Liberations large and small: a sacrament of history (sermon from Sunday, Sept 17, 2017)

Reading:  Exodus 14:9-31

The people if Israel are fleeing Egypt.  After years of slavery and oppression God has heard their cried for help, has raised up Moses to lead them, and is leading them out in mass exodus.  The people follow a giant pillar of fire and cloud that they trust is the presence of God.  But the Egyptian army is pursuing them and when the people follow the pillar of fire and cloud to the edge of the Red Sea, with the sea before them and the Egyptian army behind them, there seems no way out.

Today’s reading is part of the foundational story of the people of Israel – the people who in The Bible are God’s chosen ones.  It’s a story of liberation – of escape from slavery and oppression, and I wonder if this story is telling us that liberation is what life is about, and that liberations – whether big or small, are one of the ways we see God at work in the life of the world.

A few weeks ago – the week before the new school year started, Japhia was on the phone with Amy, our daughter-in-law, talking about three-year-old Kayson starting Junior Kindergarten.  Kayson was excited about going to school and on the school bus with his older brother, and on the phone Amy was asking Japhia if she would be able to come over the next Tuesday to stay with their two younger ones while Amy went to school with Kayson for his first-day interview, at which Japhia says she heard Kayson’s little voice in the background quite insistently and even indignantly saying, “You’re not coming, Mommy!”

As a mother, how do you feel?  What do you say?

It reminded me of the first time I drove Aaron to summer camp up on Skeleton Lake near Lake Rosseau.  It was his first time away at camp so after finding the camp and parking the car, I helped him carry his sleeping bag and bag to the registrar’s office, found out what cabin he was in, helped him carry his stuff there and pick out a bunk, and then as he started talking to one of the other boys there I just looked around the camp a bit.  After five or ten minutes I went back to the cabin to find him to say goodbye, and as I walked in to do that, he looked up at me and said, “Oh!  Are you still here?”

As a father, how do you feel?  What do you say?

Maybe life really is about liberation.  And liberations – little or small, are one of the ways we see God at work.

Sometimes it’s on a bigger scale.  Here in Canada for generations we have prided ourselves on being an open, tolerant, multi-cultural society.  The Mosaic rather than the Melting-Pot is the way we expressed it back in the 60’s and 70’s, and we celebrated the ways in which in Canada people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds were encouraged to maintain, rather than have to give up their culture.  An open border and a welcome to immigrants and refugees is the way we express it today, and we come up with slogans like “Diversity is Strength” that even our pro football teams wear on the sidelines.

But when voices are then raised against “Merry Christmas” being the only holiday sign to be appear on the Jolley Cut, and the Lord’s Prayer (a prayer of Jesus-followers) being the only prayer said in public schools by all students regardless of their religious identification and practice, and when Muslim women want to be veiled in all public settings and Sikh RCMP officers want to wear a turban – a dastar, and carry a traditional dagger – a kirpan, what as a country and as a society do we feel?  What do we say?  What do we do?

Is truly human life at heart about liberation, and are liberations – small or large, one of the ways we see God at work in the world?

And it can be even bigger and more complex than that.  For more than a generation now Canada has been learning about, and trying to learn to embrace the history of oppression and cultural genocide – both official and unofficial, both at-the-top political and on-the-ground personal that has been faced by the First Nations of this land.  We’re learning the story of the residential schools, and we’re learning also that that’s only one chapter in a very big book.  We’re learning about treaty rights, stolen land and broken promises, and so much more.  It’s something we feel bad about, and something we honestly want to correct and make better.

But when Mohawk warriors occupy land in Oka, members of the Stony Point First Nation occupy Ipperwash Park, and representatives of the Six Nations of the Grand River occupy disputed land in Caledonia and bring the life of a town to a crawl, and when First Nations traditional councils reject the authority of councils elected by Canadian government rules, and they say they want legal status as a nation within a nation, and the same rights of compensation as other nations would be able to demand, what do we as a dominant society feel?  What do we say?  What do we do?

Do we really believe that life is about liberation, and that liberations – small or large, simple or complex, are one of the ways we see God at work in the world?  And even if we do believe it, how on Earth do we act it out and honour the ways of God in human affairs?

Today’s reading is part of the foundational story of the people of Israel – the people who in The Bible are God’s chosen ones.  It’s a story of liberation – of escape from slavery and oppression, and in some ways it’s a very sad story. 

For the people of Israel – for the people whose cries God hears, to whom God sends a leader, and for whom God arranges a liberation from their oppressor, it’s a happy story – a story of escape from a bad situation, a story they will always tell and that will bring reassurance and hope of God’s saving and liberating presence any time in the future when they find themselves again hemmed in and oppressed by enemies.   

But for the people of Egypt – the people who would not let them go, who did not take seriously God’s hand in what was happening until it was too late, it’s a very sad story – sad for the Egyptians, for God, for anyone who really cares about the human race.

An old Jewish legend says that 40 years after this miraculous escape and 40 years in the wilderness, as the people of Israel finally stand on the bank of the Jordan about to enter the Promised Land, God tells Moses he will not be entering the land with them, and will not set foot in it.  After leading them all this time and all this way, he is to die and be buried just outside the Promised Land.  Moses, taken aback, asks why.  

In reply, God asks Moses if he remembers the day way back at the beginning when the people of Israel were led through the Red Sea, and they turned around to see the Egyptian army overwhelmed and drowned in the same sea they had just passed through.  Moses says yes, he remembers that day.  And God says, "Well, you smiled."

It makes me wonder how it might have been, and what might have happened if the Egyptians had only – even just at the last moment, chosen to let the people of Israel go?

If Egypt had only stopped at the edge of the sea, and finally taken seriously and accepted what they could see of the hand of God and of the clear direction that history was taking against them ... would all have been well?  If at that point, if Egypt had finally been able to "rejoice with those who rejoice" (to quote Paul from last week’s reading), had been able to sit down and smile at the people of Israel finally getting the freedom they had needed for so long (like shaking hands at the end of a hard-fought game with the team that beat you) ... and had been able to "bless those who cursed them" (to quote Jesus), had been able to wish Israel well on its journey-just-begun, even while knowing that Israel was probably only cursing them as they went on their way for all the time they had been enslaved, would all have been well?

God did all God could.  God showed Egypt sign after sign (1o plagues, for goodness sake!) of how this was going to turn out.  When Israel was finally on the run, God intervened personally and kept the two camps apart with that awe-ful pillar of fire and cloud, giving the Egyptian army time and even an excuse just to let Israel go ("Really, pharaoh, there was this big pillar of divine fire and cloud!  We tried, but there was no way we could get to them.").

Clearly, the way God opened through the sea and the way God managed for the oppressed to be free, was meant as a way for Israel, not Egypt, to follow, but Egypt insisted on everything being for them and about them ... and look where it got them.

It really does seem that the story of the Bible tells us that life is about liberation, and that the liberations all around us – big or little, simple or complex, are one of the ways we see God at work in the life of the world. 

                          

And I guess one question always is, how that makes us feel, what it makes us say, and what it leads us to do?

Thanks be to God.