All too often, I suppose, we miss the point of the story altogether. We make it about freedom for freedom’s sake. We do this in America, because freedom is the dominant storyline. Freedom is king. But, we must remember that this story of liberation and freedom takes place within the context of a larger Story. In that Story, freedom is not king. It is the Story that began with creation, where a stage was set, a script written, and characters formed. Adam and Eve, these first characters went off script, forever changing the storyline and the stage upon which we play.
Chaos, evil, and disorder made its way into the world. But God, our scriptwriter, director, and character himself, has not saw fit to crinkle up the script and start over. No, the good life-giving script and stage can be remade. As the Story continues, God comes to a barren couple and declares that through their descendants the world will be made right. Abraham and Sarah, who are by no means perfect, have faith enough for God to use them. This couple that could have no children have children. They become the parents of Isaac, who becomes the father of Jacob (who receives the name of Israel, one who struggles with God), who then becomes the father of Joseph.
Even though this family is not perfect, in fact many times they are much less than God would have them be, God remembers his promise to Abraham, a promise of faithfulness. Abraham’s descendants, through the forces of a great famine and the resentment of older brothers, end up in the land of Egypt. It is there that this family grows to become a people of great number. But it is also there that they become a people bound by slavery. For 430 years, this family, God’s own people, endure slavery. Everyday they are forced to make bricks of mud and straw.
Soon enough, we are introduced to one of the most profound characters in this great Story, Moses. Pharaoh, in an attempt to keep Israel in check, decides to have all the new male babies thrown into the river. Moses is one of those babies, but through the guiding hand of God, Pharaoh’s daughter plucks Moses from the river. After Moses is grown, he kills an Egyptian slave driver for abusing an Israelite, and he is forced to flee to the wilderness. It is in the wilderness that God comes to Moses in the burning bush.
Even in the midst of these 430 years of slavery, God has not forgotten his promise. Half of it has been fulfilled; Israel is indeed a great host. The promise of land and a home has not yet been realized. So God speaks to Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…” (Exodus 3:7-8). God knows and sees and will now act against those forces, however legitimate they might seem, who seek to keep God’s good intentions for creation from taking place.
Moses, albeit a little begrudgingly, faithfully executes the commands of God. He goes to his people and to Pharaoh and states God’s intentions. Pharaoh does not know this God or the Story God in enacting and so refuses to recognize God’s power to redeem and rescue. Pharaoh is stubborn, and even through earth shacking and world destroying plagues, refuses to relent. That is, until the final plague.
God is intent on freeing Israel, and it seams that drastic measures will need to be taken for Pharaoh to grant their release. So God orders Moses to make preparations for what will become known as the Passover. Every first-born male in the land will die, animals and people alike. Israel, for their part, will smear the blood of a lamb on their doorposts, and the angel of the Lord will pass over their house. It is through this event that Pharaoh will grant Israel’s freedom. Israel is to eat one last meal in Egypt. It is a meal prepared and eaten in haste because God’s deliverance is coming. And come it does. Pharaoh in a fit of grief and rage commands Israel to leave. He later comes to his senses and begins to pursue his lost workforce.
While Israel is being led in their escape, Egypt is in hot pursuit. Soon, Israel will be cornered, the Red Sea on one side and the chariots of Egypt on another. If the mighty acts of God in the plagues were not enough, God parts the water, and Israel emerges on the other side, free from their masters. Pharaoh and his host are no more.
This story of God’s mighty acts to free a people in slavery isn’t really about freedom. It’s about God beginning to work things so that they might be like they were originally intended to be. Israel’s salvation in the Passover and Exodus wasn’t just for Israel. It was for all of creation. It was the God of Creation that brought this salvation. See, God’s purposes for all of creation were put in danger by Pharaoh and his oppressive agenda. Israel is God’s chosen partner to bring about his purposes. The Exodus, in a sense, is God working at re-creation so that his redemption of a world that has gone badly off script might take place.
What does this mean for us? As Israel was in bondage to Egypt, so also are we in bondage to sin and death and society and world that values the individual above anything else. But God’s salvation has never been about the individual. It has never been about pure freedom. It has always been about the remaking of creation. It has always been about enlisting the help of those who have been saved in proclaiming the good news that God has not abandoned the world. The Exodus of Israel from Egypt was for the sake of creation. The Exodus that Jesus Christ brings through his self-emptying life, death and resurrection is for the sake of creation.
