September 28 -- Rescue at the Sea

Raise your hand if you’ve heard this great story before. 

Raise your hand if you’ve thought of Charlton Heston at all this morning.

That film, I think, has made this an iconic biblical scene in American culture.  And that’s a good start, because this is an image that should be burned into our Christian psyches:  God making a way out of no way.  [stehekin = the way through]

God’s people had an army chasing after them.  (BTW, chariots =  stealth bomber of that day.  The Egyptians were the most powerful nation in the world, then.)  So that’s on one side, on the other side is water, too deep to swim across, too wide to go around.  Wilderness, desert everywhere.  Trouble all around, so much so that the Israelites resort to sarcasm:  “Were there not enough graves in Egypt, Moses?”  And even more: they resort to panic.  God, where are you?  Once again.

We had this question last week, when Joseph was in prison.  So much has happened in our Old Testament saga since then:  I’m rewinding, but remember Joseph was stuck in prison after being sold by his brothers.  Then an earlier and kinder Pharaoh receives word that Joseph is able to interpret dreams, so he pulls Joseph from prison rags and puts him second in command, second in riches in all the land.  And Joseph subsequently brings his whole family to Egypt, reconciles with his brothers after all those years they had to live with the fact that they sold their brother into slavery.  One of the greatest forgiveness epics in the all of literature.  Then the family grows for generations in the land of plenty, in Egypt, and a new much less kind Pharaoh comes to power.  And he says that these immigrants are getting too numerous.  So a) we’ll enslave them (put them to work in the fields and the factories, in construction and washing dishes and dusting, all the jobs we don’t want to do), and b) we’ll kill all the first born boys by drowning them.  

God makes a way out of no way again, and baby Moses escapes the jaws of death by another watery salvation -- a little ark is made, and he’s pushed down the river, winds up in the caring hands of the Pharaoh’s daughter, who makes sure that baby Moses is cared for by employing a Hebrew mother.  Another rags to riches.  Moses grows up practically a prince too.  See how all these stories are so intricately related and interwoven?

How God works things for good, even things that aren’t good! 

And after Moses grows up he returns to his own people and winds up being the means by which liberation will be achieved: he begs, pleas, then sends plagues, 10 plagues to convince Pharaoh “Oh, baby, let my people go!”  No, no, no, no, until God does shahat on the Egyptians.  That is, the punishment fits the crime, which is an Old Testament theme.  God revisits the same atrocities that humans inflict on one another.  The evil ruler who executed the first-born Hebrew children is now brought under the same horrifying shadow of death.  And after his own son dies, Pharaoh finally tells the Hebrews to go.  Which brings us to our text and our scene this morning.

See, I wanted to rehearse all that with you, as a reminder of God’s presence and action through it all -- sometimes overt, sometimes not.  We can forget how far God has brought us, when we’re in a bad place.  But as we rehearse our own stories and the stories of others who have been oppressed, we can find God all along the muddy way, all along the dry desert way, all along the rocky way, in obvious and not-so-obvious ways.

When it seems as though there is no way now, sisters and brothers in Christ, remember all the ways God has gone with you before.  

Panic is natural, and “Crying out where are you God!” is natural.  
But we have to train ourselves to trust God and to calm down.

      

There is a Lutheran pastor back in the Midwest, whose wife became very sick in the last few years.  She was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer, and after a big operation, her road to recovery was extremely rocky -- near-death on several occasions -- and this loving pastor had to step away from his many responsibilities at the church in order to take care of her.  I learned this summer that this pastor said, while he was on that terribly rocky road, “You know, it’s as if I’ve been preparing for this my entire life of faith.”  All the prayers, all the worship, all the caring for others in these types of situations, serving and working, all the grounding himself in the biblical stories of liberation and redemption, all that training in order to trust God now and calm down.  

This is where I differ with Charlton Heston’s film: In that old movie God’s voice seems booming and obvious.  But when the waves are crashing, the winds are blowing, the clouds are brooding, the chariots are charging, the children are screaming and adults are panicking...God’s not going to try to shout out instructions over all that chaos.  Rather, Christ Jesus comes to us in still, small ways.  A whisper, a listening ear, a ray of light, a compassionate hand on your shoulder, the flutter of a butterfly or the song of bird, a little piece of bread, a little splash of water.  “It’s as if we’ve been preparing for this our entire lives.”

When crisis comes, when sorrow strikes, when storms rage, when enemies charge, when panic takes over the land, when evil seems to have the last say, God speaks.  And what does God say?  “Stretch out your hand.”  If we had more space, I’d say we should pray like this today.  In other words, stretch out the faith God has given you in your baptism.  Faith is a gift.  “Trust in me,” God says, “stretch out your hand.  I will give you freedom, life, and rest eternal.  The promised land is before you.  I’ve brought you this far, haven’t I?  I have brought your people through, haven’t I?  Remember your story, your family’s story, your ancestors’ story, your faith story.  I will bring you through this, too” God speaks softly to us today.  “I will give you life.”  

As people of the cross, venturing together through strange lands, Jesus Christ is our way through, our parting sea, our dry land, our watery salvation, our ark of safety and hope.   You see all these rich Old Testament images and stories are pointing us directly to the cross of Christ.  And in that cross, we have salvation, we are freed -- all all of creation -- from the chokehold of the oppressor, from even our own selfish, self-centered inclinations.  Even when we in our own, far more covert, ways try consciously or unconsciously to dominate and enslave others, in Christ Jesus we are freed from those clutches of evil.  Death is drowned in the sea of our baptism.  And we are made freed on the other said.  To venture into the life that God has promised and molded us for -- a life of serving and sharing, giving and caring, a baptized life.  Those terrifying waters are also life-giving waters.  And now God’s people, as your former pastor Dan Erlander, was fond of saying, now we are “walking wet”.  

When our kids come in the house after swimming, they leave little puddles with every step they take.  We too, having come through the sea of baptism, make puddles of God’s love and God’s presence in the dry world through which we walk.   May it be so.  AMEN.