Gracious God may your Spirit’s song fill our hearts and flow into our lives once more. And may you draw us into deeper communion with you and with one another. As we ponder the stories and songs of our ancestors in faith, may their melodies become our own as we lift our voices in harmony with your liberating love that never quits. Amen.
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It had truly been the hard knock life for the Hebrew people for some time. Enslaved in Egypt. Working, day in and day out, building Pharaoh’s grandiose structures. ‘Stead of livin’, they make bricks. Abused and mistreated by his officers. ‘Stead of freedom, they get kicked.
Meanwhile, Pharaoh Hannigan is living it up on Easy Street.
That is, of course, until the people call out to God for rescue. And God hears. And God responds. And God calls Moses to confront Pharaoh and lead his people to freedom.
But sadly, Pharaoh doesn’t relent. And so, God unleashes a torrent of destructive plagues upon Egypt one after another – first, the Nile turns to blood – then there’s frogs, flies, gnats, hail, skin boils, dying livestock, locusts, darkness. It’s as if the natural order, creation itself, is rising up against Pharaoh’s oppressive regime. The Egyptian magicians try to keep up by conjuring their own plagues to match, trying to prove that Moses is just a trickster and an agitator, but they eventually fail. Whatever they can do, God can do better. At that point even they try to convince Pharaoh that God is up to something in Egypt and he should pay attention.
But, at every turn, Pharaoh refuses to let the people go. And it’s only after the unthinkable tenth plague kills the firstborn child of every Egyptian family (including Pharaoh’s own son) that he finally lets them flee.
Sadly, that decision is short-lived. Enraged, Pharaoh just can’t give it up and decides to gather his army and pursue them all the way to the Red Sea.
But, of course, what looks like a dead end for the Israelites isn’t. With God’s help, Moses parts the waters, and they make their way across on dry land, out of Egypt and into a new future.
And now, as a new day dawns, Pharaoh’s chariots that had followed them into the sea have gotten their wheels stuck in the mud and have no way to escape when the waters come back together.
Pharaoh’s Egypt, built on the backs of slaves; Pharaoh’s regime, founded on exploitation, greed, and lust for power; Pharaoh’s army, of violence and brutality… has been utterly dismantled, dissolved, swallowed up in the deep.
Moses and his people find themselves on the other side of the Red Sea and a new hope begins to dawn upon them. And so, Miriam grabs her tambourine, leads the women in a dance of freedom and begins to sing a song of liberation.
It’s quite the story. The book of Exodus hasn’t yet made it to Broadway, as far as I know, but its epic drama did capture the imagination of Hollywood, of course – the Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt (which is a musical).
Other Bible stories have been made into musicals – Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat is the prequel to Exodus. And, of course, Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell both explore the stories of Jesus and his disciples.
The last time we had a musical theater Sunday I spoke about the 12th century abbess and mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, who was composing music and producing musical theater in her monastic community over eight-hundred years ago. But the use of music to tell stories and to convey deeper truths about life and faith goes back even further – to our biblical texts and the sacred scriptures of other faith traditions – perhaps to the dawn of humanity. Music is in our DNA. And it seems there is something about singing as a mode of storytelling that we gravitate toward as humans.
One of the reasons for this, I think, is that songs have a special kind of sticking power. For example, to this day I can sing the 50 states in alphabetical order because I learned the song in elementary school. And studies have shown that it’s not unusual for people who are dealing with short-term memory loss or dementia to still be able to sing old familiar songs that they learned as young people. I’ve witnessed that first-hand. Perhaps you have too.
Part of the reason for this is that music stimulates different parts of the brain at the same time and creates more complex neural pathways. Music sticks with us cognitively, but also emotionally. We all have those songs that are most important to us that have connected with our lives in deep ways – whether it be a favorite hymn, pop song, show tune, or something else.
For the ancient Israelites, the Songs of Moses and Miriam in Exodus chapter 15 are some of those sticky songs. In fact, they are probably the oldest songs in the Old Testament. And that brief refrain Miriam sings in verse 21 is probably the original bit that inspired the longer song that precedes it. Together, these songs tell the story of God’s final victory over Pharaoh’s regime at the Red Sea as well as give praise to their God who rescues and liberates.
This is one of several songs of liberation in the Bible. In Judges, Deborah sings a song after a warring tyrant is struck down and peace is finally possible in the land. The Prophet Samuel’s mother, Hannah, sings a song after his birth in which she proclaims that God will feed the hungry and raise up the poor. And Hannah’s song clearly serves as one source of inspiration for Mary’s familiar Magnificat in the Gospel of Luke that she sings in anticipation of Jesus’ birth (there are obvious parallels between those songs).
