Our God is Warrior

Readings: Exodus 15:1-13, 17-21, Secrets of Heaven #8265 (see below)
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Photo by Matthew Barra

Good morning friends, here we are on Mother’s Day, and on this day, I was drawn to feature the prophet Miriam. Our text begins with a song from Moses and all of the Children of Israel, but ends with the Song of Miriam, leading the women in dancing and song.

To give context to this story: the Children of Israel were an enslaved and marginalized population within Egypt. Moses rose up as a leader and advocated for their liberation. After a protracted negogiation with the Pharoah, which involved the famous ten plagues, the Pharoah finally agreed to let the Children of Israel leave. They were on their way towards the Red Sea, when Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his army after them. They were trapped between the army and a vast body of water, and we can only imagine their terror at having their newly found freedom endangered so soon. But through Moses, God parted the waters of the Red Sea and allowed the Children of Israel to walk over the sea bed to safety. Pharoah’s army followed them, but as soon as the Children of Israel were on the other side, the army was swallowed by the sea. 

It is the subsequent song of relief and praise that we hear in our text today. The Song of Miriam in particular is understood to be one of the oldest pieces of poetry included in the Hebrew Scriptures.(1) If we are wondering how the story of the crossing of the Red Sea was described and celebrated by the generations very close to these remembered events, these words are as near as we are going to get.

And as I was reading the text, one thing stood out to me, something that I did not expect. I resonated very strongly with the idea of God being a warrior in verse 3. For myself, I normally shy away from the militaristic and battle language in the bible. I recognize, of course, that this is partly because of my privilege. I have had the blessed luxury of not needing to see God that way for my own survival.

But we cannot get away from the fact that liberation is an integral theme of the bible, and has been an irreplaceable strand of life-giving theology for marginalized people throughout the ages. And through our Swedenborgian lens, we recognize how it also speaks to our own personal battles as well. Liberation speaks powerfully, on many levels. And in this moment, I am grateful that our God is a warrior. 

What does that even mean though? When we think of the notion of warrior, what do we think of? There is more there than the act of fighting, I think. When I hear the word warrior, I think of determination, of steadfastness, of courage, of foresight. But interestingly, I also think of empathy. Because, what is it that, in the best most ideal sense, causes one to want to protect something, to want to battle on its behalf? It’s an acknowledgment of that thing’s worthiness. We stand up to fight for something that we love, something that we consider worthy of protection. This might include people, places, institutions, or ideals but they are all things that we have feel are worthy of existence, dignity, and autonomy. Believing in these things for something other than ourselves requires a fundamental level of empathy.

Because certainly we humans fight for more selfish things: we fight for ourselves, and for the prevalance of our egos. We fight for dominance, and power, for resources and wealth, for superiority. We might even try to disguise what we are fighting for with delusion and propaganda of many kinds, trying to say we are fighting for others when we are really fighting for ourselves.

But when God is a warrior, God is fighting for our dignity, our automony, and our well-being, and not just for some but for all. And when we are our best selves, we fight for these things too, each in our own way.

Reasons to fight will keep showing up in ourselves and our world. The metaphorical pictures of slavery and danger in the Exodus stories feel very familiar because they are tendencies that keep showing up in human life and human society. 

Pharoah represents false ideas, ideas that perpetuate servitude, marginalization, suffering, and cruelty. The horses, and the riders who guide them, represent religious understanding that is falsified, potentially good ideas literally made false and wrong by selfish reasoning. Examples might be: trying to say that some people are our “neighbor” and some people are not, and so therefore do not need to be loved, or do not need due process. Or trying to say that cruelty is fine and even admirable if it is in service to faith. Or trying to say that some people are better to guide society than others and that allegience to God’s kingdom justifies such exclusion.

Swedenborg deployed these metaphors in the context of religious ideas, but we can certainly also see a simliar application to civic ideas. For example: politicians ignoring the constitution or the rule of law because they think their agenda is too important or popular to be weighed down by them. The rule of law for you but not for me.

And as we look at verse 9 we see a particularly chilling representation of the quality of these Pharoah tendencies: The enemy said, "I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. (And to be clear, the spoil is not just treasure but people). The “enemy” speaking is any parts of ourselves or our world that thinks of others as playthings, without rights or dignity. The parts of us and our world that believe that our desire is the highest and most important thing, and that it should always have its way. When this worldview runs rampant, it leads to cruelty and delusion. It is worth fighting against when it rears its head. 

What we learn from this story though, is that God stands firm against this worldview. God will throw those horses and riders into the sea. Pharoah’s system of domination will not prevail. In the Swedenborgian thought-world, water always represents truth, and so we see that the corrupted truths represented by the horses and riders, will ultimately be swallowed up by a larger, greater, more genuine truth. I know this seems hard to believe, in this current divided post-truth world. But it will happen, it is happening, even if it takes longer than we might wish, even if the road is winding. I was speaking with a friend the other day when she related watching a movie from our teenage years with her own teenage daughter now, noting a sexist reference in the movie that was par for the course thirty years ago but plays so very differently now. People can change, cultures can change, for the better. 

Liberation is possible, on every human level, because it is one of God’s central desires for us all. God will lead the people to safety, across dry ground that couldn’t be seen before, a way made out of no way. This is one of the most fundamental stories that we tell about our God. We say that God creates, God calls, God waits, God loves, God accompanies, but most importantly we say that God redeems us. We human beings will screw up big time, alone and in concert. But our God is a warrior who says we are worthy of saving and extends a hand. And we are called to take that hand, and turn around to extend our hand to another. 

Strangely, cannot think of a more appropriate text for Mother’s Day. One expression of the warrior-spirit is in mothering, for we all know many mothers who are everyday warriors. Because fighting doesn’t always look like warring; fighting for something good and true can look like organizing, advocating, communicating, connecting, standing strong. It can look like a hug just when we need it. It can look like giving love freely when love is denied. It can look like believing what is true when no one else does.

And so this brings us back around to Miriam. Miriam the prophet sings an unassailable truth about God, and leads us to dance and make music in the midst of challenging times. Her prophetic truth was embodied and connective and celebratory. It speaks of a powerful and compelling hope that we all need in difficult times. That our God works for our liberation against tools of domination, the God works for our well-being in the face of chaos. Let us always sing to our Lord, this very song. Amen.

(1) The New Interpreter’s Bible, pg 375


Readings:

Exodus 15:1-13, 17-21

1 Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: "I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. 
2 The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him.
3 The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name.
4 "Pharaoh's chariots and his army he cast into the sea; his picked officers were sunk in the Red Sea.
5 The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone.
6 Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power— your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy.
7 In the greatness of your majesty you overthrew your adversaries; you sent out your fury, it consumed them like stubble.
8 At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up, the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.
9 The enemy said, "I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.'
10 You blew with your wind, the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
11 "Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders?
12 You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them.
13 "In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode.

17 You brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own possession, the place, O Lord, that you made your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hands have established.
18 The Lord will reign forever and ever.”
19 When the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his chariot drivers went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them; but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground.
20 Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing.
21 And Miriam sang to them: "Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”

Secrets of Heaven 8265

'The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea' means in that as a result simply of [God’s] presence falsities arising from evil have been damned and cast into hell. This is clear from the meaning of 'the horse' as falsities belonging to a [corrupted] understanding, for 'horse' means the power of understanding, and in the contrary sense a [corrupted] understanding, which is no understanding at all, and therefore falsity is meant in that contrary sense by 'horse' and…from the meaning of 'rider' (or 'horseman') as reasonings based on that false knowledge…