You and I are children of the Exodus. We are characters in this Story. We have been, or for some, will be saved. Our salvation is not about our freedom from sin and death. It is, and will always be, about our participation with God in his working to set the world right.
I'm curious about this phrase, "Chaos, evil, and disorder made its way into the world." It seems to me that chaos and disorder, at least, if not also evil (depending on how you want to talk about 'evil') are in some sense inherent to the world: "The earth was formless and void." If original creation is the taming of this chaos and disorder, are you using the term 'world' to speak not of creation generally, but of that which has come to be specifically?
ReplyDeleteI ask because it seems to have important repercussions on God's 'original intentions' for creation. Was creation originally intended to be free of chaos and disorder (taking the much more complicated 'evil' out of the situation for now)? I think you're absolutely right, and this is one of the primary theological emphases for me, to say that redemption is not about 'pure freedom' in any meaningful way. However, and this may go back to our disagreement as to whether and how God is a 'director', it seems to me that the Exodus is misunderstood if it is called a 're-creation' (although I'd have much less trouble speaking of the Flood in this way). If chaos and disorder are inherent to the world, then life is not about overcoming (or being free of) them, but about existing in spite of them. It is a living against death, an ordering in the face of continuous disorder. The story of the Flood seems to imply that chaos is always ready, always able, to come sweeping back in. So, whereas the story of Noah post-flood is a story of reclaiming land, of pushing back the waters, of re-creating life in a place where death reigned supreme, the story of the Exodus is a story of God's continuing creation. God as Creator is not a singular title, reserved for 'the beginning' or even 'the end'. 'Creator' is less a title than a description of God's inherent character. God creates. It is God, in God's infinite creativity (acting with and through the church) which continues to hold back the originary waters of chaos and disorder. The demise of Pharaoh and his army (evidenced by the onslaught of water) signifies that chaos and disorder are themselves not evil, and not something simply to be overcome. Creation has never been free of chaos. The Exodus, then, would not be a re-creation, but merely part of God's continuing action to create the possibility of meaningful life. Pharaoh's actions are themselves uncreative, which makes it meaningful that his demise comes from the rushing waters of chaos. When I read this story, I read it less as a great breakdown (or moving off-script) in need of re-creation than as a demonstration of the symbiotic nature of God's ever-continuing creation (which is undoubtedly in large part due to the little Moltmann angel that perches on my left shoulder).
When it comes down to it, I don't think I'm profoundly disagreeing with you, but I am curious how you envision the chaos and disorder of original creation playing into the story which you have told. Regardless, together we celebrate that redemption "is, and will always be, about our participation with God in his working to set the world right."
I would like to talk about evil being that which works against the purposes of God for creation. This is, perhaps, a less complex and over arching way of talking about evil. I would also agree that the world was not intended to be free from chaos and disorder (There may be some examples of the beauty and goodness of chaos and disorder –perhaps children playing on a playground, it is very chaotic but there is grace and beauty in it). At the same time, chaos and disorder may be co-opted, by human agents, systems and structures, fallen spiritual forces and the like, to actively and intentionally work against the purposes of God for creation. So, perhaps the sentence that reads, “Chaos, evil, and disorder made its way into the world” should read as such, “The forces of Chaos, evil and disorder, having been disfigured in the Fall, began to make their way into the world.” ‘World’ here being the concrete specificness of the descendants of Adam, Eve and Noah.
DeleteI suppose, then, we can say that chaos, when an attempt is made to enforce an order upon it that does not come from God the creator, always ends up working against the purposes of God for creation. God the creator may be able to bring order from chaos, but anyone or anything else, which tries to do so ultimately, works evil. If chaos, when manipulated by a good and creating God, can yield a world that is right and good, then chaos when manipulated by fallen beings and systems will yield a world bound by oppression and self gratification. Chaos then becomes destructive needing God’s “continuing action to create the possibility of meaningful life” and God’s continuing action to restore what has been broken. Perhaps the language of “re-create” carries with it the idea that God is starting over. This is not what I intended to convey. Rather, I wished to communicate that God is intending the salvation that Israel experienced, and that we experience today, to be about being restored. This restoration, then, is in fact a “demonstration of the symbiotic (were you going for symbolic?) nature of God’s ever continuing creation.” Or am I off the mark?