A sermon preached at John Knox Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on September 14, 2014.
Romans 14:1-12
and Exodus 14:19-31
(Click above link for the Scripture texts upon which this sermon is based)
Ed. note: as mentioned in the sermon copy, the majority of this sermon is from a draft of Marci Glass‘s sermon “Speed of Trust,” for Southminster Presbyterian Church of Boise, preached on September 14, 2014. Grateful for Marci’s willingness to share her ideas with me and, in this instance, to allow me to adopt and adapt her words for my context. All good credit, of course, belongs to her.
Ancient Stories.
We’ve examined so many of them, it seems,
during this rather quick dash through Genesis and Exodus
that we began way back in June:
Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael,
framing our story as one of trust in God
even when we see bears all around us…
Then Isaac, being bound and then set free
and the promise of a family, a future…
The birth of the twins Esau and Jacob
and Jacob’s conniving, sneaky efforts
to secure both a birthright and a blessing…
Jacob and God wrestling at Penuel, where
Jacob is renamed Israel
the one who wrestles with God, and lives!
Jacob and his eleven boys,
including Joseph, sold to Egypt
master of the harvest, of dreams,
of redemption…
And now once in Egypt, this story of the forming
of not just a family but of a people, a nation
by the God who hears the cries
of the oppressed and alienated.
Maybe its fitting to conclude our focus
on these ancient stories right here,
with Moses and Aaron and the people
on the verge of the wilderness, their future before them
at the Red Sea.
Now, I had been reading and pondering this story all week
how Moses warned Pharaoh: let my people go
and he didn’t, and so God ratchets up the pressure
and in a divine tête-à-tête with the King of Egypt
God forces Pharaoh to send the Hebrew people away
and away they go, 600,000 of them, the menfolk at least
and many more women and children
and cattle and dogs and cats and all the rest
so many more than a million people and their stuff
middle of the night, they’re off.
And Pharaoh is stubborn. Man, is he stubborn.
Because even after ALL of the plagues, all the humiliation
he can’t let them go. He just can’t.
He’s going to make them pay, and so he goes after them
with all his chariots and his things of war.
And so we are here, in something of a final confrontation
since the Passover wasn’t enough. Apparently.
I was pondering this story
when my friend and fellow pastor Marci Glass
sent me her reflections on it
and I think she has just the right words for us today,
an important thing for us to think about
as we transition away from these stories:[i]
///
Now, I’m sure there are many interesting parts of this story,
but I confess I couldn’t focus on anything after this sentence.
“The angel of God,
who was going before the Israelite army, moved,
and went behind them;
and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them
and took its place behind them.”
The Hebrew people are on the move.
They are fleeing their lives of slavery and bondage to Pharaoh.
They are on the way to the Promised Land.
But they have miles to go before they sleep.
They’ve got a long journey ahead of them,
and a wide, wide river to cross.
But they aren’t alone.
They are being LED by the angel of God and by a pillar of cloud.
Now, being led by an angel and a cloud has its own issues, for sure.
How do you know in whom to trust?
Which cloud do you follow, exactly?
The Israelites had to decide
if they were going to listen to Moses
and follow God into this strange new future.
Did they trust that God was providing the pillar of cloud?
Could they trust the angel of God,
who had just passed over their doorposts,
killing the first-born sons of Egypt,
could they trust that angel would keep them safe?
This is a momentous decision.
But apparently they made it through those questions.
They’d decided to follow: behind the angel and the pillar of cloud.
But then, the angel and the pillar move to the back of the column
and start leading from behind.
That’s what got me thinking about the relationship between the leader and the led.
It is one thing to follow a leader.
You trust they know where they are going.
Sometimes you can even see where they are going.
And the leader trusts that the people behind will follow.
It requires an amount of trust on both sides.
Leading from BEHIND seems a whole different venture to me.
On one level, I’m sure it was reassuring to the people,
especially to the ones in the back, to know that someone “had their back”,
that someone was between them and the advancing Egyptian army.
