The Song of Moses

15Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord:
‘I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;    horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.
² The Lord is my strength and my might,^*    and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,    my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
³ The Lord is a warrior;    the Lord is his name.
⁴ ‘Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he cast into the sea;    his picked officers were sunk in the Red Sea.^*
5 The floods covered them;    they went down into the depths like a stone.
⁶ Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power—    your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy.
⁷ In the greatness of your majesty you overthrew your adversaries;    you sent out your fury, it consumed them like stubble.
⁸ At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up,    the floods stood up in a heap;    the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.
⁹ The enemy said, “I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them.    I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.”
¹⁰ You blew with your wind, the sea covered them;    they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
¹¹ ‘Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?    Who is like you, majestic in holiness,    awesome in splendour, doing wonders?
¹² You stretched out your right hand,    the earth swallowed them.
¹³ ‘In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed;    you guided them by your strength to your holy abode.
¹⁴ The peoples heard, they trembled;    pangs seized the inhabitants of Philistia.
¹⁵ Then the chiefs of Edom were dismayed;    trembling seized the leaders of Moab;    all the inhabitants of Canaan melted away.
¹⁶ Terror and dread fell upon them;    by the might of your arm, they became still as a stone
until your people, O Lord, passed by,    until the people whom you acquired passed by.
¹⁷ You brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own possession,    the place, O Lord, that you made your abode,    the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hands have established.
¹⁸ The Lord will reign for ever and ever.’

19 When the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his chariot drivers went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them; but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground.

The Song of Miriam

the enemy is not human

20 Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing.²¹And Miriam sang to them:
‘Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.’

The history of this celebration is noted in the last verses: originally the victory song belonged to Miriam and the women of Israel but it was taken, expanded, and placed on the lips of Moses. Still, the details of the song come from an ancient source and give us somwething like the folk-memory of a decisive battle. Some of its features are interesting:

1. There’s nothing about Moses’ arm and the miracle of the waters held back, except in verse 19 which is not part of the song itself. Rather Jahweh, the God of battles and storm, destroys the Egyptians in a sea storm. The natural assumption is that the Egyptian army had taken to boats to cross the water and come to grief in a sudden storm.

2. The tone is of undisguised glee that God had brought disaster on Pharaoh’s army. It’s like the old Afro-American spiritual: “O Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn/ Pharaoh’s army got drownded/ Oh Mary, don’t you weep.

3. There is nothing about forty years in the wilderness-God leads the people immediately to their new land, his holy mountain in Canaan. It’s not clear what is meant by this mountain. Probably the song pre-dates the conquest of Jerusalem.

The song itself belongs to period some hundreds of years after the supposed era of the Exodus and it may be one of the foundations on which the whole elaborate story of the Exodus has been built. We may not like the glee with which the freed slaves celebrated the death of Egyptians, but it reflects the real misery of oppressed peoples and their real joy at the misfortune of their oppressors. Those Palestinians who notoriously celebrated the 9/11 outrage, were identifying an oppressor and rejoicing at its misfortune. Members of the IRA who murdered UK citizens, saw them in the same light. The citizens of the USA and UK, like the soldiers of Pharaoh in this story, were not viewed as human beings but as representatives of oppression. Unlike the authors of Exodus we would not approve this savage joy, but it reminds us what  evils we unleash when our nations support policies that deprive people of their human dignity.

John 14:18-31

18 ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.¹⁹In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.²⁰On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.²¹They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.’²²Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?’²³Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.²⁴Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

25 ‘I have said these things to you while I am still with you.²⁶But the Advocate,^* the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.²⁷Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.²⁸You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.²⁹And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.³⁰I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me;³¹but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us be on our way.

If you love me and keep my commands....

John, as an author, constructs, as any author must do, the way his characters speak, including Jesus. This is a simple truth which escapes people who have a complicated view of Scripture, for example, those who without any evidence require it to give a verbatim report of the words of Jesus. John’s gospel was most probably writen down 80 or so years after Jesus’ crucifixion. So, our natural assumption must be that the author has to “invent” his main charcater’s style of speech. This view does not deny that any Christian author as part of a Christian community would have been taught sayings of Jesus ever since he or she joined the community. But writing a connected narrative required a huge effort of understanding, imagination and evangelical purpose. John’s Jesus speaks very differently from the Jesus of Matthew, Mark and Luke, whose characteristic teachings are in the form a short, pithy, utterances on the one hand, and parables on the other. John’s Jesus often speaks in long discourses which circle round their theme again and again, repeating key words and phrases, as in the passage above. All the forms of speech attributed to Jesus are mixtures of memory, faith and imagination; and we should be grateful for them all.

This passage gives Jesus’ understanding of his resurrection: he will not appear to the world, but to those who love him and keep his commands. That makes sense. Resurrection is not a public fact which could be caught by a security camera; it is a reality given to those who love Jesus and want to keep his commands. ( What about St. Paul, then? We must understand that through the witness of the Christians he was persecuting, Paul had come to a love of Jesus, even if he was reluctant to express it. The stories in the Acts, although much more dramatic than Paul’s own account, bear witness to this: the voice of Jesus says to him, “It’s hard for you to kick against the goad.” (Acts 26).) Those who love Jesus will know his presence. Only in John’s Gospel is the  Holy Spirit called the Advocate. Indeed Jesus describes himself as an advocate, that is, someone who furthers another person’s cause. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are seen by John as furthering the cause of humanity against the powers of evil by revealing the truth of God’s love. Primarily, the Holy Spirit does this by reminding believers of the words and actions of Jesus. That’s why Jesus can leave a true shalom (peace) with his disciples: he will not leave them orphaned, but through his own life and that of the Spirit, will bring them into the shared life of God. John is sure that Jesus opens nothing less than God’s own life to human beings, but because this life is also his own life and death, it is only available to those who love him and keep his commands. If we don’t actually like Jesus and his teachings, (and many so-called Christians don’t) we shouldn’t bother with Christianity