Tag: Divine Intervention

Exposed and Naked: We are Lost

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

We are not in control; this bothers us. Further, we are lost to ourselves, to others, and seemingly within history; this makes us anxious. To be out of control is one thing, but to be immersed in a fog not knowing where we are or what to do, too? Distressing. Why is it distressing? Because human beings are built to be seen and heard, to be found not only with others in family and community, with friends and peers, but also within our own minds and bodies. When familiar ground is ripped out from underneath us, everything comes tumbling down like some sort of bad cosmic trick gone horribly wrong. Losing a sense of place in the world doesn’t just impact that particular sense or place; it impacts the entire person from head to toe. Lost a job or retire from one? Well, who are you now when said occupation and work no longer offers you a stable and consistent sense of place and being, a tangible sense of purpose? Losing this singular piece of footing bleeds into your relationships with others; insecurity knows no boundaries and oozes into the cracks and crevices you didn’t even knew existed. Ultimately, you begin to question your own self, you own worth, your own existence.

So, our lack of control wedded to our being lost makes us feel groundless. Having a front row seat to the chaos and tumult of our world—local, national, and global—adds to our feeling lost. It’s one thing when our own personal worlds are impacted by a personal event, another when it’s quite possible that World War III is about to or has started and when our own country feels utterly confused and divided. (Let’s not even mention the confusion of our seasons locally as Summer outbids Spring for position after Winter.) The leadership we turn to—global, national, and local—provides no comfort since those in power seem to be dead set on appeasing the relentless appetite of their own egos. No one is listening to our cries; no one is even listening for them. We are unseen in the collision of nationalism and privilege, as the very few battle against each other for more power and possession ignoring how many of us are waving our arms begging for it all to stop! The weight of embracing the reality that we just don’t matter in all of this adds insult to existing injury of insecurity and instability. (It’s not like human beings are paragons of self-assurance and confidence; we are fragile creatures, don’t forget!) So, our lack of control bothers us; our being lost causes us to be anxious.

Exodus 12:1-14

We find Moses and the Israelites encased in a crucible of utter need and dependence. They are stuck under the strong arm of Pharoah; nothing will change this man’s heart. He is hardhearted and stiff-necked, refusing to liberate the Israelites so that they may go their own way to worship their God. There have been nine plagues to strike the land thus far and none of them have moved Pharoah one inch toward releasing the Israelites. And even when Pharoah’s magicians and sorcerers were found inept to reduplicate the latter curses, Pharoah remained steadfast in his determination not to liberate God’s people. The Children of God, the people of Israel, are stuck having no recourse of their own to find liberation from enslavement and oppression.

So, God steps in one more time.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. (Ex. 12:1-4)

Israel’s liberation depends on this banquet[ii] built from the flesh and blood of a young, spotless lamb slaughtered and thoroughly fire-roasted, eaten in haste with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, while its blood dries on lintels and doorposts (Ex. 12:5-11). To protect their firstborns and gain liberation, the Israelites must trust Moses and this word “from the Lord,” and do as Moses says (unwaveringly). To secure their passage through this passing over—where God will Passover the land of Egypt, striking dead all firstborns in houses without lamb’s blood decorating lintels and doorposts—the Israelites must proceed exactly as Moses describes; in this trust and faith, they will avoid God’s executed judgment coming for Egypt and Pharoah.

But are the Israelites really escaping it? The Children of Israel must stand under the lintel and between the doorposts covered in blood, they must rest and trust that this blood sacrifice is enough to spare them from the angel of death gearing up to surge through all of Egypt. Moses tells us,

The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. (Ex. 12:12-13)

They must voluntarily fall under another divine judgment: they are not in control, and they are lost without divine intervention. They cannot embrace comfort in this moment but only immense stress and strenuous anxiety; being out of control and lost is the perfect recipe for such stress and anxiety.[iii] Unable to keep believing they are the masters and mistresses, authors of their own destinies, the Israelites must submit themselves to the judgment of God that God is God and they are not. They must confess that Pharaoh will not let them go unless God steps in. They may escape the judgment ending in death of the first born, but, in this moment of deep trust and faith, they do not escape the judgment resulting in their own deaths to their notions and mythologies that they are gods unto themselves. As they wait with bated breath, hoping against hope, it’s this judgment that will actually save their lives and be their “protective covering,”[iv] now and forever. In fact, this very event will be commemorated and will mark the new year (Ex. 12:14).[v] But it will also be so much more than that. It will be the beginning of their new life with God as God’s children, humbled before God, trusting God, and found in God.

