The second sermon in the Lenten series. This has been an exciting sermon series to prepare with some great stories. Each week, there is also the challenge of tying them to our current situation. It certainly feels like we are headed to a new place, at least from a pandemic standpoint. the transition in church programming is also real, but less concrete.
As I think about the Israelites embarking on a 40 year journey in the wilderness, I find it fascinating how long one year of pandemic has seemed. Multiply that times forty - wow!
“Crossing the Red Sea” February 28, 2021; SAPC, Denton; Dr. Richard B. Culp; Exodus 14: 10-25; Lenten 2021 series “Postcards from the Wilderness”
Exodus 14: 10 As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” 13 But Moses said to the people, “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. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”
15 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. 16 But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground. 17 Then I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. 18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers.”
19 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. 20 It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.
21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. 22 The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. 23 The Egyptians pursued, and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and chariot drivers. 24 At the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and cloud looked down upon the Egyptian army, and threw the Egyptian army into panic. 25 He clogged[a] their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty. The Egyptians said, “Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”
Introduction: Crossing the Red Sea into the wildness is the first step in the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness.
A huge transition for God’s people. The wilderness will not be the final stop for the Israelites, want to be, but it is where they need to go;
Where they need to go to
to leave slavery behind
to leave oppression behind
to Pharaoh behind
to leave their old lives behind.
And discover the possibilities and opportunities God has in store for them.
Move 1: Hard to move forward to discover new places.
a. the past clings to them, calling them back.
1. We hear the Israelites cry out, “Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”
2. The ones who had cried out to God to save them, now cry for a return to their previous lives.
3. The known seems safer and more desirable than the unknown, even when the known did not seem so good when the Israelites were living it.
4. Does that mean that life in Egypt was somehow better? No, but it points to how scary the unknown in the wilderness and beyond seems to the Israelites.
5. Perhaps we recognize that tendency in ourselves to cling to the known, even when it is not so good, out of fear of the unknown.
b. The truth for the Israelites is that they cannot go back to what they remembered.
1. Too much had happened.
2. Ten plagues
3. Anger from Pharaoh and Egyptians - in fact, we might remember that when the Israelites fled Egypt, their neighboring Egyptians were urging them to go.
4. Was it realistic to think that the Israelites could even return to Egypt and start back up again with life as usual? No.
5. We see that in our own lives and in our life together as St. Andrew.
6. Will we be able to return to life after the pandemic as if nothing has changed over the last year?
7. What we have learned about community; what we have missed about community; how we have changed in our life together cannot be undone. Life in general and life as a congregation after the pandemic will be different, whether we want it to be or not.
8. We might say the same thing about life after ODB (or The Junction) leaves our buildings.
we are going to be changed.
We cannot go back.
Lots of great memories. Lots of things accomplished. But that is in our past. It will not be our future.
c. part of moving into the future means leaving things behind.
1. There are two Hebrew words for “dry land” used in this passage. One is yabbashah. This word is most often used in descriptions of the miracle God performed at the Red Sea (6 out of 14 occurrences: Exodus 14:16.22.29, 15:19; Psalm 66:6; Nehemiah 9:11). It also describes God’s work in creation (Genesis 1:9-10, Jonah 1:9) and the people’s miraculous crossing of the Jordan River when they enter the land of promise (Joshus 4:22).
But another word for dry land also appears in the story of the Red Sea crossing (Exodus 14:21). That word, charabah, derives from a root ch–r-b, meaning to dry up or be in ruins. That is, it does not only distinguish between liquid and solid, water and its absence, a place to swim and a place to walk. Forms from this root frequently name the waste and desolation that follows upon warfare, judgment, and destruction.
1. The use of this synonym in verse 21 links the motif of new creation with the end of an order. (Anathea Portier-Young, Associate Professor of Old Testament, Duke University Divinity School; https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-24/commentary-on-exodus-1419-31-5)
2. Cross the Red Sea is a clear line of demarcation for the Israelites.
3. On the Egyptian side is their past, with memories they can take with them, but the past life stays behind with all its baggage.
4. On the wilderness side of the Red Sea the unknown awaits.
5. full of new possibilities, hope, and promise; exciting and scary.
6. So how do the Israelites, how do we get to the hope and promise?
move 2: Step out in faith
a. The Israelites must step out and cross the Red Sea, but they do not do so alone.
1. As Moses tells the Israelites: “The Lord will fight for you.”
2. The proof of God’s presence has been with them every moment since they fled Egypt and headed to the Red Sea.
3. God’s presence found in the pillar of cloud and the never consumed fire that lit the way before them.
4. Now as the Egyptian army closes in on the Israelites, the pillar of cloud moves behind the Israelites to act as a buffer between the Israelites and the Egyptians.
5. God is with the Israelites.
6. But still they must step forward.
b. a Jewish midrash on this text. Now, a midrash is a kind of rabbinic literature that flows out from studying the Torah. The ancient rabbis believed that every word in the Torah was from God, and therefore, no words were to be regarded as superfluous. If the word was in there, it had a purpose (Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know about the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History).
So this particular midrash centers on one word from Exodus 14:22: “The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground.” The ancient rabbis focused on why the Torah would say “they went into the sea on dry ground.” “Why did the Lord use the word ‘into?’” they asked. Why did it not say something like “they went on dry ground through the sea”? Why into?
The ancient Rabbi Judah answered the question this way: When Moses raised his staff, nothing happened to the Red Sea. But the Lord said, “What are you waiting for?” So the twelve tribes of Israel started arguing about who would have “the honor” of going into the sea first.
Well, Rabbi Judah claimed that as they argued, a man named Nahshon ben Aminadab became fed up with the arguing, turned toward the sea, and started walking. He walked in up to his ankles. Nothing happened. He kept going until the waters were up to his waist. Nothing happened. The waters reached his chest. Nothing happened. The waters reached his neck, and still nothing happened. But when the waters of the Red Sea hit Nahshon’s nostrils, the sea opened up, and the waters became dry ground, just as God had promised they would. And because of his dogged courage, Nahshon led all of the others to their freedom and to the beginning of the new and renewed life God held for them. (i first ran across this MIdrash in the Year of Living Biblically, A. J. Jacobs (13) ; then, I read about it again in a sermon preached by Rev. Shannon Kershner, Backwards and Forwards, 9/14/14, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago)
b. This rather dramatic presentation of the crossing of the Red Sea highlights the need to step out in faith.
1. whether it happened that way or not, consider what was before the Israelites as they stand on the banks of the Red Sea.
2. Walls of water on either side of the path of dry ground.
3. Who’s to say hold long the water will hold before rushing down?
4. the prompt this week on your postcard is: when have you done something here you had to trust God.
5. At the Red Sea, the Israelites have to take that first step into the sea and trust that God will keep the path clear as they move into the possibilities and new opportunities God has put before them.
6. We too have to move into those possibilities, trusting that God is with us.
7. we have to make take that step.
Move 3: Fast forward to our calling as disciples of Christ.
a. Paul describes it to the Romans as Walking in the newness of life
1. When we are baptized into Christ, we are baptized into his death and his resurrection.
2. the death of the old life bringing us into the new life by passing through the waters of baptism.
3. Sounds like a Red Sea event doesn’t it?
b. That is our calling - to move from the old life and seek the new life in Christ.
1. An ongoing cycle of death to life.
2. the dying of our old self and claiming the new life.
3. Both our task as disciples for our own lives and our task as a community of faith.
4. Journey through the wilderness to new possibilities, new opportunities, new life.
Conclusion: God commands Moses: “Tell the Israelites to go forward”
And they do.
How about you?
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