Evensong, Second Sunday of Easter (Fr. Roberts)

The Israelites are stuck between two things. Behind them is Egypt. In front of them is the sea. They have left slavery, but they haven't arrived anywhere, and now Pharaoh's army is closing in. Their response is remarkably honest: "It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness." They would rather go back to what they know than risk what they don't.

Moses does not rally them. Rather, he says something we might not expect: "The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still." The people have one job, and that job is to stop. To stand in the space God is about to open. The rescue belongs entirely to him.

We read in verse 22 that the waters became "a wall for them on their right and on their left." That word is important. Wall. Not a gap. Not a break. A wall. It is the kind of word you use for something built, something constructed. And the reason that matters is this: it is not the first time in scripture that God has separated the waters. Back in Genesis 1, God creates the world by dividing the waters from the waters. At the Red Sea, he divides the waters again. God is not merely pulling slaves out of a tight spot. He is doing what he did at the beginning. He is making something new. Israel is born right here, between those walls. This is a new Genesis 1.

And here is what I find so remarkable about our reading. It stops at verse 22. We never hear the Egyptians drown. We never reach the far shore. The reading leaves us standing right there in the middle of the sea, between the walls.

I suspect that is no accident. After all, you and I are still between the walls. We have left Egypt, but we haven't arrived home yet. Much like the Israelites, we live in the space God has opened for us, and that space is itself a new creation. John tells us the same thing in our second lesson. "God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all." The same firm division. And then this: the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. Not cleansed, past tense, as though it were finished long ago. Cleanses. Present tense. Ongoing. The grace surrounds us right now. We live between the font and the altar, between baptism and the resurrection, between the old creation and the new. The new creation is not something we are waiting for. It is the space we are already in, and it is the Lord who holds it open.