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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to comm.church for more information.
Speaker 2:Today, we're continuing our series in Exodus. But as we've mentioned already, today is also Trinity Sunday. And Trinity is one of those strange and beautiful ideas that is in one moment very orthodox and yet in the next, basically heretical as soon as you talk about it for too long. Because the joke is that almost any way you can try to explain the mystery of trinity ends up being some kind of misrepresentation of the divine. So either sometimes you end up implying that God sometimes acts like a father and other times like a son and sometimes a spirit.
Speaker 2:That's what we call modalism. These are all just modes of God or ways that God interacts with us, and technically, that's heresy. Other times, you might end up implying that God is what you get when you add up a father and a son and a spirit. That's what we call partialism. God is the sum total of the three persons of Trinity, and that also is technically heresy.
Speaker 2:We even had a really big fight that led to the great schism between the Eastern and the Western churches in the eleventh century because we couldn't even figure out the relationships within the Trinity. The OG Nicene Creed has this line that says the spirit proceeds from the father, but then about a thousand years in, the Roman church took it on themselves to add that the spirit proceeds from the father and the son, which the Eastern Orthodox Church took to mean that there was now a hierarchy within the Trinity. They said that's not cool, so they peaced out even though nothing has ever been peaceful ever since. Unfortunately, I think at its heart, Trinity is supposed to be mysterious. And, actually, it's at its best almost unquestionably when we lean into that.
Speaker 2:Because when we say that God is triune, we're not so much trying to explain the divine. That almost never works out well for us. All of our God talk is always metaphorical anyway. Right? God is not literally a father or a mother or a son or even a spirit.
Speaker 2:Those are all human ideas mapped onto God. But when we affirm that God is trinity, that God is community, that God is somehow within God's self, the very nature of love, and that God could be giving, receiving community from before creation, before there was anything else to interact with. We're affirming that God is love, that God can be love even within God's self. And that is really at the heart of this idea of Trinity. It's the heart of what Jesus comes to reveal to us.
Speaker 2:Not the details of God's metaphysics, those will always remain the realm of speculation. But our faith and our trust is that the nature of the God that shaped the universe and us is a loving community from before anything. And the word that we use for that is trinity. So sometimes these different liturgical Sundays can sort of slip by unnoticed, but I think it can be really meaningful to remind ourselves of the depth of love embodied even in our calendar. So that's Trinity Sunday.
Speaker 2:Today is exodus. And I mean Exodus because last week, Bobby walked us through one of the more difficult sections of this tale, the plagues. And for someone who loves Halloween as much as Bobby does, I am not at all surprised that she reveled in the chance to walk us through that part of the story, but she did a wonderful job of looking at the literary angles embedded in this story. The rhythms and the repetitions and the ways this section mirrors creation in order to speak of the ways that injustice can uncreate our world in front of us. The plagues are, in some sense, the decreation of the Genesis tale as if we're going backwards so we can go forwards.
Speaker 2:And sometimes I think we all have to do the work to deconstruct what we've built in order to get back to what God intended for us. And maybe that means something very specific for you and your journey. But sometimes, I think we have this sort of bias that ancient stories are simple, and they're naive, and therefore, they're straightforward, and they're literal. Except reading closely reveals that ancient people were actually extraordinarily good storytellers. They could and they did layer meaning upon meaning upon meaning upon metaphor and symbol, and maybe that was because they couldn't type out a 5,000 word sermon manuscript and then edit it later.
Speaker 2:They were extraordinarily good at saying a lot with a little. That's something I could get better at. But it also means that when we read, we have to ask ourselves what these stories are here for. Does God really send the boils on our enemies? Do frogs really choke out the water supplies of slavers?
Speaker 2:Does a loving God really kill every firstborn son in an entire nation? And the only remotely satisfying answer I can come up with is yes and maybe no. Because no, I do not believe that a God who is triune love actually actively participates in the murder of children in retaliation for the sins of their parents. But I do believe that empires that rise up and depress and use force to persecute and abuse the marginalized that set themselves up over and against others created in the image of that same God, I do absolutely believe they bring judgment and consequence on themselves 100%. As Jesus says, those who live by the sword die by the sword Because our evil invites more evil toward us.
