Baptism sermon: The Blessing After Exodus

Sermon: The Blessing After Exodus

(Photo credit: I lost the track. Sorry, but I Like this picture. Please let me know if you find who this picture originally belongs to.)

In today’s story, Moses and the Israelites arrive in the wilderness of Sinai (picture) after escaping from slavery, in a sea-parting story of the impossible made real.

After Exodus.

Exodus is often seen as a sweeping cinematic story, featuring the climactic moment of the red sea parting in two. Scientists and Biblical scholars have their own ideas and guesses of what happened, why it happened, or whether it even happened at all. Exodus, however, as God’s event and as human drama, repeats, resonates, and echoes whenever we venture near the thin places of our lives and of history. We see people escape other ‘slave’ states: foreign empires, genocide, apartheid, lands ruled by tyrants. It’s always good to witness people freeing themselves from oppression, the ‘pharoahs’ that seek to rule and control them. Sometimes we’re so busy looking at other people and their situations, we forget to see whether we have any pharaohs governing our own lives. How about you? It doesn’t have to be political - just anything that controls your life and constricts your freedom to truly be yourself - to truly be may be your secret pharoah.   

Exodus teaches us that, after a triumphant ‘exodus’, (remember that God says to the Israelites, “See how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself”.) the work of the future begins. Before any Exodus, it was “they” who stood in our way, but after our own ‘exodus’, it is only “we”, ourselves, who can limit our potential.

In the open land, in the wilderness of Mount Horeb, dispossessed of their past privilege, of their past comfort, of their past security, (We remember that the Israelites shouted out loud, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! (Even in slavery) There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted.”) the people of Israel are invited to begin the work of the future, after the exodus. What God promises is not food in abundance, but a “covenant” in relationship – the renewed relationship with God – as the only possible survival tool for Israel, both individually and communally. They were merely an ethnic tribe in Egypt, before Exodus, but now they are called to become a community, after Exodus.

Are any of us surprised that the state of insecurity that follows the escape from Egypt is met by a rash of complaints? It’s very true to life, isn’t it? Living in a state of insecurity dries up our patience, faith, confidence. The people no longer live in physical slavery, but have become enslaved to fear. They speak against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food,”.

Their fear of death is not an ungrounded fear; they face the real threat of death – a mass death, a death of the community they love, care for and identify themselves with - , dramatically symbolized, in today’s story, as being attacked by serpents.

We may not like fear, but it is part of our survival-oriented, biological programming. Humans have evolved and adapted through changing environments to learn to fear a wide range of circumstances and threats so that we can successfully identify and avoid things which could kill us. It’s not just dangerous situations that evoke fear; we live in all kinds of relationships beginning from our first moments of life, in a world that entangles us in different emotions, we learn who we can trust, and who - and what - we should fear.

One of my fears, among many, is ‘being unloved.’ My earlier life experiences made me think, “If I am not excellent in what I do, I may lose the feeling of belonging. I may lose the affection of others. My worth is dependent on other people’s recognition of how well I am doing.”

I was ruled by those feelings for many years - they were my pharoah. I am glad to witness that I am now able to resist this kind of influence and fear. I am no longer enslaved by this fear, because I learned that this fear has no ground in faith. I learned that developing faith was the most affirmative journey that I could take - it helped me to believe, to be solid, and to claim that faith confirms my inherent worth. God dwells in me. I experientially learn to know and claim that unity. This experience, this unity, brings to the forefront of my life – transformation.  

Very recently, following an event and some reflection afterwards, I wrote in my journal, “I pray that I’ll choose an action that leads, not to the solution (of a problem), but to transformation that begins with me, changes me and advances me. I may experience being unsettled. It may not appear to be the best, wisest solution, but I will choose a one-on-one encounter with Jesus, reflecting on which way the historically true Jesus would choose, whose way itself is peace, to whom peace is never an outcome of a battle or fight. I will always choose the holy manner of respect.

Going back to today’s first reading, I would like to make clear that it is not the Gospel. It is not only not the Gospel, but the model of the covenant this story illustrates is not the original covenant God had promised between God and Noah and every living creature on the earth. God said, “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” Here, God promises that God would never again undertake such “divine terrorism”( that’s from John Dominic Crossan). Now, in today’s story, God controls the situation, manipulating the people’s fear of future punishment. The people complained – spoke against – God and Moses. God punishes Israel by sending out fiery snakes to bite the people. Many Israelites die from the snakebites. In this story, God chooses a terrifying solution to the people’s unceasing complaints, by sending out the fiery snakes, not God’s own transformation that God has already established with Noah. The covenant in this story is conditional, rather than unconditional, and based on sanctions – blessings when obedient, curses when disobedient.

Now, in his Gospel, John says, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Here, the “Son of Man” refers to Jesus, What John says is that, the cross, this death on the cross, being lifted up on the cross IS the glory of Jesus, even without the wonder of Easter. Easter is not the glory. Already, the cross is the glory. The good news with this, which I believe has great relevance to our own time is that this death is not martyrdom. Jesus did not plan it. Martyrdom should never be willed or wanted – only accepted and endured.  

Then why did Jesus become a sacrifice, enduring death? Today’s Gospel reading says that it is because “God so loved the world.” Loved. The world. The word, ‘world’ can be an ambiguous term, but here, the world means, the world as creation, not the world as civilization, or society. And even for God, it is not easy to love the world, when it is saturated with greed, violence, crime, all those things which pit themselves against God’s creation. So love, divine love takes a heart-breaking, unsettling, aching and trembling transformation for God on the cross.

So here we are with our children, Julia, Brody and Grace. Curious, rather than fearful. They’ve just received the gift of that transformative love of God, through baptism. Baptism is a gift, not a measurement to judge others or a ticket that guarantees admission to Heaven. Baptism is a gift, and the gift is transformation and kinship to the living Christ. Baptism signifies two things in my mind: God sings to us, “I bear you on eagle’s wings and bring you to myself,”:  the very essence of blessing and comfort. And hand-in-hand with the idea of return, we are invited to understand that baptism is a symbolic Exodus. With this baptism, with every baptism, the work of the future begins anew with each one of us. Does that scare you? Maybe it should - all that work, starting again with every new soul. Yet, baptism is also an everlasting promise that God is a rainbow hung in the clouds, for us to know that we can be confident that God’s love endures and is steadfast and faithful. “Even in the clouds, you see my glory. My love never changes and turns away from anyone. This love, my promise of covenant, will never be taken away, but dwell in you forever as a gift, a treasure that you will never lose but will await your finding and your joy.”