Exodus 12:1-14
Sunday, September 7, 2014
First
Congregational United Church of Christ – Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
Preacher confession: despite agreeing with myself
to follow the Exodus narrative through until it ends mid-October, I was very
temped this week to give up and just go in a different direction because today’s
passage is decidedly not fun. I think the Exodus narrative is a lot of
things…gripping, full of drama, beautifully written, powerful, puzzling,
complex, distasteful, horrendous….but rarely “fun.”
But I’m going to hang with it because these stories
are our stories and we have to know them, share them, grapple with them
together. So much of who we profess to be as people who follow Christ comes out
of these stories. Those who encountered Jesus experienced him as a new Moses –
a liberator, come to set the captives free. It’s no accident that when we
gather around the table later today we commemorate the Passover meal – Jesus
was a Jew, coming together with other Jews to do just what was instructed in
today’s passage from Exodus – remember this event, the Passover, keep it as a
festival for all generations, a perpetual ordinance.
So, first things first, I’ve just got to get some
stuff out there in regards to the problems in this passage, as I see them.
Because it feels like a giant elephant in the room. I don’t have solutions to
these problems, but they need to at least be named.
Most obviously, this passage describes a God who is
vengeful, blood-thirsty, a cold-blooded killer. True, true, God doesn’t kill
the “good guys” so I guess we should take some comfort in that. But, truly, I
have a very difficult time reconciling my experience of God with the murderous
God described in this passage. I don’t believe God kills people. I don’t
believe God has the power to do so and even if God did, I don’t think a loving
God would exercise that power.
Last week we read the story of Moses’s calling –
the burning bush and all that. In between that passage and this one, we have
long, long chapters of plagues. Time and time again, Moses returns to Pharaoh
and asserts that the people must be freed. Time and time again, Pharaoh says
no. Time and time again, God sends a pestilence, presumably to try and scare
Pharaoh into changing his mind. Towards the end, as the plagues get
progressively worse, though, a new idea comes into play: God is the one
hardening Pharaoh’s heart. God wants to show his almighty power and God is
determined to punish the Egyptians.
It’s ugly. I don’t like it. I’m not sure what to do
with it. Is that just me or are you feeling it, too?
The best I can come up with this is: I believe that
the Bible is a collection of books written over a long period of time by people
who were struggling to name the reality of God that they experienced in their
lives. They heard stories from others. They added to them. They changed things.
They kept the parts that rang true. Eventually, stories like this one were
written down and canonized because they felt like a true description of God to
many people.
Part of the problem with this story, and part of
why the God described in it seems “off” to me and maybe to many of you is that
it was written for a group of people who had an incredibly different lived
experience than me, and probably most of you. Though I have certainly been
through challenges in my life, though I have certainly had difficult times,
nothing I have experienced thus far can even begin to compare to what it is
like for people who are enslaved. To be completely stripped of your freedom,
told that you are nobody, forced to work – hard, back-breaking labor – day
after day….and for what? Not much. You don’t belong to yourself. You are no
one. Nothing.
I’ve never experienced anything like that. In
reality, my life certainly resembles the Egyptians much more closely than the
Israelites.
So, the thing is, when people are enslaved – when
people are oppressed to the point of being dehumanized – they become desperate.
They long for freedom at any cost. And I can see why they would be driven to
violence. I can see why they would long for a powerful God who was murderous,
blood-thirsty, a God who avenges. I get it. And I’m not prepared to pass
judgment on them for wanting their God to kill their enemies.
I just don’t identify with it much. And I think
it’s problematic. After all, if we believe God is on our side and is willing to
enact great violence on our enemies, what might that lead us to do? It’s a
slippery slope, to say the least.
Since I can’t figure out how to fix the problem of
an incredibly violent God and I don’t want to totally throw this foundational
text out, what are our other options here? I have a tendency to want to go back
to the passage and see what other things the story names as true about our God.
Is there Good News yet to be found in this passage? One of our faith ancestors,
the Rev. John Robinson, who came to this continent from England and helped
found the Congregational Church said, “I am verily persuaded that the Lord hath
more light and truth to break forth from His holy word.”[1]
Is there light and truth to be found yet in this
passage?
The God of the Hebrews is present – immanent. This
God is close by, never more than a breath away. The God described in the Exodus
story is active. You’ve heard of helicopter parents? Well, this God could
certainly win awards as helicopter parent of the year.
