Dawning Faith
THE GREAT VIGIL OF EASTER
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 • Luke 24:1-12
I used a stopwatch this week to time how long it took to part the Red Sea in film adaptations of the Exodus story.
In “The Ten Commandments” from 1956, it takes forty-one seconds. Charlton Heston (as Moses) stands on a rock, lifts up his staff, spreads out his arms. With Academy Award-winning special effects, dark storm clouds funnel into the sea, the waters churn and begin to pull apart, and a wide dusty road rolls out before the Israelites like a red carpet.
In the 1998 animated film, “The Prince of Egypt,” parting the Red Sea takes longer: fifty seconds. Moses wades into the water and lifts up his staff with both hands. Wind sweeps through his shaggy dark hair. He inhales and appears to summon his faith before plunging his staff into the shallow water around his ankles. Instantly, water disperses in a circle with Moses at its center. Water shoots sky high from either side of a path formed on the sea floor.
In the movies, the parting of the Red Sea takes less than a minute. But in the book of Exodus, it took much longer. Moses stretched his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove back the sea “by a strong east wind all night.”
How long exactly was “all night?” I couldn’t use my stopwatch, but I estimate eight to ten hours. The parting of the sea appears to begin right at dusk, because just moments before, the Lord’s presence is still in its daylight form—a pillar of cloud. Soon, the pillar of cloud repositions itself, from guiding the Israelites forward to protecting them from behind, and it changes to its nighttime state—a pillar of fire. (Think of headlights on cars that are newer than mine, that switch on automatically when the sun sets.) Let’s say that this time of year, dusk was about 8 pm.
The next time marker in the story isn’t until the phrase, “the morning watch.” The “morning watch” was the last third of the night, from about 2 to 6 am—before sunrise. By that point in the story, the Israelites have entered the sea, the Egyptian army has pursued them, and the Egyptian chariots are getting stuck in the seabed.
The last time stamp in the story is dawn itself, when, as we heard, “the sea returned to its normal depth.”
Based in this timeline, the wind started to blow between sunset and nightfall, and the crossing was complete just before six or so in the morning. Whether we should picture the Israelites advancing slowly through the night as more and more dry land appeared, or whether we should imagine them waiting on the shore until the path was fully clear, I’m not sure.
But what strikes me about the fact that parting the sea took all night is that the Israelites must have completed their journey in near-total darkness. From the visual perspective of these Israelites, the Lord’s presence wasn’t even there to guide them. The pillar of the Lord’s presence was needed in the rear guard, to protect the Israelites from the pursuing Egyptians in the last hours of night. In any case, the Israelites made it all the way through the sea before morning arrived, perhaps walking by some dim pre-dawn light, but after a long night of waiting for the slow, driving wind to complete its work.
The close followers of Jesus in tonight’s gospel must have drawn their own dawning faith from this story. After Jesus’s crucifixion, they spent a day resting for the sabbath. The sabbath day of rest would have reminded them of the Lord’s own rest after the creation of the world, when the Lord first divided sea from dry land.
The sabbath day of rest also celebrated the freedom of the Israelites from forced labor in Egypt. That particular sabbath fell during the Passover, the multi-day festival commemorating the Israelites’ passage through the Red Sea, a triumphant high point in their history. The Egyptian army remained a threat to the Israelites for generations to come, but the Israelites celebrated and savored this particular victory over the Egyptians and their fancy chariots, and all that this victory symbolized, for even longer.
Perhaps that Passover sabbath day allowed the followers of Jesus to rest in the creative and liberating powers of God. Perhaps that day reminded them that the presence of God, as in the Red Sea crossing, may be watching our backs even when it’s not clearly lighting our way.
These followers of Jesus had little more than glimpses to guide them to the resurrected life of Christ. The women set out “at early dawn,” when the sun was just beginning to shine. When other apostles dismissed their story of the empty tomb, Peter was just curious enough to run to the tomb and see it for himself.
The linen that Peter found there may also be a glimpse of the dawning faith of another follower of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea. He’d given Jesus a burial place fit for a king and had wrapped his body in linen. Some see this linen as a symbol of hope that the body would rise.
These close followers of Jesus give us glimpses of what faith looks like at its dawning. The faith they have is just enough to keep them going, often without plans and without answers. It’s just enough to keep them curious, astounded, and attending to the flesh of Christ in love, with linen and spices.
This faith may look like it appears out of nowhere. But often, it’s the result of a God who works in slow and subtle ways, all through the night. And it’s the product of our own resting, and watching, and walking in darkness or in dim light.
Tonight is a long night—about as long as a movie. Movies are famous for distorting our expectations of life and our sense of time. Walking out of a movie theater, our eyes have to adjust to light again, and to the fact that life is usually less dramatic, less transcendent, and more time-consuming than cinematography would suggest.
But these hours keeping watch for the risen Christ show us that the work of God takes a long time. Some triumphs turn out to be temporary, some victories fragile. But God is working in the darkness, working even while we sleep, to awaken in us a faith that needs only a glimpse of possibility. I hope that these hours also fill us with a sense of how glorious and transcendent life in the resurrected Christ is and will be.
© 2022 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas