It will change your life!

Problem.
Cry for help.
Intervention.
Happiness.

This is the pattern of just about every TV commercial you will ever see. Arnold has bad credit/bad breath/bad clothes. Arnold asks the sky/his wife/his friend for help. The celebrity endorser/his wife/his friend says “Here! This product will solve all your problems!” Arnold not only now has good credit/good breath/good clothes, but also a remarkable sense of peace/joy/popularity/wealth.

Usually, part two of the story goes like this: Betty sees commercial. Betty goes and buys the product. Betty may or may not now have good credit/good breath/good clothes, but does not find that all her life’s problems are solved.  Right?

Now take a look at this story. Israel has no water. Israel complains about having no water. God says “Here! Here is some water, because I am with you.”

Same pattern, except for two things: the story of God and God’s people never ends, and God can actually provide all those things that commercial products can’t.   Whatever it might have meant to the people who originally heard the story, in our world today, it’s a great reminder that God is the only one who can actually fix our broken lives.

• Have you ever bought something because the commercial made it look so great, and then been disappointed? What was that like?
• Why do you think people believe so easily that a new product will solve everything?
• Is there anything in your life you wish God would fix? If you haven’t, try asking. (Sometimes God doesn’t answer as quickly or in the way we would like, but it’s always worth asking.) See what happens.

What have you done for me lately?

In politics, if you want someone’s vote or support or money, you often have to make them promises. It doesn’t matter what you’ve already done for them – they want to know what you’re about to do for them. And certainly if you haven done anything for them for a little while, it doesn’t matter how big a thing you did for them – they want to know “what have you done for me lately?”

In politics, maybe, that makes sense. But now the people of Israel are treating Moses and Aaron and God like politicians! “Sure, you freed us from Pharaoh. But what have you done for us lately?”  The grass is looking greener back in Egypt.

• Why do you think they feel this way?
• How have you experienced this “what have you done for me lately?” way of life, either in how you’ve approached someone else or how they’ve treated you?
• Why do you think it’s hard for people to stay grateful for past gifts?

 

THE Exodus

It’s finally here – the exodus itself, the journey away from what the Israelites had always known and toward a future they couldn’t quite even imagine yet.

This is one of the most important stories we have – the story of how God led the Israelites out from slavery to freedom (and conquered a mighty military power in the process). At the Easter Vigil service, when we tell the big story of who we are as Christians, this chapter of Exodus is the only chapter in the whole Old Testament that MUST be read. Everything else changes from year to year, but this one stays, always.

• Why do you think this is true? What makes this chapter so important in our story as Christians (sometimes called salvation history)?
• Why do you think this story is important for us as people of faith today? What meaning does the exodus have for you?

Pharaoh

It sounds like Pharaoh is finally ready to let the people go. His heart has been changed, right?

Well, maybe, but take a look at what Pharaoh says and does as opposed to what the other Egyptians say and do. The Egyptians are grieving, they say “We are all dead men”, and they load up the Israelites with silver and gold and clothing (after all, what do dead men need with riches?).

But Pharaoh still wants to keep control. He says “Go and worship – but bless me.” It’s not clear whether the Israelites are supposed to bless him as they leave or while they are sacrificing to God, but it’s clear that Pharaoh still doesn’t quite get it.  He still thinks he is in charge.

• Why do you think Pharaoh still doesn’t get it?
• Do you think there is anything that would convince Pharaoh that he isn’t in charge?

Great visual!

I often google our readings for interesting thoughts, questions, videos, art, poems, etc. to share here.  So I googled “first passover” – and one of the hits caught my attention.  Here’s what showed on the search page blurb:

The First Passover – The Tenth Plague on Egypt

The first Passover and the tenth plague on Egypt – the death of the firstborn in
free Bible art. Beautifully visual Bible lessons.

I’m guessing that they use the same descriptors no matter what the story is, but it got me thinking about the way we “pretty up” Bible stories and how much of the meaning we lose in the process.  The first passover wasn’t just a happy family meal with fancy prayers, and I’m guessing the death of the Egyptian firstborn wasn’t beautiful.

• Why do you think we try to make Bible stories safe and pretty?
• What effect do you think it has on the way we understand the story? On how we understand God?
• What would you say if you were writing this description?

 

Looking back

This is it. The death of the firstborn son will be the last, and most traumatic, of all the plagues. Tomorrow we’ll read about what the Israelites were doing while the Egyptians were mourning, but for now, we’re basically sitting in the middle of a war zone.

Which makes it a great time to look back and think about the plagues as a whole set.   It’s taken us several days to read through them all, longer than we’ve spent on most other events.  And it didn’t have to be written that way – the narrator could have just said “And God sent one plague after another – blood, frogs, lice, etc. – but Pharaoh didn’t let them go until all of Egypt’s firstborn were dead.”

• Why do you think we have such a long story about the plagues?
• How might the story of the plagues still have the power to affect our faith today?
• How might our faith be different if we did not have the story of the plagues?

 

Prince of Egypt

Do you have a picture in your mind of what the plagues were like? If not, take a minute now to think about it, before you read any farther. See them in your mind’s eye.

Got an image or two? Good.

Now check out the way the moviePrince of Egypt portrays the plagues:

• How does this version of the story compare with the version in your mind?
• If you were writing the script for this movie, what would your version look like?

(Credit where credit is due: most of the ideas behind yesterday and today’s posts came from a book called Scary, Gross, and Weird Bible Stories.)

Which God rules?

In ancient Egypt, there were a whole lot of gods. And some people think that the plagues were set up to show that the YHWH, the God of Israel, was more powerful than each of them, like this:

• Rivers of blood: W – YHWH, L – Hapi (god of the Nile)
• Frogs: W – YHWH, L – Heqt (frog-shaped fertility goddess)
• Lice: W – YHWH, L – Kheper (god of beetles and flies)
• Flies: W – YHWH, L – Kheper
• Livestock: W – YHWH, L – Apis (the sacred bull)
• Boils: W – YHWH, L – Imhotep (physician god)
• Hail: W – YHWH, L – Nut (goddess of the sky)
• Locusts: W – YHWH, L – Seth (god of crops)
• Darkness: W – YHWH, L – Ra (sun god)
• Firstborn: W – YHWH, L – Pharaoh

If that’s true, then the plagues represent the things that stood in the way of people trusting the God of Israel in a pretty literal way.

• What do you think of this idea? Does it make sense or do you think it’s silly?
• Whether you think it’s true or not, play with this idea a little: what plagues might God send today? What are the things that get in the way of people trusting God today, like false gods? (A seasonally appropriate example might be to say that Cupid or Valentine is the false god of dating relationships… what plague might be sent to overcome that?)

The slow work of God

The story of the exodus, of God bringing God’s people out of slavery into freedom, is one of the very most central stories in all of Scripture.  It tells us lots of important things about who God is and who we are as people of God.  It is dramatic, and flashy, and important – and slow.

You would think God could move a little faster here – clearly God’s mind is made up, the leaders of the movement are chosen, and yet, it takes God quite a while to get Pharaoh to let the people go. People are suffering more and more with every moment they have to wait, and yet, things still take time.

It reminds me of a poem by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a famous writer:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
– that is to say, grace –
and circumstances
acting on your own good will
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.

• Do you ever feel like things are taking too long? What are the things that make you feel impatient?
• Have you ever looked back on something that felt too slow and been glad it did take that long? What was that like?

And so it begins

Here we go… the plagues.  Just to ease us gently into things, we’ll start with turning all the water to blood.

Ew.

• Why do you think God started off with blood? Drama? Force? Symbolism?
• Why do you think the magicians turned more water into blood instead of turning it back?