Their God is intimately involved in every aspect of
their lives. I mean, these are some pretty detailed instructions about how
exactly to enact the Passover miracle. This God has a plan for their salvation
and is steadily working towards it, day after day. This God is tenacious – a
force to be reckoned with. The Israelites lived in a time and place where
Pharaoh was revered as a god….but this God is out to prove that Pharaoh was
inconsequential compared to the one simply called “I am what I am.”
And this God chooses sides. This God is unafraid to
name death-dealing systems of injustice for what they are: sin. This God is
working tirelessly to move the people towards life in the face of great systems
of death. This God – the one who created the sun, and the moon, and the stars,
and the creepy crawly things, and the big roaming animals, and the fish and the
birds and the tiny buggies and the great, glorious, beautiful, flawed humans –
THIS God is still creating. THIS God is still moving towards life. THIS God is
saying no, no, NO to the paths that lead to slavery, injustice. THIS God
believe that humanity is created in the image of the divine and holds out hope
that all of humanity can learn to walk in the ways of truth and justice and
life. THIS is the God of second chances, resurrection, freedom, healing,
wholeness.
And I can get on board with that. THAT feels like
some light and truth breaking through in this violent and difficult passage.
The other thing I see happening in this passage is
that God is asking, pleading, commanding the people to BE READY. Change is
coming. This is a defining moment in the history of Israel. God is telling the
people, “Pay attention. This is happening. You need to be ready to move.”
Anathea Portier-Young, Old Testament professor at
Duke Divinity School, outlines the way the “repetitive, ritualistic” language
of this passage situates firmly in time.[2]
She says that in this passage, God is telling the people, “This time is for
YOU.” God is telling people to pay attention to the time – for the time of
freedom is finally at hand. The dawn is coming and the people must be ready to
move quickly, with confidence, into the new day ahead.
God knows the systems of oppression that lie in the
past. And God is calling the people to do something very hard – step out in
faith and be willing to let go of their shared past together. Everyone is
expected to participate – even the smallest families must gather with other
families to share the task of letting go. No one can be left behind.
Portier-Young notices that the time of the
slaughter of the lambs is as twilight – the time between, the transition
between day and night. And, for Jews, twilight is also the beginning of a new
day since the Jewish day begins at sundown. This is a time of ending and
beginning. Will they be ready to go? Are they ready to pack up the unleavened
bread that has not yet risen? Can they do the difficult work of eating the bitter
herbs – remembering the painful life that they leave behind?
God asks – no TELLS – the people, “Get ready to move.
Behold! I am about to do a new thing!”
And the people? They do it. They are ready to go.
They are willing to follow this terrifying God into the wilderness.
Earlier this week, I read a hopeful, heartbreaking,
brutally honest piece about the Black Lives Matter ride to Ferguson that
happened last weekend.[3]
Rutgers professor Britney Cooper wrote of her trip to Ferguson and how, while
preparing for the trip, she talked with other organizers as they wondered
aloud….is Ferguson a moment….or a movement? Social movements don’t happen
overnight. They are a long time coming. Dr. King could not have stood in
Washington D.C. and shared his dream with us if A. Phillip Randolph had not
organized the first March on Washington 22 years earlier. The students who
gathered at lunch counters in Greensboro in 1960 would not have done so if
other activists hadn’t begun using the same tactics back in the 1940s. Rosa
Parks never would have stayed seated on that bus in 1955 if Irene Morgan hadn’t
done the same thing back in 1946.
Professor Cooper believes we are in the midst of a
movement here. Not just a moment. Rodney King. Amadou Diallo. The Jena 6. Trayvon
Martin. Renisha McBride. Michael Brown.
Which makes me wonder about those Egyptians. I
can’t help but wonder did they notice they were in the midst of a movement, not
just a moment? What might have happened if some of the Egyptians had realized
that they were a part of an unjust system that led only towards death, not
life? What might have come to be if the Egyptians had been ready to move? What
if some of them had also stepped out in faith, turned their back on the
horrific practices of their homeland, and journeyed into the wilderness?
Because, friends, I mentioned earlier that I feel a
lot more like an Egyptian than an Israelite most days. And I also know that
when given the choice between Pharaoh and the God of the Israelites, I want to
choose the God of the Israelites every single time.
May God grant us the strength, the wisdom, the
bravery to be ready to move.
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