Theme: Where would Moses, Aaron and all the rest of them have been without Miriam?
They were as close as Israel got to a royal family in their early days as a people. They had charisma, and the people followed them out of slavery to Egypt through the wilderness all the way to the edge of the Promised Land.
There was Moses,
the fearsome one whose words and actions fairly flashed with the power, the
presence, and the purpose of Yahweh God.
We have lots of stories about him, and he was clearly the leader through
many difficult times and seemingly impossible situations.
There was Aaron,
his younger brother – or maybe step-brother, who was Moses’
second-in-command. We know a fair bit
about him too – both flattering and not so flattering.
And then there was
Miriam, their older sister. There aren’t
as many stories about her, but what has been preserved makes us wonder just
where Moses and Aaron and the people of Israel would have been without her – wonder
if maybe she was the nerve and the heart of the operation that really brought
things – and brought the people together.
Think of the very
beginning when baby Moses is placed in a reed basket and hidden among some
rushes on the Nile to avoid the Egyptian’s genocidal slaughter. If Miriam his older sister had not stood
watch, the little basket might have been pushed by the current downstream and Moses
lost, or he might have been swallowed by a crocodile, for which the Nile is
famous. And even when baby Moses is
found and taken in by the pharaoh’s daughter, if Miriam had not quickly
intervened and arranged for their mother to be employed as nursemaid for the
baby, Moses would have been given to an Egyptian nursemaid and would have been
raised without any knowledge of his Hebrew heritage – would have been swallowed
up in the Egyptian court and equally lost to the Hebrew people.
In some ways it’s
Miriam who at the beginning is the real hero of the story – or at least the one
without whose nervy and ingenious help the hero could not have begun his
journey.
And I wonder if
it’s the same years later at the time of the exodus – the actual, critical
moment the people of Israel are led to freedom through the Red Sea – or the Sea
of Reeds, as the Egyptian army is bogged down in it and drowned.
It’s Moses who
leads the people through – who channels for them the power of Yahweh to make
the passage possible, under whose outstretched staff they find safe passage
through the sea. And it’s Moses who then
is said to sing a song of praise to Yahweh for leading the people through,
letting all the people know Who it is who is really their Saviour, and who they
should commit to follow on the journey ahead.
Except is it
really Moses who leads in the post-passage celebration? In the official record, in Exodus 15:1-18
there’s a long song of Moses that begins with the words, “I will sing to the
Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the
sea” and then continues to recite the details of the day and what’s happened,
as well as details about the rest of the journey and how God has saved the
people all along the way from different peoples and problems they encounter in the
wilderness. And that’s the problem –
those things haven’t happened yet, leading scholars to suggest that this long
song of Moses has been written later, and then inserted into this section of
the story.
More original to
the story is the three verses after this – verses 19-21, that we have read
today, in which it’s Miriam, described as a prophetess – one who helps the
people understand the work of God in their time, who takes a tambourine in her
hand and leads the women in a festive dance, singing the simple song, “Sing to
the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into
the sea.”
These two lines
of song are some of the earliest Hebrew poetry we have. They were used later as the first two lines
of the long song of Moses. But they come
first from the lips of Miriam, and they are used to help the people really come
together around the great thing that Yahweh has just done for them.
The place of the dance in Old
Testament worship has been ignored and the
importance of solemn assemblies has
been over-emphasized – maybe because most
scholars and saints are
middle-aged before they are scholars and saints. So the importance of Miriam has been
forgotten. Dancing as a social pastime
is a modern invention; in the ancient community dancing was an act of worship,
in which body, mind and spirit together are committed to God and to the story
of God’s great deeds. It was a way in
which the community of faith was really welded together and cemented.
And it was Miriam
who did this – who led the people in the song and the religious festival that
really helped them understand what had just happened, and to commit themselves
as a people to the God whose salvation of them they were celebrating.
I don‘t know if
Moses could have done this – could have brought the people together in quite
this way. There is always something a
little fearsome about Moses, and a little aloof. He speaks and acts with the power of God –
the people know that and respect him for it.
But he is so hard to follow and challenges the people in so many
ways. To be sure, Moses and his God
always see the people through. But after
a while, a steady diet of impossible situations and miraculous solutions gets
very tiring, and it’s understandable the people always feel a certain distance
from Moses.
Miriam, though,
is the one who is able to touch their hearts, and bring them together as a
people. She knows how to gather them
around the power of God, and feel it themselves in their bodies and bones and
spirits. She’s the one who helps them
sing and act out their faith together in ways that are natural to them. So I really do wonder where Moses and Aaron
and all the people would have been without her.
In a way, Miriam
is kind of a matron saint or an exemplar of a lot of things that still are
necessary and true in the formation of real faith community. It’s the spirit of Miriam that’s channelled
in our worship in the ministry of the music director and choir, and is brought
to life in the hymns we sing and anthems we hear that give us a tune to hum on
the way home and a way to sing the goodness of God for ourselves through the
week.
It’s the spirit
of Miriam that comes to life in gatherings like the Friendship Circle and the
Now Group – circles of women who gather to share life and sacred support for
one another.
It’s the spirit
of Miriam that is felt at the after-worship fellowship at Timmy’s, as well as
coffee hour here.
It’s the spirit
of Miriam that is shared in the on-going pastoral care that you and others in
the congregation offer one another in visits to someone who’s ill or under the
weather, in telephone calls sometimes just to say hi and share what’s going on,
in the daily ministry of the Prayer Chain.
It’s the spirit
of Miriam that is given time and space to work around the peach-peeling or
pie-rolling tables, or around the tables and in the kitchen of the spaghetti
and lobster dinners.
Perhaps it was
the spirit of Miriam that led us a few weeks ago to spend the first hour of our
worship time on the front lawn of the church with muffins and juice so we could
welcome and cheer the Pan Am Torch Relay, before coming inside for the second
half hour and a wonderfully informal communion service.
The spirit of
Miriam is alive and well in so many ways in the shared life and concern and
personal relationships of our own community here. It’s what helps us really feel ourselves to
be a people
of God and a community of faith.
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