[Video to come]
Ah, yes; the parting of the Red Sea. Most of us are so familiar with this story and the way it ends that we don’t ever really stop to think about what it actually would have been like for the Israelites. After the chaos of the ten plagues and their rushed exodus from Egypt, chapter 14 finds the Israelites several days into their journey. Undoubtedly, they were anxious and afraid when they’d first set out, but after about a week of traveling without incident, I can imagine them beginning to let their guard down, possibly even feeling the first real glimmers of hope. They’d become so confident in their success, in fact, that they decided to take a break from running away and rest by the Red Sea for a little while.
You know what this context weirdly makes me think of? There’s a campfire song that’s been around since at least the 1950s that some of you may know. It’s a call-and-response sort of chant called, “Going on a Bear Hunt”. I’ll share the version that I know, but you have to help by doing what I do and repeating after me. Ready?
We’re going on a bear hunt (We’re going on a bear hunt)/Gonna catch a big one (Gonna catch a big one)/What a beautiful day! (What a beautiful day!)/I’m not scared! (I’m not scared).
Right? But then what happens in the song? We encounter an obstacle!
Uh oh! (Uh oh!)/What’s that? (What’s that?)/Grass! (Grass!)/Tall, wavy grass (Tall wavy grass)/Can’t go over it (Can’t go over it)/Can’t go under it (Can’t go under it)/Gotta go through it! (Gotta go through it)!
Then, we traipse through the grass (swish swish swish swish) until we arrive at the next obstacle. This continues until the leader runs out of ideas for obstacles or gets bored.
If you think about it, this is pretty similar to what happened with the Israelites. They were walking along, feeling pretty good about things, when suddenly, they realized that the Egyptians were coming after them. In that moment, the Red Sea transformed in their eyes from a pleasant campsite to an obstacle standing in the way of their freedom. You could rewrite the bear hunt song to be about them.
Which, of course, I did. Ready?
We’re getting out of Egypt (we’re getting out of Egypt)/gonna find the promised land (gonna find the promised land)/What a beautiful day! (What a beautiful day!)/I’m not scared (I’m not scared)/Uh oh! (Uh oh!)/What’s that? (What’s that?)/A sea! (A sea!)/A deep, deep sea. (A deep, deep sea.)/Can’t go over it, (Can’t go over it,)/can’t go under it, (can’t go under it,)/gotta go through it! (gotta go through it!)
Now, it’s obvious to us that the answer to their problem was to go through it, right, because we know how the story ends. But it wasn’t initially obvious to *them*. Given the information that they had at the time (namely, that human beings aren’t able to walk across huge bodies of water under normal circumstances) it’s hard to blame them for overlooking this particular solution. What we CAN blame them for is the terrible solution that THEY came up with. I mean, I get that they didn’t have a lot of options, but it seems like they could have done a little bit more brainstorming before concluding that they should just surrender to the Egyptians and return to slavery.
As you might expect, Moses tries to dissuade them from this course of action. He encourages them to instead stay put and trust God to fight on their behalf. Which normally would have been a decent suggestion - but in this case, it wasn’t good enough for God. After all, even if they somehow managed to hold the Egyptians off, staying where they were would never get them to the Promised Land. It would just get them stuck.
Now, of course God recognized that this was a terrifying, impossible thing to ask the Israelites to do, but the only way forward was to somehow cross the Red Sea: “Tell the Israelites to get moving! They can’t go over it; they can’t go under it - they gotta go through it!” Moses was probably pretty surprised by these instructions, but he’d long since learned not to doubt God. So through the sea they went, as we all knew they would. And although it took them another forty years to get there, they did eventually arrive in the land that God had promised to Abram so long ago.
This may feel like the end of the story. But remember how I said that the bear hunt song doesn’t stop at the tall grass, but it keeps going as new obstacles arise? The Israelites' struggles weren’t over once they got to the other side of the Red Sea. Far from it. Exodus alone continues for 26 more chapters, in which the people face hunger, thirst, exhaustion, idolatry, and flat-out rebellion over the course of their wilderness journey.
