Creative Team Building and Leadership Resources - In our Elements

Hot Pursuit

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Fellow Passengers: This week’s Promise Passage* (Exodus 14:10-29) transports me to a dramatic desert chase scene, with Boss Pharaoh and his Sheriff leading a posse in hot pursuit of the runaway slaves who had plagued them so. The newly freed families had left Egypt with a rebel yell, bearing a heavy plunder of jewels and fine clothes given to them by their grief-crazed captors. The Hebrews had been straightening the curves and flattening the hills for hours when a foreboding started to descend on them and they began to look back over their shoulders, expecting to see who knows what. One of these glances back provided them with the answer: they saw dust stirring up on the far horizon and before long realized that it was the horses and chariots of Pharaoh and army. (Perhaps one of them did a Butch Cassidy impersonation: Who are those guys?) Suddenly they were laden with fears heavier than all the gold and silver on their backs. They ran harder, haunted by the impending prospects of death by horse and chariot stampede. Their terror found an outlet in bitter complaints to Moses, I’d rather be a slave than be buried in my grave under the scorching sand of this strange land! Moses responded with the standard leadership challenge: Fear not! Stand firm! And there they stood, while the Lord created a conspiracy of miracle workers with cloud and fire and wind confounding and confusing the pursuers, splitting the sea into two water walls, drying the saturated soil.

I can resonate with how the runaways must have felt as Moses tried to calm their fears. With human-borne violence behind and water-borne violence ahead, they found themselves standing in the consummate no-man’s-land with no way out. That old Egyptian roof overhead and the three squares of slavery must have looked far better from this angle. As they stood there close to the shore of the rip-tide filled water, I imagine them looking at the sea the way King Hrothgar looked at the imposing lake of the monster Grendel when he described it to Beowulf: A deer, hunted through the woods by packs of hounds, a stag with great horns, though driven through the forest from faraway places, prefers to die on those shores, refuses to save its life in that water. The mighty courage of the great-horned stag, that ancient symbol of macho, was no match for the horrors raging under the surface beyond the shore. I also think about Indiana Jones at the end of the Temple of Doom, when he stood at the door of the cave out onto the cliff and the mammoth drop to the bottom of the ravine, and this was his only way out. He had to have the faith to step out into the abyss of nothingness in order for the bridge to appear. Those are all familiar feelings to any of us called to face our worst fears, to walk through the sands of a soon-to-be raging sea, trusting that the walls of water will not suddenly break the spell and come crashing down, to trust that the land will indeed stay dry enough for us to put one foot in front of the other, and not suck us down into the mire.

The Hebrews listened to the voice of courage, as did Beowulf and Indiana Jones, and walked through their fears. And then God conspired once more with nature and had the waters drown every last one of the Egyptians. In preparation for this watery demise, God spoke, in what I read as a bit of macabre comic relief. God told Moses that by drowning these evil Egyptians, the pursuers would finally be able to acknowledge that He is Lord. Now there’s some radical evangelizing! It reminds me of a cold-war witnessing plan my seminary roommate and I hatched up: ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missions), where we proposed putting thousands of copies of the Four Spiritual Laws on the heads of all our nuclear missiles, to be released just prior to the explosion, so that the Rooskies would learn that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives right before they go up in the mushroom cloud. God is not the only one with a weird sense of humor.

 

How about you? Where does this Promise Passage take you on your journey of faith? Feel free to comment.

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  • Exodus 14:10-29

    *Today's Passage

    As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, “Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians”? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.’ But Moses said to the people, ‘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, and you have only to keep still.’

    Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground. Then I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers.’

    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.

      –Exodus 14:10-29, NRSV