SAINT ANTHONY PARK LUTHERAN CHURCH, SAINT PAUL, MN

22 MARCH 2006

TEXT: EXODUS 14:21-23, 26-31; 15:20-21

PREACHER: FREDERICK J. GAISER

 

AND MIRIAM SANG

 

            This week and last week—two pictures serve as bookends to the biblical exodus story.[1] The same little girl whom we met last week standing beside the water of the Nile, watching to see that her baby brother would be rescued, now stands as an adult beside the water of the sea, celebrating the final victory.[2] The battle is over, Pharaoh’s army is decimated, and Israel is free.

Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them:

            “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;

                        horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” (Exod 15:20-21)

            And who would not?! Indeed, who could refrain? According to the psalmist, even the sea fled and the mountains skipped like rams (Ps 114:3-4). What mortal would not sing in praise and awe at such a moment?

            Remember VE Day and VJ Day, celebrating the victories in Europe and Japan at the end of World War II—if not in person, then at least in pictures? Remember the famous Life magazine photograph of the sailor kissing the nurse? Praise and jubilation broke out, because they did, because they must.

            Remember the dramatic ending of the sixth game of the 1991 World Series (brought to mind again by Kirby Puckett’s death) and the Twins victory in the final game the next day? Who in these parts did not sing and dance and jump with joy even as the Braves slunk back to Atlanta in defeat? Or for you younger people for whom even 1991 is ancient history, picture the endings of the games in last week’s girls’ basketball tournament. Screaming and jumping for some. Tears and dejection for others.

            Still, sports are one thing; war is another. No victory in war without death—violent death. And the early Jewish rabbis worried about that. Of course, they gave thanks for God’s deliverance. And rabbis still do. Who will not sing when Auschwitz is liberated and the gates of Dachau are opened? The oppressed are set free—but others, guilty and innocent others, have to die to make it happen. “Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians,” says our text, “and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore....So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses” (Exod 14:30-31). And the rabbis wondered. Does God care about the dead Egyptians? Does God rejoice when our enemies die in the same way that we rejoice? God’s people often seem to think so.

            The Star Tribune reported a few weeks ago a conversation about the problem of evil between an avowed atheist, August Berkshire, and Christian students at Northwestern College, in which Berkshire said to the students, “All of you here are nicer than the God you believe in.”[3] Was Berkshire right?

            The early rabbis thought he was not. “But does the Holy One, blessed be He, rejoice over the downfall of the wicked?” wonders the Jewish Talmud.[4] Then it goes on to comment on our text for this evening: “When the Egyptian armies were drowning in the sea, the Heavenly Hosts broke out in songs of jubilation. God silenced them and said, ‘My creatures are perishing, and you sing praises?’”[5]

            Indeed, during the Passover Seder, commemorating the exodus victory, Jews to this day pour out ten drops from the first cup of wine, because, as they say, “Our triumph is diminished by the slaughter of the foe, as the wine within the cup of joy is lessened when we pour ten drops for the plagues upon Egypt.”[6]

            This lesson was brought home to me as a child when I learned from my parents and the media to despise the treason of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—rightly so, no doubt, for they were convicted in 1951 of delivering atomic secrets to the Russians. So when the news came on the radio of their execution in 1953, I cheered, aloud. I was surprised then and humbled now by the rebuke from my father, from whom I had picked up most of my attitude about their treachery, that death was never an occasion for rejoicing.

            But there stands Miriam, singing with joy. Suppose we had her here. Or suppose we could interrogate her picture. Do you do well to sing, Miriam? You who know so well the pain of the death of your own people? What might Miriam say?

            First, no doubt, would be the “can’t not” response, which is understandable. Release produces, “Oh!” Joy produces song. “When the wicked perish, there is jubilation,” reports Proverbs (11:10). And make no mistake, slavery and torture are wicked. God wants no part of them. Against all such, Miriam would say, my brother Moses was right: God becomes a “man of war” (Exod 15:3). God did, and the wicked perished. So, of course, we sang, Miriam would say. You would too.

            And I understand that, Miriam. I even agree. We’d all be happy to have our mourning turned into dancing—and we would dance. And sometimes violence does seem the only way to overturn oppression. But, Miriam, consider the compromise; consider God’s compromise; consider the terrible price. Dear Miriam, have you seen the bodies?

            You’ve been to an African village, Miriam might say. You’ve been welcomed by the women with song and tambourine and ululation. It’s a welcome, a greeting, an outburst, it’s what village women do—and my sisters and I were welcoming victory, greeting the dawn of a new day, ululating God. We were not praising death.

            I get that, too, Miriam, and I rejoice with you. What you did was spontaneous and wonderful. I’m sure God loves ululation even more than I do. It stirs our spirits and, no doubt, God’s too. But, oh, Miriam, when you breathed in after your hallelujahs, did you smell the bodies?