Once they settled in the Promised Land, obstacles kept arising during the time of the judges, followed by even more obstacles leading up to the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and then Judah. They encountered obstacles during the Jewish exile, and then more upon their return. The challenges facing God’s people continued in the New Testament - obstacles arising from the Roman occupation, obstacles during Jesus’ ministry, obstacles as the early Church grew and spread in different cultures. And each time, the people found that as much as they might have wanted to, they couldn’t go over the obstacle in front of them. They couldn’t go under it. They had to go through it, because that’s how they got to the next part of God’s plan for them.
Although the journey to the Promised Land ended centuries ago, the Israelites’ descendants keep encountering obstacles because they - and we - are now on a new journey: a journey towards the kindom of heaven. Of course, this journey is different than the one to the Promised Land in that its goal isn’t a physical destination so much as a new way of being, a new life for all creation. So the obstacles we face along *this* journey tend to be less tangible and more abstract. This makes them much more difficult to identify and overcome - especially since so many of these obstacles originate from within ourselves.
Let me explain: the kindom of heaven is characterized by things like love, mercy, justice, and equality, right? This is the world we’re all working towards. Many of us go through life believing that we’re doing great on this journey - that we’ve escaped the bondage of old, harmful ideas and are making wonderful progress. Racism is a thing of the past; sexism and misogyny are long gone; LGBT+ folks have equal rights; poverty is under control. “What a beautiful day!” we tell ourselves.
But then, seemingly out of nowhere, BAM! An obstacle arises - we’re confronted with an uncomfortable, ugly reality that disrupts our perception of the world. People of color tell us that racism is actually built into our culture. Women share stories about being systematically denied both the opportunities and the justice that are afforded to men. The LGBT+ community says that they’re actively under attack. We discover that poverty isn’t gone; it’s just hidden from us. I’m not mentioning specific examples here because it would take all day to give each one the time it deserve, but given the nature of social media and the internet, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble filling in the blanks - take your pick.
Whenever we encounter one of these uncomfortable truths, we - just like the Israelites - have three different ways that we can try to deal with the obstacle in our way. One, we can run away from it. We can fall back on our old assumptions and deny the new information in front of us. Of course, that would keep us enslaved to a false narrative - but hey, at least it’s comfortable and familiar, right? Two, we can stand our ground. We can affirm the truth of this new information and bravely proclaim that “someone should really do something to change this.” But that doesn’t get us anywhere. We’d feel good about being on the “right side”, but we wouldn’t be making any actual progress towards the kindom of heaven.
If we want to move past this obstacle and continue on our journey toward the kindom of heaven, we can’t try to avoid it by going over it or under it. We have to choose the third option: we have to go through it. We see the obstacle in front of us, we acknowledge it as real, we wrestle with how we and those like us have been complicit in allowing it to continue. We do whatever we need to do to integrate this uncomfortable truth into our otherwise pleasant understanding of the world. And then, we move. We act. We work to change the narrative that has deceived us for so long and to dismantle the systems that allow these truths to get pushed under the rug. We push through the discomfort and fear. And we don’t stop until we - all of us together - have placed the obstacle in our collective past for good.
No journey worth taking is easy. We have to keep working towards the kindom of heaven every single day, without rest, if we ever hope to get there. We will encounter obstacle after obstacle, and we will be sorely tempted to give up and live in our false (but familiar) reality. But fortunately, I happen to know a song that, with just a few lyrical changes, can help us remember how God wants us to deal with these obstacles. Will you sing with me one more time?
We’re going on a mission (We’re going on a mission)/Gonna build the kindom (Gonna build the kindom)/What a beautiful world! (What a beautiful world!)/I’m not scared! (I’m not scared!)/Uh oh! (Uh oh!)/What’s that? (What’s that?)/a truth (a truth)/a sad, ugly truth (a sad, ugly truth)/can’t go over it (can’t go over it)/can’t go under it (can’t go under it)/gotta go through it (gotta go through it).
You’ve got it! Now - make it happen. Amen
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I considered including lyrics from this song in the sermon, but ultimately decided against it. I still want to share it with you, though, so here it is:
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