Salvation Through Work

Beginning the Story

 The long walk to freedom, to paraphrase Nelson Mandela, is frequently difficult and almost always confusing.

I don't know about the rest of you – but my life journey sure has had a few twists and turns. If you listen to the experts who talk about life stories – they all do. We find ourselves facing challenges, changing directions, starting over, choosing friends for the journey, killing them, hiding the bodies and choosing new friends…. There is, to say it a different way, nothing more constant than change.

So here we are, trekking through life, and the thing is – sometimes we get stuck. Who knows, we find ourselves stuck in a job, our house burns down, a bad relationship, we goi bankrupt – somehow we find ourselves not knowing which way to go – not capable of finding a way forward.

What then?

Sometimes we are lucky enough that the answer comes to us and we just set out in a new direction..

But that is certainly not usually the case. Most of the time we need something to happen, someone to come along, or some sort of kick in the proverbial can to push us out of the rut.

When I was in school this was often a daily occurrence. A teacher would have to tell me to stop daydreaming and do my work – or I would be stuck on a math problem and they would have to show me a different way to think about it. That is basically a teacher’s job – to show people a different way to move forward, a new way to think about things, and create a path forward

I have been lucky enough to have friends, teachers, colleagues, even enemies that have pushed me forward all the time. And in doing that I have always had those “aha”moments when I could say – oh… I see…. This is what I need to do!

I think that might be the easy part. I think most of us have someone or something show up when we stop dead. Life just has a way of moving around us and carrying forward.

Another bit of wisdom I heard once is that you can never put your foot into the same stream twice. So we may get stuck – but when we look up, the change we need will be there for us….
But there are always complications – right? That is life.

A Reading: Exodus 14:5-7, 10-14, 21-29

Then the Lord said to Moses: Tell the Israelites to turn back and camp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall camp opposite it, by the sea. Pharaoh will say of the Israelites, “They are wandering aimlessly in the land; the wilderness has closed in on them.” I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them, so that I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army; and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.  And they did so.
When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the minds of Pharaoh and his officials were changed toward the people, and they said, “What have we done, letting Israel leave our service?” So he had his chariot made ready, and took his army with him; he took six hundred picked chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt and he pursued the Israelites, who were going out boldly. The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, his chariot drivers and his army; they overtook them camped by the sea, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon.

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. 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? 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.” 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. The Lordwill fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. 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. 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. 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.”

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. 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.

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. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued, and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and chariot drivers. 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. He clogged 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.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers.” So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.

Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

Seeing it Through Story

Mazes

The Story Unfolds

The psychologist Jung had a term for the ideas that matter most to us. He called them archetypes. Good and Evil, for example, are archetypes... we all understand what they mean instinctually. And they show up in every story from All in the Family to Little Red Riding Hood...

The way we understand the world is through story - and the way we understand story is by repetition of things we already know.

There is always a hero - there is always a villain - someone always has to go on a quest and someone usually falls in love. There are more - but I am hoping you see what I am saying... there are patterns and there are archetypes...

And the Bible is no different. It is a story that is told in the same way over and over so that the moral sinks in.

Well - not quite. The heroes and events have different names, they take place in different locals and involved different villains. But the idea is that we will get it one of these times...

This is the reason I chose to do the Narrative Lectionary this year - I want us to get a picture of the Bible as a whole - and see why it is what it is.

And September was Prehistory. The beginning. And the archetypes.

You might remember we have talked about Noah Jacob, and Abraham, and now we are on to Moses.

Anyone know what all of these characters have in common? No seriously, tell me some ideas of the point that Genesis makes over and over...

How about this... God gives us something, we do not entirely trust God, we are given a quest to test our faith, we do the right thing, life gets better.

That is the story of Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob and Moses.

Each of them faces a different challenge, rebels in their own way, and accomplishes their quest in their own way.... but it really is the same story again and again and again.

You realize what that means right? It means it is a pretty darn important story!

So why is this the story that needs to be told in so many different words? The answer comes in today’s passage when we finally get to see how it works out in a crowd. In case you did not see yourself in ANY of the characters so far - YOU are the Israelites...

God says, follow this guy I sent to help you and I will lead you out of captivity to freedom and new life. The going gets rough and we realize that the journey is gonna be long and hard and we decide not to trust God. We were better off back there, weren’t we? What was so bad about Egypt that we need to spend our whole lives wandering around in a desert? Is God really involved in any of this?

That is right. The people of Israel, in the middle of being saved, stop dead and complain that they would rather go back.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?

Well - it should. It is the human condition. But these stories are also very clear about what happens if we have a little faith and keep going.

Ideas to Take With Us

I want you to see that these stories are all making the same point because it is an archetypal point, it is a foundational point, it is the point that underlies every other point and has to come first.

We need to follow where God is leading to get to a better place and we are not going to like the journey.

Translate that in any way you want - we need to love our neighbour in order to find out what true love is, but it is not going to be easy.

We need to open our hearts if we expect to have someone love us but it is going to hurt a lot.

We need to leave the past behind to find out who we truly are but the journey is going to be difficult.

To untangle what this whole faith thing is all about - we really need to start here.... none of us want to leave our comfortable nest. All of us have to. We will find something better.

Of course, I do not envy Moses. At least there was some food in Egypt. Water. Sure, there was the whole slavery thing, but you try and convince a hundred people that it is for their own good to leave home with nothing but the shirt on their back.

You would really have to have faith to do that....