If any of the stories of these women were set as Broadway musicals, these songs would be the showstoppers that bring the house down at the end of Act I – not unlike Elphaba in Wicked when she finds her sense of purpose and bravely decides to defy gravity and oppose the wizard’s plans for control and power – despite the fact that she’ll soon be slandered as a “domestic terrorist.”
People who sing of liberation in the face of injustice have been around for a long, long time. People who sing of hope, even in times of despair. People who sing with courage, even in the midst of fear and danger: Our ancient ancestors in faith. Those who were enslaved in our own country (you heard some of those spirituals last week). People on the streets of cities throughout history, including 19th century Paris, as Les Misérables portrays. People on our streets, even in 20 below winter weather this week in Minneapolis.
Nothing in this world, troubled though it is, has yet to succeed in silencing the songs of the people.
One of the beautiful and powerful things about musical theater, in particular, is how a song (through both its lyrical and musical composition) can draw us into a character’s story. And when we let these songs sink in – they can move us to deeper compassion; they can inspire us to loving action; they can reveal something to us about ourselves.
When Fantine in Les Misérables “dreams a dream of time gone by” – voicing her pain, pondering where hope had been and if there could ever be hope again, we are invited to enter into her struggle under the weight of poverty and abuse, to feel what she feels. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful and powerful. In her song Fantine voices the suffering of countless people throughout history. And we’re left to ponder do we hear their songs? Do we feel their pain? Do we choose to stand with them? At the end of the musical, one of the morals of the story is simply stated: “to love another person is to see the face of God.” We are invited to look, love, and see deeply the face of God in others.
In Jesus Christ Superstar, when both Mary Magdalene and later Judas Iscariot sing “I don’t know how to love him,” they both voice the challenges of personal relationships, but also the challenges of faith. The moment when Judas sings that song becomes an honest, heart-wrenching confession of both faith and doubt, love and struggle. Despite our best intentions, don’t we sometimes struggle to love and follow Jesus into the hardest places and circumstances? I know I do.
Until this week I never really thought of Little Orphan Annie as a Moses-like figure. But inspiring joy in others who are suffering and daring to dream for tomorrow, despite the struggles of today, are prophetic acts. Annie exhibits courage and grit. And Miss Hannigan, like other bullies including Pharaoh, thinks that tightening her grip, intimidating and manipulating others, will give her victory. But it won’t. Annie and the other orphans will escape her clutches. Hannigan’s plan unravels; her lies are exposed; and (at least in the Broadway version), she gets sent to jail.
These stories and songs ring true because they invite us in to find our own points of connection with the characters and their experiences. When find meaning, common humanity, emotional resonance, and spiritual truth when we let their stories speak to us.
One of the great tragedies of the Exodus story is Pharaoh’s hard heart. Even after Egypt is in shambles, even after the loss of his own child, he still can’t stick with his decision to let Moses and his people leave. He can’t let go of this need for power and victory.
Just look at the song in chapter fifteen: “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.’” What a sad, futile effort, doomed to fail. And it does fail. In the wind and the waves, in the very fabric of creation, the last vestiges of Pharoah’s powers for destruction are themselves destroyed.
The divine violence is troubling, but it also serves as a warning that such human regimes, built on violence and domination, are inherently fragile, unsustainable, immoral, and doomed to fail. Sadly, it’s a warning that too many have ignored throughout history, causing much harm.
But the liberating God of all creation dreams of something better for us. And nothing is beyond the reach of God’s liberating love.
And so, as we step beyond the Red Sea with Moses, Miriam, and their people, we are extended an invitation to personally and collectively receive and trust in God’s liberating grace. Personal transformation and liberation are possible. Collective transformation and liberation are possible too. Look around and you will find people who are choosing to say yes to this invitation, choosing to live together in community and care for our neighbors, near and far. Loving community and collaboration are what most threaten the powers of division, violence, and hate.
As Miriam and the women begin to dance and the whole company begin to sing, we are invited to join the chorus. We are invited to sing of God’s liberating love and to belt out our own willingness to love courageously and boldly as we join our voices with the Song of the Spirit that is still singing truth, beauty, freedom, and joy into all corners of creation.
It was a new dawn, and though Miriam didn’t sing this song, she could have…
Let the sun shine! Let the sun shine in!
Amen.