A sermon preached by Dottie Yunger at Capitol Hill United Methodist Church on September 14, 2008, the 18th Sunday after Pentecost.
Text: Exodus 14: 19-31
We have moved from the Book of Origins, the Book of Genesis, to the Book of Exodus, the Book of Exits (Exodus is derived from the Greek work for exit). The first part of the story tells how a group of slaves exits their situation of oppression to freedom. The second part of the story tells how a rag-tag group exits from estrangement to covenant community. Our story today is about how the Israelites once and for all escape from Pharoah’s oppression by crossing the Red Sea. When Pastor Alisa asked me to preach on this day, to mark my exiting as a regular participant in worship now that my ministry internship has been completed, and the Sunday before our Cooperative Conversations with Ebenezer, with whom we are in a Cooperative Parish – hopefully marking an exiting of estrangement to covenant community – I was thrilled to discover the passage for the day was the parting of the Red Sea. How great, I thought, to preach on such a rich text, such a powerful story, and who better than CHUMC’s own resident marine biologist. It seemed much cooler to preaching on the parting of the Red Sea before Hurricane Gustav hit, and then Hurricane Hannah hit, and now Hurricane Ike hitting.
Will you please pray with me?
What to make of the story of the parting of the Red Sea – a central story in the bible, one that any one who spends any time in bible study as either a child or an adult ends up hearing about. Such a powerful story with such rich imagery that Hollywood has depicted it time and again in movies. A story like this, so full of meaning and implications and imagery, deserves to read closely and carefully, so that we can hear what the text has to tell us, not superimpose on the text what we want to hear or the point we want to make.
I want to start by explaining that we could spend a lot of time and energy debating the historical and scientific accuracy of the parting of the Red Sea. I as a marine biologist could spend time explaining here now bodies of water flood and recede and the natural events that affect how they do that. I could spend time giving you historical and geographical information about the Red Sea or the Reed Sea or what exact body water is being referred to and how exactly it was parted, whether this was a natural phenomenon the Israelites tried to explain, a natural event the Israelites tried to explain as a divine act of God. We could spend a lot of time and energy debating the historical and scientific accuracy of the parting of the Red Sea.
I’m not going to do that – you came to hear a sermon not a lecture on oceanography and meteorology or even archeology. They aren’t the point here. Whether the Red Sea actually existed and was actually parted isn’t even the point in my mind. The point is not how did this story happen but why this story? Why did the Israelites tell this story and tell it this way? What did the people of Israel want to claim about God, claim to know about God, want to say about God through the telling of this story and its retelling? They couldn’t have imagined us today but they must have imagined future generations who would need to hear this story to know about God, so they told the story and retold the story and preserved the story in a particular way for a reason. That’s the really interesting, the really important conversation to have about this story, a conversation that gets lost in a debate about historical and scientific accuracy. That’s the story that’s going to help us discern our own story.
What are the clues in the story?
The elements of creation are the elements present here as well. Genesis begins with a formless void and darkness covering the face of the deep. Our story today begins with a void between the Israelite army and the army of Egypt and the darkness of night. In Genesis a wind sweeps over the face of the waters and the light is separated from the darkness. In our story today, the pillar of cloud sweeps in behind the Israelite army and in front of the army of Egypt, and it lights up the darkness of night. In Genesis, the waters are separated above and below, as well as separated from the dry land. In our story today the waters are driven back and parted and there is dry ground. Then the Lord, in a pillar of fire and cloud, defeats the Egyptian army and delivers the Israelite army.
The God of Israel is the God of Creation, the God of Land and Wind and Sea and Sky. The elements of creation – earth/mud, sky/pillar of cloud and fire, wind/blowing all night, sea/parted – are here in this story as they are in the stories of creation. God creates and recreates, God is at work in and through creation. In our story today, God’s chosen people are being recreated as they exit their captivity. They are being recreated into a free people, a community of people.
God intervened on behalf of the people of Israel. The rabbis of the 18th and 19th centuries were as troubled as I think we can be about God’s intervention involving the suspension of natural law. They too struggled with the literal truth of the splitting of the sea. They paid attention the description – a clue – of the strong east wind as a hint that the parting of the sea happened through a natural event. One rabbi even translates the wind as not an east wind but an ancient wind, the wind that divided the sea had been created for that purpose at the time of creation.
The Israelites went into the sea on dry land – the rabbis play with this part of the story as well. They tell a midrash that the sea would not part until the Israelites showed enough faith to wade into the water themselves. The Israelites, sensing Pharoah and his army close on their tail, were frightened and told Moses they would rather surrender to Pharoah then die in the wilderness. Moses says, Don’t worry, God will deliver us, the Lord will battle for you!
