TURN OF THE TIDE

Reading: Psalm 114, Romans 14:1-12, Matthew 18:12-35, Exodus 14:19-31
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY on September 11th, 2011

A printable PDF file can be found here

Geographically speaking, the area where I was born and raised was known as the Wirral peninsular. On one side of the peninsular lay the River Mersey, where you could, as Gerry and the Pacemakers once sang, catch a ‘Ferry across the Mersey’ to Liverpool. On the other side of the peninsular lay the River Dee, and over the other side of that river, the nation of Wales.

The River Dee side of the peninsular held the best beaches. One of the fun things to do there was walk across the sands, at low tide, to visit a bird sanctuary called Hilbre Island, where you could watch seals playing out in the estuary.

In fact when the tide went out it looked as though you could walk across the sands all the way to Wales. You couldn’t because there was a deep fierce channel of water that separated the English from Wales (something historically the Welsh were rather glad about) but when you were walking out on the sand, it looked as though there were just miles of sand stretching in every direction. A beautiful place.

Beautiful, but dangerous. Almost every year people lost their lives through not paying attention to the tide. If you did not know at what hour the tide turned, then it was not safe being out on the sands. Whereas when the tide was out the sands stretched for miles, when the tide turned the whole area became sea.

The frightening thing was how quickly the change from sand to sea took place. Little streams in the sand would become rivers. The rivers overflowed. You could be walking on sandbanks, unable to reach the coast, unaware that the waters were closing in. If you were out on the sand when the tide turned, you were lost.

One can only imagine the dread that the Hebrew people felt as they fled from Pharaohs’ chariots. There lay before them a seemingly impassable body of water. Their only hope was that God would intervene on their behalf. That somehow the tide would turn.

It is 10 years to the day since the terrorist attacks of September 11. The events of that day saw a turn in the tide of our consciousness. Our safety can no longer be taken for granted. Our security remains in question. We are no longer invulnerable. We are no longer isolated from the rest of the world.

On that occasion it wasn’t pursuing enemy chariots and threatening soldiers that were swept away but the lives of ordinary people going about their daily tasks and the many heroic souls who attempted to rescue them. When the tide turns, the waves do not care if their victims are aggressors or innocents.

The reasons behind the growth of terrorism are incredibly complex. Political, economic, geographical, religious, educational, historical. Issues of poverty and injustice and imbalance and empire and greed. Trying to isolate any particular aspect and suggesting that ‘this’ alone is to blame is as futile as investigating a single channel flowing through the sand and claiming that it alone caused the tide to turn.

In the story of the Hebrews escaping from the Egyptians are many different layers. Religion obviously plays a huge role (it is after all a bible story). But then so also do injustice and slavery and economics and politics and the search for national identity.

You will notice that the turn of the tide does not lead the Hebrews to the Promised Land but into the wilderness. The destruction of their enemies in the crushing waters leads them not into a place of peace, but one of fear, regret and dependence. The closing verse of the passage we read this morning; verse 31 ‘And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in Him and in Moses His servant’.

Since the events of ten years ago, surely we can identify with that picture. We are not out of the wilderness. There is a desire for strong leadership. There is mistrust. There is fear. The old certainties have been swept away and exactly where our anchor should be placed remains a topic for debate. The tide has turned. Many remain unsure which direction to go to find anything like a Promised Land.

The past month saw an earthquake and a visit from Hurricane Irene. Every passing year brings unpredictable turns of events. Not only can we not predict the actions of our fellow human beings, nature herself seems happy to remind us of our own frailty and insignificance in the larger scheme of things.

Against this backdrop it is important to remind ourselves that we still have choices. The Hebrew people had a choice. They could stay in Egypt in slavery. Or they could, as a community, follow Moses.

They may well have wondered at the wisdom of their choice when they were faced with the prospect of being destroyed at the water edge by the advancing Egyptian army. Even after their miraculous deliverance, though they saw their enemies’ dead and defeated, they knew their journey was far from over. They still faced an uncertain and unpredictable future.

On this our Rally Day we too have a choice. We can rally together and seek to be a community of God’s people. We can put our trust in God to lead us towards better days. We can choose to build our lives upon faith in Jesus Christ, over and above trust in any other institution.

We can choose, as did the Hebrews, to invest in nurturing the spiritual lives of both our selves and our children in the ways of God’s Kingdom. We choose our priorities. We can say ‘no’ to unreasonable demands on our time that take away our energy to invest in the things of God.

Events such as those we are recalling ten years ago, and events like the recent hurricane in which some lost so much, should indeed cause us to question ‘What is really important?” For a moment we are taken out of the normality of the hectic everyday race we are pursuing. For a moment the power goes away, the trains don’t run, the TV has no programs, the phone stops ringing because the connection has no connection. For a moment we realize our dependency. Do we treat it as a wake up call? Or do we just hop back onto the train and in six months time wonder why nothing has changed?

The Christian gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, is that there is another way to live, a better way, and a higher way! But the rub is, in order to discover it, we have too choose to change. We have to let go of some of the things we are so reliant on. We cannot allow our I-pods and I-phones and I-pads to become our I-dols. We cannot pursue both God and wealth. We cannot keep seeking happiness and joy and fulfillment through every avenue but the love God and expect that somehow God will bless us anyway!

Scary, horrific events force us, just for a moment, to examine our choices. As the Hebrews gazed across the Sea at the bodies of their enemies, there was little rejoicing. I remind you again of verse 31 ‘And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him.’ In moments of crisis you have to choose in whom you place your trust.

Because of the tidal estuary that lay on the sands between England and Wales, I learned at an early age that you had to be aware of the changing tides. A best selling book in my home area was the ‘Tide-Tables’ that catalogued the times when the tides would turn. The tables told you how high the tides were likely to be, and all the vital information that would let you know when it was safe to walk out to Hilbre Island and when you needed to stay away from the sands.

God has not left us in the dark. We have God’s Word in Scripture. But we have to read it. We have the living presence of Jesus Christ to lead and guide us. But we have to discover the guidance of His Holy Spirit, which only comes through prayer and commitment. We have a community of faith to which we can belong. But we have to make life choices that enable us to be active participants.

On this day of remembrance we have an opportunity to rally together and consider in what we choose to invest our lives. The Hebrew people chose to trust God, to deliver them and lead them through the wilderness days that lay ahead. Seems to me, that’s the kind of choice open to us all.

Amen.

Rev Adrian Pratt