The Rev. Carol S. Wedell
September 14, 2008
Perhaps some of you have heard the story of a little boy who came home from Vacation Bible School. His mother asked him what he had learned. He said that he had learned that the Egyptian army was fighting the Israelites and the Israelites were out gunned. So they were retreating, but their backs were against the sea. So Moses called in the Corps of Engineers and they built a pontoon bridge across the Red Sea so the Israelites could escape. Shocked his mother said, "Is that what they told you at church?" The boy replied, "No, but you'd never believe what they said really happened."
Can you blame him? This foundational story of the Hebrew people is hard to believe coming from a 21st century mindset. I would guess that many of you here have heard pastors and others try and explain it; but let's get real. This story isn't explainable if we are talking about the specific details of a sea parting in two. And trying to explain such miracles from a logical or scientific point of view actually minimizes the impact of the story - and misses the whole point.
Remember last week when I told you we were going to be spending some time in Exodus and that there would be parts that made us scratch our heads? Well the parting of the Red Sea is certainly one of them. But remember -- this was the story of the Hebrew people's escape from captivity in Egypt. It circulated for centuries before it was ever written down. It was a story that was told around campfires, and hearths. If you look carefully, you'll notice that even this story (which, by the way, is retold in the next chapter of Exodus in a poem), weaves together the perspectives of two distinct writers.
So what is this story really telling us? Why is it so important to the people of Israel, and by extension, to us? The story of the Exodus, complete with cinematic drama, assures us of a most essential truth. While scholars have debated the historical accuracy and geography of this text and have challenged its vision of supernatural deliverance, nevertheless the Hebraic peoples saw God's hand moving to free them from oppression. The Israelites' central story reminds them and us, "God is with us. God protects us. The fact that we are here is a miracle and it was God's doing."
That is what matters. The language of miracle is the language of faith. This story uses the language of legend, of myth - not in the sense of not being true, mind you. But in the sense that it can only be understood by faith. From my perspective, it is not critical whether or not it happened in the dramatic way some of us remember from the movie The Ten Commandments, as Charlton Heston playing Moses raised his arms and the water split.
This marvelous story still has power to communicate the people's experience that God had not abandoned them. They know they are not alone on this journey; and they give glory to God.
If you were listening carefully, you undoubtedly noticed that there is another part of this morning's reading that is quite troubling - perhaps even more so than the dramatic epoch of Moses parting the waters of the sea. For as God leads the Israelites across to dry land, the Egyptians who have been in hot pursuit of them are swallowed up by the waters of the sea. We read "the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained.....Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore."
I don't know about you, but that makes me very uncomfortable. Saying that God is with us is one thing. Acknowledging God's saving action is important. But saying that God is willing to kill hundreds or thousands of others to protect us is quite another. Not unlike last week's story about the deaths of all those first-born children, this story prompts the question, "What about the Egyptians: doesn't God love them, too?"
Remember that this story would have been consistent with the earliest Hebrew's understanding of how God worked in the world. The culture at that time believed that whatever occurred was because of one god or another. So the Israelites were happy to claim that their God was on their side. Just as our comprehension of God grows as we mature in faith, so the Israelites understanding of God grew over the centuries. The God who is exclusively for the Israelites in the book of Exodus, welcomes in foreigners in the book of Jonah.
Within Judaism, there is a tradition called, "Midrash" where rabbis and others will take the text and expand the story a bit, or tell it from a different perspective. A part of the Red Sea legend, as told in the Hebrew Midrash, is that God wept as the Hebrews celebrated because, "the Egyptians are my children too!" Sometimes the story needs to be enlarged to accommodate such new insights.
As the Hebrew people told and retold this story it became a reminder to the them that God's hand was at work in their lives, even when they could not see it, even when they were absolutely "up against it," with the water of the sea on one hand and the armies of Pharaoh on the other. Can you imagine how they must have felt? Can you feel the panic and terror as the vast armies of Pharaoh appeared on the horizon in hot pursuit? All their lives they had lived under his thumb, under the heal of his mighty hand - so they knew what Pharaoh could do. Now they are just beginning to understand what God can do.
It's important to remember that for early peoples the sea was a symbol of chaos, and of deadly threat. Having watched the devastation of yet another hurricane this weekend, can any of us challenge that concept? For Israel's God to "tame the chaos" declared how powerful they understood God to be - that even the forces of nature were under God's authority.
