Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost - 11 September 2005 – Rev'd Harvey Smith
Exodus
We have witnessed on our television screens the most amazing exodus of people. The sight of a million people being evacuated to safety is quite something. It does however give a very poignant underscore to the first of today’s readings which narrated the climactic events of the Biblical Exodus.
Likewise the thought that this same reading inspired such giants of the 20th century as, Vaclav Havel, Martin Luther King, Jr., Yasser Arafat, Nelson Mandela, and Lech Walesa to name but a few.
Just to remind you about the Exodus.
Abraham’s family in its widest and most extended form had moved down into what is generally called Palestine. It was here that Joseph, yes of the amazing technicolour dream coat was sold into slavery in Egypt. It was in Egypt that he became the Prime Minister of the Pharaoh’s government and in a well judged move took over all the granaries in order to prepare for the predicted seven years of famine. The hard times came, the famine was rife and this led to reuniting of Joseph and his family in Egypt. The Pharaoh gave land and they settled down to live their lives in peace and good will.
Times passed, Pharaoh’s came and went, but all the time this migrant clan of Hebrew people grew larger and larger and larger. There came a Pharaoh who knew nothing of the story of Joseph and his coat. This Pharaoh felt extremely threatened by this migrant clan perched on some of his best land. Governments seem always to feel threatened by migrants and when threatened they do what all rulers do, they sent the law enforcement people to place them in detention, in this case the extreme detention of slavery. The Hebrews stayed enslaved until God heard their cries and sent Moses, a leader who would take them to their promised land. After an amazing series of events Pharaoh gave his permission, the Hebrews could leave. A permission quickly rescinded as he sent his army, horses, chariots, riders chasing after the fleeing Hebrew ex slaves. Today’s reading is the climactic narrative of how the slaves made their escape to freedom.
Moses had taken the slaves to an area known as the sea of reeds, not the Red Sea which is far to the south. This was a good choice as armies with horses and chariots struggle on marshy, boggy ground. The most ancient source of the Exodus story tells us that on an extremely boisterous, stormy and windy night the Hebrew slaves were perched on various islands in the middle of this sea of reeds. Not far away was the Egyptian army also settled in for the night. As night fell, a very strong East wind developed. It blew so hard that all the surface water was blown away to the west. The slaves knew not to move. The army of Pharaoh did not. Panic set in amongst the soldiers and they tried to shift camp. The horses, chariots and soldiers all got bogged down in the marshy soil and as they panicked so it happened that this strong east wind diminished allowing all the water that had been held back by that wind to return to its former lakes and puddles in the sea of reeds. This returning water swamped the soldiers, their horses and chariots and the army existed no more. As day light came the scene of carnage unfolded before the slaves’ eyes and as they picked their way to safety they saw the mighty hand of their God not just in this climactic event but in the whole narrative of the exodus.
Throughout all their subsequent history, up to this present day, the Hebrew slaves and their descendants, the Jewish people, see in the Exodus their founding, their most powerful narrative event which they would recall in times of joy and in times of extreme hardship.
As Christian people we share with them this powerful event. It is at the very heart of all that Jesus did and said. Unsurprisingly, oppressed people also see in this narrative the actions of a powerful God upon whom they would call that a new Exodus may take place in their lives, freeing them from oppression and bondage.
The first and key point about the Exodus is that the Exodus asserts that God acts in concrete historical moments with powerful results. It is crucial that we never lose sight of the fact that God engages with issues in this world, in our history and does so with transformative power. We do not worship a God who is a philosophical construct, nor one who comprises a smorgasbord of attributes dependant upon our feelings. The Exodus asserts that God is revealed in reliable narrative acting in transformative ways for the well being of all humanity.
In its most revolutionary testimony, this Exodus narrative tells us that God said:
I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. (Exod. 6:6)
Israel’s
testimony to God as deliverer talks about God’s resolved capacity to intervene
decisively against every oppressive, alienating circumstance and force that
precludes a life of well-being for God’s people.
This
remarkable assertion of God’s intention for Israel already contains three of
the decisive “Exodus verbs,” of which God is prepared to be the subject.
... the Lord brought you out from there by strength of hand.... (Exod. 13:3)
This
verb speaks about a geographical exit. Whatever we may judge to be true about
the historicity of the Exodus from Egypt, Israel’s testimony is uncompromisingly
about a geographical departure. Israel’s story is the flight “from there to
here.”
