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Exodus 14:19-31

This is one of the best known and most pivotal stories in the Bible. For Jews, the Israelites cross some sort of sea and fulfill a centuries old promise. They are no longer slaves. For Christians, it portends the powers over nature that they will see in Jesus. For either, they need to deal with the brutal murder of their would be oppressors. I can't find a good justification for this.

The details of the event don't help us much. There are theories about this being the “Reed” sea instead of the “Red” sea and even in the text you can see remnants of the idea that it was a wind that kept the water to one side. But, as often happens in the OT, more than one writer is included in the text, and we get that image Cecil B. DeMille used of the walls of water on either side.

Truth is, there is nothing historical here, not the details or the escape itself. Nor is there a God that is going to harness the forces of nature and fix what we've done to our natural world. We are going to have to deal with our enemies ourselves. And when they are gone, we will meet our enemies and they will be us.

There are long discussions on the Exodus story in the Jewish tradition of midrash. I'm focusing on the stories themselves, but that might be something I come back to some day. Somewhere else in this book is a comment about how this story is unfolding so that it may be told. That is, the events are there for us to hear again and again and to discuss how we feel about them. Since we now know that these events never happened, that should open us up to greater possibilities of what they mean. Something more than “God will smite our enemies”, I hope.

Genesis 50:15-21

Rather abruptly this week, we return to the Joseph story and, at the end of it. Jacob, the father of the brothers, has died and it seems he has left them instructions to forgive Joseph. With the father out of the picture, Joseph could exact some revenge. Joseph feels the weight of all that they have done and he has done, and he chooses to forgive. He invokes the name of God as a symbol of all that is good, of how despite our petty human frailties, we tend toward justice and reconciliation. God does not appear as a character much throughout this story, but as a word, used to express something larger than ourselves.

I wonder if this is not in the Lectionary today to make a point about the Exodus story. That story is a massive action that, if it were real, would certainly be strong evidence for a God that intercedes in human affairs. Is the inclusion of this story telling us we should take that one more symbolically?

Romans 14:1-12

If Matthew did not take up so much time this week, I might spend more time on this one. In brief, this is some pretty nice stuff about not being judgmental and living for the good of others, not just ourselves. That it appears as a summary should temper some of the judgmental verses that seem to appear earlier in this chapter. It may be that those are not intended the way some say they are.

I brought this up at the beginning of this Lectionary year.

Matthew 18:21-35

After last week's “Rule of Christ” this chapter transitions into a parable that includes torture and revenge. Not the kind of thing Christians today like to acknowledge. For Bibles with titles, this one is “The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant” and could be said to start as early as verse 21. This parable appears in William R. Herzog's Parables as Subversive Speech, so the first manner of business is to determine exactly what is the “original” parable. We know the gospels are copies of copies and were not even first written down until decades after the time of Christ. Herzog does not discuss the existence of Christ, and neither do I, but we can ask questions about where the stories came from.

In verses 21 and 22 we find the Christ we like, the one who forgives seven times seventy-seven times. Then we get an introduction, “therefore”, and an indicator of a parable with “is like”. The parable starts with forgiveness, but then it degrades pretty quickly, so it does not seem to support verses 21 and 22. It ends at verse 35 with an explanation. Those are often suspects for being added on later to tell us what the writer (who is copying an earlier version) thinks it means, not the original teller. In a study Bible they explicitly give you an explanation. In my NIV Study Bible, the footnote says, “forgive, the one main teaching of the parable”. If it didn't tell me that, I wouldn't think it was about forgiveness at all.

It seems like it is about torture, and I'm always suspicious of characters in parables acting against Jewish law. Of course actual Jews were doing the same at times, but it makes me less certain that the king in this story is God. Instead, it could be an illustration of the need for mercy and the awareness of mutual forgiveness in the community. Some say, “human mercy calls forth divine mercy”, and this is a story of how we must act, before the day of judgment because the reign of God is at hand. This theme is more consistent with the chapter and subsequent chapters, and many churches embrace it.

If the king is to represent God, then the servant must represent the rest of us. When I first read “ten thousand talents”, I thought that sounded high, and research said it was a lot of money. This could be a hint that this is not intended to be regular folks, but high rolling political characters, akin to a political cartoon of today. The king represents just that, a king who gained his power through whatever means necessary and now views his kingdom as his to do with as he pleases. The servant is a necessary evil for him, a retainer who manages some details of transferring whatever surplus he can from the suppliers (the farmers and producers) to the elite. As the parable opens, the servant has been caught doing something, some form of graft, and the king needs to make a statement, or he will lose some of his authority.

When the servant returns to obeisance, as he well should, the king can then show mercy. This saves him the trouble of finding a new servant with the skills that this one has. When that servant then goes out and does not show equal mercy to the lower level servant, this is not an equally unjust act. The first servant is going out and getting back to work, doing what is expected of him. But even this next lower servant is probably not a representative of the audience that these parables would usually have. The shakedown for ten denari is still more money than peasants would normally see. They normally deal in bartering, not with cash at all.

But then why the less than happy ending, if everyone is doing as expected? It could be the forgiveness of the first large sum was a symbol of the type of revolts that had been attempted in this time. The type of revolts that were meant to lead to a return to an egalitarian past. But the unmerciful servant does not follow through, and he is punished. The king returns to how things were because he has no other choice. To forgive the servant again would show too much weakness and no ethical standard. It seems forgiveness in the structure of king and peasant is not even possible. A ruler can be generous, but the bureaucracy he built can't be undone. At least not by a single decree or one act of mercy.

This story plays out today when a drug kingpin has to maintain his power by force, or face being replaced by execution. In the business world, a company that shifts too much profit to charity will lose investors and shareholders. Giving away your millions is supposed to be something you do in retirement. In government, you make promises to voters, but mostly you keep the promises you made to made to big donors. Unfortunately this parable does not offer a way out, and I don't think verse 35 sums it up for us.