The Threat Is Right Behind You

Romans 14:1-12

Exodus 14:19-31

Israel’s escape from Egypt is the best chase scene in the Bible.  Yes, Israel gets a head start.  But the Egyptians pursue with fearsome determination.  Pharaoh with chariots, horses, and weaponry . . . the threat is closing in fast.  It looks like Israel will be overtaken by the faster, stronger, merciless Egyptians.  But at just the moment when it looks like Israel will be caught, a wall of water crashes in upon the Egyptian chariots.  And Israel rides off into the sunset.  Well, not quite.  They wander their way slowly towards the land God has promised them!

As we watch this scene, we find ourselves rooting for Israel to get away.  Egypt is by far the more powerful force.  They are the dominant empire.  Israel is a smaller, weaker people who has been through terrible hardship.  And we watch the chase scene of their escape with interest because we want the underdog to win and we want the powerful, threatening side to be blocked.  Why do we root for Israel in this chase scene?  Because we’re rooting for ourselves.  We’ve automatically put ourselves in the role of those running for our lives, with threats breathing down our necks.

 

This famous story stretches the limits of what we can imagine.  It’s dramatic on its own terms.  It makes for great Sunday School material.  But what should we do with it?  How should we hear it and incorporate it as part of our ongoing life with God?  I’d like to wander for a bit, then come back to the story with a fresh perspective.

Several of you have already mentioned some of your favorite chase scenes in films.  Let me add three more great chase scenes from film, and then my favorite of all time – a chase scene from a novel.

The James Bond 007 movies are known for dramatic chase scenes.  The 11^th Bond movie was Moonraker (1979).

Agent 007 – played by Roger Moore – finds himself in the Amazonian Jungle in Brazil.  The villainous billionaire industrialist Hugo Drax sent his henchman to kill Bond.  So Bond is flying down a river in a hydrofoil speedboat with the henchmen closing in behind him.  The bad guys have machine guns and bombs on their boats.  But Bond has mines and torpedoes on his.  And he manages to kill a number of henchman on several boats, but he can’t seem to shake the boat driven by the steel-toothed henchman named Jaws.  It looks like all is lost as we see Bond’s speeding boat approaching the massive falls where he is sure to die.  With a machine gun boat behind him and the massive falls approaching, there’s no way out!  He will crash to his death over the falls!  But wait, what is that?  Is the top of his boat detachable as a hang-glider?  Yes, it is!  Bond hang-glides away as his boat sails over the falls along with the boat of the villainous henchman. 

The opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) has Indiana Jones – played by Harrison Ford – barely outrunning an enormous boulder as he escapes a South American Temple.

The best chase scene in that film happens in the desert.  Indiana Jones has to ride a horse full-tilt to overtake a truck full of Nazis.  He leaps from the horse onto the vehicle, and forces his way into the cab of the truck.  He throws the guard in the passenger seat out the window and shoves the driver out the door.  But as soon as he gets control of the vehicle, he’s attacked by more Nazis from the back of the truck!  They shoot him in the arm and fight their way into the cab.  They throw Indiana Jones through the windshield of the fast-moving truck.  He grabs hold of the hood ornament to keep himself from sliding off and being run over.  When the hood ornament bends and cracks off he grabbs hold of the truck’s grill.  But the bars of the grill began to break and so he grabs hold of the front fender.  To avoid being rammed into another truck, he climbs underneath the truck and clings to the underside of the engine (If you’re wondering how you hang upside down to the bottom of a fast moving truck . . . just watch the movie and stop asking questions!!).  He makes his way back to the rear axle, ties his bullwhip to the back fender and is dragged spinning through the desert sand.  He eventually pulls himself back to the truck, mounts the backside, crawls along the side to the cab and fights with the driver, eventually throwing him out the windshield and taking control of the truck.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (2001) is the best of the Terminator movies. 