But I wonder how it felt to the people at the front of the line?
How many of them,
those who had been happy to follow behind the cloud and the angel,
all of a sudden paused and said, “which way do we go now?”
How many of them offered to let the people behind them go ahead.
“No, really, that’s okay. You can go first for a while. I insist. You first.”
And, while I’m sure the angel and the pillar of cloud
had their hands full taking care of the Egyptians,
I also wonder if they were wondering
how things were going at the front of the line.
“They didn’t turn left at that intersection, did they?
They needed to turn right. I hope they go the right way!”
Because that’s the problem of leading from behind.
You have to let go.
You have to trust that the people at the front have learned from you
and have what they need to find the path without your direct help.
Leading from behind becomes an exercise in collaboration,
with the leader and the led each playing an important role.
///
And I confess that
I hadn’t thought much about the responsibility for their own journey
the Israelites had to make.
I tend to think of them as sheep,
just following along where they are led,
complaining about the conditions,
forgetting about the promises.
But, if the pillar of cloud and the angel of God have gone back
to take care of the situation at the back of the line,
then the Israelites were more than sheep.
Sure, they had Moses with them at the front.
But they didn’t have to follow him either.
They could easily have said,
“Uh, yeah, thanks,
but we’re going to wait for the cloud to come back, Moses.”
But they heard Moses encouragement and decided to trust him:
“Do not be afraid, stand firm,
and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today.
For the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again.
The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”
///
A friend shared this quote with Marci, and it struck her as profoundly true:
“Relationships are the currency of faith communities.
Things get done at the speed of trust.”
We rarely think of the Exodus story in terms of relationship.
Yet this quote reminds me how relationship FRAMES this story,
as scaffolding underneath the plaster and the walls.
The Israelites knew each other—
enough to join together on this journey to the Promised Land.
They knew Moses—
enough to trust he was speaking words of life and hope for them.
They knew God—
enough to trust the pillar of fire
and the angel sent to guide them.
How does the time we invest in our relationships
help determine who we trust?
With their divine leaders at the back of the column,
the Israelites reach the Red Sea.
And they wait for the morning.
Water on one side, approaching Egyptians on the other.
And they wait for the morning.
While they wait, in the darkness,
Moses stretches out his hand to part the waters.
And all night long, the Israelites must have heard—I don’t know what they heard—
there must have been a sound that accompanied the parting of the water.
Waves. Wind. Sea spray blowing toward them from the darkness.
And despite the fact that they are up against a large body of water
and have no boats, life preservers, or inner tubes,
the Israelites don’t turn themselves in to Pharaoh.
They stand their ground,
faces turned away from Pharaoh
and toward an impossibility.
All night long,
on one side they hear the noise of the chariot wheels
and the neighing of the horses,
the sound of the Egyptians cooking their dinner,
and singing around the fire as they anticipate
the rout and destruction of the foolish Israelites in the morning.
On the other side they hear the wind.
It is dark, so they can’t see what’s going on,
but they can tell that something is happening on the Red Sea.
And in this part of the story,
you SEE the trust that is often hard to see
from the Israelites during the rest of the Exodus story.
They wait. All night long.
They stay in place over night,
trusting that that pillar of cloud and the angel of God
will take care of what is behind them
and that Moses has some sort of plan for what is ahead.
And in the morning, a miracle happened.
I can’t explain this miracle,
and it doesn’t seem to be worth our time to do that today.
(Although if you google it, plenty of people will try to explain it to you…)
But I want you to notice WHEN this miracle occurs in the story.
It doesn’t happen in the first few miles of the journey.
The Israelites follow the pillar of cloud for a while.
The miracle doesn’t happen
when the darkness at the end of the day arrives either.
The Israelites sit through a dark night,
not knowing what would happen in the morning.
The miracle happens with the new day,
after a night of trust, weird sounds, and deep anxiety.
