The Only Way Out is Through
Exodus 14:5-7, 10-14, 21-30a; Matthew 2:13-15
Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm. And see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today. You need only keep still.”
We are about a month into our experiment here at Epiphany with the Narrative Lectionary – telling the story of Scripture through the year as a single narrative of God’s revelation of who God is and who God wants to be for us. We have heard the stories of Noah and Abraham and then of Joseph in Egypt, and today we have the foundational story of Israel getting out of Egypt – this foundational story of what God desires to do for us.
For generations now, the Hebrew people had been enslaved in Egypt. The cruelty of their oppressors grew worse, and finally God heard their cries and called Moses to lead them out of Egypt, out of slavery, and onto the road to the promised land, to a new and different kind of life. The kind of life that God has always intended for human beings to live – where there is peace and plenty, where people live in harmony with one another and creation, where everyone is included and treated with dignity and respect and love.
After great drama – the plagues that reveal to Egypt the depth of the sickness and death in their society, the Passover meal, the flight of the escaped slaves into the desert – we come to our reading this morning, where the Hebrew people are trapped. They have hit the shore of the Red Sea, and Pharoah’s army is chasing after them. In front of them is chaos and danger they have no capacity to tame or control. Behind them is an army that wants to re-enslave them and punish them for their insolence, an army they cannot withstand or fight on their own. They cannot go forward and they cannot go back.
Have you ever felt stuck like this in your own life? You’ve been trapped, enslaved, oppressed, dragged down. You try to escape, but you can feel it behind you pursuing you, trying to drag you back. In front of you is an impossible obstacle, a challenge too great. Behind you come forces trying to drag you back into captivity, in front of you is an angry sea of chaos and peril. And there is nowhere to go.
Sometimes our whole world feels like this. Like we are confronting a raging sea of chaos, of Covid and war and climate change and a breakdown in social cohesion, our past mistakes catching up with us and threatening to destroy us, and we do not see where there is a pathway in front of us leading to the land of milk and honey.
This is a foundational story in Scripture because it describes a universal experience. We know we want to escape from Egypt, we know God has promised us that life in the promised land is possible, but right now we do not see how we can get there and the power of Egypt is closing in. Jesus had this experience too – not just, as we read, in his childhood, when he too fled to Egypt as a refugee and then was returned to the Promised Land. But also in Jerusalem for the annual celebration of the Passover, the annual commemoration of the escape from Egypt, Jesus stood at his own Red Sea shore and said, “Father, isn’t there some other way than plunging into the sea of death in front of me? But if the only way out is through, I will trust that you will make a way to the promised land of resurrection on the other side, and your will be done.”
The promise – if we dare to trust it – is that God will make a way where there is no way. To see it, the Hebrew people had to stop looking back at the approaching chariots and to stop looking at Moses and telling him, I told you so. They had to look forward to see the path that God was opening up for them. And God did not push them into the sea – God just opened the way and invited the people to follow. I’m sure the towering walls of angry sea on their right and their left were just as scary as the approaching army, just as arrest and crucifixion was probably just as scary to Jesus as the mess that he was in. And I’m sure that whatever way God opens for us in our own day won’t be a walk in the park either.
But we know that God hears us when we cry out in despair. And we know that God responds and comes to save and that the promised land of life in the wide open spaces of God’s love lies on the other side of the sea. But first we need to see the opening that God is making. And then we have to have enough trust to take it.
Just as it is no coincidence that Jesus passed through death into life at Passover, at the time of remembrance of Israel’s passage through the sea – so also it is not a coincidence that the first step in following Jesus is for each one of us to pass through the waters ourselves. If you have been baptized, you have already been through the water, you have already been called out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, and the promise of God’s salvation and new life have already been made to you. And this is what we share with Elsa today. So that when she stands before the raging seas in her life, as one day no doubt she will, she will know what to look for. She will have been given an example of how her fellow travelers have trusted and made it through. And she will know that the ancient promise of God has been made to her as well: “Do not be afraid. Stand firm. And see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today. You need only keep still.”
Much of the imagery in this sermon is adapted from Nathan Nettleton, http://southyarrabaptist.church/sermons/a-way-out-when-there-is-no-way-out/