Speaker 2:And these stories that stand and somehow persist in the midst of a world absolutely in love with our own violence. They are here to remind us that God is not like us. God is always on the side of the persecuted, always on the side of the oppressed, always ready to make things right. And standing in opposition to that coming liberation, that's a dangerous place for any of us to plant our feet. And that means that today, we now walk with Moses and his people through the Red Sea and onto freedom.
Speaker 2:But first, let's pray. Triune God who is like a parent to us, like a friend beside us, like a spirit within us. Triune God who is creator and redeemer, who is our sustainer even now. Might we begin to move past language that seeks to define and hold you down and slowly into the mysterious welcome that is the eternal dance. The dance of gift and reception of breath and exhale of welcome and embrace through which you invite us to know you.
Speaker 2:May all of our theology, our God talk point us to your grace and ultimately to the path of peace that Jesus walked for us to follow. And if that path leads us today to follow with Moses toward our liberation, might we have joy for that journey. And if that path today leads us to examine our choices and the pain that we have caused and the judgment that we are courting for ourselves right now, might we have the courage to change and to repent and to move into new ways of searching out your grace for us. In it all, might we trust that you are here ready to meet us where we are and walk the long way home beside us. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 2:Amen. Today, it's the Exodus and we are gonna talk about one letter, real battles, hard hearts and muddy feet. But let's start with Exodus 13 and this is starting in verse 17. When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, if they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.
Speaker 2:So God led the people around by the desert and toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went out of Egypt ready for battle. K. A couple of things here. First, when Pharaoh let the people go, that is not my favorite translation of this phrase.
Speaker 2:The verb here is shalah, which is a specific form, we call the p l stem of the verb shalah. And the important part here is that it means it is not a passive form of the verb. So Pharaoh did not let anyone do anything. Pharaoh drove them out. One scholar, John Durham, suggests that this is more literally, Pharaoh hurled them out of his battered lands.
Speaker 2:And that's important because if we go all the way back to the start of the story, we read this phrase from God. I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform, and after that, Pharaoh will let you go. That's Exodus three twenty. And there the verb is in what we call the cal stem, which means that it is passive. So God, at the start of the story, is hoping that the wonders will move Pharaoh to understand his injustice and that he will let the Israelites choose for themselves.
Speaker 2:Except that's now what happens. Right? Pharaoh is driven further and further into his own ego, which means the plagues get worse and worse for him. And eventually, instead of ceding control, he seizes control and he forces the Israelites out. And this is really interesting, actually, how easy it is to mix up surrender and control when sometimes they look the same.
Speaker 2:There's one tiny letter difference between what God wants for us and the path that we sometimes choose for ourselves. And I like, I wonder about this a lot. How many times have I convinced myself I'm doing what is right, but really it's all in the service of appeasing my ego Or maybe protecting my position. Or holding on to my power or making sure that I look good in front of those near me. Am I doing the right thing or am I doing the right thing for me?
Speaker 2:You ever hurt someone, and then you apologized, and you went through the motions, and you checked all the boxes, but you knew really you were more interested in repairing your reputation than you were in healing the person that you hurt? And it looked the same, but you knew what was driving you. I've done that. And sometimes that difference is actually pretty subtle. The thing is only one of them, the way that is intent on healing the person you hurt, only one of them is reflective of the way that will heal you as well.
Speaker 2:And I think we could probably say that Exodus wants us to see at the start of the story that God is interested in more than just the liberation of the Israelites. God is interested in the liberation of Pharaoh as well, except that's gonna take three to tango. And sometimes, if I'm really honest, I find myself in the place of Israel calling out for salvation, and then other times, I find myself more like Pharaoh deciding if I will participate joyfully or whether I will just begrudgingly relent. And I guess I just pray that I know the difference, especially when it's this subtle, just one letter different. Second thing here.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about how the Israelites leave town. We read that God did not lead them on the road to the Philistine country even though that was shorter because God was concerned that if they faced war, they might change their minds and return. K. That shorter road through Philistine country, that was actually part of a fairly well developed trade artery that extended from Egypt into Asia Minor and then eventually on to Mesopotamia. And we're talking about a 200 kilometer journey by foot to Gaza.
