Whether you grew up going to Sunday School or not, many of the stories we’ll be covering in this series are familiar to us even in popular culture. That is very much the case with this one. Growing up, I’d often get collections of comics for Christmas, including The Far Side. One of those comics has Moses as a child sitting at the kitchen table practicing parting the Red Sea in his glass of milk.
There are so many variations of this. Moses as a barber, opening his arms wide and the person in his chair having his hair parted right down the middle. Moses parts his own hair in the mirror. Moses fishing next to his brother and parting the river so Aaron’s line just sits on the muddy bottom. You get the picture. This is even part of The Ten Commandments, one of the most famous films ever made, where Charlton Heston plays Moses and leads the people across the sea on dry land.
A lot has happened between last week’s story of the burning bush and this one. Moses has returned from Midian to Egypt to rescue the people. He goes to Pharaoh and asks that he let the people go to worship the Lord in the wilderness. This angers Pharaoh, and he demands more productivity and forces the Israelites to gather their own materials to make the bricks.
Moses and Aaron go back to Pharaoh ten more times, each followed by a new plague — water turned to blood, frogs, gnats, flies, death of livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and finally the death of all the firstborn. Surely this was not the time for living well in Egypt, yet Pharaoh refuses to let the people go until the disaster of the tenth plague comes upon the land.
Finally, Pharaoh lets the people go. God leads them visibly. The fancy word for this is “theophany.” The burning bush was a theophany, where God’s presence was revealed in a tangible way. God does the same in leading the Israelites now, as a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.
Realizing that he’s sent away all of his free labor, Pharaoh gathers his army and chases after the Israelites. There are two things to notice about how this story begins. First, while leading the Israelites, God marches them straight to the sea where they get hemmed in by their enemy. It’s really a bad strategy for avoiding conflict, isn’t it? So, clearly God has a purpose that goes way beyond good military strategy. Second, before parting the Red Sea, the presence of God protects the Israelites from the Egyptians. By day and night, the cloud and fire form a barrier between the two groups. (You’d think after the plague of darkness the Egyptians would be a little leery about what was coming next, but their rage wins the day.)
Finally, Moses says to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today….The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.” So, the presence of God hems them in, and Moses raises his hand over the sea. God drives the sea back by a strong east wind, something that takes all night. At daybreak, the Israelites are able to cross on dry ground. As the cloud lifts, the Egyptians see their progress and chase after them, a choice that leads to their destruction, as we just read.
So, today I want to pay attention to three themes present in this harrowing story. First, this is a story about deliverance, about how God saves people from evil forces and delivers them to life. Second, this is a story about how God, humans, and nature work together to bring about deliverance. And, third, this is a story that must be put into conversation with other Scripture so we can more fully understand what it means for how we live today.
Let’s start with the first idea. If we read the Bible as though it were reporting from a newspaper or a simple history lesson, then we’re missing its far greater aim. The Bible has a motive, a purpose. It wants to tell you God’s story and how that story relates to the human story, which is, of course, your story too. The Exodus is all about how God saves people. It begins with the rescue of Moses as an infant. Two Egyptian midwives disobey Pharaoh and cover up Moses’ birth. His mother nurses him until it’s no longer possible to keep him concealed. Then she places him in a basket, hoping to save his life.
Pharaoh’s daughter finds the baby in the basket and names him Moses, which means “taken out of the water,” which was meaningful in that moment but also appropriate to today’s text, where water is part of the salvation story. Time and again, people “pass through the waters” to find the way to life. The Israelites cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land. And, of course, in the waters of baptism, we still speak about how people pass from death to life. All of these have their roots in this Exodus story, which is more than a story. It’s a way of describing how God works on our behalf to make us free, even in the face of horrific evil.
I want to draw our attention to a couple of aspects of this kind of salvation. The first is that evil is very real. Yes, Pharaoh and Egypt are held forth as the example of this, but this is very much a story about how human power tries to rebel against the way of God and of how God works to put that power in its place. It’s a theme we encountered all the time when we studied Revelation a couple of years ago. Scholar Peter Enns observed, “Egypt has finally paid the ultimate price for the ultimate transgression. Their king has been contending with God, thinking that he was his equal. He set out to destroy God’s beloved son, Israel. Now, finally, once mighty Egypt understands that this was a mistake.”
The second is that we’re a lot like the Egyptians and Israelites in this story. God leads us to the edge of salvation, but there’s something in the way. In this case, it’s the Red Sea. We have seen God’s faithful provision time and again, but the moment things get hard, we complain. We doubt the goodness of God. Our trust evaporates. And, like the Egyptians, we sometimes run headlong into our own destruction. Our own behaviors and biases put us into an impossible situation that corners us with only more pain. We’ve all been there before, haven’t we? Yet, it is God who makes a way where there seems to be no way.
