Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Passing Through the Waters"

Text: Exodus 14:19-31

if they ever start making movies again about biblical stories,

I hope they let Steven Spielberg

direct this particular scene.

Can’t you imagine the wonderful special effects?

God in the pillar of cloud …

Moses stretching out his hand,

and a huge wind coming up,

and the sea dividing,

with dry land appearing in the middle …

A crowd of people struggling through

with these huge walls of water on either side of them …

Some really gooey disgusting mud

for the Egyptians to get stuck in …

And then, turmoil and chaos

as the waters close in again

on the trapped soldiers and chariots.

Quite a dramatic scene.

And even those of us with a more scientific mindset,

who might have trouble accepting the whole thing as literally true …

have to admit, it’s a powerful story.

But there, in its power,

also lies some of its danger.

Because it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking

that the special effects are the point of the story.

That the emphasis ought to be placed on

these miraculous kinds of things God can do.

But I don’t think that’s it at all.

The special effects are means to a greater end …

they themselves are not the most important thing.

So, no more Steven Spielberg or Cecil B. deMille.

Let’s get down to the plot behind the dramatics:

Here are the Hebrew people …

After years of being slaves in Egypt,

they are finally gaining freedom.

God has sent Moses to lead the people out,

and after a few nasty plagues,

Pharaoh says good riddance; get out of my sight.

And they go,

and begin marching across the desert …

And Pharaoh changes his mind,

and sends his armies out

to fetch those slaves and bring them back.

Now of course, the Hebrews had a head start.

But they had their children and older folks along,

who couldn’t move quite as fast,

and they were carrying along

as many of their possessions as they could,

which also slowed them down.

They were certainly no match for Egypt’s finest,

especially when the horses and the chariots got into the picture.

So there are the poor Hebrews,

just when they were starting to think they’d made it,

trapped between the Red Sea on the one side

and the Egyptian army on the other.

So lesson #1 out of all of this is:

Just because you’re doing God’s will

doesn’t mean that you won’t have powerful enemies.

Actually, the Bible makes that pretty obvious,

but we have to contend today

with some strands of Christianity

which still believe that power equals truth.

T. H. White’s book The Once and Future King,

about Camelot and King Arthur and all those folks,

returns again and again to the question,

"does might make right?"

Such as, if your side won a particular battle,

does that mean God was on your side?

And the answer is no,

it doesn’t necessarily mean that at all.

The Old and New Testaments are filled with stories

of people obeying God’s will

who nevertheless had enemies more powerful than they.

Elijah had to run for his life

because Queen Jezebel promised to kill him.

A godly man named Uriah was killed

because King David wanted his wife, Bathsheba.

Prophets were put to death.

Stephen was stoned to death for preaching Christ.

Peter and Paul were executed.

Jesus himself was crucified.

Faithfulness to God is no assurance

that people will like you, or pay attention to you,

or even let you live!

In fact, the Bible often seems to indicate just the opposite.

Faithfulness to God almost guarantees

that some will take offense at you,

and others will laugh at you,

and still others will threaten you.

That’s a painful lesson for us to learn,

as it surely must have been for Moses

and that ragtag crowd of Hebrews.

Even when you know you’re doing the will of God,

you will still have to contend with

the principalities and powers of this world

who are God’s enemies,

and, therefore, yours as well.

However, lesson #2 kicks in here at this point.

God does not leave the Israelites stranded there

between the devil and the deep blue sea.

God intervenes on their behalf.

A safe way is made for them,

and they escape a seemingly impossible predicament.

Lesson #2 is this:

When you are obeying God’s will,

and you find yourself in difficult times,

God will help you out.

Again, the Bible is full of examples.

Peter, walking across the water to Jesus,

plucked out when his faith falters.

Paul and Silas, thrown in prison for preaching the gospel,

singing and praying until the walls fall down

and their chains are broken.

Jeremiah, thrown down a well and left to starve,

then rescued when a king repented of his evil deeds.

There are times in our faith journey when

we may feel like the Hebrew people surely did:

like God has pushed us out onto a limb

and is now preparing to saw it off behind us.

I remember feeling like that

towards the end of my last year in seminary

and the months after that,

as I waited for a church to discover me and call me …

I had not doubt that I was doing

what God had called me to do,

and yet, you know me well enough to imagine

what I was feeling

as the men in our class started to get calls

and we women killed time comparing rejection letters.

But here I am.

Twenty years later.

Which leads us to a very necessary lesson #3:

God will help you out,

but God does not promise to do so

in accordance with your demands,

or even your imagination!

I never dreamed I would start out my ministry in west Texas …

not because I didn’t want to,

but because I figured I stood

about the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell

of being called to a church

in a very conservative part of the country.

Similarly, I’m fairly sure the Hebrew people,

even though they had seen all those wacky plagues

God had visited upon the Egyptians …

I’m sure they could not have been prepared

for the astounding way in which God chose to rescue them.

In fact, if you listen to some of their grumblings in other verses,

you have to wonder sometimes

if they trusted God to look after them at all!

How often do we limit God in our praying,

and in the requests we make?

I think I’ve said this before,

but I know that for me, the tendency is to pray,

"Dear God, here’s the problem,

and here’s what I want you to do about it."

When all I really need to say is,

"God, you know what’s going on … Help!"

We limit God’s creativity

when we assume that God cannot do

anything beyond what we can imagine!

I would have preferred, for example,

if God had just let Hurricane Katrina

spin herself out harmlessly in the Gulf …

If I were in charge,

I would have told God to keep that levee from breaking.

I probably would have sent lightning bolts at a few looters …

not the ones getting food and water,

but the ones carrying plasma-screen TVs and fistfuls of gold jewelry …

But first I would have kicked some serious you-know-what

of dithering federal bureaucrats.

But look at what has happened

in the aftermath of a disaster none of us could even have imagined:

Displaced persons are being sheltered, clothed, and fed …

semi-permanent housing is being found for thousands of people …

somehow, jobs are being created to tide people over.

Even small communities,

with a whole lot less infrastructure than a Dallas or a Houston,

are sharing in the responsibility of caring for brothers and sisters

whose lives have been shattered.

Mexico is sending aid to the U.S. …

who would ever have thought it?

God is at work in the midst of this disaster,

even though it may not be in the ways

we think God ought to act, or ought to have acted.

And we can’t yet know what may come out of this,

on the other side,

when rebuilding has been completed,

or permanent resettlement encouraged,

or other outcomes we haven’t yet imagined.

Personally, I’m hoping that Dallas will see that

if we can incorporate upwards of 25,000 hurricane refugees,

it will be small potatoes to find a way to care for

a measly 6,000 homeless people.

And I’m hoping that someone, somewhere,

will ask how we immediately found 800 units of public housing available

when the waiting list for our own city’s poor

is between two and three years long.

Those are questions for another day.

But let’s not forget them.

In this moment,

God is at work through us,

rather than through signs and wonders.

Or perhaps, we are the signs and wonders.

I hope we have all had the opportunity to

donate some of our "stuff" to relief efforts …

I hope most of us will be able to stay

for the concert this afternoon,

and contribute to offering funds for relief.

I hope maybe some of us can answer

the Red Cross’s call for 40,000 volunteers,

to help with resettling and rebuilding

for our sisters and brothers who have, literally,

passed through the waters.

God is with us in this,

just as God is with us in all our crises,

and hurt, and suffering.

We were not left alone on the shore of the Red Sea;

we are not left alone on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain;

we are not left alone, ever.

Right now, we have the opportunity

to be part of the answer to other people’s prayers.

May we pass through this time together,

and arrive safely on the other side.

Amen.