Speaker 2:So it would have been the shorter way, but still a pretty long walk. However, an army of Tutmose the third was recorded covering that same journey in just ten days. In fact, this section of the road was called the Way Of Horus because it was the primary way that Egyptian armies would make military incursions into Asia. So it was actually walked pretty regularly. Thing is, it's actually not a war with the Egyptians that God is worried about here.
Speaker 2:Remember, pharaoh just tossed them out of the country anyway. The war that God is worried about here is with the Philistines. Now Philistines is a bit of an anachronism here. At the point in history where Exodus is set, the, quote, unquote, Philistines were not really a nation yet. They were more like a loose confederacy of sea peoples that had come down from the Aegean and had a few skirmishes with the Egyptians.
Speaker 2:So Philistines as a nation is kind of imported from later in the story back into Exodus here. But the concern is, look, if the Hebrews are on the run and they get attacked by a group they've never seen before, they might decide this isn't worth it, and let's just run back to the safety of Egypt. That makes sense. But what I really like about the section is the follow-up. It's sort of like we hear the Israelites say, we're ready for battle.
Speaker 2:But the narrator chimes in to say, the Israelites were not in fact ready for any kind of battle. We can be honest here. That is a word of the Lord for all of us sometimes. Jeremy got up full of energy, ready to conquer the day. That's what I told myself this morning.
Speaker 2:And the spirit of the Lord said Jeremy was not in fact ready to conquer anything because he didn't get enough sleep last night and instead stayed up late trying to finish a video game. Bad choices. Now I don't know what your divine reality check is, but I am intrigued by the fact that the let's be honest here, Israelite men think they're ready for a battle, and God instead thinks they should be focusing on helping their community with a long, tiring, uneventful walk through the mud. Far too often, our imagination of our battle centers us into heroic fantasies about ourselves than the task that's actually right in front of us. And long, slow, steady, kind, gracious investment in your kids, in your family, in your friends, in your neighbors, in your neighborhoods, that's how you make a dent in the world.
Speaker 2:Often, it's not about rushing in swords drawn, it's about taking the long way around to avoid an unnecessary fight. And sometimes, I think we all dream about defending our partner from a mugger and God is like, can you just do the dishes? Like, show them that you care and we'll figure out how things go down the road. Start small sometimes. Still, we have to keep moving here because so did the Egyptians and the Israelites.
Speaker 2:And so the Israelites first camp at a place called Etham. It's on the edge of the desert. But then in chapter 14, we read that the Lord said to Moses, tell the Israelites to turn back and this time encamp at Pih Haroth between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea directly opposite Baal Zephon. And Pharaoh will think, look the Israelites are wandering around lost in the desert hemmed in.
Speaker 2:I'll harden Pharaoh's heart and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and through his army. And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord. So the Israelites did this. Now before we get to the water and the passing through on dry land, we gotta talk about this.
Speaker 2:Right? Why is God hardening Pharaoh's heart? Isn't that kinda like rigging the game? Well, is a tough one because it's a lot bigger than just our boy Pharaoh. This actually speaks to how we imagine the interaction of the human and the divine.
Speaker 2:And the Hebrew perspective, as is often the case, is going to leave us a little bereft of concrete answers, so strap in. But I'm gonna turn primarily to the Jewish scholar, Nahum Sarnah, on this one. For one, he's quite brilliant. But two, he's obviously, I think, a lot closer to the Hebrew way of thinking through these passages. But he points out that the hardening of Pharaoh's heart occurs exactly 20 times in Exodus.
Speaker 2:In Exodus seven thirteen fourteen twenty two, eight fifteen nineteen and thirty two, nine seven thirty four and thirty five, and then again in chapter 13 verse 15, the hardening refers to an essential character of the man, Pharaoh. So, for example, Exodus eight fifteen says that Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses. But then in Exodus four twenty one seven three nine twelve ten one twenty and twenty seven eleven ten and then again in fourteen four eight and seventeen, the hardening this time is done by God. For example, in verse fourteen four, our verse here, God said, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. So 10 times Pharaoh hardens his heart, 10 times God hardens it back.
