“Peacemaking”

Exodus 14:10-31

Now I bet that you didn’t know that before this pastoring gig got a hold of me, I had a long and prosperous career in landscaping. It all started when I was looking for a summer job as youth in need of some cash. This was not just your residential type of landscaping, mind you. I am talking about a career as a landscaper for a company on the island of Oahu that owned several high rise condominiums. A family friend told me to show up at one of his companies buildings and so I did. When I came that first morning, the head of maintenance gave me a pick axe, a shovel and other assorted gardening tools, and lead me to a hill on the side of the H-1 freeway. “Clear that.” he said to the skinny, gangly, goofy looking kid, pointing to the 100 yard stretch along the freeway.

Ok, said I, not wanting to look like a wimp. I went to the top corner of that hill, and I noticed that the hill was not just weeds. It was full of koa trees and other assorted weeds and brush that had been weed whacked again and again. So the growth wasn’t that high, but at the base, the roots were thick, and they went deep. As I said, I wasn’t going to look like a wimp, so I took that pick, and shovel and I went at it. People driving on the freeway on that sunny morning saw dirt flying in all directions, pick swinging, shovel digging. If they had their windows open, I confess, they heard some unholy language rising up for all to hear. I was in a fever. I was, as they say, “in the zone.” I was determined that this hill was not going to beat me.

I remember one moment distinctly: exhausted, hot, sweaty, covered in that red clay soil, looking up to see that long stretch of hill in front of me, and then looking down at my feet. After hours of furious action “in the zone” I had cleared, oh, about one square foot of that hill. I went in to have lunch with the rest of the maintenance crew and they were laughing. I didn’t last the day. That was my landscaping career. I turned in my pick axe, shovel, & assorted gardening implements. The task was too great for me.

And so we come to this morning’s focus: peace. Just scan this morning’s headlines. “Bombing at Hotel in Pakistan Kills at Least 53” One of the worst acts of terrorism in Pakistan’s history. “Seven hurt in Basque bombings” “Weekend attacks leave dozens injured in Iraq” This is just this morning. Place this in context of the headlines that we see every day, and it is easy to come to the conclusion that achieving peace, true peace, is a task just too great for us.

It is tempting to turn in our shovels and other implements and just say, “Everyone fend for themselves!” When it comes to hoping and working for peace, it can very easily seem, using the imagery of this morning’s story, like we are on the edge a vast sea that can’t be crossed. The uncrossable sea is in front of us and the well armed, blood-thirsty powers of evil are right at our backs. Our very survival is at stake.

In our story, the Israelites had no army to speak of. No heavy duty weapons. At this point of the story, as a nation, they didn’t even have much of a history with this God that had landed them in this predicament. They could only complain and wish they were back in Egypt. “Why did you bring us out here Moses? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

We are not quite so helpless. When faced with an uncrossable sea in front and the powers of evil behind, we reason that the only solution is to fight like the Egyptians. If they come at us with chariots and spears, then we should build even more chariots and spears. And we are tricked by this reasoning into the relentless cycle of violence that never stops. Crossing the sea to peace seems a task naive, misguided, overly idealistic, impossible. So goes human reason. 

But Scripture offers us a different vision. It offers a vision so fantastic, so unbelievable, that it seems foolish even to consider it. It offers a vision of peace. It offers the thought, the possibility that the uncrossable sea, is, maybe, just maybe, not so uncrossable after all.

Now you might be thinking at this point that the story we have before us is quite violent. There is no typical battle, indeed, but the Egyptians all end up dead on the shore. I don’t know about you, but I shudder when I hear that. How can you be talking about peace when God wipes everyone out? I struggle with this, I confess.

I have come to believe that we need to see these kinds of story in their historical context. It is a raw, graphic story of life; not a dispassionate news account of a God that resorts to violence. This story is about a cosmic battle between the power of pharaoh and the power of God. It is a passion play about a world that must choose every day between serving as a slave of pharaoh and following God across an uncrossable sea.

