Getting Out of Egypt

Tuesday, April 4, 2006 -- Week of 5 Lent (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117

An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this link -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (p. 957)
Psalms [120], 121, 122, 123 (morning) // 123, 125, 126, [127] (afternoon)
Exodus 5:1 - 6:1
1 Corinthians 14:20-33a, 39-40
Mark 9:42-50


Getting out of Egypt

God is in the business of getting people out of Egypt. Egypt is the place where authority is practiced over people, not with them. It is the place where power is used in the service of money. It is the place where people are a commodity to be used, where productivity is increased and production costs decreased, where the powerful dictate to the weak. It is a place of bondage. When the poor or the weak lift up their voices to complain or organize to create a better life for them in their work, those who complain or organize are isolated or punished. God wants to free people from Egypt.
______________

I can still remember childhood fears prompted by today's Gospel reading. These threats of eternal punishment were very concrete to me. What does it mean to "put a stumbling block before one of these little ones"? Since I was around "little ones" all of the time, and daily involved in some conflict with one child or another, I figured it was pretty likely that I had at least "put a stumbling block" before some other kid, maybe with regularity. I could vivid imagine what it would feel like to have a heavy stone tied to my neck. I could feel the scratchy rope on my little neck. I could picture what it would be like to be plunged neck-first into the ocean. This was horrible. But it was preferable to what may happen to me for messing with some other kid.

And I was pretty sure my hand or my foot or my eye caused me to stumble from time to time. Better to cut them off? I could visualize life without one of them. But I knew my own tendencies. The way I was going, I would end up with no appendages.

It was pretty clear that there weren't any grownups around who had acted on these scriptures. I wondered if they knew something I didn't know, or if they were just risking the inevitability of being "thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched." I decided not to act on these passages and to try not to worry about them very much until I grew up and knew a little more.

I'm not sure I know much more now. I still get the heebie-jeebies when I read this stuff. But I have been involved in the business of trying to confront my life-long false self habits that are such stumbling blocks to me and to God's "little ones." Those anxious and fearful habits are so ingrained and practiced that turning from them is like chopping off a hand or foot or losing an eye. I've functioned dysfunctionally for so long that I fear I'll not know how to function if I change my ways.

So the stark choice is placed before me. Change my compulsive habits or stay in hell (or in Egypt). God wants my freedom from my own bondage. But it takes a lot of trust to leave the familiar environs of Egypt. And habits don't die on their own. They fight to keep control. Besides, what would I do in that wilderness across the water? You can get used to dragging millstones around.