GBBW: Red Sea
and a major theme you gotta know
Hello, and happy almost Easter to you! You may know that I’m a low-church gal, so this week is just our usual, with school break on the horizon. But for those who do the full Holy Week, I hope it’s great.
Meanwhile, we’re walking here at that Great Big Bible Story Walkthrough. Specifically, we’re walking across the Red Sea today!
The Exodus is the second most important story in the Bible (behind the resurrection), especially when it comes to understanding its larger narrative arc. The writers of the Bible reference it, connect to it, make meaning because of it time and time again.
Within the story, there’s a specific theme that repeats itself, one that’s essential to understanding the Bible: Empire.
Without an understanding of Empire, we risk reading the story only in light of individual characters–Moses, Pharaoh, etc and missing the invitation God offers: trust me, not idols. And while Egypt is our first Empire in the Bible, it’s far from our last.
The Logic of Empire
As some of you may know, my time at Willow Creek was a tumultuous one, especially at the end when the church went through a scandal that eventually led to the exit of most of the leadership. The details aren’t particularly relevant here, except to say that the ways the leadership responded to the whole situation seemed at the time to be short sighted and confusingly tone deaf. The reflexive denial of everything. The invoking of God’s work and presence in the organization, and how this scandal threatened all that good. The demonizing, almost literally, of the opponents. The Us vs. Them of it all.
Having lived through it, my husband and I were struck when we started seeing virtually the same failed strategies – even exact phrases – popping up in scandal after scandal at other prominent churches, companies, and organizations. At one point Curtis turned to me and said, “Is there like a rich-and-powerful-guy playbook for this? Like do you get a physical copy when you pass a certain net worth?”
While I don’t think such a physical playbook exists (although if it does I’m sure you can find extra copies locked away in a lawyer’s office or PR firm headquarters near you), the underlying logic that contributes to the desperate and tone-deaf grasping to hold on to power by any means necessary is depressingly real.
It is just one manifestation of the Logic of Empire.
See, Empires have this way of spinning a narrative where they are the center of all that is good in the universe. They are the ones that order the chaos, give meaning to life, steer the world towards a bright and promising future. They are the hope of the world. Empires set themselves up, in other words, to be gods. And when you are a god, any challenge to your throne needs to be shut down, fast.
When a threat appears, the Empire will first try to crush it, silence it–nothing to see here! But some threats don’t crush easily enough, and so then the tactics shift: “Look at all the good we do! Clearly God (or the gods) are working through us, and are you really going to believe this nobody who says we aren’t all we say we are? They are opposing the good things God is doing, then what does that make them? Evil, clearly.”
Such has it always been. In the time of Jesus, the world Empire was Rome, and part of the propaganda of Rome was a concept called the Pax Romana, which, in English, means “Roman Peace”. It was Rome’s version of “look at all the good we do!” Rome wanted everyone to know that they had ordered the world, made it safe, brought peace to all under their power. Everyone should give Rome their loyal support, because they were the only thing holding back the barbarians and forces of darkness that threaten your peaceful life.
The Tactics of Empire
So you have the logic of Empire spinning its ‘we are your life, hope, and peace” narrative. Annnnd, if a little brutality, some light extortion, minor devastating wars, and a crucifixion now and then are needed to keep that peace, well, that’s just the price of doing business, just the way the world works, who are you to question it, you’re the problem, shut up.
Empires don’t come through on their promise of being the hope of the world. Even when the intentions are good and good things have happened along the way, Sin has this way of worming its way into positions of power, infecting those who wield it. And they tend to wield it in strikingly similar ways: oppression and control, usually with a side of suffering for the powerless. These are the Tactics of Empire.
Despite the rhetoric of goodness and the promise of life, the Empire turns out to be a false idol. Every time.
Which is why the Bible, to put it mildly, does not have good things to say about Empire.
Egypt is the first example of this in the stories of Scripture, an Empire who brutally enslaves ethnic minorities, tries to crush even minor rumblings of dissent, thinks nothing of genocide if that’s what it’ll take. But the Empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Rome will all make their appearance in these pages.
The Bible is written by people who are the oppressed minorities of these Empires, who see clearly the lies that undergird the propaganda that peace and goodness will only come from loyalty to the throne. They see, and they want us to see, that the reality is simple:
Empires oppose God.
Because Empires set themselves up as an alternative to God, a different source of salvation, peace, and meaning, the Bible’s stories about Empire are trying to communicate that reality.
The writers hope to inoculate us against the temptation to become loyal to Empire, to trust the idol of the Empire to keep us safe and well instead of being loyal to, putting our trust in, God.
The Systems of Empire
The Empire promises safety and security if you are loyal to it and its ways. Perhaps this is tempting especially because the logic seems to make sense, the people who go along with the empire seem to be doing all right, the whole thing seems awfully impressive. And so more people go along. And then more people. Like a black hole sucking in all it touches.
When enough people are lured in by the Logic of Empire, a whole system gets built up supporting the Empire. (And The Tactics of Empire get minimized and rationalized.) These systems inevitably lead to oppression and violence and injustice. These systems get entrenched to insulate themselves from any threat, to crush any opponent.
It gets to the point that there are no minor tweaks that will fix it, because the Logic of Empire is animating the whole thing. Minor reforms might be trotted out so the Empire can pretend it’s fixing things, but, to borrow an image from Jesus, it’s like whitewashing a tomb. Even pretending at change while nothing gets fixed is part of The Systems of the Empire.
These systems also depend on the majority of people feeling like, “There’s nothing we can do; this is just the way things are.”
So what is to be done about Empire? About the logic that it is the source of life and the tactics that actually control and oppress and the systems that normalize it all and demand undying loyalty?
Tweaks and small adjustments won’t fix the underlying problem. Empires gonna empire.
There’s only one alternative: the whole thing needs to be torn down.
Which brings us back to Egypt.
Empire, Egypt, and Invitation
The stories of the Exodus are set up as a contest. A contest between Yahweh and Pharaoh, who is both a representative of the Empire of Egypt as well as a god in his own right. The Hebrew slaves have been told their whole lives that Egypt, the Empire, is their source of life and protection, their only hope, that they have no choice but to serve it. The god Pharaoh, after all, literally has power of life and death over them, and isn’t afraid to remind them of that fact.
Now, Yahweh has come to say through Moses that there is an alternative. The people could be loyal to Yahweh instead who has come to set them free. Who will they trust?
When we see the Exodus in this light, we see that Yahweh God’s goal is more than just freedom for the Hebrews. God’s goal is to show that in the contest between Yahweh and Empire, Yahweh is the clear winner. Pharaoh can do his very worst, bend all his considerable might to opposing Yahweh, but Yahweh will win.
And because Empires will never just go quietly, the whole thing will come crashing down in the process.
We will talk about some more of these details in the commentary pages, but for now I hope you catch: having Empire eyes will help us see the whole story of God and the world (in the Bible and today) more clearly. The question is always: who will you trust? The invitation is always: trust God, not idols.