Devotion for Being Apart -
September 13
I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.
My wise friend Peter recently asked, “Why do we always act like ‘sustainable’ is a positive thing? There are a lot of things that are sustainable that are not good. Racism, clearly is sustainable. We’ve sustained it for a long time.” Then he asked, “Instead of asking if things are sustainable, why aren’t we asking if they’re ‘life-giving’?” “The broken systems that perpetuate injustice in this country are sustainable, but they sure are not life-giving. And a frenzied, way too busy pace of life that drains my soul, I sustained that just fine. But it wasn’t life-giving. “
When we’ve lived in brokenness for so long, it shapes our understanding of what’s possible for a good life to be. We stop asking what a good life is, what is life-giving, what brings wholeness or fullness to our lives and to the world. We shrink down within the walls of our collectively enslaved minds and hearts and we grasp the tiny reprieves and little escapes that keep our lives sustainable.
But when we find ourselves in unknown territory, forced out of our sustainable patterns, possibility opens up for something previously unimaginable. And there are some experiences so significant, so deeply formative, that they change how we define ourselves and become a lens for how we see the world from then on out.
The Red Sea moment is that for the Israelites.
All of our scripture – all Judaism and Christianity in fact – comes through the lens of this story. Even the things that happened before it are seen in retrospect through this part of their story. It’s the starting point: God is the one who delivers. We are the people of a God who saves.
So it’s almost impossible for us to imagine what it was like in the moments before this moment, because we are not given anything from that angle. But I want us to try to imagine it anyway. Because before this moment, their trust in God was hypothetical trust, it was trust in theory, inherited more than personal. The stories of creation, and the ancestors--Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Leah, Rachel, Jacob and Rebekah--were a long time ago, far removed from daily life.
They practiced their faith every day and they believed that God was real and they were the people of God. That was true in the big picture. But what was true for them on the ground, day in and day out, and had been for their parents and grandparents and grandparents’ parents before them, was that they were slaves of Pharaoh. They were valued only for their capacity to labor, cherished less than a chariot horse. They belonged to God, sure. But really, actually, daily, they belonged to Pharaoh for a life of constant work and no rest.
So yes, they’d seen the seven plagues that convinced Pharaoh to release them, they’d seen themselves spared from the angel of Death. Moses said God was leading and they were going to follow Moses. They were ready to be free. Let’s do this. But their trust in God was more abstract then applied. Their right-now-God-is-real-and-God-has-got-me-and-I-am-in-God’s-hands muscles were just starting to get exercised.
So it might have been that they set out on this escape with some brand new baby hope, tentatively trying on, inside themselves and with each other, a new identity that does not involve slavery but is something else, something ancient and true, wondering a little awed about what this might mean.
But now that Pharaoh has unleashed the entire Egyptian military against them, and is running them down in rage, with mighty chariots racing and terrible weapons drawn, they tend to agree with Pharaoh. Who do they think they are to go against the Empire and imagine they could be free? Of course Pharaoh is going to come after his property, his workforce! And of course he is angry!
And now they find themselves on the banks of the Red Sea, with nowhere to turn, and the Egyptian army fast approaching. There is no escape, and they are terrified. And—I love the sarcasm that often comes through, revealing across the centuries the feisty personalities of the Israelites—they say, ‘Hey Moses, were there no graves back in Egypt you could bury us in? You have to drag us into the wilderness to die? Didn’t we say, just leave us alone and let us serve the Egyptians? Huh? Didn’t we say that?”
Life in Egypt was sustainable. This feels like sure and certain death.
When we are in a dark and terrifying place, we’d rather go back to what was, even if what was sucked out our souls. Even if we lived like slaves, working for what doesn’t matter, wasting our lives for something we don’t believe in, grinding away for survival far removed from our deepest belonging and highest calling, with no real rest. Because as bad as that is, at least it’s not death in the wilderness.
And when God is a religious concept that we hang onto but don’t really experience as a real, all-powerful, all-loving being who hangs onto us, it makes us much less thrilled about the risks of really living, and much more willing to settle for merely being alive.
But Moses answers the terrified Israelites, "Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, you have only to keep still."
When we’ve lived in brokenness for so long, it shapes our understanding of what’s possible for a good life to be. We stop asking what a good life is, what is life-giving, what brings wholeness or fullness to our lives and to the world. We shrink down within the walls of our collectively enslaved minds and hearts and we grasp the tiny reprieves and little escapes that keep our lives sustainable.
But when we find ourselves in unknown territory, forced out of our sustainable patterns, possibility opens up for something previously unimaginable. And there are some experiences so significant, so deeply formative, that they change how we define ourselves and become a lens for how we see the world from then on out.
The Red Sea moment is that for the Israelites.
All of our scripture – all Judaism and Christianity in fact – comes through the lens of this story. Even the things that happened before it are seen in retrospect through this part of their story. It’s the starting point: God is the one who delivers. We are the people of a God who saves.
So it’s almost impossible for us to imagine what it was like in the moments before this moment, because we are not given anything from that angle. But I want us to try to imagine it anyway. Because before this moment, their trust in God was hypothetical trust, it was trust in theory, inherited more than personal. The stories of creation, and the ancestors--Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Leah, Rachel, Jacob and Rebekah--were a long time ago, far removed from daily life.
