RBWords

     In an age when "special effects" have to be truly elaborate to get more than a yawn from moviegoers, the scene showing the dividing of the Red Sea in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS by Cecil B. DeMille may seem almost crude!  But when I was a kid [Oh, SO long ago!], it was spectacular.  Scripture scholars tell us that the original trip was not quite as dramatic, but they're not the story teller!  To this day, when I think of Moses, I think of Charleton Heston, leading the Israelites between those two walls of water!  The vividness of the scene and its dramatic impact are the stuff of good story AND good theology.  It may not be nice to "mess with Mother Nature," but it is even less nice to mess with God!  Pharaoh learns the hard way!  The Israelites will have their turn as well!  

     Delivery from slavery and oppression is the major theme of the Passover.  We Americans should find that familiar.  Our secular patriotic civil religion uses that theme in recounting the "American Revolution" and the "Civil War!"  Theologically, it is transformed by Jesus into his own action in saving humanity from its own slavery to sin.  We transform it regularly into people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr.  We memorialize their lives with large monuments.  The perspectives are different, however.  In the case of Moses, we are dealing with thousands of years of history.  In the case of Jesus, we are dealing with eternity!  

     At the Easter Vigil, today's first scripture is one of the required readings for a good reason.  Lest we forget.......AMEN