Conclusion

The Israelites are caught in their lostness and anxiety because everything around them is chaos and tumult and only getting worse. They are trapped in their anxiety, and the only way out from such anxiety and lostness is to throw themselves into what feels like an anachronistic “Hail Mary” and dare to trust God and have faith in God. They have a choice: submit to God’s judgment that they are lost and not in control, that they are groundless or reject God and keep believing that they are in control and not lost. One will result in finding themselves on the new and firm ground in God grasping new life, sure love, and divine liberation forever secured under divine protective covering; the other will find themselves and their firstborns swallowed up by the old ground of captivity, indiference, and death. The human being, whether ancient Israelite or post-postmodern person, cannot overcome, on their own without intervention, this utter lostness and oppressive anxiety born from the human tendency to dethrone God and throne oneself in God’s stead.

As it was for the Israelites, so it is for us.

Holy Week continues Lent’s commanding us into a state of being exposed and naked, into an honesty that will peel back our facades and remove our masks, bringing us to a very naked state that will feel like complete and total death. We are brought to our most dreaded confession: we are not in control, and we are lost creatures bearing crippling anxiety, utterly distressed, and groundless. But it’s out of this death, this confession, out of this naked and vulnerable place, where God’s word liberates us out of death and into life by God’s love. This word that brings this divine life to dead creatures, God preaches through God’s son, Jesus the Christ; it is this incarnate word that becomes the source of our bond with God even when we feel the most lost and the most anxious, and when we are at our most exposed and naked; it is the new and sure ground under our feet. It is the very source of our new life, new love, and new liberation. God is coming to clothe God’s own in the “protective covering” of the righteous garments of divine love, life, and liberation so they can become creatures who have new eyes and ears to see and hear the fear and anxiety within themselves and from others, to confess our own lostness and notice the lostness of others. And in doing so, becoming the people who bring love where there is indifference, life where there is death, and liberation where there is captivity.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 125. “Preparations for the exodus” “Israel is to prepare for the coming redemption with a sacrificial banquet while the final plague is occurring and is to commemorate the event in the future on its anniversary by eating unleavened bread for a week and reenacting the banquet. This banquet became the prototype of the postbiblical Seder, the festive meal at which the exodus story is retold and expounded each year to this day on the holiday of Pesah (Passover), as explained below.”

[iii] LW 9:154-155. Bread of Affliction, “He calls it ‘bread of affliction’ because of the past affliction which they suffered when they first ate this bread. He explains by quickly adding, ‘Because you came out in a hurried flight,’ that is, with anxiety and fear, just as those who are in straits will make haste and be in distress, so that they flee as fast as possible. For this is the force of this word…which does mean simply to hasten or tremble but…to try to flee out of distress…”

[iv] Tigay, “Exodus,” 126. “In most European languages, it is also the name of Easter (as in French ‘Paques’). The translation ‘passover’ (and hence the English name of the holiday) is probably incorrect. The alternativity translation ‘protective offering’ is more likely…”

[v] Tigay, “Exodus,” 125. “Since the exodus will be commemorated on its anniversary every year…the preparatory instructions begin with the calendar. Henceforth the year will commence with the month of the exodus, and months will be referred to by ordinal numbers rather than names….Since the number will mean essentially ‘in the Xth month since we gained freedom,’ every reference to a month will commemorate the redemption.”