The miracle is a byproduct of relationships that led to trust—
trust in who you follow,
trust that the journey is heading where it is supposed to be heading,
trust that YOU will make it through the darkness of night.
So, here’s the question.
Who do you trust?
And don’t just say “God” because you know that’s the right answer.
Because it is easy to SAY we trust in God.
But often times, it seems we say that, when we trust only in ourselves.
And I suspect there were a few Hebrew people who were like us.
I’m sure some of them were thinking,
“I’m sure God has it under control,
even though it is dark and I don’t swim
and the Egyptians hate us and did I mention it is dark….
but I’ll let God take care of the rest of the Hebrew crowd.
It’s nice of God to offer, really, but I’ll just take care of myself,
maybe move a little further away
from both the water and the Egyptians
and find a nice quiet spot to rest a bit
and then I’ll catch up with everyone later.”
Because when it really comes down to it,
we don’t want to have to rely on anyone else.
Not even a Divine anyone else.
And in much of our lives, we can get away with that illusion of control.
We are very self-reliant people, which is fine, to a point.
God doesn’t want us to just lie down and wait for the bus
to come to carry us out of slavery and into the promised land.
The Hebrew people had to walk,
and we have things to do as well.
But we need not confuse our participation in the exodus
with being in charge and setting the course.
We need to remember God sometimes doesn’t lead from the front of the line,
but is protecting us at our backs.
When the path forward isn’t clear, it doesn’t mean we are alone.
///
So for us at the Kirk, this might be a really life-giving question,
after we’ve pondered all these ancient stories
and are ourselves in a time of renewal.
Who do we trust to lead us?
As we do our part in the work of deliverance, who are we following?
In whom do we trust?
We live in a world where the news can terrify us.
–Ebola in Africa and other viruses here in the US.
–The prospect of war (again) in the Middle East.
–Violence in our streets and violence in our homes,
as if violence could be “domesticated”.
Just a few weeks ago, in fact,
this was brought home for us.
–And this week we marked the 13th anniversary of 9/11
And as we try to get our minds around what the Israelites must have felt
as they waited for the water to part,
perhaps 9/11 isn’t the worst connection to make.
Everything we thought we knew, changed in a moment,
as modern day pharaohs decided their reign of terror wasn’t over,
upending people’s lives, their sense of safety and security.
Pharaoh, and all of the pharaohs after him,
force people to accept terror as the “new normal”
by trusting in systems of fear, deprivation, and uncertainty.
On the anniversary of 9/11,
Marci’s friend shared this poem from Steven Garnaas-Holmes,
called “The Red Sea”:
You’ve been wronged:
hurt, betrayed, accused,
robbed of something, someone.
The wound still bleeds,
smoke still rises in twin columns.
You can pretend,
and your ruse will imprison you.
You can rage,
and your rage will enslave you.
You can believe you’re deserving,
and your shame will bury you.
Or you can walk to the sea,
the sea at the end of the world,
the dark, chaotic waters of Creation,
the Red Sea bounding your Egypt,
the ocean of forgiveness.
A bitter Pharaoh will follow you,
but don’t turn back.
You will walk into the pain, up to your ankles,
the grief, up to your waist,
the powerlessness, up to your chest
before the waters part
and you walk free.
///
So, who are we going to trust?
We can trust ourselves.
We can trust the political realms.
We can trust the free market or the almighty dollar.
We can even trust Pharaoh.
At the end of the day,
I pray that we will remember to wait on the Lord.
I pray that when we find ourselves in the dark night,
with enemies encamped behind us and no clear path before us,
that we trust our deliverance is not in our own hands.
We will not create our own miracles. Lord knows we can’t.
But it is God who is our refuge, our very present help in times of trouble.
Trust in that.
Amen
——————
[i] Marci Glass, “Speed of Trust” a sermon on Exodus 14: 19-31 for Southminster Presbyterian Church of Boise, Idaho, preached September 14, 2014.
Image credit: The stained glass work of Witraze, Poland. “Passage of the Jews Through the Red Sea“
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