Cherith Fee Nordling—Year A Proper 19

Anthony: Well, let’s transition to the next text. It’s Exodus 14:19–31. It’s a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 19 in Ordinary Time, September 13. Cherith, would you read it for us, please?

Cherith: Happily.

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 on the Egyptian army and threw the Egyptian army into a panic. ²⁵ 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.”

²⁶ 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.” ²⁷ 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. ²⁸ 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. ²⁹ But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.

³⁰ Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. ³¹ 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.

Anthony: I could listen to you read scripture all day. Maybe that’s a new profession for you someday, Cherith.

So, Moses tells the people, “The Lord will fight for you,” yet God commands Israel to move forward into the sea. And I’m curious, how does this passage hold together God’s sovereign action and Israel’s responsive obedience?

Cherith: Lest we forget the reluctance …

Anthony: There it is.

Cherith: It says The Lord will fight for you.” They’re saying to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us into the desert to die,” right? “Didn’t we say to you,” ― I love this ― “Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone. Let us serve the Egyptians. It would be better to serve them than to die in the desert’?”

And I also find it’s fascinating that right before this passage and the promise of the Lord fighting for them at the water, as he pulls them out of Egypt, there’s a shorter way. There’s a way straight into the Philistine land of Canaan, and the Lord says, “I’m not going to bring them the shorter way, because they’ll face the Philistines immediately, and they’ll turn back. They are going to be afraid of war. And so, I’m going to take them a different way. Literally, “I’m going to make a way where there seems to be no way so that I can create a barrier of protection for them, but they will absolutely have to trust Me.”

And I was like, “Oh no, we want the shorter way.” We always want the shorter way. And then we feel so betrayed when it’s hard. And so, when the Lord’s like, “How about I give you my way?” But it really looks impossible. The Lord has to fight for them, right? Because he’s basically set them up for death from their own perspective. They’re trapped on the one side by the sea and the army that’s coming.

So, only he can move them through and into a space that isn’t just rescue, but it is precisely to give them, after 400 years, like imagine, that’s like the length of the time that people have conquered this continent, right? And lived upon it. That’s how long they lived in that nation state under these pharaohs who thought they were divine, and every corner you’re on has a different god.

That they would remember the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or Joseph who brought them into Egypt for safety, like, God has to basically reintroduce himself to them, and to grow them into relationship with him. And so, to allow the ways that he makes to not just be a submission to obedience to something he wants to do, as if…

So, offending all the people who use this language, I apologize in advance. But I’ve really just come to find myself cringe a little bit around the language of God giving us assignments and having plans that we have to act out. I think God is just good, and relationally always with us, and growing us into his life as our life is hidden with him in Christ.

And so, if in fact, he’s doing something here and he wants Israel to respond, these Hebrew people to respond, he must be doing it to make a space for them, a way for them, that brings them into relationship with him, and the manifestation of his love and life. And so, I think it’s always us living in response to something God is doing, even if we can’t figure out what that doing is.

If he has said, “Trust me,” which is what he’s, Jesus is just always saying, “This is your life, is that you just trust me and do with me what I am doing in the world, that you trust my love for you and come with, to be part of what I am doing,” then that’s what we do. We don’t trust him once we’ve stood with him in the war room and seen the game plan and say, “Okay, that’s a good plan,” right?

But that’s such a different way. And so, I think there’s both providence and obedience at play, but I also think it’s always just call and response in relationship. That’s really, maybe, the deeper categories of which to consider what this is really about.

Anthony: That’s … I’m going to ponder that: call and response in relationship.

So, as you think about this particular pericope, and you think about your own faith community, what else would you herald? You’ve given me a lot to think about, and I’m sure our listeners to think about already, but is there anything else that you would want to glean from this text that, that points us to our Lord?

Cherith: Yeah, I think there’s just that deep reminder that God is not for some and against others. God is just for us, for all, all of his children have been made in his image, and all of his children are called to stand before and see face to face the one whose image has been finally made what it will be forever, as the resurrected, ascended Son of God who sits as a human being upon the throne of God.

And I think we just have to keep holding the fact that in Christ, everything is reconciled. Death, in the form of the Egyptians, putting to death everything that is untrue about God and about what it means to be human, that we are not to be oppressor or oppressed, or to build up gods in our own image so that we feel like we are in control of the world, or that we can make excuses for the ways that things happen instead of trusting a God who may be doing things in ways we do not understand. All of that, lets this picture of dying in the waters of baptism, that we die with Christ in our Egyptian life, with Christ.

And we are raised with Christ as God’s people, not because we’ve done anything except the goodness of God has brought us through those waters with Christ and everyone else into ― we just happen to know the name of our Father right now, and we happen to know the name of our Lord. But I keep becoming more and more aware of how these first centuries of the Church don’t talk about hell. They see Jesus as entering Hades, and the icons are always pulling up Adam and Eve and everyone else in their train from these deep waters. And sometimes you see the icons from these waters of the Red Sea that everyone is being pulled up. What could the resurrection not cover?

And does that depend on people knowing or not knowing what story they’re in? So, I think, actually, it’s holding so much more mystery to me, and just saying, “If you want to make it smaller, and you want to try to decide who’s in and who’s out, then let’s go back and just pray Ephesians 1 prayer with Paul, and just watch how big that story is, and how lavish the love of God is, and how he is, in fact, reconciling all things to himself in Jesus Christ.”

And I’d just say, where is he inviting me to die, to the ways that I keep people away or judge instead of letting God be the one who takes that judgment upon himself? And then where does he want me to live into the real life of God instead of the things I’m very petty about and small life about, and then want to run back to Egypt and say, “That feels like enough life for me.”

Because that isn’t the life of God. So yeah, I think there’s just a lot here to, to just sit with Jesus in and say, “How would you have me know you better, and myself in it.”

Anthony: Yeah, this, this whole business of othering keeps us from looking at ourselves with honesty and seeing that there’s an Egyptian in me that will die, that has died and I think ultimately will be burned away. Hallelujah that the liar in me won’t inherit the kingdom of God. That the oppressor in me won’t inherit the kingdom of God. That has been covered in Christ’s death and resurrection. There’s just so much to chew on here. Thank you for making my mind wander to thoughts of other things I’d want to say from this text I didn’t see before. That’s part of the beauty of having this conversation.