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| "Crossing the Red Sea" Nicholas Poussin, French, 1634 |
“The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand
and an outstretched arm…” (Deuteronomy 26:8)
Boy, I sure hope the folks at ABC-TV keep to their tradition and run Cecil B. DeMille’s epic The Ten Commandments on Easter Sunday again this year. Every year I catch a little bit of that 1950’s era epic, and every year I get a kick out of how outrageously corny it is. But, in all seriousness, the story of the parting of the Red Sea and the deliverance from oppression of God’s chosen ones always goes hand-in-hand with our observance of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. It was, after all, at the time of the Passover that Jesus suffered and rose. The early church even called the Easter celebration Pascha, which, if you want to get technical[i], is the Aramaic corruption of the Hebrew word Pesach which means Passover.
It makes perfect sense that our Revised Common Lectionary should start the Sundays in Lent with this wonderful passage from Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 26:1-11) which synopsizes the Passover story. A smart Bible scholar guy named Marcus Borg referred to the Exodus narrative as one of the three “macro-stories” which shape our Christian scriptures—the other two being the Exile story and the story of Jesus which Borg calls the “Priestly Story.”[ii] The Exodus story, as you can tell from our First Reading for Lent One, goes like this: God’s people were slaves in Egypt, and that sucked. God didn’t like that this sucked because God is righteous and hates oppression. God delivered the people from bondage, brought them through the Red Sea, provided for their journey in the wilderness, brought them home to a land flowing with milk and honey (metaphorically speaking, at least), and suggested they might want to show a little gratitude by way of praise to God and generosity to others.
This story is typical of what my old boss, the Rev. Dr. Tim Kennedy, reverently called a myth. That is, it’s the tale of something which possibly never was (or at least never was in the form in which we know it), but always is. The Exodus story, the story of how God freed people from bondage and brought them through a desolate and empty time, is not just a celebration of a past event. It’s an allegory of all human experience. Slavery isn’t just one human claiming to own another. We can be slaves to all kinds of things—bad relationships, drugs and alcohol, financial insecurity, really stupid ideas, or a devastating world-wide pandemic. The bottom line is the same: God doesn’t want us to be trapped in this way, God provides a way out, God cares for us during the liminal period of confusion we’re bound to suffer after our “exodus,” and God brings us to a place where we can look back and say, “Dang. I survived. I’m actually really blessed, and I have God to thank for this. Maybe I’d better up my game and be less of a jerk than I’ve been.”
Alas, this always brings us to the place where we get to make a decision about our lives, and this explains why the guys who cooked up the RCL chose to marry the Exodus story with the gospel lesson about Jesus and the devil (Luke 4:1-13). Whenever we think we’ve rowed the boat to the shore and have the whole world by the Fruit of the Looms, that’s invariably the moment of temptation. And the biggest temptation is the temptation to doubt.
The first temptation the devil uses in our gospel story is the temptation about provisions. He turns to a hungry Jesus and says “You’re hungry. You don’t look so good. Okay, you haven’t starved, but you better turn some stones into bread just to be on the safe side.” And that’s always the way. God has provided for us, but we’re never sure it will be enough. Forget faith and screw generosity, we better look after ourselves first.
Then there’s this temptation to doubt our own worthiness. The devil offers Jesus the chance to be the biggest and most powerful force in the world—as if he wouldn’t become that anyway! He’s saying in effect, “You’re not getting the credit you deserve. God wants more for you. You don’t seem to be living up to your potential. You’re just not enough the way you are.”
And, last but not least, the devil gives this gleeful invitation to test the whole “faith” thing out. He’s asking, “Are you really sure God protects you? Maybe you’ve survived because you have great internal grit and fortitude? Do you really need all this God crap? Why not test it out? Just jump to what will probably be your death and see if God saves you. Oh, you won’t? Are you chicken..? Or, are you really too smart to believe all this Sunday School nonsense and you know you’re the captain of your own destiny—you big stud, you!”
I’ll confess: the devil, for want of any better expression, gets into my head at times[iii]. I worry about getting past the time of COVID, about the uncertainty of what lies ahead for my congregation, about the lack of a Music Director and traditional choir, what will happen to our Sunday School, etcetera, etcetera, yadda, yadda, yadda. Then I watched the Facebook Live video of our Ash Wednesday’s mass, and I concluded in spite of what wasn’t there, we still had church. I thought how unique Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia is as a house of worship, and I realized that this is a beautiful place because the people of God—though few in number—are still here.
We always begin Lent with contrition, but Sundays are never counted as part of the 40 days. Instead, every Sunday is a little Easter. Every Sunday is a reminder that God knows our situation, provides for us in the frustration of our confusion, and promises to bring us safely home.
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