So let us pray. God, you're the one whose spirit leads us and guides us to be the ones who help others who are stuck in traps and allow us to also be open to the help of others and to your love in our lives, as so many things separate us from one another and from your creation and from your love, help us find ways to part the waters that feel like they divide us so 

that we can reach out and connect and find healing and wholeness. May your spirit guide us in this time today and lead us to renewed ways of being your people. Amen. So since last week, a lot has happened in the biblical text. The last time we heard from Joseph, he was in jail. 

But then he gets out of jail again because of his interpretations of dreams gift. He interprets Pharaoh's dreams and becomes one of the highest in command. He encourages and aids Pharaoh in the hoarding of resources because of an upcoming famine that they've discerned through his dreams. And it leads to the point where everyone else has to be dependent on Egypt in this region. He plays a trick on his family and reunites with them and encourages them to abandon everything where they were so that they can come and live and 

in Egypt instead, and live in a way that they have this abundance of resources because of all of the hoarding that they had done ahead of time. The Israelites then grow in number, and a new Pharaoh arrives who doesn't know Joseph. And because of this abundance of outsiders, he's afraid of them and enslaves them over generations. God hears the cries of the enslaved and then sends Moses to lead them out of Egypt. God's using plagues and all kinds of performance art in a way to manipulate and then 

also apply pressure in the parts that matter most to Pharaoh's life in order to try to convince Pharaoh to finally let them free. And so the beginning of our reading is right after it's like, yep, you can go, get out of here. This is too much of a hassle. So as they're leaving, Pharaoh realizes that that was a mistake. To lose out on an abundance of free labor was not helpful for the Egyptian empire. 

And so, out of fear, he begins pursuing the Israelites with an army. And so then the Israelites have found themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place on the edge of this sea of reeds, or Red Sea, depending on how you want to translate the Hebrew. And Pharaoh's army fast approaching. So I notice first that trauma has a huge impact on their imagination. 

This generation of Israelites were raised in a slavery system by people who were raised in this slavery system. So when they found themselves on the edges of the sea with the might and destructive power of the Egyptian army coming, they lamented that they would rather return to slavery and live and be full and have all of their needs met at the basic level, then follow God into the unknown and die on the edge of the waters. 

We too seek the comfort of the known, even when it upholds unjust systems, even when it continues our own pain and suffering, even when it keeps us more isolated and disconnected from one another. Trauma convinces us that there is nothing worth dreaming about, that our imaginations don't need to do any work, because what we experience is the best we're ever going to get. It's interesting because in one podcast about this thing, they talked about how, like every church has a Back to Egypt committee 

that whenever they're thinking about trying something new or unknown, there's people who want to go back to how they used to do things, even though having how they used to do things clearly doesn't work anymore. And so they nicknamed them the Back to Egypt Committee. But I think the reality is that trauma lives in us in a way that we have our own little internal Back to Egypt committee that wants to go back to the comfort of known, even though we live in an unknowable world. 

So Moses here tells them their job. They've already taken their first steps to freedom. And instead of allowing their trauma to lead them back to slavery, they're given simple and supportive instructions from Moses, which, in my opinion, is the first miracle of the text. Because Moses isn't frequently this understanding, he usually gets frustrated a lot faster. 

And the fact that he kind of knew the right words to say to them required a divine act, at least at this point in the story. He says, don't be afraid. Stand your ground and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. 

You just keep still. Which is not comforting words, right? It feels like you're just being told to just stand here and be slaughtered. But the comfort that God is going to do the work for them is what then invites them to bravely step into the water and enter fully into the unknown. 

And then they are reminded that the violence that Egypt relies on is not their job, that the system that they're leaving, that we're dependent on power over people, is not how they need to find their own freedom. They take hours to cross, which doesn't seem obvious whenever you're watching any of the films about the Exodus. And actually in movie versions of the story, we see that, like, they make it dramatic and like, Moses has to keep his staff up in the air, otherwise the water might come back. And there's like, some tension to that. 

And so then they send people to like, help Moses keep his arm up. And that makes sense because if we're doing this for hours, that sounds excruciating. And so we see through the story that they aren't going through the waters alone. They have each other and God's guidance. So as we begin to heal and transform our imagination, as we enter the unknown and 

find renewed ways of being, God goes with us and sends us together with people who can support us along the way. And as they're passing through, the way is opened before them and closed behind them, showing that there is no option to return back to these old ways of doing things with God and each other. The Israelites have traveled far enough into the unknown where there is no turning back. 

They have seen the violent system of oppression that they were raised under and their parents were raised under, and their grandparents were raised under, washed into the waters, Witnessing something that was beyond the wildest dreams of all who had raised them. They now have to find a new way to be a people together, to be God's people together. So as we support each other through the perils of violent systems, we have to make sure 

that what we co create together, the Holy Spirit's guidance, doesn't pick up the exact same violent and oppressive tools that we're trying to walk away from. In Matthew's Gospel, the author makes a callback to the Exodus story. In chapter 2, verses 13 through 15, when the Magi departed, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, get up. Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. 

Stay there until I tell you. For Herod will soon search for the child. In order to kill him, Joseph got up and during the night took the child and his mother to Egypt. He stayed there until Herod died. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet. 

I have called my son out of Egypt. So as the early Christians heard the Gospel of Matthew and heard of Jesus having to be an immigrant, removing himself and his family from a violent system in order for him to live as an infant and then later return to his homeland once that king was no longer around and ready to kill them off, they found inspiration in the Exodus story. 

Every year, our Jewish siblings retell this story and remember the tension between the pain and loss of Leaving and the joy of finding a new way of being in the world and also acknowledging that as a people, they are spread across the globe and don't have the ability to live out the dreams that they thought they were going to live out as a people at that time. So they stay every year in this tension of pain and loss and hopes and dreams and 

holding all of these as valid emotions. And that's how we rebuild our imaginations in order to transform our experiences. And this story isn't just one that speaks powerfully to Jesus and his family and all of our Jewish siblings in the world today, but it is spoken to all of our Christian siblings who have turned to the Gospels and, and to the Hebrew Bible 

for inspiration when they feel like they have their backs against the wall, when they're stuck in oppressive systems, enslaved Africans in chattel slavery in the United States, if they were given Bibles by their enslavers, this story was removed because it acknowledges the power of God to break chains and set people free. And so this story spoke to entire generations of people trying to liberate themselves from oppression. 

And in the same way, it can speak to us still as we think of ways to become God's people in the world today when we see so much pain and suffering around us, It helps us when we need hope and empowers us to foster an imagination that is no longer limited by the dreams of oppressors, but instead by the boundless grace and liberating love of God. So let us pray. 

Liberating God. You are the one who parts the waters and guides your people through dry land. May this story of your people finding freedom continue to call to us and ignite a collective imagination in us to be your people in this world, as we continue to live out our baptismal vows to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they find themselves. 

Because we know that your spirit continues on the same mission, the same spirit that led Abraham and his family and his descendants to be a people, to be a blessing to all the nations, is the spirit that guides us and leads us through Jesus, that helps us to understand what does it mean to be a blessing for all nations, a blessing for all people. And 

today we acknowledge how your spirit continues to move through all people across the globe as we join together in communion with all of your people who acknowledge this sacred day as a day where we can turn to one another across traditions. So may your spirit, who has done all of this great work in your body and continue to lead us and refine us so that we can be your people who love boldly, serve joyfully and lead courageously. 

Amen.