They practiced their faith every day and they believed that God was real and they were the people of God. That was true in the big picture. But what was true for them on the ground, day in and day out, and had been for their parents and grandparents and grandparents’ parents before them, was that they were slaves of Pharaoh. They were valued only for their capacity to labor, cherished less than a chariot horse. They belonged to God, sure. But really, actually, daily, they belonged to Pharaoh for a life of constant work and no rest.
So yes, they’d seen the seven plagues that convinced Pharaoh to release them, they’d seen themselves spared from the angel of Death. Moses said God was leading and they were going to follow Moses. They were ready to be free. Let’s do this. But their trust in God was more abstract then applied. Their right-now-God-is-real-and-God-has-got-me-and-I-am-in-God’s-hands muscles were just starting to get exercised.
So it might have been that they set out on this escape with some brand new baby hope, tentatively trying on, inside themselves and with each other, a new identity that does not involve slavery but is something else, something ancient and true, wondering a little awed about what this might mean.
But now that Pharaoh has unleashed the entire Egyptian military against them, and is running them down in rage, with mighty chariots racing and terrible weapons drawn, they tend to agree with Pharaoh. Who do they think they are to go against the Empire and imagine they could be free? Of course Pharaoh is going to come after his property, his workforce! And of course he is angry!
And now they find themselves on the banks of the Red Sea, with nowhere to turn, and the Egyptian army fast approaching. There is no escape, and they are terrified. And—I love the sarcasm that often comes through, revealing across the centuries the feisty personalities of the Israelites—they say, ‘Hey Moses, were there no graves back in Egypt you could bury us in? You have to drag us into the wilderness to die? Didn’t we say, just leave us alone and let us serve the Egyptians? Huh? Didn’t we say that?”
Life in Egypt was sustainable. This feels like sure and certain death.
When we are in a dark and terrifying place, we’d rather go back to what was, even if what was sucked out our souls. Even if we lived like slaves, working for what doesn’t matter, wasting our lives for something we don’t believe in, grinding away for survival far removed from our deepest belonging and highest calling, with no real rest. Because as bad as that is, at least it’s not death in the wilderness.
And when God is a religious concept that we hang onto but don’t really experience as a real, all-powerful, all-loving being who hangs onto us, it makes us much less thrilled about the risks of really living, and much more willing to settle for merely being alive.
But Moses answers the terrified Israelites, "Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, you have only to keep still."
And then, against all instinct – both as slaves defined by their labor, and as people filled with terror and adrenaline – they are still. They stand still and watch. And before their eyes a re-creation happens. Hemmed in by light and cloud of darkness, there is evening and there is morning, a new day, and this God who formed the earth moves again and the waters are separated, and dry land appears.
God makes a way where there was no way.
And they are brought from death to life.
And then, not only does God save them, but in front of their eyes, God destroys all that would destroy them. God wipes out the enemy entirely, with a bodies-scattered-on-the shoreline kind of finality. The invincible powers dominating them for centuries as an indisputable fact of life were obliterated by the hand of God.
You are MINE. God says decisively. Be still and I will show you this is so.
On either of the Red Sea, life is no picnic. Life is full of hardship and unknown. There is struggle and pain in life no matter what. But on one side fear is dominant, and God seems a nice, sustainable notion while the tangible threats to our stability feel far more powerful than an unreachable God. On that side we are slaves who never stop, whose life is only for existing, whose worth is defined by our doing, who have settled for a small, rigid world with emaciated hope.
But when we pass through the waters to the other side—when, in a moment of terrible need and difficult stillness, God comes to us, and saves us from what was certain to destroy us--we are redefined as people held by God no matter what. We are led into something new and also returning to our identity, ancient and true: we belong to this God. We belong to each other. Heading into the wilderness, as hard as that will be, we are made free.
God begins us in love, and ends us there too. And along the way God grows in us enduring trust, and forms in us expansive hope. God shapes us for a good life—a life of belonging to God and to each other. This life cannot be earned or lost, but only received and enjoyed.
The other side of the Red Sea is not about what is sustainable, but about what is life-giving. Salvation is described in scripture as resting in God’s care. And this is trust too. As the continuation of the Israelite’s story makes clear, learning to live as the people who rest in God’s care, who trust in God, never ends. But it begins here: God saves. God saves us. We are those who are saved by God. We belong to the God who acts to save us; we are the people who rest in God’s care. That is who we are. That is our story.
There is no mustering that faith, or crossing that sea on our own. God must do that. God will act for us. That’s who God is. That’s what God does. So when we are ejected from our sustainable patterns into the unknown, when it feels like persistent and powerful fear will undoubtedly capture and destroy us, when death feels sure and certain, don't be afraid, be still. God will make a way make a way where there is no way. The terrors we face today will not prevail. The Lord will fight for you. You need only Be still.
Amen.
CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:
A simple way of praying that frees us from having to figure out how God should solve things, and allows us to grow in trust that as we hold people and situations up to God, God hears and will act.
This works especially well as a walking prayer.
A simple way of praying that frees us from having to figure out how God should solve things, and allows us to grow in trust that as we hold people and situations up to God, God hears and will act.
This works especially well as a walking prayer.
Here now,
with you,
for _______
For example:
Here now,
with you,
for those sick with covid.
Here now,
with you,
for those fighting fires.
Here now,
with you,
for the hungry and afraid.
Here now,
with you,
for (name).
No comments:
Post a Comment