The first reading is Exodus 14:19-31
To set the scene once again in the Book of Exodus: the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt. God sent Moses to stand before Pharaoh and tell Pharaoh to let the people go.
When Pharaoh finally did let the people go, they headed east, toward home, back in Israel.
We come in on the story today at the dramatic moment when Pharoah had changed his mind, and decided to go after the Hebrews with his army, to bring them back into slavery or kill them.
The people of Israel are led by a pillar of cloud during the day, which burned at night to light up the sky. The cloud is one of the great images of the presence of God in the Hebrew Bible. A reminder that in this story God was acting in history to set the people free and on their journey into freedom – and here at this dramatic moment – God was with the people.
When the people came to the sea, Moses stretched out his hand over the water, and the water parted, and the people went through on dry land.
Then Pharaoh and his chariots came through the same way, and the water closed over them.
And the people were free.
In place of the Psalm for Sunday, we can read together Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21 The Songs of Moses and of Miriam, a song or canticle of praise to God for setting the people free.
We give thanks for freedom. For me, freedom is an important theological idea. God is the creator of all human beings, and because of that, every human life is of infinite value before God, and belongs ultimately to God, and has certain basic human rights.
Freedom of thought and inquiry and speech are not only civic virtues, they are important in the life of the church.
We remember the legacy of the story of Moses and of the Exodus in the modern search for human freedom. Moses standing before Pharaoh to say, Let my people go, has echoed profoundly in the history of Chicago and Illinois and America, in the fight to end slavery, in the Civil War, in the modern civil rights movement.
Today’s first reading is a substantive part of a reading which the Book of Common Prayer requires us to read at the Easter Vigil.
For the story of God acting in history to save the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt looks to the Easter story – the story of how God acted in history to set all people free from sin and death, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
God who brought the people of Israel through the Red Sea waters on dry land, has brought us in Christ through death into the new life. We have the promise and hope of new life with Jesus in heaven, at our end – the promise that our end will be with him.
And here on our journey through life, we enter the new life loved by God in Jesus Christ, all gift, all grace.
We remember today’s reading from Exodus vividly at Easter in the opening verse of the Easter hymn, Hymn 199:
Come ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness!
God hath brought his Israel into joy from sadness:
loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters,
led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.
The profound connection of this first reading with Easter is singularly appropriate, as by chance this Sunday will be the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
The second reading is from the Letter of Paul to the Romans 14:1-12.
Also by chance, our second reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans 14:1-12 contains a great passage quoted in the opening words of the funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer:
For none of us has life in himself,and none becomes his own master when he dies.
For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord,
and if we die, we die in the Lord.
So, then, whether we live or die,
we are the Lord's possession. (Book of Common Prayer, page 491)
The Gospel reading is Matthew 18:21-35.
Then in Matthew 18:21-35 there is Jesus’ great call to us to forgive, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
(Raymond Webster)