The Lord says to Moses, Why do you cry out to me? My rabbi described God’s response as What are you crying to me for? Stop praying and start swimming! Tell the Israelites to go forward. You lift up your staff and stretch out your hands over the sea. In addition to divine activity, this miracle involved human activity. The Israelites needed to intervene on their behalf as well. They exited their situation of oppression to freedom, and as the story continues, they will exit from estrangement to covenant community. The Israelites and the elements of creation participated in the accomplishing God’s will, namely the freeing of God’s people from captivity and the creating of a covenantal community.
Notice I used the M word – miracle. It has been said people think of a miracle as any time God does what we want God to do, but that God thinks of a miracle as anytime we do what God wants us to do.
God said to the Israelites, what are you praying to me for? We have two options – into creation and freedom step backwards into chaos and captivity under Pharaoh, or step forward. You may not know exactly what you are stepping into, but it may be enough to know what you are stepping away from. God says, I want you to leave your captivity and enter your freedom. And the Israelites stepped into the water, stepped out in faith, and that’s when the wind, the wind that had been with them the whole time, since the beginning of creation, the wind blew and the waters parted and the Israelites crossed through, leaving behind them chaos and captivity. They were freed from that which had enslaved them and held them captive. The people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord – and that’s another way of saying the people had what in God. Faith. They had faith in God.
Maybe they didn’t know they had that faith in God before that point, and the miracle that gets lost when we debate whether the parting of the Red Sea was real or not, accurate or not, the miracle is that the people feared God and believed in God.
What did the people of Israel want to claim about God?
That God saves us– not Pharaoh.
That God intervenes for us – not Pharaoh.
That God delivers us, liberates us from whatever enslaves us, keeps us in bondage, keeps us captive.
And each time this happens it’s a mini creation story, a mini version of what happened at creation. We are being created again and again, we are being recreated to be more who we were originally created to be. An ancient wind blows to help us, to guide us.
Sometime that means we have to cross an ocean and strong, ancient winds have to blow. What are the oceans that we need to cross? By what or who are we held captive? What do we need to be miraculously delivered from? What is our Red Sea?
I’ve been at CHUMC for a little less than ten years; I know that because it’s been a little more than ten years since my mother died. I cried an ocean of tears when she did, and nearly drowned in them. It wasn’t the best time in my life; I was held captive by forces and thoughts and situations just as sure as the Israelites were held captive by Pharaoh. When I first came to CHUMC, I sat in the back pew. I arrived at 10:59 and left at 11:59. Then a wind blew in that back pew – Carol Miller invited me to stay for Fellowship Hour on Sunday. I didn’t, but that invitation shifted the waters just enough that I could wade in a bit. Then I went to CHUM Women after being invited by Carol Anderson. Then I joined Disciple Bible Study after I witnessed the community the previous class had developed, and I though to myself, “I want a piece of that.”
It’s a seeming ocean from that back pew to this pulpit, but winds blew and the sea parted until a sea of change has taken hold and the miracle is that I can ride the wave of change knowing that God loves me, God saves me, God delivers me. And that is a miracle, no doubt about it.
I have experienced a sea of change since first sitting in that back pew and here at CHUMC I exited into a freedom to be more of the person I was created to be. An ancient wind has been blowing in me, blowing me towards this time in my life, when I am discerning how to be a force of change in the world combining my science background and my faith in God.
Next Saturday is the Cooperative Conversations of the Ebenezer Capitol Hill Cooperative Parish. We wade into the water of racism and mistrust and brokenness that have separated us physically and spiritually and with conversation and prayer and a miracle, that sea will part and we will be freed from the racism and mistrust and brokenness. We exit from the broken body of Christ to the whole, restored, recreated body of Christ. Through cooperative conversation we exit from estrangement to covenantal community. What exactly does that mean? I have no idea. Absolutely no idea – but I had no idea I would journey from the back pew to the pulpit, either. We are called to wade in the water, to step out in faith and find out.
It is through God’s power we find the strength to journey from captivity to freedom, and it is not enough to gain that freedom for ourselves, we must work in God’s plan to free others who are held captive. The Israelites didn’t cross the Red Sea and think “Shwoo, we’re done, glad that’s over.” The Book of Exodus is about the forming of God’s chosen people as a community, God’s covenant with this community, and how the community was to be in covenant with its members.
The next faithful step is to discern what to do with this new-found freedom that comes from claiming identity in God. The most important see of change if the change that occurs in us and the change we are then committed to be in the world. The change we are committed to being within CHUMC. The change we are committed to being in the Ebenezer Capitol Hill Cooperative Parish.
Having been delivered from captivity to freedom we are called to help deliver others. Having been delivered from estrangement to covenantal community we are called to help others. Having been recreated ourselves we are called to help recreate others.
Through God with God and in God, we exit captivity and enter freedom. We exit estrangement and enter covenantal community. An ancient wind blows and a sea of change occurs. We wade into the waters in faith resting in the assurance that is what we are created for, who we are created to be.
And thanks be to God for that.
