Delivered Sunday, January 16, 2022 at Zion Baptist Church
Good morning!
הנה מה טוב ומה נעים שבת אחים גם יחד…
How good and how pleasant it is when sisters and brothers dwell together! [Psalms 133:1]
This week’s Torah reading describes the dramatic high point of the Exodus, the crossing of the Sea. It’s the ‘Parting the Waters’ moment, the point of no return, the piece de resistance of the whole story.
Benjamin Franklin suggested a depiction of that moment of high drama as the great seal of the United States. In Franklin’s proposed great seal, the Israelites are shown marching through the opened Sea, Moses at their lead, with a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire marking the path.
Dr. King himself fully understood the miraculous nature and high drama of the crossing of the sea. Sixty five years ago he spoke of it at a service of thanksgiving at St John the Divine in New York City marking the Supreme Court’s Brown v Board of Education decision in 1956.
Egypt was the symbol of evil in the form of humiliating oppression, ungodly exploitation and crushing domination. The Israelites symbolized goodness, in the form of devotion and dedication to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These two forces were in a continual struggle against each other—Egypt struggling to maintain her oppressive yoke and Israel struggling to gain freedom from this yoke…This story, at bottom, symbolizes the death of evil. It was the death of inhuman oppression and ungodly exploitation. The death of the Egyptians upon the seashore is a glaring symbol of the ultimate doom of evil in its struggle with good. There is something in the very nature of the universe which is on the side of Israel in its struggle with every Egypt. There is something in the very nature of the universe which ultimately comes to the aid of goodness in its perennial struggle with evil….
YES, YES, YES…And…
Right after that miracle of miracles, something pretty interesting and perhaps surprising happens. The people journey for three days into the wilderness and find that there is no water — ולא מצאו מים (v’lo matz’u mayim)
Immediately, the complaining begins. The people — העם (ha’am) — complain to Moses: מה נשתה (mah nishteh) — what will we drink? Their brief against Moses, and by extension, against God too, continues – there was plenty of food in Egypt; did you bring us out here to die?
God’s response to this first blush of Israelite complaining is to announce ‘I will rain down for you לחם מן השמים (lehem min ha’shamayim) — bread from the heavens. And indeed, manna begins to arrive day by day — יום ביומו (yom b’yomo) — as the Torah puts it.
The spiritual high of the crossing of the Sea has certainly worn off; and it only took three days! What’s going on?
Sefat Emet – a nineteenth century Hasidic master whose actual name was Rabbi Yehuda Leib Alter of Ger in Poland – suggests that the hunger experienced by the Israelites in that moment wasn’t physical or physiological but rather spiritual in nature. רעבון אחר (ra’avon aher) hecalls it, ‘a different kind of hunger.’
My own teacher, Rabbi Erin Leib Smokler, unpacks Sefat Emet’s idea this way: Three days out from experiencing a ‘god who performs wild miracles’ the people are wondering ‘now what?’ Could the god of the plagues – of the big dramatic miracles – ‘also show up moment to moment?’ Beautifully, Rabbi Smokler spells out this ‘other kind of hunger’ — the people seek ‘not a dramatic performer but a reliable provider’; they wish to be faced ‘not with extraordinary shows of force but with humble gestures of care.’ They are, in short, ‘hungry for quiet love.’
Once the afterglow of the big event fades, we’re all hungry for quiet love, deeply in need of humble gestures of care, day by day by day.
The Yom Kippur prayerbook preserves a similar idea. Late in the evening service, just a few hours into a full day fast, we offer these words:
עמך ונחלתך רעבי טובך צמאי חסדך תאבי ישעך
(am’kha v’nahalat’kha r’eivei tuv’kha, tz’meiei hasd’kha, t’eivei yish’ekha)
Your people, Your inheritance – they are hungry for Your goodness,
thirsty for Your kindness, desirous of Your care and concern.
We’re not physically hungry or thirsty at all at that point in the day; we’ve just eaten a big meal in advance of the fast. And yet, we are in fact feeling that other or different kind of hunger that Sefat Emet and Rabbi Smokler speak of – a spiritual, emotional, psychic yearning for God’s goodness and kindness, for God’s constancy.
It’s what we all want, and not only from God, but also from one another – goodness, kindness, concern – day by day by day.
I have one more piece of theology to drop on you to complete this puzzle. Ready? Here goes – after the Israelites cross the Sea, but before they discover no water and start whining, they sing. Their song, known in Jewish tradition as שירת הים (shirat ha’yam) — the Song of the Sea, may just be the oldest part of the Hebrew Bible. It’s a mythic poem that celebrates God’s vanquishing of Pharaoh and of the primordial waters that existed even before Creation.
I will sing to the LORD, for God has triumphed gloriously;
Horse and driver God has hurled into the sea.
Yah is my strength and song.
God is become my deliverance.
This is my God whom I will glorify;
The God of my father, whom I will exalt.
[Exodus 15:1-2]
An early Midrash reads creatively and brilliantly – ‘this is my God whom I will glorify’ — I will model myself after God! How? As God is gracious and compassionate — חנון ורחום — so too shall I be gracious and compassionate. God spreads goodness, love, support, nurturance? Me too. You too.
Rabbi Isaac Hutner, a twentieth century ethicist and philosopher, takes this early rabbinic teaching and runs with it in a spectacular and astonishing way. Without God’s חסד (hesed)— God’s steadfast love — we wouldn’t even exist; so too, without our חסד (hesed) — our determined, reliable care and concern for one another — it’s as if there’s no place for God in the world!
My teacher Rabbi Aviva Richman puts all of that into plainer English for us: ‘What kindness can we do to activate the potential for Divine Presence in the world?’ What care and concern, in other words, might we express for and with one another such that we’ll come to notice and feel God’s Presence in our lives and in our world? Caring for one another with kindness and love during our own long slog into and through the wilderness is the very thing that keeps God in our midst. That’s the big idea.
Dr. King viewed the end of school segregation as the crossing of the Sea. Which means we’ve actually crossed the Sea together more than once. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 – crossing the Sea; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – crossing the Sea; and more crossings besides. But after each of those crossings, we end up on the other side, with that same spiritual longing, facing the need to journey through the wilderness shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand.
Another of my teachers, philosopher Michael Walzer, reads the Exodus story as political metaphor.
The “door of hope” is still open; things are not what they might be — even when what they might be isn’t totally different from what they are. This is a central theme in Western thought, always present though elaborated in many different ways. We still believe, or many of us do, what the Exodus first taught, or what it has commonly been taken to teach, about the meaning and possibility of politics and about its proper form:
— first, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt;
— second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land;
— and third, that “the way to the land is through the wilderness.” There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.
That, I think, is where we stand on this MLK Day; making our way though the wilderness. Which means that it’s time for that ‘other’ face to once again make its appearance. Now, right now, is the time for humble gestures of care, for quiet love, for day to day, and moment to moment, acts of nurture and support.
That’s what we can, indeed must, do for and with one another today, tomorrow, every day.
As usual, Dr. King himself put it best: Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?
May God bless this decades long partnership. With love and kindness, care and concern for one another, let’s keep marching. You never know when and where there’ll be another Sea to cross!