Speaker 2:And there's actually three different words that are used across these various references. There's qaved, which is to dull, qazak, which is to strengthen, and qashah, which means to become obstinate. And both are used on either side of this God pharaoh divide, so that doesn't really help us much either. Still, it seems far too convenient to see 20 references over 10 chapters with 10 going one way and 10 going the other way to think that this is not part of an intentional structuring of the story. Someone has taken great pains to say something here.
Speaker 2:So and what are they trying to say? Well, first, we need to know that your heart does not mean your emotions in Hebrew literature, not the way we think about it. That's your bowels. You feel things in your gut. In Hebrew thought, you think things in your heart, in your chest.
Speaker 2:So you feel it here, but you decide here. That's really important. Because whatever is going on in Pharaoh here is not about his feelings. A detour. My son, who is in grade four and has very big and very wonderful emotions, came home from school this week.
Speaker 2:And before he got home, we had gotten an email from his teacher. See, she had read a book in the class that day, and the chapter involved a sad story about a family having to put down their family dog. Well, as she was reading, she cried, and then some kids cried, and she wanted to make sure that as parents, we were ready if students wanted to come home and talk about the emotions they were feeling that day. A very kind email, actually. So my son, who gets emotional about every movie, every story we ever see, my son who watches the movie Real Steel with Hugh Jackman and a boxing robot and cries every time the little boy cheers on his dad.
Speaker 2:This kid comes home and says to me, yeah, it was a sad story, dad, but I didn't cry. I'm not like other kids. I guess I just don't have emotions. I'm built different. I was like, slow down, Vin Diesel.
Speaker 2:Do you need me to put on the Paw Patrol movie so we can both cry when that little puppy is left alone in the city with no one to fend for him? This is not about a lack of emotions. Okay? Pharaoh has big feelings. Just like my son, he has a lot of emotions.
Speaker 2:He's scared the Israelites might revolt. He's disgusted by these slaves that are not like him. He's humiliated when these foreigners show up as court magicians. He is heartbroken when his son dies. This language of hardening is not about those feelings.
Speaker 2:It's about what he does with them. And that's important for all of us to hear because you and I, we we can't always control our emotions and what we feel. In fact, rarely can we. But we can control what we do with them. And Sarna describes this as a descent into arrogant moral degeneracy, unresponsive to reason and therefore incapable of compassion.
Speaker 2:Compassion. And first of all, it's just a great quote by the way. But Sarna uses this frame of descent here because as he points out, in the first five plagues, Pharaoh's hardening, all of it is self willed. He does it to himself. And it's only after he chooses that path for himself that the hardening is then later attributed to divine causality.
Speaker 2:And that framework finds its way all through the scriptures. Right? Paul talks about God giving us over to our worst desires. Jesus talks about those who refuse to forgive becoming unable to be forgiven. Exodus talks about those who harden their hearts, having their hearts hardened.
Speaker 2:And at a very practical level, I think this makes sense to me about my experience of the world. I mean, I think even about those words that are used here in the Hebrew, to dull, to strengthen, to become obstinate. Often, when I have just really decided that I want something, that sounds a lot like me. And by the way, anyone who knows me well can just remain silent right now. It's not the time to say amen, Rachel.
Speaker 2:This is the problem. Right? Dull to the concerns around me, strengthen in the resolve to follow my own way, obstinate and headstrong in the pursuit of my goals. It's incredibly easy for some of the things that I appreciate, I love about myself to become twisted and toxic if I'm not paying attention to how I'm using them. And I think what the scriptures are trying to tell us is that there's a spiritual dimension to all of that.
Speaker 2:God has given me certain attributes, certain parts of my personality, you as well. And when I steward them well, they are God's gift to me. But when I abuse them and I misappropriate them against people, they can become God's judgment on me. Sometimes in life, you will get what you want, and the only difference between it being a blessing or a curse is how you shaped your desire in the first place. And that is a sobering reality when oftentimes I find myself chasing things that are just not well aligned with the kind of person that I truly want to be.
