13 September 2020
Exodus 14.19-31
God’s got our back. I dislike cliches but use this one reluctantly for emphasis. God’s got our back and our front and both sides of us. He’s got us to save us from everything—the evil one, sin, death—that would deprive us of the fullness of life. Indeed, that would destroy our lives.
In the reading today from the Book of Exodus, Yahweh God sends a series of increasingly devastating plagues against Pharaoh and Egypt. As a consequence, he reluctantly releases God’s people, the Israelites, from slavery. He has oppressed and exploited them to build his great kingdom.
“Just go,” I imagine Pharaoh yelling to Moses “Get out and take these people with you.”
And Moses leads Israelites from slavery toward freedom and the fullness of life, and God is with him and them in power as a cloud in the day time, a pillar of fire in the night guiding them, protecting them, saving them.
But Pharaoh reconsiders his decision and leads his six-hundred chariots and their officers and his mighty army in“hot pursuit” of these former slaves. He intends to capture them and return them to Egypt or, perhaps, kill them trying
The Israelites look back in terror at that mighty multitude. They can’t go back, although they do contemplate surrender and tell Moses so. And they can’t go forward because of the Sea of Reeds. They are trapped.
Shaking with fear, they complain against Moses: “Have you led us into the wilderness to die?”
And then God speaks to Moses, telling him, “Take up your staff and stretch it over the sea.” And he does. And walls of water rise, suspended above the sea bed. A path through the middle appears. And the Israelites rush toward the other side.
They are within the grasp of the Egyptians, until their chariot wheels stick in the mud, the marching feet of the soldiers sink. And the Egyptians panic.
Moses, at the command of Yahweh God, raises his staff and stretches it over the sea again, and the walls of water collapse onto Pharaoh and his charioteers and soldiers.
Exodus says that God throws them all into the water, and their drowned bodies wash up on shore.
In the wilderness and at the Sea of Reeds, God reveals his presence and his power as the cloud by day and the tower of fire by night. He does so to save his people from their enemies and to lead them to the fullness of life in the Promised Land
The Israelites are in awe of the Lord. They believe in him and in Moses, his servant leader. For now.
In a metaphorical sense, Pharaoh is in hot pursuit of God’s people today.
Pharaoh is the pandemic, with all the infections and deaths, with the disruptions to our lives—from business closures and rising unemployment, to growing homelessness and hunger. Pharaoh is racial inequality, protests, violence and destruction in our cities. Pharaoh is arguably the most divisive presidential campaign in history.
Many Americans are terrified by what is happening today. Many of us feel alone, depressed, on the edge of despair.
Yet, as the Exodus story reminds us, God loves his people and all people, and he is with us as the cloud by day, the tower of fire by night to save us, to heal all that is broken in us, in our country, in our world through the power of the Holy Spirit. To lead us through this sea of chaos to the promised land of life in its fullness.
As I was working early Tuesday morning, Penny knocked on my study door. She asked me if she could share something that had happened during her devotional time minutes earlier.
She was praying from the daily service booklet of Iona Community, a Christian community off the coast of Scotland, of which she is an associate.
She prayed to the God of Life. “You are before me God, you are behind. You are around me God, you are within.”
As she prayed those words, she said, she believed that God revealed to her that he inhabited her, that she and God were one. That he loved her. Would never abandon her. Would work in her for her wholeness, the fullness of life now and always, even eternally.
“I cried tears of joy,” she told me.
May we know the joy that God is the cloud by day, that tower of fire by night to guide us, to defend us and to lead us to the fullness of life. God’s got our back. Amen