The writer, using the language and imagery of her day, wants the hearer to know that, despite a point spread heavily favoring the armies of pharaoh, God will win. And God’s children, despite all evidence to the contrary, are on the road to freedom and wholeness. The Egyptians in the story, I think, stand less for flesh and blood human beings than they stand for all of the inhuman powers that seek to enslave us. And this story seeks to plant in us the radical thought that vanquishing these powers is a task not to great for God. The armies of pharaoh are powerful indeed, but when we dare to cross the uncrossable sea, says the story, they have no power over us.

I can’t solve all the questions this morning (or ever!). But standing on the edge of the sea, nurtured in a faith that says blessed are the peace makers, following a savior who choose to end up on a cross rather than use violence against violence, believing in the transformative power of love that offers us glimpses into peaceful creation as God intended, we are invited to step into the water and choose peace not just in theory, not just when it is convenient, not just when it doesn’t threaten our way of life. We are invited to choose peace even when it seems an uncrossable sea. The gospel invites all of us to make that choice.

If there is anything we can learn from this story this morning, it is the suggestion that when it comes to peace, the uncrossable sea is, perhaps, not so uncrossable after all. ““Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today (14:13).”

There is one more element of the story I would like to point out: Moses.

Did you notice what the Lord told him to do? “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 (14:15-16).”

As we have discovered throughout this journey through the Exodus story, God uses partners in accomplishing God’s plan. God chose Moses to lift up his staff and lead the people forward. That’s all Moses had to do to begin this great crossing, that one small act, and it started the great divine wind. Do you think there is truth here for us? I do.

We have had some pretty dedicated people working on the building project this past week. They were tasked with tying rebar together on the walls of the gym with little bits of wire. The rebar, when it is all tied together along the wall, will provide strength and structure when they cover it with shockcrete. (This is part of the earthquake reinforcement in our little project.) Now, if you were to look at one little tie, it would amount to almost nothing. It would hold up next to nothing. But when you put a whole bunch of ties together, you have the makings of one strong wall.

That’s what this “Declaration of Principles for a Presidential Executive Order on Prisoner Treatment, Torture and Cruelty” is all about.

Torture is an action that belongs to Pharaoh. When evil rides up behind us and the uncrossable sea is before us, it is tempting as the seemingly last resort, but there is a wind blowing. To choose not to use torture is a choice for peace. There is a wind blowing, and in the wind is a whisper, “raise your staff...stretch out your hand. The uncrossable sea is not so uncrossable after all.”

You are invited, today, to sign this declaration, and to raise your staff, and help lead the way to peace. Each signature may not mean much by itself, but you put enough of them together, and we begin to cross that uncrossable sea. As we cross, our sad complaining is transformed into a song of celebration. Peace is possible...together. This task is not too great for us. With the wind at our backs, and as the sea becomes dry land, we discover that we are not alone.

My father was a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II in the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia) and after they were defeated, of Indonesian independence forces (since my grandfather worked for the Dutch colonial government.) My father witnessed and experienced much suffering.

At one point, for three nights in a row, there was a call for a minister, someone who could preach good news in the midst of suffering. On the third night, my father, a teenager at the time, stretched out his hand and said, “I will preach.” He was transported deep in the night from camp to camp to comfort those who suffered. When he came back to his own bamboo hut, he would cry out to the Lord, “How can I continue? What will I say?”

One night, there was a Dutch soldier who was awake when my father returned. He wiggled my father’s toe, and beckoned him over to a crack in the bamboo wall. “Look up,” he said. In the dark night sky was the vast spread of countless bright stars. “If God’s arms are long enough to rule all of those stars, they are not too short to reach down and save you.”

You are not alone peacemakers. Raise your staff. Feel the wind at your back, and just see what happens.

Amen.

September 21, 2008

Rev. Paul Heins

First Presbyterian Church

Logan, Utah