This month's Alternative Worship allowed us to play with some of the Exodus stories. We set up a side room with stations to allow people to engage with the text and then, with their imaginations, to walk the wilderness as well. I played with some ideas and made a mind map - my usual starting point.
I read through the significant parts of Exodus and also started blogging some ideas (some of the posts in this topic are still being re-written, and so aren't posted yet).
The key is to engage the imagination and the senses, particularly with the feeling that somebody would have had if they had been there on the periphery of the original event.
Slavery was "easy" - we could use modelling clay to make bricks. We would mould the clay by hand and then carve into a side something which enslaves us. It was delightful to have that scent of clay on ones fingers again - a real throwback to childhood.
I tried to recreate the burning bush using a plastic tree we have in Church and have used for various things, and then wrapped the lights on an LED string with crepe paper to make little flames.
I kept this afterwards, and we can use this as a visual aid when we come to think more closely about the book in our teaching series starting in a couple of weeks.
The Passover was represented by some (home made!) Lamb Koftas and some rocket leaves.
Likewise, the section dealing with the people complaining had little plastic shot glasses with salt water in them.
We looked at how we need to purify ourselves and not to presume upon being able to walk into the presence of God, using a bowl of water with soap and a towel.
The pdfs of the pages on each station are here Download Exodus stations 29 Apr 18. Feel free to use these yourselves if you want to (but it would be great to know and to see some photos of how you set this up).
The book of Exodus gives us only two options to answer the question of where we are. Either we are in slavery - settled, yes, but enslaved, or we are on the move - nomads in the desert looking for the Promised Land.
Eric Kim is a street photographer I admire, and in the clip he refers to his life as a nomad...
...and how it cuts against the expectation of settledness that the West encourages.
The era of Christendom called for places of worship to make a grand statement - cathedrals and architectural masterpieces which would point to the heavens in perpetuity. The rediscovery of our nomadic roots will surely direct us once more to the tent as worship space; temporary and moveable, leaving no trace of its presence. I think the first generation of Christians got this, and so the writer to the Hebrews in chapter 13 verse 14 states
For there is no permanent city for us here on earth; we are looking for the city which is to come.
The Irish poet, Michael Longley, borrowed from the King James translation of this verse for the title of his first collection of poems, No Continuing City. Let us not pretend that this is not a precarious existence; unsettling and disrupted. This is not the easy option. Is it any wonder that, at times, the people following Moses complained and wished they had never left slavery in the first place!
So, as we work through Exodus we need to repeatedly ask ourselves where we see ourselves in this story. The preferred answer, the Promised Land, is not available to us without the trials and hardship of the journey, but those difficulties are what shape us into who we are.
By Unknown - http://www.heritage-history.com/?c=read&author=skae&book=english&story=beard, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32495611
On April 29th 1587, Sir Francis Drake sailed into the port of Cadiz and sank 23 Spanish ships, causing significant damage to the Spanish Navy. The event became known as the singeing of the King of Spain's beard. It happened almost 430 years to the day from the writing of this post, and it seems a very long time ago - the length of time during which events become a bit hazy in the retelling, the sort of period for something to become folklore. Even though we still own and tell the stories of Francis Drake playing bowls on Plymouth Hoe as the Armada approached there is no first hand account of this, but we tell the story because it says something about what it means to be a dashing Englishman, unflustered by the approaching enemy.
Four hundred and thirty years is also the stated time that the people of Israel spent in the land of Egypt (Exodus 12:40). One wonders how many of the stories they told about their identity dated back a similar length of time as we might do to Drake and beyond. Their stories would probably have been the accounts of Abraham and his descendants that we find in Genesis 12 onwards.
In those years, they had descended from the glory days of Joseph's blessing of Egypt by his administration and wisdom in a time of famine, to being the hated and despised racial grouping - Pharaoh using the fear of what they might do as justification for oppression. Thank goodness we live in more enlightened times!
Exodus seems to be give little clue as to the spiritual well-being of the nation. My experience visiting the South Sudanese Refugee Camp in northern Uganda would suggest that being oppressed and without resources is not a bar to having a vital faith, but it becomes harder over time as the possibility of restoration diminishes and despair creeps in. My feeling as I re-read Exodus recently is that the peoples' relationship with their God was more akin to an inherited identity than a coherent practice. There is no record of there being the infrastructure of worship or of those with the role of leading it (the Tabernacle and the Priesthood were to come later in Exodus). Having said that, the midwives were described as 'God-fearing' (Exodus 1:17) and the cry of the slaves went 'up to God' (Exodus 2:23). God has compassion on them and, as we come to hear, acts.
But when God choses to being the revealing of Himself via the burning bush in Exodus 3, it is as if God has to introduce Himself afresh (or, possibly, the Moses' generation needed to learn for itself the person of their God).
I'm not quite convinced that this is exactly how it happened. I don't think God sounds like Darth Vader reading from the King James Bible...
...but opinions may vary.
The key moment of revelation is later, as Moses meets God on Sinai and we learn more of God's character; holy and faithful. Interestingly, God seems to have communicated about his character and holiness by the means of instructions for their own lifestyle and ordering of their own communities.These instructions can, to our ears, sound bizarre and a little random. Some are given as an echo of God's own character (for example, the Sabbath is blessed because that is the day God chose to rest - Exodus 20:11 and Exodus 31:17), others are given in order to differentiate God's people from those who would be living around them later, others seem to have little specific rhyme or reason.
There are whole chapters in Exodus which deal with the proper ordering of worship whilst the people are walking through the wilderness. We know that the pattern of worship significantly shapes the understanding and actions of the worshippers, so here too there is emphasis placed upon who the people are to be as a direct result of their being rescued and then their encountering the presence of God.
The God of Exodus takes the initiative to reveal Himself, to call Moses, to rescue His people and to offer the Law - the means by which a people might remain identified with and close to their God.
Obvious musical accompaniment for writing and (hopefully) reading this post...
It is said that one of the roles of the Christian leader is to identify where those in her or his care are in the over-arching story of Scripture. I love the idea that in looking back we can see more clearly where we are and where we are heading. It also reassures me that in the decision making and choices ahead we do not walk alone. So I thought I would try to clarify why we are in Exodus at the moment.
I found the two parts of The Bible Project's videos on Exodus helpful as a good visual overview.
As I start to write this, I envisage this falling into three parts which, for ease of reading, I will do as three separate posts, but which seem to be inter-related.
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