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Exodus

Law and Transcendence

Law and Possibility
by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
Exodus 20:1-4; 7-9; 12-20
October 5,2014

“We are not alone.” You may recall that was the tag line for the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in the late ‘70s. Richard Dreyfus plays a man who has had a “close encounter” with a flying saucer and he begins to act crazy, building mountains out of mashed potatoes and so forth. It turns out that the mountain he is imagining is the meeting place—the point where aliens at last reveal their presence to the Human Race. It is ultimately a benign encounter, but what the movie gets at so well is the confusion—the sense of being mad, of cracking up—that one would experience when first confronted with that terrifying reality—and the sense, most of all, that you will be forever changed, that the individual, and humanity itself, will transcend its limitations when we discover that “we are not alone.”

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If

If
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
September 28, 2014

Exodus 19: 1-7

“If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can… watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools…”
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), “If”

The children of Israel wander in the desert, led by a crotchety, opinionated, and often glorious man. He tells them about a new god, named Yahweh, who is actually the true God, and who has been their savior and protector, leading them out of slavery in Egypt, defeating the Egyptians, feeding them and finding water for them in the wilderness. And now they come to Sinai, and now they will meet this god. It sounds promising: a personal relationship with God.
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Is God With Us?

On the Shoulders or On the Rock

Exodus 7: 1-7

If you’ve been following the story of the Exodus so far, then it will come as no surprise to you that the children of Israel wandering in the desert are complaining. This time, they want water! Once again Moses is on the spot. But God reassures him. Strike the rock with your stick, and water will come out of it. What God actually says, is: “Here, I stand before you on the rock at Horev. You are to strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people shall drink.” Moses does what God says and the people drink. And Moses calls the place Massah and Meriba, “testing” and “quarreling,” because of the contentious questioning of the people, who wondered, according to scripture: “Is God among us, or not?”[1]Read More »Is God With Us?

Enough God?

What is the What?
By Rev. Fritz Ritsch
September 14, 2014
Exodus 16: 2-16

In Exodus, a couple of chapters before the chapter we’re reading today, Pharaoh watches his former slaves, the Hebrews, starting to leave Egypt, and cries: “what is this we have done, releasing Israel from our service?” (14:5). But on the other end of the spectrum are the Hebrews themselves, free at last from slavery, but wandering seemingly lost in the desert, and they demand of Moses, who freed them, “What have you done to us?” (14:2) “Why are you crying out to me?” responds God, frustrated. “What shall we eat?” the people complain, and Moses and Aaron, his co-leader, respond in disgust, “What are we that you should grumble against us?” Once the Israelites have escaped their Egyptian slave masters, they have a serious case of corporate Buyers’ Remorse: “Why did you bring us up from Egypt?” they cry. And Moses responds, “Why are you in a contest with me? And why do test God?” Then Moses turns to God in exasperation: “What am I to do with these people?” (Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Particulars of Rapture. New York: Shocken Books, 2001. P. 206.)Read More »Enough God?

Cry and Response

Moses Begins
by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
August 24, 2014
Exodus 1: 8-14; 22; 2: 1-10

“[Rabbi] Reshi gives credit to [the Egyptian Princess’] way of seeing; she ‘sees It, the Presence of God, with the child.’ Her way of seeing makes room for the ‘hidden sphere,’ the ‘complex ferment’ that is The Presence of God in the crying voice of a child.” Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture

If you noticed that the title of this sermon sounds a lot like “Batman Begins,” there’s a reason for that. Moses Moses is the first true hero of two faiths. Even Jesus based his ministry on Moses’ model. Moses begins it all. Before Moses, there was no Hebrew people. Before Moses, the Hebrews had no coherent identity. Sources from Egyptian times, sources far more ancient than the Bible, tell us that a group of disparate tribes arrived in Egypt about the time of the Great Famine. They may not have seen themselves as connected to one another at all. But the Egyptians referred to them as a collective, much as we tend to call all people from the south of the border Hispanic or Latinos, whether they are Mexican or Guatemalan or Colombian. The collective term the Egyptians used was Habiru. And it’s likely that is the source of the term Hebrew for the people who Moses saved.Read More »Cry and Response