Sermon:
September 15, 2002
Sunday Night Alive!  

Scripture:
Exodus 14:10-15

Did you ever play with cars when you were young? Maybe we still do. It’s the size that changes. The thrill really doesn’t. 

Many years ago I loved to play with the old classic Matchboxes. They used to come in the cardboard boxes. There were whole cities made out of plastic you could buy and drive them on….roads, garages, gas stations, they’d all snap together. You could spend hours driving the cars around. 

I used to have a tackle box filled with all my prized cars, but they’re gone….probably somewhere between tree forts, baseball and girls, it was all sold in a garage sale or given away. Today I’m sure it would be quite a find. I mention this because we rarely realize how significant an event is or will be until we see it in hindsight. 

This week the Oakland Press ran an article on a high school senior from Walled Lake Western who is not playing football this year (9/10/02). There are probably handfuls of seniors not playing football this fall, but Mark Guy’s story caught my attention. You see, Mark grew up in a family of alcoholics. As he put it: “They didn’t care what I did, so I didn’t either.” By eighth grade, he was big for his age, absent from school weeks at a time, and had but two goals: to get drunk and get high. 

While he didn’t choose it, Mark’s is not an uncommon story. In Exodus, God himself reminds us that the sins of the parents will still be seen to the third and fourth generation (Ex. 34:7). Mark’s past is not what was so unusual, it was what he became. After threatening a teacher, the state stepped in and Mark found himself in a detox and anger management program for the next year and a half. Once out, he went to live with his aunt and uncle, to make a new start. He joined the football team, and with coaches who became surrogate fathers, he thrived….grew to be a leader….grew to be a man.  

So why isn’t he playing? Because his early problems required that he repeat his course work and his eligibility (four years) has run out. While everyone worried that this would send him back into past patterns, Mark decided he is not going back. He still practices every day, and every Friday night he is on the sideline….knowing he won’t play, but cheering on his friends. 

Mark knows from where he has come. Today he hardly recognizes the boy that gave birth to the man. He is on the other side….and we cheer for him (and maybe cry for him). But what about those times when we find ourselves on the shore of life, looking out across the water and wondering what to do? Isn’t that where we find ourselves a lot? It is great to look back and see from where we’ve come, but it is the seeing where we’re going that is usually a little more tricky. 

This evening, our reading chronicles one of those most pivotal times for God’s people. For thousands of years it has been looked to as one of God’s mighty saving acts. But had we been present, we may have heard all around us an echoing question: “Lord, you want us to go where?”    

The story is familiar. Moses is leading the people out of Egypt. Pharaoh, coming to his senses, has called his army and gone after them. By this time, the Israelites have come to the Red Sea and see no way across. They see only the armies of Pharaoh coming and, with a passion that each of us has felt, turn to Moses, saying: “Whose idea was it to come out here in the first place?” 

Please take a moment to read Exodus 14:10-15. Verse 15 catches my attention every time I read it. God says, “Moses, why do you cry out to me?” “Oh Moses, not you, too.” “Just get moving. I’ll take care of it.” 

Years ago, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band put to music what everyone already knows: 

“If you’re going to see a rainbow, you have to stand a little rain.”

Others put it: 

“To see the view, you have to climb the mountain.”

“The hardest part on any journey is the first step.” 

We could go on and on. It should not surprise us, then, that we have to go through the water to get to the other side. But sometimes that water looks deep, the river seems wide, the current feels awfully strong. And while Paul speaks to the Corinthians and wants them (and us) to be confident and brave, and cheers us to “walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7), it is what we see that still scares the heck out of us. 

Do you remember the old Indiana Jones movies? The last of the series was entitled Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In this one, Indy and his friends are looking for the Holy Grail, the cup from the Last Supper. Fast forward through the movie. Indiana and his father are in the desert of Palestine. They have followed the map to a remote ravine and discovered the ancient cave where the grail is said to be. The tunnel opens to an underground chasm hundreds of feet deep. There is an opening on the other side, but seemingly no way across.           

They are stuck. Until they remember the words of the senseless riddle. I don’t remember the riddle. But a light dawns on Indy’s face and he takes a step of faith. The camera angle swings, and what’s revealed is a narrow bridge that, while completely undetectable from the opening of the path, is there nonetheless for those who have the courage to take the first step.  

Conventional wisdom would suggest that “When we reach the end of our rope, we do what?”   “We tie a knot and hang on.” But if we read what is presented here (the Bible) as the history of God’s self-revelation to his people….as the Word by which God seeks to have relationship with those who would know Him….we see how, over and over again, when God’s people reached the end of their rope, rather than tying a knot, God said: “Let go.” 

Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, Jonah, Peter and Paul. Time and time again we see those who knew God, trusted in God and spent their lives with God, unable to recognize where the path went from the situation they faced. Hesitant to take the next step, asking: “You want me to go where?” 

Even Jesus, the one who knew and trusted his father’s will more than any other, struggled in his full humanity to go through the water. In the Garden on the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem….following the Last Supper….on the night he was to be betrayed….Jesus prayed: “Father, remove this cup from me. But please, not what I want. What do you want?”  

The Israelites cried before Moses that they were doomed. Moses looked to the water and, while desperately trying to rally their will to fight as an army, knew their destruction was imminent. It is near impossible to guess what God is going to do, to try to see his work before it happens. He has never called us to be so presumptuous. 

I feel for folks who have a consuming need to know the answers, the guaranteed outcome, before they take action. Because we’re reminded once again by God’s word, by this story of God’s glory that has been told generation after generation, that God more often simply says: “Let go.” Then: “Here are the answers, my plan, does it meet with your approval? Is it enough to trust in?” 

Had the Israelites stayed where they were, they would have been destroyed. Had Indiana not taken a step of faith….that, yes, may have meant falling to his death….he never would have reached the Grail. 

When I think of the parting of the Red Sea, I don’t see a bearded Charlton Heston standing up on a rock with his arms outstretched and the foaming waters drawing back. I see uncertain people like you and me….whose minds are telling them, “This is nuts! Go Where?!”….as they step, tentative though they may be, from the shore. Whose hearts reach beyond what they see and what they can understand to grasp the incomprehensible. 

Each of us stands on that shore. And each of us must decide if we are willing to give God the opportunity to bring us through the water to the other side. It’s not a decision we can make in reverse. We must decide its value now and dare to take the journey that truly begins where the path ends.  

Amen.