water really was. We debate
whether the Israelites crossed the Red Sea – or the Reed Sea – or a tributary
of one or the other. We try to cram the
story into a logical, rational, historical box – convincing ourselves that its
truth is found in whether there was 10 inches of water or 20 foot waves.
However,
this story is not about history – as we understand history today. This story is about God/Yahweh/The Great I
Am. This story is about faith, about
faith in God’s love and protective caring.
This story is about how far we will go, how deep into the waters we will
travel on what seems like only a wing and a prayer. This story that is so central to the Jewish
psyche and therefore so central to Jesus is about faith, faith in the power and
abiding presence of God.
And
this story is about more than simply trusting.
It is about what you do when you have your back to the sea, when you
have run out of options, when there seems to be no way. “And then God opens a way that was not there.
God opens a path that did not exist. Up to this point it has been about trusting
God. Up to this point it has been about accepting that God will fulfill (God’s)
promises. Now it is just about following the path.” (Pastor Gavin)
So
it was for the Israelites, and so it is for us.
If we have not already, someday we will all face impossible situations,
with nowhere to go. Do you treat the
cancer? What do you do with the son whom
you suspect is gay, or the daughter whose marriage is falling apart? What do you do when your life – or the life
of someone you love – turns on a dime – and there seems to be no way forward, no
way out of the horror, the dislocation, and the pain?
As
Baptist pastor Amy Butler writes, “In the hardest moments of your life and mine
there are decisions that need to be made, decisions about whether or not we
will lift our feet and take the next step, even though we have no idea what’s
ahead, or we’re scared beyond belief or both.”
This
story about Moses leading the Hebrew people to freedom is about those moments
when you have to decide whether or not you will step out into the waters of
faith. It is about those times when you
have to come clean and decide just how powerful, how loving, how protective
this God you worship here every Sunday really is.
But
understand that the question is not, as Amy Butler points out, “will God bail
us out?” It is rather “will we have the courage to step out in faith?”
No
one said that living faithfully is easy.
Even Moses realized that God was not going to do it all. What did God say to Moses? “ Why are you
crying out to me? … Split the sea, Moses, split the sea!”
Moses had to raise that stick, had to stretch
those 80 year old gnarled hands out over the waters that seemed to have no end,
had to take that first step into the brine, had to screw up all his courage and
beckon the Israelites to follow. As
seminary professor John Holbert noted, “God's biblical promise is not that God
will forever save us from ourselves and our stupidity. The promise is rather
that God will stand with us, urging us” on.
And
when we embrace that promise, when we make that statement of faith central to
who we are, when we take that deep breath and step out into the waters of
faith, not knowing where it will lead us, but trusting that in the end it will
be to a good place, that is when the waters part, revealing a path, a plan, a
way when there seemed to be no way. That
is when we know that we are not in this crazy life alone. That is when we can
see dry land ahead of us when before it was only the roiling and chaotic sea.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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