Thy Word and Thy Wars
Exodus 14:26-29
Oct. 4, 2015
We are wrestling this fall with difficult or challenging
passages of scripture that touch on and inform our thinking about difficult and
challenging aspects of our lives. Let’s begin this week with an old folk song:
Gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside,
down by the riverside, down by the riverside/Gonna lay down my sword and shield
down by the riverside/study war no more./Ain’t gonna study war no more/ain’t
gonna study war now more/ain’t gonna study war no more.
There’s another old folk song that goes like this:
Moses stood by the Red Sea shore/smotin’ the Egyptians with
a two by four
Pharaoh’s army got drownded/O Mary don’t you weep
And then there’s this verse:
It was Moses who first got the notion/that the world would
be safer with the armies in the ocean
Pharaoh’s army got drownded/O Mary don’t you weep
Those two old songs, both of which I enjoy, pretty much
capture the essence of the Biblical witness concerning war: God is the God of
peace, but God is also God of war. As the late Albert Winn, the general
assembly moderator often credited with bringing the northern and southern
Presbyterian churches together under his leadership in the late 70s and early
80s, put it, “The dream of the abolition of war is given us in the Bible, but
the reason most Christians hesitate to accept that dream and act upon it comes
also from the Bible, from all the wars that are recorded and celebrated by
God’s people, all the wars that are authorized and even commanded by God.”[1]
The prophet Isaiah announces God’s promise that “nation will
not lift up sword against nation, neither will they study war.” At the same
time, in the Exodus story from which we just read, the same God says, “I will
gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army; and the Egyptians shall
know that I am the Lord.”
So Pharaoh’s army got drownded – O, Mary don’t you weep.
I’ve always enjoyed that song, just like I’ve enjoyed that
wonderful, foundational story of the Exodus. God hears the cries of the
enslaved Israelites suffering under the oppressive hand of their taskmasters,
and God calls forth Moses, the great liberator, to bring the people out of
bondage to a land flowing with milk and honey. Isn’t that wonderful story?
But I’ve always wondered how that song and that story play
in Egypt.
God must look different from the perspective of the smoted
than God does from the perspective of the ones doing the smotin’.
Now surely it is important and relevant to point out that
the strong right arm of God – as scripture regularly names the moments when the
wrath of the almighty comes down – is generally lifted up in the name of the
powerless. The Egyptians, in the story at hand, are the powerful oppressors on
whom the tables are turned.
As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann put it, “The
narrative of the Exodus is designed to show the radical criticism and radical
delegitimizing of the Egyptian empire. At the beginning Egyptians are in full
flower and full power. They ‘wheel and deal’ and are subject to none.”[2]
The God who acts is the God who brings the mighty down from
their thrones and lifts up the oppressed. Thus, it is incumbent upon us as
readers to know our own place in the scheme of things, and to understand that
saying, “God is with us,” is not the same thing as saying, “God is on our
side.”
Indeed, throughout scripture, God insists most often on
being with and on the side of the poor, the outcast, the nobodies. God does not
help those who help themselves. On the contrary, the God of the bible helps
those who cannot help themselves. War imagery in scripture – and let’s be
honest, the bible is full of war imagery – tends to depict God fighting for
those who cannot defend themselves.
The great promise of Advent – of the coming birth of a
savior – as sung by Mary, tells us that God is about to turn the world around
by lifting up the lowly and sending the rich away from the table.
The challenge to the church in North America comes, in part,
in recognizing that we live at the center of power, and that we benefit from
that power enormously. For us, the stories of a warring God should bring little
comfort. Indeed, we should shudder to consider the possibility that these
stories do, in fact, capture something of the reality of God.
All of which is to say that while the Biblical witness when
it comes to violence is complicated, the pattern of God’s involvement in or
blessing of warfare is less so: God is on the side of the oppressed. The
American church tends to forget this pattern when it comes to the wars of our
own empire.
We also tend to forget that, while the overall witness of
scripture is complicated, the pattern of Jesus is far more straightforward: lay down your sword. As one of the
bumper stickers on my guitar case puts it, “when Jesus said ‘love your
enemies,’ I’m pretty sure he meant don’t kill them.”
There is a long history in Christendom of explaining away
the challenge Jesus puts to our own violence. Some insist that the ethic of the
Sermon on the Mount – turn the other cheek, love your enemies, and so on – is
for individuals and not nations, or that it provides a “perfectionist” ethic
for priests or nuns but lets the rest of us off the hook.
Nevertheless, if we call ourselves followers of Jesus, we
are called to struggle with the challenge of his life, and we are invited to
understand God through the lens of that life.
This is a short sermon, not a systematic theology or even an
extended treatment of war and peace. So I’m going to leap to a premature
conclusion the leaves in the margins years of study, reflection, and advocacy
on peacemaking.
Here’s where I come down: Whatever we make of the divinity
of the Christ, the gift of Christology is twofold: first, if we want to know
what God is like we look to the life of Jesus; second, followers of Jesus must
read the whole of scripture in the light of Jesus’ great commandment – love one
another as he loved.
As Al Winn suggests:
The war that is open to Jesus’
followers is not war against other nations, but war against hypocrisy and greed
and cruelty and injustice, war against all the demonic systems and powers that
cripple and cramp and pervert the humanity of human beings.[3]
Remaining, in conclusion, within this metaphor of war, the
witness of Jesus offers more than the challenge to engage such warfare, it
offers also a critical piece of tactical advice, and one singularly powerful
weapon: this table.
It’s remarkable how many times in the gospels Jesus breaks
bread with those we might consider his enemies. That was no accident, for Jesus
understood that the table of grace provides the best opportunity for the
reconciliation that is the ground of any true shalom.
So, this morning, come to the table of grace. Be reconciled
with all that wars within your own soul, and be at peace with God. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
8:03 AM
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