This is a story that highlights the ongoing battle between God and evil. It’s a battle as local as your own life. It’s a battle so universal that it includes all of the cosmos and time. But in the midst of this battle, “we must remember not that we are awaiting God’s deliverance, but that that deliverance has already come, in Christ.”
So, the Exodus is about salvation, and it’s a pointer to the larger work of salvation God has been doing in Christ.
The second major idea relates to how God chooses to work in the world. In the parting of the Red Sea, we encounter a God unwilling to accomplish salvation apart from humans and the natural world. Think of it. You have God, the one who created everything — seen and unseen — out of nothing. God is supernatural. God is all-powerful. God can do anything God wants to do, and yet God chooses to create all things, including humans, out of love. So, even though our nature is sinful and corrupted, God still chooses to work in and through us.
God works with and through Moses, who is argumentative, stubborn, and regularly a failure. In this story, Moses stretches his hand out over the sea. Following that motion, God drives the sea back. But, how does God do this? Through nature. A strong east wind blows all night long, driving the sea from its place and creating the conditions for the deliverance of the Israelites. God parts the sea. Moses raises his staff. The strong east wind blows. Divine. Human. Nature. All working in harmony.
We have to recall, especially in our modern, scientific world, that the division between the natural and the supernatural is largely a recent way of viewing the world. The ancients saw no division between the two.
So, this story is a fascinating example of how the supernatural and the natural work in concert to accomplish God’s good ends. In this case, it’s the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. There are countless other cases throughout Scripture and history where this also happens. And what is truly interesting to me is that standing between the supernatural and natural are humans, whom God has specially gifted to rise above our basest instincts and to live into our role as God’s image bearers. We are super — space — natural, if you will.
That idea is what brings me to my third point, the one that I’ve been trying really hard to avoid. As a child, I remember learning this story and it felt uncomplicated. The Israelites were the good guys. Those Egyptians were nasty and bad. God rescued the good guys, and, well, the Egyptians — the bad guys — who cares?
We’ve been trained by our stories that that’s the way things work. In Star Wars we don’t care how many faceless storm troopers get blasted to smithereens as long as Luke Skywalker triumphs, right?
So, on its surface, we read this story and the enemies are easy to write off as uncomplicated and bad. After all, aren’t they getting their just desserts after drowning the Hebrew children in the Nile? It’s full circle — an eye for an eye.
We have to be really careful in our readings because this kind of interpretation has significant collateral damage. Kristine and I had a classmate in seminary who is an Egyptian Christian theologian. Imagine what it’s like for him to engage with these texts. Imagine if the nationality was switched out for your own and you were the faceless enemy.
So, my third point really is this. What do we do with enemies?
A key to reading and interpreting a text like this — and all of Scripture for that matter — is reading it through the lens of love. Augustine was one of the earliest Christian theologians and an African. He held that we have to interpret Scripture through that lens of love of God and neighbor. If our interpretation leads us to less than that, then it is not correct. If we read this and think, “Way to kill the bad guys, God!” then we’re wrong. If we read the Bible and think I’m a winner and others are loser, then we’ve missed the mark.
That’s why I paired this text with a portion of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Can we square this with the teaching of Jesus? Well, I’m not sure we can square it, but we can read it in light of what the God we know in Jesus Christ directly tells us. And what is that? He says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”
This, dear friends, is part of God’s deliverance for you. Our sin chases us the way the Egyptians chased the Israelites into the wilderness. It hems us in and leaves us in an impossible position. Yet, it is God who makes a way. It is a way that causes us to rise above what we thought was natural and possible. It is super — space — natural.
And that is the same way I’d describe Jesus’ teaching that we are to love our enemies, not simply our neighbors. It takes supernatural strength to do that kind of impossible thing. It takes God’s Spirit dwelling in us and driving us into new life that makes this possible. Loving our enemies is as impossible as the sea splitting and the Israelites walking on dry ground. It’s as impossible as extending forgiveness to someone who has really harmed you. Yet, with God’s help, we can live today super — space — naturally.
God has not simply delivered us from something but also to something. Our old life has passed away. The waters of baptism have washed us clean. Our new, super natural lives have come.
Could you even imagine a world where people awakened to this super natural reality, lived it, and saw everything through the lens of loving God and neighbor? That would truly be a miracle, but it’s one God offers to us even now. If only we’d step out in faith.
