Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21

Pentecost +18 – Year A

Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21

Do you remember the biggest moral equivalent of a "roadside bomb"? – God and Moses and the Red Sea!

How did you first react to this passage? With joy because you identified with trapped Israelites? With sorrow because of the insanity of persecution?

Have you kept to your first reading or have you found another perspective from which to view such events?

Miriam dances her response? How would you use your body to demonstrate your response?

Was it for such an event as this that cloud and fire had led the Israelites? Are we again proving a God's need for praise? demonstrating the essential weakness of a chosen people needing saving, time after time?

When there is no Truth and Reconciliation process forgiveness is not forthcoming. New life is held in abeyance. So threats continue to be made, lacking any wisdom or different model. In response, a defensive action becomes offensive. And we are set up for further conflict internal (golden calves and rampaging death) and external (seeing giants and committing genocide).

This praise doesn't last all that long. Moses who used a staff to beat water into rock will soon be baited into beating a rock into water. Neither of these grand actions move the story along, we are kept in a retributive and reactive mode.

Let's find something larger to sing about.