The Conversation on the Other Side of the Red Sea

There is a midrash story told about the splitting of the Red Sea. Specifically about who will go into the sea first. I collected this translation from Conservative Yeshiva Online. I hope you might read the original writing as it is very good.

(Exodus 14:22) "And the children of Israel came in the midst of the sea on the dry land": Rabbi Meir said one interpretation. When the tribes stood at the sea, this one said: ‘I will descend first into the sea’ and the other said: I will descend first into the sea’. In the midst of their argument, the tribe of Benjamin jumped and descended into the sea first, as it is written: ‘There is little Benjamin who went into the sea (rodem), the princes of Judah who stoned them, the princes of Zebulun and Naphtali. Your God has ordained strength for you, the strength, O God, which you displayed for us on high.’ (Psalms 68:28-9) Do not read “rodem – ruling them” but “rad yam – descended into the sea” Then the princes of Judah threw stones at them, as it says: ‘The princes of Judah stoned them’

A parable. To what can this be compared? To a king who had two sons, one older and one younger. The king said to the younger one: ‘Wake me up at sunrise’ and he told his older son: ‘Wake me up at the third hour of the day‘. When the younger son went to wake his father at sunrise, the older brother did not let him, saying: ‘Father told me to wake him at the third hour.’ The younger brother responded: ‘He said top me at sunrise.’ While they were standing and arguing, their father woke up and he said to them: ‘My sons, in any case, both of you only had my honor in mind. So, too, I will not withhold my reward from you.

Here the ironic part of the story that the tribes who wanted to prove that they were the most faithful to God were the ones who attempted harm. One might think that God would reward the tribe of Benjamin for their faithfulness and also punish the other tribes for their attempted harm towards Benjamin. And yet, the midrash calls that into question with the parable in which neither son fulfils the commandment of the king. It is also worth noting that each son attempts to stop his brother in the attempt to accomplish the commandment the other was given. Then the king wakes up and does not punish either son for their failure to follow either commandment nor for being an obstacle to the other.

Be it the LMC, the GMC, (both of which have an image of communion on the homepages) or the UMC (with an image of serving those in need on the homepage), or any other movement/denomination that ends in “MC”, there is a strong temptation to pick up stones and take aim at the other we see being “irresponsible” while our side is “faithful”.

The current UMC stands at the edge of the sea. We are stuck between the fear of being powerless to stop the coming armies of change, and the frustration as we face a legislative sea we cannot navigate. Some are arguing, others are quite, still others are jumping in.

The parable suggests that God can give contradicting commandments to the children. This parable suggests to me that it is our unease with contradiction that is the problem, not the commandments. Until we come to peace with the contradictions we find in the Bible, the contradictions we find in ourselves, the contradictions of being a church, we will be tempted to thwart and stone one another. Rather than try to eradicate the contradiction by splitting and breaking and “othering”, the contradictions give us a chance to practice living with one another - even as we disagree - so that we can learn to love fully.

We spend a lot of time focusing on the conversations we are having on this side of the sea. However, one day we will get to the other side of the sea. The crisis will subside. The threat will be gone. And then we will have to turn to one another and realize God did not leave anyone behind.

I wonder what the conversation was like on the other side of the sea between the tribes? I doubt they argued about who was the most faithful, but turned their attention to thanksgiving and praise for God’s faithfulness. I wonder what the conversation of the sons were after the king rewarded them both, even in their failures? I bet it was less about who was the better son and more about how can they mirror the king.

Casting Out the Caster-Outers

This Holy Week we recall how Jesus threw people out of the temple. Specifically the moneychangers and those who set up tables

Mark’s telling of this story goes like this:

Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”?
But you have made it a den of robbers.’
And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

It is said that the chief priests and scribes were upset about this action, so much so they wanted to kill Jesus. They are so offended that Jesus would do such an action and they want to get to the bottom of this. So just a few verses later, they go to Jesus and ask him by what authority does he act?

These folks are not a fan of being thrown out of the temple and called thieves or bandits. They do not like the idea that Jesus was suggesting that these leaders did not care about the people; Jesus suggesting they were taking advantage of the poor. They did not like being tossed out of the center of their religious home.

Among the many genius things of Jesus, one of the most brilliant things of Jesus is his ability to use the very mechanism of the systems against itself. Jesus only does what the leadership of the temple had been doing - casting people out.

For instance, there were ten people with leprosy (Luke 17:11-19). If you had leprosy, you were cast out of the temple for being a sinner and unclean. There was a man born blind and when he disagreed with the leadership, he was cast out (John 9). There was a woman at a well who had been cast out of the community for having several husbands (John 4). There were children who wanted to see Jesus and the disciples tried to cast them out (Mark 10:13-16).

