KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 20 November
Crossings
The Crossing of the Red Sea marks the culmination of the story of the Plagues and the Passover, which distinguishes the Israelites from the Egyptians, and inaugurates the wilderness journey so central to the Exodus and to the ethical education of the people of Israel. This week in Chapel students read and heard the story of the Crossing of the Red Sea and the provision of manna to the people of Israel in the wilderness. Both stories speak to the enterprise of education and its challenges.
The Passover story ends with the question which reverberates down throughout the ages, “what mean ye by this service?” It complements the greater question raised by Jesus that introduces the famous parable of the Good Samaritan. That greater question is “how readest thou?” How do you read? How do we read the story of the Crossing of the Red Sea? My point is that we easily mis-read it if we remove the story from the way in which the story has come down to us in the coming together of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures as a whole as well as the coming together of the Christian Scriptures. In other words, these stories belong to a rich and profound reflection about an ethical education, about the principle which defines and informs our lives with respect to what is good and right, to what is true and beautiful. The Exodus belongs to a tradition of ethical reflection.
Thus Philo of Alexandria, the great Jewish theologian writing at the time of Jesus, sees Moses in terms of Plato’s Philosopher/King, as Lawgiver, and as Prophet. The stories of the Exodus are part of a moral and ethical education about how to think and live. It is about living towards and with a principle which by definition cannot be defined by anything prior to it but upon which all else depends. This counters the mistaken view of fundamentalist and atheist alike to read these stories in a literal manner and to attempt to explain them or to explain them away by reference to some sort of empirical phenomenon; in other words, to look for a naturalistic explanation, for example, the east wind, rather than recognising the theological point about God as beyond and above nature who uses the forces of nature for his will and purpose. This is the main point of the story of the Crossing of the Red Sea through which Israel is finally and completely freed, at least externally, from Egyptian domination. At issue is a clash of principles.