Set in Los Angeles, young John Connor is fleeing for his life from a villainous T-1000 Terminator sent from the future to murder him.  John Connor is on a mini-bike, and the Terminator has stolen an 18-wheeler.  At first it appears that the teenager has given the slip to the Terminator when he exits the highways down onto a flood control drainage channel about 15 feet beneath the level of the highways.  But the Terminator spots Connor and crashes the 18 wheeler through a highway barrier, flying down 15 feet into the drainage channel.  And he’s bearing down on John Connor, because a semi is faster than a minibike.  There’s no way the little dirtbike can outrun the semi, and there’s no way out of the drainage channel.  It’s a matter of seconds before he’s run over from behind!  At precisely this moment Arnold Swarzenegger (a good Terminator) jumps his Harley down into the channel, bottoming out and sending sparks flying.  He comes alongside Connor, swings him onto his Harley and whisks the young boy to safety.

Now these are some great chase scenes.  But for edge of your seat tension, nothing can top the scene in Willa Cather’s novel, My Antonia.

Willa Cather published the novel in 1918.  The story takes place during the late 19^th century, on the plains of rural Nebraska, where Cather herself grew up.  Living in a small farming village were two Russian men, Pavel and Peter.  No one knew why these two had immigrated from Russia and found their way to the Nebraska plains to farm.  But as Peter lay dying, he told their story.

This will take me about six minutes to read . . . but it’s worth it (p. 38-40).

When Pavel and Peter were young men, living at home in Russia, they were asked to be groomsmen for a friend who was to marry the belle of another village.  It was in the dead of winter and the groom’s party went over to the wedding in sledges.  Peter and Pavel drove in the groom’s sledge, and six sledges followed with all his relatives and friends.

                  After the ceremony at the church, the party went to a dinner given by the parents of the bride.  The dinner lasted all afternoon; then it became a supper and continued far into the night.  There was much dancing and drinking. At midnight the parents of the bride said good-bye to her and blessed her.  The groom took her up in his arms and carried her out to his sledge and tucked her under the blankets.  He sprang in beside her, and Pavel and Peter took the front seat.  Pavel drove.  The party set out with singing and the jingle of sleigh-bells, the groom’s sledge going first.  All the drivers were more or less the worse for merry-making, and the groom was absorbed in his bride.

                  The wolves were bad that winter, and everyone knew it, yet when they heard the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much alarmed.  They had too much good food and drink inside them.  The first howls were taken up and echoed and with quickening repetitions.  The wolves were coming together.  There was no moon, but the starlight was clear on the snow.  A black drove came up over the hill behind the wedding party.  The wolves ran like streaks of shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but there were hundreds of them.

                  Something happened in the hindmost sledge: the driver lost control – he was probably very drunk – the horses left the road and the sledge was caught in a clump of trees, and overturned.  The occupants rolled out over the snow, and the fleetest of the wolves sprang upon them.  The shrieks that followed made everybody sober.  The drivers stood up and lashed their horses.  The groom had the best team and his sledge was lightest – all the others carried from six to a dozen people.

                  Another driver lost control.  The screams of the horses were more terrible to hear than the cries of the men and women.  Nothing seemed to check the wolves. It was hard to tell what was happening in the rear; the people who were falling behind shrieked as piteously as those who were already lost.  The little bride hid her face on the groom’s shoulder and sobbed.  Pavel sat still and watched his horses.  The road was clear and white, and the groom’s three blacks went like the wind.  It was only necessary to be calm and to guide them carefully.

                  At length, as they breasted a long hill, Peter rose cautiously and looked back.  “There are only three sledges left,” he whispered.

                  “And the wolves?” Pavel asked.

                  “Enough!  Enough for all of us.”

                  Pavel reached the brow of the hill, but only two sledges followed him down the other side.  In that moment on the hilltop, they saw behind them a whirling black group on the snow.  Presently the groom screamed.  He saw his father’s sedge overturned, with his mother and sisters.  He sprang up as if he meant to jump, but the girl shrieked and held him back.  It was even then too late.  The black ground-shadows were already crowding over the heap in the road, and one horse ran across the fields, his harness hanging to him, wolves as his heels.  But the groom’s movement had given Pavel an idea.

                  They were within a few miles of their village now.  The only sledge left out of six was not very far behind them, and Pavel’s middle horse was failing.  Beside a frozen pond something happened to the other sledge; Peter saw it plainly.  Three big wolves got abreast of the horses, and the horses went crazy.  They tried to jump over each other, got tangled up in the harness, and overturned the sledge.

                  When the shrieking behind them died away, Pavel realized that he was alone upon the familiar road.  “They still come?” he asked Peter.

                  “Yes.”

