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Exodus 14: 5-9;
19 October
11, 2009 THE
SONG OF MIRIAM: For the last few weeks, we’ve been working on some of the old bible stories of our faith, and this morning I would have us explore one of the oldest pieces of poetry found in the bible, “The Song of Miriam.” Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, The horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea. This is one of the oldest poetic couplets in the bible, dating back probably to the time of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. Now, please forgive me for saying so, but in terms of competition, I think Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost are fairly safe. For me, this does not represent the best of literature, and neither does it represent the best of theology, for clearly it portrays God as one who intervenes in human history and uses violence to destroy those who are on the “wrong side.” Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, The horse and the rider he
has thrown into the sea. This Song of Miriam comes as something of a musical interlude in the story of the Exodus. You remember from your Sunday School lessons how the people of Israel – the Israelites – had been slaves down in the land of Egypt. Moses, who was himself an Israelite, had been adopted by an Egyptian princess and raised in the house of Pharaoh, but one day he finds himself overwhelmed with righteous indignation, and he intervenes on behalf of the Israelites, and he kills one of the Egyptians. He then runs away to the land of Midian, and it is there that he sees a burning bush and feels compelled, called by God to go back to Egypt to become a liberator for his people. In retelling this story I confess I feel a little embarrassed because it’s sort of like those dramatic readings you may have heard that tell all of Shakespeare’s plays in about 5 minutes – with Hamlet, Macbeth, Falstaff, Prospero, Henry 5th, Othello, Iago, Portia, Shylock, Julius Caesar, Romeo, Juliet, King Lear, all run together in one long run-on sentence. Be that as it may, I’m counting on you to go back and fill in the gaps, for surely this indeed one of the greatest stories ever told, filled with all kinds of applications for the lives we live today, but allow me to say, as long as, as long as we do not take it too literally. As you may remember, Moses confronts Pharaoh and says, “Let my people go!” And then when he doesn’t, Moses appeals to God and the Egyptians are given a whole series of plagues as sort of an early warning signal. Code Blue or Code Yellow, if you will, to use the color codes of Homeland Security. First, Moses throws down his staff and it becomes a snake, in my imagination, a King Cobra, and then when the wizards of Egypt turn their staffs into snakes, the King Cobra goes around and gobbles up all of their snakes. This particular staff, by the way, was made by our Native American friends on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and it is made out of what they call “diamond cedar.” And so you better be nice to me, for, if I were to drop it, it might become a diamond back rattlesnake! Anyway, after the battle of the snakes, the Nile is turned into an environmental disaster, a river of blood, killing all the fish, and then, when that still didn’t work, through Moses, God sends a plague of frogs. Everywhere you looked, there were frogs. Now, as one who rather likes frogs, finding them to be rather benign, I wonder why God or Moses or both of them would choose frogs. Also, frogs seem to be somewhat out of order in this mathematical progression: from a King Cobra to a River of Blood to a bunch of cute little frogs? I mean if you were to create a plague for your enemies, why use frogs? Why not ticks or mosquitoes or flies or slugs? Imagine stepping out of bed onto a floor full of slugs; now that would be enough for me. I’d say, “Anything you want; just get rid of the slugs.” Anyway, frogs it was, and then when that didn’t work, God came to His or Her senses and started using some really heavy artillery -- gnats and flies, swarms of them – a thousand times worse than the black fly season up in New Hampshire or the gnats down in the southern part of Georgia, and if you’ve ever experienced these furies, you know how quickly you would capitulate to Moses’ command: Let my people go! But Pharaoh was tough and not easily intimidated, and so Moses then called in the really bad plagues. A disease was sent that killed all the Egyptian cows but not the Israelite cows. Darwin spoke of Natural Selection; but this might be thought of as Theological Selection. And then, all the Egyptians were afflicted with boils and then hail and thunderstorm and then a cloud of locusts and a thick darkness covered all of Egypt. But Pharaoh was either as tough as nails or a slow learner, for none of this seemed to work. Perhaps you remember what God and Moses did next. All the Israelites were told to the put the blood of a lamb on their doors, and in the night, the Angel of Death came to every household and for every house that did not have the blood of the lamb on its door, the first born child of that family was killed. Why do children always have to die for the sins of their parents, but so it was in this story, and so finally the Pharaoh decided that enough was enough and so he let the Israelites go. The people started out on what would be a 40 year sojourn through the wilderness, but they didn’t even get to the Red Sea before they looked back, and there were 600 chariots bearing down on them. But once again, Moses’ staff seems to have had powerful medicine, for as he holds it up high, the waters part, and the Israelites cross over to the other side, but then, when those 600 chariots try to do the same, the waters rush back and all the Egyptians are drowned. And so, finally – finally – we come to our story for this morning, the story of Miriam and the song she sang on the far side of the Red Sea. Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, The horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea. With Moses and Aaron being more task-oriented, holding up the staff and saying, “no time to waste, we must push on toward the Promised Land, Miriam took out her timbrel, a musical instrument probably very similar to the tambourine, and she led the people in a joyous celebration. The Staff and the Tambourine. Usually the “staff” wins out, but in this case, the tambourine and the spirit of Miriam prevailed. Picture hundreds, if not thousands of Israelites, long in captivity but now finally, they are free, and I love to think of Miriam back in captivity, packing up for her long journey, and out of all the things, all the practical things she might have brought on that long journey – clothes and blankets and cooking utensils -- she chose to bring along a tambourine. She seemed to understand that life is more than practicality; life is more than just getting there, far more than just getting to the top; life is more than just responsibility; there also needs to be expressions of joy, playfulness, celebrations, even daily celebrations, birthday celebrations and “unbirthday celebrations” as well, and so even with her big brother, Moses, eager to get started, waving his staff and telling her to put her tambourine away, Miriam says, “no, this is a time for festivity”, and so she dances and sings and plays her tambourine. Now, what do we do with this story? As much as I love this story as a story of liberation, and as much as I love the impractical joy of the tambourine, I don’t know about you, but I have problems with the theology of this story. I have problems with what this old, old bible story says about the nature of God. I mean it is one thing for Miriam to dance and sing and play her tambourine to celebrate their liberation from captivity; that much I can appreciate. But when you imagine this, what does it do for you, how do you feel when you picture her playing the tambourine and then singing those ancient words of poetry: Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, The horse and the rider he has thrown into the sea. Now, there are some who read the bible as if all of it – every square inch of it – is the literal truth, but for me, this story is a case in point of how problematic that literal reading of the bible is, particularly in the light of what we know about the life and teachings of Jesus. If Jesus said, as we believe he did, that we should “love our enemies”, I doubt very much if he would approve of anyone dancing on the grave of their enemy. I mean, can you see Jesus and the disciples dancing on the grave of a Roman Soldier? Furthermore, I may be in the minority, but I refuse to believe in a God that would turn the Nile or any other river into an environmental disaster just to make a point, and I cringe when I think of the God that I know and love as sending the angel of death to slaughter the innocent children of my enemy. What we see in the bible and so many of these ancient stories is not so much the nature of God but rather the nature of people’s understanding of God. God does not equal theology. God does not equal our words about God. What we do see in these stories and throughout the bible is an evolution in people’s understanding of God, and indeed, these old stories were a way in which they could work their way through their more primitive, problematic theologies, holding on to what was good and discarding what was bad. Now we need to be careful here in not making a big divide between the Old Testament and the New Testament, as if everything in the Old Testament is antiquated and everything in the New Testament is enlightened. This is sometimes called “supercessionalism”, the belief that Christian theology supercedes Judaism. Actually, we don’t have to wait for the New Testament to find what I would call a more enlightened understanding of God. Take a look at the book of Job and I think you can see there a much more enlightened understanding of God than what we find in the more primitive theology in “the song of Miriam.” Job is a good man, but sadly and inexplicably he loses everything, and so it is with life. