Splitting the Scene
Sometimes the bible’s lack of detail is maddening. The entire book of Exodus - from a the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph, to the baby Moses in the reeds, through all the plagues and the Passover - leads to one, climactic moment in which the Jews flee Egypt in the middle of the night. After all this build-up the story says little more than, “they left in a hurry.’ Really? That’s it? Did they leave in a big column, marching shoulder to shoulder? Who organized them? How? Were babies and children crying or was all silent save for the shuffling feet? Were the people jubilant or apprehensive or afraid? Where was Moses when all this was going on? What was going through his mind?
It’s almost as if this is not the climactic moment in the story and, really, it may not be. From a writer’s perspective it’s not clear that there’s a single, defining scene in the narrative, but rather several. The Passover is one, the Exodus another, the parting of the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments and the golden calf - all are plot-line peaks. It’s a much larger story - so large, in fact, that the climax is well beyond the lives all its characters.
We’re going to look at what this story means in a much fuller, broader context on Sunday morning. I don’t think we can fully grasp the Exodus story without seeing it in light of the person and work of Christ. The Israelites, as they flee Egypt by moonlight, are embarking on a great journey - a journey that takes all of us from Pharaoh’s court to the squalor and misery of the cross and brings us face to face with a God who is bigger than all of our imaginings could ever dream.
And after all the shoutin’ is done we’re going to have a pot luck with the folks from Peterborough Free Methodist. Oh my, how I love a party!
Change vs. Transformation
Poker players look for a ‘tell’ on the faces around the table - a twitch, a gesture, a mannerism - that hints at what the player is hiding in their hand. in the Exodus story Moses tries to bargain with Pharaoh to secure the release of the Jews and the result is disastrous. As a result, he offers us a fascinating little ‘tell’ that shows what he’s really thinking. That tell is obvious when you realize Moses lied to the Pharaoh.
At the burning bush God told him to display miracles in front of Pharaoh. Instead, he tries to strike a bargain. Let us go to the desert to worship, he says, if you don’t God will kill us. In other words, lose us for a few days, or lose us for ever. God, of course, never said any such thing. God gave Moses the tools he needed - the miraculous staff, the healed hand - but Moses simply didn’t believe they would work. Moses was more afraid of Pharaoh than he was of God so he cooks up a story to move things along. At the end of the 5th chapter of Exodus, however, Moses is a completely different cat. Now he’s up in God’s face, angry, frustrated, making some pretty strong accusations about God sitting on the sidelines. There’s no doubt now about what Moses believes. Now he’s fully in. Now he’s demanding that God act.
Change happens everywhere, all the time, to everyone. There’s no escaping it. Every change process has, I believe, a transformational moment. It’s like diving off a bridge - you reach a point at which there’s no going back. You’re posture changes from standing to diving and your body from dry to wet. Your emotional state changes from apprehensive to afraid and then exhilarated. But, as a result of that one dive into the river, your inner self might be transformed from being timid and shy to being courageous and outgoing. In Moses’ case, it was his failure that resulted in a profound change in his understanding of his situation and a subsequent transformation of his inner character to become fully committed to God. Contrast this with Pharaoh, who changes his mind a dozen times but never experiences a transformation.
The plagues that God brings next precipitate a change in Egyptian history. But I really think they were necessary not just to make the Pharaoh change his mind but to make the Jewish people want to leave, also. It would take a long time in the wilderness - an entire generation would have to die - before the Israelites were ready to fight their war to take the land. They’re situation changed, but it would take more than forty years and a speech by Joshua before they were transformed from cowed, subservient slaves to confidently freed men and women.
I think we’re in the middle of a ‘transformational’ time at Third Space. We’ve been through a lot of changes in the last couple of years and I, for one, am ready to stop trying to negotiate with change. Like Moses before Pharaoh, I don’t think we can simply tweak the way things are anymore. I don’t think we can make a deal with the powers that are holding us back. We need to be transformed. We’re going to talk about this on Sunday. It’s not a Sunday morning that’s going to fill in a lot of blanks or answer a lot of questions. It will be food for thought instead, manna for the mind. It’s time.
Church, get ready. God’s about to do a new thing.
Out of the Frying Pan…
What happens when things don’t work out the way we had hoped? Where do we turn when the worst case scenario becomes the very thing we must live through? When there’s no explanation for our suffering, how can we go on? And what if - and this may be the most difficult question of all - there’s no answer to the question, ‘why?’
The 5th chapter of Exodus presents just such a scenario. Moses follows God’s instructions and things start going very, very wrong. The Pharaoh gets angry and increases the workload of the Jewish slaves. In short order the Pharaoh is angry, the Jewish Foreman are angry and the people suffer, terribly - all because Moses did as he was told. There’s a couple of things we have to keep in mind when reading this story. The first is that it plays out over a time-line that was a lot longer than a ‘made for tv movie’. The Jewish people endured real hardship and suffering while this story played out over weeks - if not months. The second is that we read this knowing how the story ends. This is not the case with Moses, the Pharaoh, the Jewish people or anyone else at the time, and their actions look very different when seen from this perspective. They can’t answer the ‘why’ question. They don’t know what happens next. A God they’ve only just been introduced to - “I Am That I Am” - appears impotent and they must pay the price for the foolishness of Moses.
We’re going to try and walk through some of this on Sunday morning. Frankly, the passage raises a lot more questions than it does answers and not all of them are questions we want to ask. It’s easy for us to discuss those questions in a coolly detached way in church but it’s quite another to find ourselves trying to live through them. Sometimes, an answer to the question ‘why’ simply isn’t possible. How can we live without the answers that matter most?
Image: Moses in front of Pharaoh by Haydar Hatemi, Persian Artist. Public Domai
Arguing With God
This Sunday we’re going to be walking through a rather long - and rather curious passage of scripture. This is the story of Moses encountering God in the burning bush and the difficult conversation he has with God. Difficult? Oh yeah - no question about it. God has considerable difficulty with Moses - and Moses has some trouble with God, also. In a nutshell, God asks Moses to lead the Jews out of bondage and slavery and Moses says ‘no’.
Not the story we’re used to hearing, is it? Moses puts up a lengthy argument and his final word to God was
“Lord, please! Send anyone else.” (vs. 13) God, we are told, became angry, and sent Moses’ brother Aaron to help him. With that Moses - and God - both reluctantly relent of their argument. It seems to me that neither one really got what they wanted. Moses took on a job he didn’t want and God took on a less than enthusiastic servant - and then added Aaron to the mix, something he (apparently) hadn’t already planned on. As the Exodus story progresses we see that their relationship doesn’t improve much.
God has no trouble with any aspect of creation. Thunder and lightening, storms out to sea, the Coney in the rocky crags - none of it is a problem for God. People? That’s another story. But I can also understand where Moses is coming from - he’s settled down now among the Midianites, has a wife and young family and now, suddenly, God is asking him to go back to Egypt and… then what? For Moses, the outcome is hardly clear; God has not provided enough information on which to build a plan.
This Sunday we’re going to look at the dialogue between Moses and God. It’s far too easy to fault Moses for doubting God . This becomes an entirely different story when we read it from Moses perspective. The story becomes even more powerful when we consider it from our own perspective in relation to our encounters with God.
The image above is a Russian icon of Moses and the burning bush from the 18th C. [via About.Com]