                  “How many?”

                  “Twenty, thirty – enough.”

                  Now his middle horse was being almost dragged by the other two.  Pavel gave Peter the reins and stepped carefully into the back of the sledge.  He called to the groom that they must lighten – and pointed to the bride.  The young man cursed him and held her tighter.  Pavel tried to drag her away.  In the struggle, the groom rose.  Pavel knocked him over the side of the sledge and three the girl after him.  He said he never remembered exactly how he did it, or what happened afterward.  Peter, crouching in the front seat, saw nothing.  The first thing either of them noticed was a new sound that broke into the clear air, louder than they had ever heard it before – the bell of the monastery of their own village, ringing for early prayers.

                  Pavel and Peter drove into the village alone, and they had been alone ever since.  They were run out of their village.  Pavel’s own mother would not look at him.  They went away to strange towns, but when people learned where they came from, they were always asked if they knew the two men who had fed the bride to the wolves.  Wherever they went, the story followed them.

The threatening and harrowing chase scene with the wolves and the wedding party is connected to the larger story of Peter and Pavel on the run their whole lives.  Never able to rest.  Never able to escape what’s chasing them.  Always anxious about the threat right behind them.

Now with a battery of chase scenes in our imagination, let’s return to our story.  Israel’s escape from Egypt functions to alert us to the threats that are part of life.  It is a dramatic story that can be heard as an expression of what’s going on in our own lives.

If you’re still skeptical about the connection between threatening chase scenes and your own life, I’d like to suggest another connection for you.  One of the most common dreams we have are dreams about being chased.  Often we don’t remember upon waking who was chasing us or why, but remember the threat we felt.  These dreams are sometimes accompanied by the sensation that our legs aren’t working, or we’re stuck in something, or we’re in slow motion.  Deep in our unconscious life is a fear of being overtaken by threats, caught by shadows, devoured by something hostile to us.  Often these fears feel so threatening that our conscious lives cannot face them.  That’s why they emerge from our unconscious in dreams of being chased.

Ann Ulanov writes (in Religion and the Unconscious) that the reason we go to church is that the church provides a living connection to a set of living symbols.  I think she’s right.  The story of Israel’s escape from Egypt lives and breathes in the reality of our own lives. 

It’s a symbol that helps us organize our own experience and connects us to the reality of the threats we face.  But if it left us there, we’d be no better off.  This story also provides a way for us to process this experience as people loved and protected by God.

The story reminds us that no matter what threats we face on our journey, God is present with us.  God accompanies Israel night and day as a Pillar of Cloud and Fire.  The often harrowing and scary experiences we have during life do not signify that God has abandoned you.  God doesn’t leave the scene when life comes under threat.  God is the always close mystery of love enabling us to bear what comes our way.  Sometimes, if we’re open to it, God even enables us to live with grace and peace in the midst of trouble.

The story also reminds us that the threatening forces that gather like storms will not prevail in the end.  At the height of the battle, God looks down and throws the Egyptians into confusion, even jamming the wheels and overturning their chariots like the gods do in Greek dramas.  The point isn’t that God loves some people and doesn’t love others.  The point is that God is at work in the world to create a new kind of people, people who order their lives by justice and mercy.  And God will thwart even the most powerful empires if they insist on harming, enslaving, and oppressing the human beings God loves.  No matter how powerful the threats appear in the moment of your crisis, we trust that God’s kingdom of love, forgiveness, mercy and peace will prevail.

Today we’ve heard a rip-roaring, tension filled story about how God delivers us from all that threatens us.  God delivered Israel from Egypt.  But that story has become our story as we confess together that in Jesus Christ, God continues to deliver us from all threats.  It’s not just my own puny experience of God that counts.  I can depend on the confession of countless others through the ages who have found God to be trustworthy.  For thousands of years, God has been calling people through the waters of baptism into a new kind of life.  And God continues to lead us out of slavery and into the freedom that belongs to all those who become part of Jesus’ new family.

“And when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant” (19:31). 

Fear the Lord as the presence of Almighty Love who delivers us from slavery and threat.  Trust the Lord as the one who is guiding your steps in the face of all evil and danger.  And trust in your Lord Jesus Christ, whose amazing, infinite love is more powerful than any threat you’ll ever face.  Amen.