            But it’s about freedom, Miriam would say. We were bound and now we’re free. We were blind and now we see. Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, we’re free at last. Freedom sings!

            Right, Miriam, of course. And we celebrate your freedom, for it is our freedom as well. No exodus, no Israel; no Israel, no Old Testament; no Old Testament, no Jesus; no Jesus, nobody here! We’re free, too, and we sing with Jesus in our soul. We know that, Miriam, but, oh, Miriam, don’t you see that dead Egyptian boy over there on the bank. He can’t be more than twelve, and he is bloated and blue. Isn’t there another way?

            But look at the picture, Miriam says. Look closely. And listen to our song. It’s not just Egyptians that die here. Death dies here. Look at the soldier and the spear and the shield, the war horse and the chariot. The implements of war are vanquished here. The bow is broken, and plowshares are possible. See the new green life emerging? Can’t we sing for that?

            Oh, yes, Miriam; yes, we can. Here’s what I think: If we sing for the death of the enemy—any enemy—we perpetuate death. What goes around comes around, and the killing never stops. But if we sing for the death of enmity, we promote life. Can enmity die, Miriam? We hope so, and, oh, how we would sing. But, still, Miriam, the vultures are picking at the bellies and the eyeballs, and the sight makes me swallow my song. Isn’t there another way?

            Look again, says Miriam. See how my sister and I are bowed, not proud. We bow in awe at God’s wonder, for we know the victory is God’s, not ours. We do not praise war or death; we praise only God and the future that God has in store for us. For that, we must sing.

            True, Miriam. You speak well. I see why they call you prophetess. But the bodies are washing up still, Miriam; in your story, in our story, in every generation. Too many bodies; too much death; too many war songs; too much killing in God’s name. Isn’t there another way? Be a prophetess again. What do you see?

            The other way will be hard, I fear. I see Isaiah saying that God will not act in this way again; that God will do a new thing, and will not again quench the wick of the wicked in the sea as God here quenched the wick of life in Egypt’s troops (Isa 42:3; 43:17-19). Not again. But that way is hard, even for God. That way will lead my people Israel to become a servant to the nations, says Isaiah, despised and rejected, bearing the infirmities and the transgressions of the other, countering wickedness with forgiveness, suffering for the transformation of the sinner (Isa 52:13-53:12). This will be God’s new way, God says, but it will not be easy (53:10). For I see farther. I see the servant Israel become flesh in a young Jewish carpenter. I see that servant mocked and tormented for speaking God’s word and turning the other cheek. I see that servant on the cross, forgiving his enemies. And now I see that body, bloated and blue. It will not be easy. For there is no resurrection without the death of wickedness and arrogance—yours and mine. Only so does death lose its sting.

            Not easy, Miriam—not easy for God; not easy for us. But it brings hope. Here at last is the death of enmity rather than the death of the enemy. Here at last I can celebrate the death of wickedness within myself, rather than that of the wicked other. Here at last is the death of arrogance rather than the song of arrogance. Here at last is forgiveness for me and the power to forgive others. Here at last is the death of the me that perpetuates death. Here at last is something that can make us new so we no longer demean others and kill in God’s name. Here at last is life. Help us, Miriam, to see it, to cherish it, to learn it, and to be transformed by it. Sing life, Miriam, and we sing with you. Oh, how we will sing. AMEN


[1]Sermons in this Saint Anthony Park Lutheran Church Lenten series are based on biblical texts illustrated by Chinese Christian artist He Qi. This week’s featured picture, “Miriam Prophetess and Sister,” is viewable at http://www.heqiarts.com/gallery/print%20gallery%202005/pages/MiriamProphetessandSister.html. The artwork displayed last week, “Finding Moses,” is viewable at http://www.heqiarts.com/gallery/print%20gallery%202005/pages/FindingMoses.html. (Both websites accessed 20 March 2006.)

[2]Everett Fox sees Miriam’s two appearances as a structural inclusio around the story; see The Five Books of Moses, in The Schocken Bible, vol. 1 (New York: Schocken, 1995) 336.

[3]Pamela Miller, “The Atheist and the Christians,” Star Tribune, 25 February 2006, E11.

[4]The Babylonian Talmud: Seder Nezikin 5, Sanhedrin 39b, trans. Jacob Shachter and H. Freedman, vol. 1 (London: Soncino, 1935) 251.

[5]This wording appears in A Passover Haggadah: The New Union Haggadah, ed. Herbert Bronstein for the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Penguin, 1982) 48. The side note refers to Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 39b. The rabbinic argument is extensive in this section of The Babylonian Talmud (see previous note). There the sentence at issue reads: “In that hour the ministering angels wished to utter the song [of praise] before the Holy One, blessed by He, but He rebuked them, saying: My handiwork [the Egyptians] is drowning in the sea; would ye utter song before me!” (251). A similar account of this exchange appears also in Megilla 10b.

[6]Passover Haggadah, 49.