Speaker 2:Am I hardening my heart, or is God giving me what I think I want? And is there really a difference there? So, Pharaoh casts the Israelites out. And the Israelites think they're ready for a war, but God wants them to focus on a long journey instead. Pharaoh's heart is hardened and so now, finally, we get to the payoff.
Speaker 2:Moses and his people, they come to the edge of the sea and Pharaoh sends his armies after them. And then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. And all that night, the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind. And it turned into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left.
Speaker 2:And This is the moment we've all been waiting for. Right? The strong-arm of God that carries the people to safety, and it is that undoubtedly. Pharaoh orders his armies into the sea to chase the Israelites. God crashes the water back down on that pursuing army.
Speaker 2:And what follows in Exodus 15 is a pair of songs from Moses and from Miriam. You should read them this week. But Miriam sings to the Lord for God is highly exalted. Both horse and rider have been hurled into the sea. And to me, this is a precursor to that voice of the prophet Isaiah that follows later in the Hebrew tradition.
Speaker 2:He says, God will judge the nations and settle disputes. They will beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer take up sword against nation. They will not train for war anymore, For war has been hurled into the sea. And yet, I'm also drawn through the skepticism of Jewish readers.
Speaker 2:Rabbis over the years who have seen this incredible story of salvation somehow be forgotten in their communities and wondered about how that could be. In fact, they tell a story about two old men somewhere near the back of the younger men who led the way and before the throng in women and children that would have followed after. And so caught somewhere in the middle of this mass of humans making their slow, steady journey toward liberation, these two, the story goes, talked and trudged and trundled along grumbling to each other about why Moses was taking them the long way. And so staring at their tired feet and complaining to each other about how the ground had suddenly become sort of muddy, their sandals tangled with strange weeds. Story goes that they walked through the midst of that crowd staring at the ground, lamenting the journey all the way to freedom, never even once looking up to notice the walls of water towering over them.
Speaker 2:That seems quite profound to me that we not confuse the Exodus story with just the miraculous workings of God. Because it is that, of course. Right? God is on the side of the oppressed. God hears the cries of the ignored.
Speaker 2:This story introduces us to God. It tells us who God is. But it's not just that. It's also this reminder that the long, slow, steady arc of the universe is freedom because the origin of the universe is love. That means that you and I today, we can read Exodus and then we can either get ahead of the curve and start looking for the spaces where liberation has not yet been made real in the world.
Speaker 2:There's people in our lives who have not yet encountered the grace of true welcome, the systems that surround us that are not yet aligned with the justice that values all people as beloved children of God. And then we can participate in the dismantling of all that stands in the way of God's goodness, or we can choose instead to harden our hearts to the inevitable transformation of the world, and we can find ourselves then at risk of being swept away in God's cleansing water. See, the Exodus did not end injustice. That's not the point of the story. It opened our eyes to see it all around us everywhere.
Speaker 2:And that means that you and I, we can grumble and complain that the way is long and the path is muddy. We can put on our boots and we can get to work. Because in the end, the reason that the Exodus is so formational to the Hebrew story and is the foundation on which Jesus built and the Christian way in the world that he invited for us to follow, it's because now we believe that the world can be better. That things can change and empires can fall and people can be made free, and we trust that we can be part of that long story together. See, Exodus is not just about the walls of water, it's about all the ways that we push back against anything that gets in the way of God's goodness and crushes our neighbor.
Speaker 2:And when that story sings it some self somewhere deep into us, we get to participate in the goodness that God has set free in the world. Let's pray. God, thank you for these stories collected and preserved, protected, and then handed to us so that we can see your presence all around us in history and in tradition and the narratives that shape our imagination of the world and who you are. We pray that as we read stories that are disconnected from us by a lot of history and time and even culture, that we would see in that the crystal clear heart of the God who loves all and welcomes all and who works against the systems that push others down. Might we grab that story and sink it somewhere deep into ourselves so that we can claim that liberation for ourselves when we need it, so that we can put on our boots and pick up a shovel and begin to dismantle the systems that hold that liberation away from those near us.
Speaker 2:And in that, might we participate just as the Israelites did in the transformation of this world into your imagination of a new kind of kingdom In the strong name of the risen Christ, pray. Amen.