The Hebrew word for the sea has rich connotations: it can mean either the Reed Sea or the Sea of the End, the end of slavery, oppression and humiliation, and the start of something new. When the Hebrew people fled to the edge of the sea, they ran into the threshold between then and now, the end of human bondage and the beginning of a new relationship with God. Clearly, the main point of this amazing story is that God is for us, that God is capable of doing the impossible, that even in the midst of unbelievable struggle, when we are up to our necks and can't swim, God will be there for us, and if we are willing, lead us to a new place.
Some of you may feel very far removed from those Israelites, and may feel little connection with their fears of leaving all that they had ever known (even if it was slavery) and heading into unknown territory -being pursued by a mighty army at that! Some of you may wonder what this story has to do with you.
But let's stop for a minute and think back over the past few weeks. This week we remembered the anniversary of 9/11 and all whose lives were lost or touched by that terrorist event. We've watched as international tensions around the world have jarred our sense of security. We've watched as hundreds of thousands of people in the Caribbean, especially in Haiti and Cuba and yet again in the Gulf Coast have battled with the chaos of wind and water as hurricane after hurricane have destroyed buildings, towns and vegetation, as well as killing far too many. Unless we are totally oblivious to the world around us, we know that there are many who understand the fear - the terror - that the Israelites faced as they journeyed into that water - uncertain what was coming next.
For some, the anxiety and pain is closer to home. I spoke with two friends this week, both in the midst of extremely painful divorces, certainly feeling that they were up against the wall, often without good choices available. My heart aches for them, and I know they may have to search at times, to feel the presence of God with them. I know some of you who are battling illness or maybe just issues of aging - and as the saying goes, "Getting old isn't for sissies!" Yes, we know something of the concern that faced the Hebrew people as they looked for signs of God's presence as they made their way.
Maybe you are making decisions that will affect your future - a move, a college decision, a change in job, a change in relationship. You may feel uneasy, unsure. Maybe you simply sense that God is leading you somewhere new and you haven't figured out what that is yet - there is just a restlessness inside that tells you to listen and pay attention. We live with fears of all kinds: rising fuel prices, of being ridiculed, of not being a good enough parent or spouse or child, of failing, even of succeeding.
There is an image in this story that I find comforting - the pillar of fire and of cloud. Whether it is leading the people during the day, or covering their backs as they walk through the sea, the people are given a concrete image of the angel of God. Not quite a year and a half ago when I faced my own Red Sea with unexpected surgery, you were my pillar of fire. The cards, calls, flowers and meals that kept coming reminded me that God was indeed present with me - that I wasn't on this journey by myself.
Like the Israelites as they faced impossible choices between Pharaoh's army, the sea and the desert, to some degree, all of us have been there. Notice the interaction between God and the people. God leads the people; God doesn't carry them. God doesn't part the waters, but gives that job to Moses. In other words, while the primary message of this seminal story is that God is with us, we have a part, just as the Hebrew people did.
First, we need to pay attention to God's leading; to recognize God's presence and follow that pillar when it's in front of us. And then we need to act. The Israelites had to take that first fearful step into the water. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel captured this idea beautifully by suggesting that we take not leaps of faith, but rather leaps of action.
We give thanks that God worked so powerfully in this event to save the lives of the chosen people. But we also know that in our own lives, we can't always count on a miracle to come along and get us out of a jam. When we find ourselves with a sea in front of us and an army at our backs, there is no promise that the sea will open up for us, that dry ground will appear, and that our enemies and opponents and pains and problems will be swallowed up in defeat behind us.
More often than not, we need to get the resources that God has put before us and get moving, following that pillar of fire as it leads us into the future God has in store for us. It may be frightening and unknown, but as we follow we'll learn, as one of my favorite hymn says, "the journey is our home."
Ruth Duck wrote this hymn in 1974. Listen to the words of the first two verses:
Lead on, O cloud of Presence; the exodus is come; in wilderness and desert our tribe shall make its home Our bondage left behind us, new hopes within us grow, We seek the land of promise where milk and honey flow.
Lead on, O fiery pillar; we follow yet with fears, but we shall come rejoicing, though joy be born of tears. We are not lost, though wand'ring, for by your light we come, and we are still God's people. The journey is our home.
Friends, like the Israelites long ago, let's take that first step into the water!