... I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians.... (Exod. 3:8)
This
verb refers to an abrupt physical act of grasping or seizing often, as here,
grasping or seizing in order to pull out of danger. It is the same verb used by
David, who was “snatched” from the danger of the paw of a lion (1 Sam
17:37), and by Amos, referring to Israel being “snatched” by God like a
brand from the fire (Amos 4:11).
I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. (Exod. 6:6)
The
verb redeems speaks of a transformative action that is as radical as that of
delivers, but the ambience of the term is quite different. This term appears, in
the first instance, to refer to economic action within a family in order to
maintain family property (Lev 25:25ff.), or to avenge a wrong in order to
maintain family honor (Deut. 19:6,12). The image of the verb suggests something
like family solidarity, in which God acts as a kinsperson for the maintenance
and well-being of the family. It is clear that without this intervention on the
part of God, these “kinfolk” of God would have disappeared in the empire and
been dishonored for having been abandoned by their potential redeemer.
Each
of these three verbs; God brings out, God delivers, God redeems, arises from a
different context and range of images, but all agree on their main claim. The
verbs witness to a decisive, intrusive act of transformation, whereby God has
interrupted the life of Israel, with its “burdens of Egypt” and its
“slavery to them.”
When
Israel began telling of its subsequent history, about what happened in other
times and places and circumstances, Israel characteristically retold all
of its experience through the powerful, lens of the Exodus memory. That
is, God did not enact these powerful, transformative, liberating verbs only once
at the outset of Israel’s life in the world. Rather God repeatedly,
characteristically, and reliably enacted like transformations in like
circumstances throughout Israel’s normative memory. The testimony of the Old
Testament is that actions of bringing out, delivering and redeeming are
characteristic of the actions of Israel’s God.
We
note that later when the Old Testament arrives at a larger awareness concerning
the other nations, the power and authority of this verb-centered recital
persists. Thus in the Isaiah texts of the exile, the capacity of Israel to
depart the controlling hegemony of Babylon depends on this same God to commit
like “actions of bringing out of a new form of slavery, delivering them from
the power of Babylon and redeeming the community so that it might have a
homecoming in Jerusalem. In all these things God’s powerful actions make a
departure possible.”
In what may be the most extreme case, when the prophet Amos wishes to counter the self-congratulatory faith of Israel as God’s special people, he appeals to the Exodus memory. In the time of the prophet, the community of Israel apparently celebrated its special privilege in identifying with God, the God who had enacted their deliverance from Egypt. Amos does not contradict this claim made by Israel, but in a terse utterance he categorically denies the claim. Amos says:
Are you not like the Ethiopians to me,
O people of Israel? says the Lord.
Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt,
and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir? (Amos 9:7)
The
Exodus memory is left intact for Israel’s affirmation, but the exclusiveness
between Israel as an Exodus people and God as an Exodus God is broken. For now
it is asserted that the God who brought up Israel from Egypt does many other
like deeds as well. This same God has wrought exoduses for the Philistines and
for the Arameans, Israel’s most persistent enemies. God is characteristically
a God who enacts exoduses, and who does so in many places, perhaps everywhere.
Wherever people are in oppressive situations and are helpless to extricate
themselves, there this God might be engaged in actions of bringing out, of
delivering and of redeeming his people.
In
the New Testament, we can see how this same Exodus grammar continues its
effective claim. Thus, for example, Matthew must begin his account of the Gospel
with an exodus from Egypt. Luke, in his narrative of the transfiguration of
Jesus, explicitly uses the term exodus (Luke 9:31). But
the cruciality of the Exodus tradition for the articulation of the Christian gospel
is not to be found primarily in such explicit references. It is found, rather,
in the larger affirmation that Jesus acts transformatively in solidarity with
the bound and bonded, the weak and the marginalised (Luke 7:22).
Remember when the John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus whether he
was really the promised Messiah? And Jesus said to them:
‘Go and tell John what you have
seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers*
are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news
brought to them.
Thus
it is possible to see that the stories of Jesus’ powerful transformative acts,
commonly called miracles, are in effect enactments of exodus, whereby a gift
of power decisively transforms the circumstance of the subject.
This morning I have tried to put before you the foundational character of God as perceived through God’s actions made known by these strong transformative Exodus verbs: God bringing out, God delivering, God redeeming. Next Sunday I want to think with you about what is appropriate behaviour of people who worship this God who acts in such ways. We will do that thinking in response to a reading of the Ten Commandments.
Harvey Smith