Re-reading the Red Sea

The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Proper 19A, Track 1, 9/17/23

Readings: Exodus 14:19-31 (Parting of the Red Sea), Romans 14:1-12 (Do not pass judgment), Matthew 18:21-35 (Parable of the Unforgiving Slave)

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.

Today we hear one of the most iconic stories in all of scripture; the story of God delivering his chosen people, the Israelites, from the pursuit of their enslavers, the Egyptians. As we know, the story goes that God miraculously parts the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to cross to safety, while the Egyptian army is left scrambling in the muck until the sea comes crashing down upon them, swallowing them into the depths.

Depending on your generation, this story might conjure up images of Charlton Heston as a handsome Hollywood Moses, rendered in glorious technicolor in Cecil DeMille’s 1956 epic film, The Ten Commandments. Or, perhaps, if you’re a bit younger, your mind’s eye pictures the story from the perspective of the charming 1998 animated musical drama, The Prince of Egypt. Or perhaps you imagine the scene in another way.

There are hundreds of musical, artistic, and cinematic retellings of the Crossing of the Red Sea and the fact that it remains such an iconic Biblical story, even in the mainstream, is a testament to the power that the story holds over our popular imagination. I think that part of our enduring fascination with this story is because of how excitingly dramatic and also straightforward it appears to be, which we know is not always the case in Biblical narratives. Scripture is so often narratively confusing and theologically muddy. Not so in this event. There are clear protagonists, the underdog Israelites, who are led by the charismatic prophet Moses; and there is a clear villain – Pharaoh, the perfect Hollywood bad guy. There is rising action as Pharaoh’s army hunts down the Israelites in a high speed chariot chase and there is a tremendous climax as God delivers the good guys while the bad guys are left thwarted and utterly defeated in a definitive triumph for God. A happy and tidy ending, if we would like to leave it that way.

The way that we often retell this iconic story leaves little room for ambiguity, which makes for excellent storytelling, however, as I’m sure you’ve found, stories that reduce reality to neat categories of absolute good and evil, while entertaining, are typically limited in their usefulness to us in the real world, where good individuals often find themselves enmeshed in structures that create evil; and real world evil often looks much more mundane than sinister, as Hollywood archetypes would lead us to believe. Now I believe that this story actually allows for more a more nuanced interpretation than popular retellings give it credit for, so please humor me as we look at the story of the parting of the Red Sea from various perspectives to see what we can glean.

Let’s begin by revisiting the bad guys, the Egyptians. As a child in Sunday school, I often pitied the evil Egyptians, which I think was less of a reflection of my compassionate character and more of a subconscious admission of my own guilt as a fellow tormenter. As a tyrannical little Pharaoh, I often treated my poor younger sister as an Israelite. Nonetheless, it’s worth considering whether all the Egyptians deserved the severe punishment of drowning fearfully in the Red Sea. Surely there were some bad actors, such as Pharaoh himself, who God gave multiple opportunities to turn from his wickedness, and yet he would not relent. But what about all of the contractors, foot soldiers, bureaucrats, and non-military personnel whose livelihood was enmeshed in the will of a government that they had little say over? Surely they were as much victims of Pharaoh’s authoritarianism as they were perpetrators of what theologians and ethicists call structural evil.

You see, this idea of structural evil suggests that evil is so often manifest most potently in largescale social systems rather than in individuals, and then the pervasiveness of these systems and structures allows individuals to easily rationalize their participation in them by asking the questions: What other options do I really have? If not me, won’t someone else just do it? And, I have to earn a living to take care of my family don’t I? It’s a brutal cycle. And so, I believe that a nuanced understanding of the story allows for us to imagine God’s compassion for those who are mired deeply in these systems of evil that trap us like thick, constricting mud on the ocean floor. In Rabbinic tradition, Jewish scholars imagined that God stopped the angels from rejoicing at the demise of the Egyptians, whom He regarded as “the works of his hands” whom he pitied to see, drowning in the sea (B. Sanhedrin 39b).

And it’s also helpful to remind ourselves at this point that scripture is not merely about retelling God’s actions as literal historical events. Scripture is about helping us to see God’s consistent character of steadfast faithfulness and love. If we leave the story to a strict literal interpretation, this would be a story about God killing thousands of people in order to save others whom He was more partial towards. But this isn’t what the story is about. At a spiritual level, the story is about God’s conquest, not over individual humans behaving badly, but it is about God’s victory over the very forces of evil themselves, which Pharaoh and his army came to embody. Frankly I’m not as interested in the historical plausibility of this event, as I am about what it teaches us about the nature of God and God’s will for us. While I’m not saying that the parting of the Red Sea is just an outdated myth, I am suggesting that stories don’t need to have literally happened for them to be true. And the truth of this story is that God loves us too much to let evil overtake us.

So what about our valiant heroes, the Israelites? It’s their upstanding moral fortitude and unwavering faith in God that saves them isn’t it? Let’s take a closer look. In the verses just preceding where we find them cornered between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea, the Israelites cry out cynically to God, saying “was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (Ex. 14:11), which is a pretty clever retort if you ask me. Then, in the next verse, they tell God that “it would  have been better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (14:12). And who can blame them? They believed in this moment, as most of us have at some point, that God had abandoned them. We find them not as heroic beacons of faith, but as fragile human beings who act as humans do when we are scared and cornered.

You see, there’s a curious thing that can easily go overlooked in this story. The way that God led the Israelites out of Egypt in the first place was by appearing as a giant pillar of clouds and fire that they could see with their eyes as a clear sign of God’s presence leading them to safety. Then, the text tells us that when they reached the Red Sea – the pinnacle of their crisis – the cloud of the Lord then moved “from in front of them and took its place behind them,” where they could presumably no longer see or feel God’s presence with them (14:19). Moments of deep crisis in our lives have a tendency to obscure our sense of God being truly with us.

But little did the Israelites know, the cloud representing God protecting them had moved between them and Pharaoh’s army – the threat of evil and destruction that loomed behind them. God never ceased to remain with them and to protect them, even though God’s presence was obscured from their eyes. So too with each of you. If you believe, as I do, that this story is not actually about the Israelites, or about the Egyptians, or about us, but it is about God’s unrelenting faithfulness to us to protect and deliver us from the powers of darkness, then we too can and should find assurance that God is with us in every trial that befalls us.

God is with us most strongly when we ourselves are not strong enough to sense His presence. The story of God’s deliverance of the Israelites from the Egyptians hearkens to God’s deliverance of the whole world from the grip of evil, which was overcome once and for all by the cross of Christ and the empty tomb. Christ Jesus took the consequences of sin and evil for the oppressed, for the oppressor, and for all of us who stand somewhere in between. God is faithful to us even when our faith is greatly shaken, and as we pass through darkness to move into light, God is behind us, and in front of us, and within us. 

So as we gather to celebrate God’s faithfulness to us in the Eucharist and at our joyful parish picnic today, let us sing to the Lord as Moses did, for God is with us and “God has greatly triumphed” (15:1). Amen.