The temple and the leadership of the day was excellent at casting people out.

The leadership found it acceptable and perhaps even honorable when others were cast out. But when the leadership is cast out, when they get a taste of their own medicine, when they see in the mirror all that they had been doing to others - it was only then that the leadership wanted to kill Jesus.

It is brilliant that Jesus was able to use the very same system of “casting out” to expose and destroy the very system of casting out. It is not surprising that we do not like to be the ones doing the casting, but we surely are deeply offended when we are the ones cast out.

What About Those Satan Shoes?

Violence is all around us and we know this, but we do all that we can to avoid knowing that we know this. And so, when that violence is put in our faces and we are forced to see it, we are confronted with the reality that now we know, that we know that we know.

Enter the weird world of high end shoes.

I do not know who "Lil Nas X” is. From what I see he is a child of God, African American, member of the LGBTQ community who also makes music. The only reason I know this name is that he helped to create something called “Satan” shoes. Nike has no affiliation with these shoes, just like they had no affiliation with the “Jesus” shoes. Chances are you and I did not hear about the Jesus shoes, but you may have heard of the “Satan” shoes.

I am not endorsing either shoe, I think they are both idols. They are both similar in their design using the same base shoe. It is unclear to me if Nike was okay with the Jesus shoe, but they clearly want it known they are not okay with the Satan shoe (everyone is more comfortable profiting off Jesus anyways). While one has a pentagram tag, the other has a golden Jesus on a silver cross. Both has scripture on the side (we will return to that) that translates to their obscene price point. The Jesus shoe was more expensive ($1425 vs. $1018) because the scripture reference was from Matthew 14:25 (“And early in the morning he [Jesus] came walking towards them on the lake”). The Satan shoes reference Luke 10:18 (“He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.’”).

The Satan shoes have a disgust factor and that is adding to all this I am sure. The Jesus shoe has water from the River Jordan in the shoe. The Satan shoe has red ink and a drop of human blood. Let’s start with that.

The Satan shoes are not the only thing on the market with human blood. Many of us have diamonds on our hands that have blood in them. Fast fashion has blood in it. Technology has blood in it. These are not the first Nike shoes (again, Nike is not involved with these shoes) that have blood in them. What makes the Satan shoes different is that the blood is not masked or hidden. The violence is right in front of you. You cannot pretend to not know the human cost. And when we know that we know that we know, we often get upset. The blood in the shoes is not new, we just liked it better when we could not see it.

The Satan shoes are awful to us not just because of the idolatry we might associate with them. Our collective non-rage of the Jesus shoes suggests that we are okay with the idolatry of Christ in gold form. The Satan shoes are awful to us because they reveal to us that we know what we pretend to not know. We know that we know and we would rather not know that we know. We are a people addicted to violence. We are a people who believe the lie that violence can solve our conflicts. We are a people who believe that there are conditions where spilling of human blood is acceptable - war, capital punishment, abortion, gun violence, etc.

I did not think that we had a limit to where blood could be spilled. Apparently I was wrong.

We draw the line at shoes.

The Ten Commandments - Bottoms Up

Human beings seem to love lists. I would guess that 30-35% of sports talk radio is some form of “list talk”. Questions like “top 5 soccer players” or “who would you have in your starting line up” or “worst quarterback of all time” all are versions of “list talk”.

Like most lists, there is a bias toward #1. It is usually at the top of the list as you work your way up from #10. The “top spot” is reserved for the penultimate of the list talk conversation and the top of the list is also a short hand embodiment of the whole list. It is as though lists “build up” to who is #1 like a triangle with #1 being the peak.

This is bias is important in that it impacts how we read and understand the 10 commandments of Exodus 20.

The bias toward #1 might give the impression that the first commandment (You shall not have any other gods before me), is the most important. And there is nothing wrong with that assumption, frankly that is a really good commandment. However, the power of that commandment is lost when we read it as #1 and the others are slightly “less important” - especially the farther down the list you get.

However, if we read the 10 commandments not as a list of descending commandments, but as a list that builds up to something then we come to a keen insight.

If you read the 10 commandments as building up to the last commandment (you shall not covet) then you may come to see that it is #10 that is the most important commandment - not the least.

If we were a people who did not covet , if we did not desire the desires of others, if we were only desiring the desires of God, then all the other commandments would not be necessary. We have false gods because we covet the power of that god. We do not honor the sabbath because we covet the approval of the market to make money. We would not kill or participate in adulatory if we did not covet our neighbors things or loved ones.

The next time you read the 10 Commandments, consider reading them from ten to one and see how that impacts how you understand them. And then, let us not violate the commandment to covet.