ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #41 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> When I read this poem, part of my reaction was some discomfort with all of this talk about God killing the soldiers of the Egyptians. How do we account for a God of life engaging in all of this death dealing and destruction? Does this say anything important to us today? >> Well, what it says to us, Nick, is that we have to be careful not to allow our cultural shaping to dictate the way that we read the text. This theme that we have here in the book of Exodus at this point we might describe as the theme of Yahweh the warrior. It's kind of the Old Testament version of an important theological theme in the history of Christian theology that we often call the ***Cristos Victor theme, the Christ the victor or the victorious Christ theme. And this theme of Yahweh the warrior or Cristos Victor is one of the most important themes not only in the Old Testament but also in the New Testament. Again, especially in the book of Revelation. The God who called us to himself in Christ is not a God who makes empty promises. He's a God who is willing to go to war for us, to fight for us. The willingness of God to fight and even in the end to die to redeem his creation from bondage, the bondage into which Adam and Eve sold us, is the source of comfort to us. This is how great the love of God is for us and for all that he has made. God's promises are not empty promises. He backs them up, even with his own life. And this is sort of a reminder of the fact that we have a tendency to spiritualize the Gospel, we have a tendency to spiritualize the idea of a God of love. But when the Bible talks about God being a God of love, it doesn't mean that he's a God who feels affectionate about us or perhaps I should say it doesn't only mean that he's a God who has a certain emotional affection toward us. But rather, God's love is concrete and it's real. And it moved Yahweh to come down to Egypt in order to bring his people out. To fight the gods of Egypt for them and to defeat them and, of course, in the human sphere, that included the death of Pharaoh's army, who was attempting to thwart God's will. That God was victorious in his fight with Satan. That Jesus was raised from the dead, is our ultimate victory. Because when we're joined with Christ in baptism. We're joined with him in his victory and raised with him from death to life eternal as St. Paul says in Romans 6. So this conflict and this victory are not some vague spiritual principle. They are not a general spiritual truth. They are an absolutely solid historical reality. God defeated his enemies in defeating the Egyptians. God won on a real cross by the shedding of real blood and was victorious in rising from a real tomb on an actual Easter morning. And if the Mel Gibson movie "The Passion of the Christ" did anything for contemporary Christianity, its very gruesomeness served as a solitary reminder of the reality of Christ's suffering, a suffering that we tend to weaken by spiritualizing it. The account of the conflict of Yahweh over the gods of Egypt and the fate of Israel should serve the same function for us by reminding us of the solidness and the reality of our salvation. Our own culture is shaped by a late 20th century revulsion of war. And it's an honest and good revulsion of war. In human terms we should shy away from conflict and preserve human life whenever possible. But in the end, if we translate that into a feeling about the way God should act for us, then we end up stripping ourselves of one of the most important sources of comfort that the Gospel has to offer us. So you know, I think while I understand why, you know, we do tend to feel uncomfortable with this idea of the violence and death dealing and destruction that is inherent in the redemption of Israel from Egypt, I think if we realize the reality here of God's battle and the reality of our redemption, then it should serve not as a source of discomfort to us, but a source of joy. That we have a God who is willing to fight, even to die, so that we could with be joined with him forever. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***