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Exposed and Naked: We are Unsafe

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

We are not in control; this bothers us. Further, we are not safe, to others or to ourselves; this angers us. To be out of control is one thing, but to be wildly unsafe, too? Offensive. So, we do whatever we can to create an atmosphere around us that feels safe, that causes us to feel okay, like everything is fine. But it’s not; nothing is fine. As politicians and pundits spin narratives and weave tales causing our attention to be diverted from the real problems plaguing our land and location, we hide behind our own mythologies and cover ourselves up with our various blankets of ignorance. The heavier the blanket, the safer we feel; the taller the myth, the more secure we think we are. We vacillate between having to know increasingly more (the more we know the more we can control) and not wanting to know anything and sticking our heads in the sand (if we can just not know we will regain some sense of safety and maybe even comfort). But this drive to cover up and hide from that which causes us to feel unsafe means that our community with others breaks down: as we hide from and deny the disasters swirling and twirling around us, we—ourselves—become our biggest problem not just to ourselves but especially to our neighbors, the ones fighting for their right to live in this world, the ones most visibly threatened by nationalism and extremism.

So, our lack of control wedded to our being and feeling unsafe makes us feel hopeless. In a world where it feels that World War III is always one strike away, where unstable and erratic egos leave more death in their wake than life, where one’s power and privilege are more valuable than the life of the least of us, our sensations of feeling unsafe surge. Surely, if they are coming for my neighbor…then am I next? In this surging feeling of unsafety, our hypervigilance turns to hyperarousal, and we lash out at anyone and anything. Humans need to feel safe; it’s the fundamental level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The divides and divisions caused by viewer driven news rooms that plague our communities get worse because we must view everyone else as a threat and patch-work some modicum amount of safety no matter how tattered that sense of safety is. But this makes us exceptionally unstable creatures and no mythology (no matter how it glitters and sparkles in the light) will cause use to feel and thus to be safe (to ourselves and to others). We are always just one moment away from complete break-down. We are nuclear weapons charged and ready to go off at any moment. Our lack of control bothers us; our unsafety angers us.

Is there any help for such as these?

Exodus 17:1-7

Moses[ii] begins by telling us of a journey and of a problem, From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink (v1). Being without water is no small issue. Rephidim is the last stop before entering the terrain of Sinai.[iii] Thus, being without water here—about to travel through the terrain of mountains and sand dunes in a climate that is demanding being of high elevation and often cold—is life threatening. In normal circumstances a person can survive 3-5 days without water, add in exertion, a challenging climate, and tough terrain, and that number falls.

The Israelites have every right to be disturbed by this, as Moses tells us, The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink,” (v 2a). Humans without water (assuming they did not have much water to begin with as they embarked on their journey) become easily angered as dehydration sets in; thus, quarreling makes sense as a characteristic of dehydration and the fruit of the fear that is setting in. They feel unsafe and thus they are becoming unsafe to themselves and others. However, Moses appears to be rather unphased by the dire situation. His reply? “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” (v2b). Not the most pastoral response.

So, the people ramp up their complaints against Moses, and it’s understandable. With no foreseeable way to get water, and with a leader who seems to consider their needs to be mere “quarreling” and disobedience to God, the Israelites escalate—which happens when fear and anger are not addressed but exacerbated. As the Israelites feel the impending doom of their being unsafe, they respond from that place of fear and anger and the situation gets worse. As Moses, tells us, But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” (v 3). If Moses doesn’t act now, he’ll be facing a full-on uprising and rightly so. Can we blame the Israelites for their reply of desperation?

Here, Moses senses just how serious the problem is and does what any good leader of God’s people should do (even if a moment delayed): call on God to help. Our text tells us, So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me,” (v4). The narrative doesn’t really give a glimpse of how bad the situation is until Moses mentions to God that the people “are almost ready to stone me.” The community—the people and its divine appointed leader, Moses—are in a tenuous situation. Death threatens to rear his head, anger and fear are the emotional monarchs, and the situation is far from safe; it’s perilous. So, in this moment, Moses throws himself at God’s feet in desperation; he’s failing to deescalate.

