Sunday, September 14
Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Focus Theme
Road to Freedom

Weekly Prayer
God of freedom, you brought your people out of slavery with a mighty hand. Deliver us from our pride and indifference to the needs and gifts of others, that we may be ready to love as you have loved us, and to give even as we have received. Amen.

All Readings For This Sunday
Exodus 14:19-31 with Psalm 114 or
Genesis 50:15-21 with Psalm 103:(1-7)8-13 and
Romans 14:1-12 and
Matthew 18:21-35

Focus Reading
Exodus 14:19-31

The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued, and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh's horses, chariots, and chariot drivers. At the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and cloud looked down upon the Egyptian army, and threw the Egyptian army into panic. He clogged their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty. The Egyptians said, "Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt."

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers." So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.

Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

Reflection and Focus Questions
by Kate Huey

Focus Questions 1. What was the difference between the everyday, long-term experience of the Hebrew slaves and that of Pharaoh? 2. How do you answer the question, "Did God love the Egyptians, too?" 3. What does it mean to be a "chosen" community? 4. How do you think God makes liberation happen in the world today? 5. Have you ever experienced liberation? Text for Meditation The cloud was there in the darkness / and it lit up the night. For ideas on how to meditate with the Bible, read our article on Praying With the Bible

People of faith often define and experience "faith" itself in different ways. While many understand faith as an intellectual agreement with, and acceptance of, certain claims about God (one reason the church has shaped creeds in the past), they also connect their "heads" with their "hearts," and ground their love for God in what they hold to be true about God. It is, however, very important to them to be clear and even detailed about these intellectual claims, and to require assent to them. Other folks, when speaking of faith, go first to the experience of trust in God, a trust that enables them to live their lives not in anxiety but with the conviction that God loves them and holds them precious in God's sight. Perhaps this kind of faith is not articulated in complex or sophisticated theological statements, but it too must be grounded in what a person "knows," or believes to be true about God.

Reflecting on the meaning of faith may be a good point of entry into this text. We could get hung up on questions about the miracle involved in the sea parting (including the "natural" explanations that have been offered for it), or we could get bogged down (so to speak) in concern about all those dead Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea. After all, not unlike last week's story about the deaths of all those first-born children, this story prompts the question, "What about those Egyptians: doesn't God love them, too?"

In either case, we would be missing the main point of the people of Israel telling and re-telling, remembering this story about God's hand at work when they were absolutely "up against it," up against a wall of water that trapped them before the certainly awesome might of Pharaoh and his armies. This wasn't one army against another, however outnumbered and outgunned. This was a ragtag group of impoverished ex-slaves escaping their captors not by their own strength or wits or organizational skills or strategic planning, but by the power of God. Can you imagine how they must have felt, their panic and terror, when the vast armies of Pharaoh appeared on the horizon, in hot pursuit? They had lived their entire lives under the heel of this mighty empire, so they were well acquainted with what it could do. However, they were still learning just what their God could do, and how small and powerless the mighty Egyptians would soon appear.

Remembering who God is

The people of Israel have told and re-told many stories in their long history, but this one, about the exodus, is right at the heart of their great, over-arching story. This is the story that reminds them over and over again about who God is, and who they are in the light of God's compassion and care, who they are because God has a commitment to them, grounded in promises given long ago (back in the book of Genesis, we may recall, and the story of Abraham). If it wasn't clear to them when the plagues came and Pharaoh finally let them go (an amazing thing in itself, no doubt), surely the parting of a great sea of water and the washing away of the mightiest army in the world must have made an impression on the Hebrew people. In his Introduction to the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann calls this "the powerful, compelling center of Israel's defining memory of faith," through which Israel comes to understand itself as "the beloved, chosen community of YHWH and the object of YHWH's peculiar and decisive intervention in public events."

And that is one reason the story is at the heart of our faith, too. With the "voice" of the later, Priestly writer so present in the text, it's possible, says Brueggemann, that Pharaoh himself can be understood as Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian oppressor during the exile of the Jewish people six centuries after the exodus. But not just Nebuchadnezzar, and not just the sixth century B.C.: It's significant, writes Gary Anderson, that this Pharaoh, "unlike almost all other foreign kings in the Bible, however evil they may be, is not graced with a name." Thus, he can be identified with, and experienced as, every one of the "powers-that-be," every overwhelming, well-armed oppressor, for he is "as much a cipher for evil as a flesh-and-blood human being." If God and empire face off, the story reminds us, in any situation or time, God is always going to win.