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. Life isn’t always fair. Sometimes our enemies prevail, and sometimes they don’t, and if we put too much trust in the lyrics of Miriam’s song, we’ll always be wondering why God doesn’t intervene; why doesn’t God reach down and smite my enemies? What’s wrong with me, I lift up my staff, but nothing seems to happen? All of which is to say that “the Song of Miriam” has great music but lousy lyrics. And yet, at the same time, I wouldn’t want to lose this story, for this story is the story of human liberation. All of us are on a journey from captivity to freedom, all of us know what it’s like to be enslaved and to have enemies – foreign, domestic and internal, and these are perhaps the most fearsome enemies of all. The internal enemies are the most infernal enemies. I think it was St. Augustine who said, “Imagine the arrogance of thinking your enemy can do you more harm than your enmity.” And so it is in that sense that I can understand this ancient story, for I can think of a lot of enemies that I would like to “drown” – bitterness and resentment and greed and cynicism and self-righteousness and self doubt and jealousy and negativity and fear and hate. When these come riding into our lives – 600 chariots strong -- the Moses in you and me is one who holds up a staff and says, “With God’s help, I will not be defeated.” “I will not allow myself to be destroyed.” “I am greater than my enemies. I am stronger than my enmity.” And it is then, when we put our faith in God, that it does seem as if we find a way through those troubled waters, whatever that turbulence may be. Like all the bible stories, this one is multifaceted and has not one but many different applications. Sometimes our enemies are internal – spiritual, emotional or psychological – but sometimes also our enemies are embodied; they are out there in those who would do us harm, and so this ancient story of the Exodus from Egypt has had huge, huge implications for all sorts of liberation movements, for those who have been in captivity – for the slaves in this country, for the black people of South Africa, for the Jews during the Holocaust, for the Greeks and the Armenians during the Ottoman Empire, for Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry during the early days of this country, for Che Guevara in South and Central America, for the Huguenots in France, for the Palestinians under the Israeli occupation, for homosexuals like Matthew Shepherd beaten to a pulp and then left to die on a barbed wire fence. For all of these, this story is so very, very important, for there isn’t a person among us who doesn’t yearn for freedom. If it is true that “the hero has a thousand faces” – to borrow the language of Joseph Campbell – so it is also true that Pharaoh has a thousand faces as well. So, for me, this staff is a reminder of the spirit of Moses and the role that he played as a liberator for his people. For me, it’s a reminder that the church needs to always venture beyond its comfort zones to be always on the side of those who are oppressed and to stand up to the Pharaohs of this world, whoever and wherever they may be. I am proud of my father who stood up to a Pharaoh by the name of Adolph Hitler during World War II, and I am equally proud of him, for I never saw him “dance” – literally or figuratively -- on the graves of the soldiers he may have killed, for being the person of faith that he was, he knew that the best soldiers are always the sad soldiers, the reluctant soldiers, those who do what they have to do because there seems to be no other way. But when I look at this staff, I’m also reminded of the walking stick of a man by the name of Mahatma Gandhi who used non-violent resistance against a different sort of Pharaoh. Nevertheless, as important as the staff is and all that it may symbolize, we also need to remember the importance, the spiritual significance of the tambourine. In the long journey from captivity to liberation, at those times when life seems to be one battle after another, when we are weary of holding up this staff, when we feel overwhelmed by all of our responsibilities, as important as those responsibilities are, I hope we will also remember the spirit of Miriam, who in addition to all the more practical stuff in her luggage, also packed away a tambourine. For birthdays and unbirthdays, for victories of the spirit, large and small, for fears that we have overcome, for hatreds and jealousies we have put to rest, for the sheer joy of being alive, for the privilege of being able to see the colors of autumn, for the daily liturgies of forgiveness and reconciliation that take place in our families and communities, for every time we have said “no” to some addiction, for every time we have said “yes” to ourselves or to someone else, for every time we have allowed ourselves to be people of hope, for the joy of learning something new, for some negative emotion we have conquered, for some new friendship that has deeply enriched our lives, for a job well done and for a job even half done, for an intermission from some mission you are on, for finding the courage to knock the devil off your back, for finding the humility and the patience to knock the chip off your own shoulder, for the sheer joy of looking back over your shoulder and patting yourself on the back for all the Red Seas you have passed through… for all these reasons, and so many more, keep a tambourine nearby, and sing the song of Miriam and if you change the lyrics, that’s okay with me! Amen.
David W. Good Old Lyme, Connecticut
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