Thankfully, God does step in and instructs Moses to cause water to flow,

“Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink. Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called [Rephidim[iv]] Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (vv5-7)

Seems God does not have a problem providing God’s people with water to drink; what if anyone had just asked God? Moses accuses the people of testing God; it seems to me that Moses is the being tested. The people did demand to see that God is present by invoking quarrels with Moses because they were thirsty;[v] thus why Rephidim is then called “Massa and Meribah”, being wordplays on quarreling and trying from v2.[vi] However, the people are also asking a deeper question of Moses: Are you with us? Do you see us? We are about to die of thirst, and do you care? Ignoring and dismissing the needs of the people is not the right way of faithful leadership; it is the slipperiest of slopes to the people devising not only their own solutions and building their case for disbelieving God.[vii] God’s chosen leader must represent God to the people and the people to God; Moses failed this test in this moment. Moses could have heard their cry (the voice of an unsafe situation from people who are scared and angry) and have asked God to help him and them. But now Moses’s leadership is being questioned and doubted. Notice that there are elders to be selected to go with Moses to witness[viii] the striking of the limestone rock that causes the water trapped within to flow;[ix] God is aware that the people need to see (and know) that not only is God with them but God is with Moses thus Moses must be with them. These witnesses will be testament to the reality that both God and Moses are with the Israelites, through thick and thin, in good and bad, when things flow with milk and honey and when water seems scarce.

Conclusion

The Israelites are caught in their fear and anger because the situation they find themselves in is precarious: they are unsafe and they become unsafe to themselves and to others. Fear and anger are born here and cause stones to be lifted to make one’s point known; fear and anger when things are unsafe do not know any limits and boundaries, the rational and reasonable components of the human intellect and mind are bound and gagged. The human being, whether ancient Israelite or post-postmodern person, cannot overcome, on their own without intervention, their anger and fear born from feeling and being unsafe. Trapped in unsafety, the human being will resort to their primal instincts and fight, like any trapped animal would.

As it was for the Israelites, so it is for us.

Lent commands us into a state of being exposed and naked, into an honesty that will peel back our facades and remove our masks, bringing us to a very naked state that will feel like complete and total death. We are brought to our most dreaded confession: we are not in control, and we are unsafe creatures, afraid and angry. But it’s out of this death, this confession, out of this naked and vulnerable place, where God’s word liberates us out of death and into life by God’s love. This word that brings this divine life to dead creatures, God preaches through God’s son, Jesus the Christ; it is this incarnate word that becomes the source of our sure ground when we are at our most unsafe, most exposed, and most naked. It is the very source of our new life, new love, and new liberation. God is coming to clothe God’s own in the righteous garments of divine love, life, and liberation so they can become creatures who have new eyes and ears to see and hear the pain around them, bringing love where there is indifference, life where there is death, and liberation where there is captivity.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Using Moses as the traditional author because it is both easier and makes for more interesting story telling

[iii] Jeffrey H. Tigay, “Exodus,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 142. “Rephidim, the last station before Sinai…and, to judge from v.6, near Sinai.”

[iv] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “The place, Rephidim, not Horeb.”

[v] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Try. i.e. to test, demanding proof that God was present among them and controlling the events.”

[vi] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Massah and Meribah, meaning ‘The Place of Testing and Quarreling.’ These names, playing on the verbs ‘quarrel’ and ‘try’ used in v.2, became by words for Israel’s lack of trust in God.”

[vii] LW 11:55 “For to tempt in the hearts is something else than tempting in words. The children of Israel in the wilderness always doubted that they had been led out by the hand of the Lord indeed, they did not believe it…They came to this unbelief because they argued form a human point of view: ‘If the Lord were with us, and if we had been led out by the hand of the Lord, would we be bothered with hunger and thirst in this way? Would we thus lack everything? If the Lord had done it, we would undoubtedly have everything we want, and we would be in a land flowing with milk and honey, as He promised us. But no, since everything is opposite, it is not true that the lord has led us out, but you have done it.”

[viii] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Moses is to take some of the elders, perhaps as witnesses, and set out for Horeb (Sinai), ‘the mountain of God’ 3.1), to obtain water.”

[ix] Tigay, “Exodus,” 142. “Strike the rock: In the Sinai there are limestone rocks from which small amounts of water drip, and a blow to their soft surface can expose a porous inner layer contained water. A similar but enigmatic episode, with differences suggesting that its an oral variant of this one, appears in Nu. 20.2-13…”

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