Israel remembers who it is

If we listen that way, with a heart of trust in God's promises and God's care, we experience God as the main actor in the story, and realize that we're hearing about God's intention for God's people. Even at its height, the nation of Israel was never the great power that Egypt, Babylon and Assyria were. They must have always felt small and vulnerable next to those super-powers. And yet they claimed this particular place under the watchful eye of God, and they had a story that backed up that trust and provided a firm foundation for their faith in God and their self-understanding and identity as well. James Newsome says that the story "tells of the utter commitment of God to Israel, and of Israel's fearful doubt. As the story is crafted in this reading, it is a narrative 'toward faith.'" A narrative "toward faith"--the Israelites are on their way.

So the people's understanding of who God is and who they are were inevitably strengthened by this experience of deliverance. But so was their understanding of their future, and their acceptance of the leader that God had sent to take them toward that future, that Promised Land. When the people entered that passage-way carved from the water (another vivid scene from the movie, "The Ten Commandments"), James Newsome writes, they were "a group of refugees, terrified and in panic," but they "emerged on the other shore in awe and in an attitude of faith in Yahweh for this great miracle of salvation." This, then, is another message at the heart of the story: the acceptance of Moses as the leader sent to them by God, worthy of their trust even if he takes them out from the "security" of slavery into a wilderness of risk as well as possibility and hope.

So what do we learn from this story from long ago that will strengthen our faith, our trust in God today? We learn not to let our fear stop us from "stepping out in faith," as the saying goes. Gerald Janzen writes beautifully about this kind of faith, which is "the willingness to pick up and carry one's fear in one's bosom like a weaned child (compare Psalm 131) and go forward in the direction that trust calls for." If fear keeps us trapped in our suffering, then faith as trust is definitely a gift of God: The people of Israel, Janzen writes, "are saved in a double sense. Not only are they delivered from the power of Egypt but they are also delivered from the power of their fear and their doubt." (Janzen's beautiful commentary on Exodus can be found in the Westminster Bible Companion series). Whether the foe we face is as formidable as an ancient empire or as immobilizing as our own fear, God is there to deliver us.

If necessary, reminding God

In fact, the people of Israel, Gary Anderson writes, look back to this great story every time they pray: "Israel comes to know her God in this stupendous fashion so that she can witness through her praise to his beneficent nature (so Exod. 15), but also so that she can be moved to prayers of petition that God would repair matters when things began to break down." Centuries later, during the exile, they could remember and trust God still, for Israel "can have the temerity to remind God, in moments of crisis and lamentation, of his prior acts of fealty." This is all well and good, but we might still ask how and when God decides to intervene in the events of our lives.

This question leads us back to Moses' leadership and his role in the deliverance of his people (not just himself, but his people--we recall that he had escaped Egypt but returned to follow God's instructions on behalf of the people). James Newsome points to another lesson within the text, about the ways of God, "about the nature of God's activity in human life in general," and our role in freeing the captives of the world: "Yahweh does not work in splendid isolation or...from afar. Yahweh works through the special agent who has been designated to act on Yahweh's behalf." A special agent may be a leader, or it may be any one of us, because God works in mysterious ways.

This is the story of which we are a part, a story that, for Christians, continues to Jesus, who declared in his mission statement (in Luke 4) that he had come to "bring liberty to the captives." Walter Brueggemann writes that "the wonders of Jesus are understood as parallel acts of emancipation and transformation wherein Jesus enacts the wonders that properly belong to God." This God is the God who makes--and keeps--promises, not only long ago, to Abraham and Sarah, to Moses on the mountaintop, to the people crossing the Red Sea, but to us, a people of faith, a faith that is trust grounded in who we understand God to be. With that trust, and undeterred by fear, we step out in faith to be those "special agents" of God's love and care in the world.

For Further Reflection
Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners

In South Africa in 1987, Nelson Mandela was still in prison, and the world thought for good. School children were being killed daily by government police, and the struggle seemed to be at a standstill. I met a 14-year-old boy who was, like many there, organizing in elementary and high schools. I asked him if he was optimistic for the future and he said, "Yes." I asked him if he thought there would be a new, free South Africa someday, and he stated to me matter-of-factly, "I shall see to it personally." ...There is simply no other alternative than for each person to see to it personally.

Weekly Seeds is a source for meditation and prayer based on the readings of the "Lectionary," a plan for weekly Bible readings used in Protestant, Anglican and Roman Catholic churches throughout the world. When we pray and study the Bible using the Lectionary, we are praying and studying with millions of others. We invite you to continue the conversation on our "Opening the Bible" forum at http://i.ucc.org.

Weekly Seeds is a service of the Congregational Vitality Initiative, Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, © 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Revised Common Lectionary is © 1992 Consultation on Common Texts. Used by permission. The Ancient Christian Devotional is © 2007 by Thomas C. Oden and ICCS, and is published by InterVarsity Press. Used by permission.