Moving On

‘Tell the people to move on’  - Exodus 14:15

We are all aware of the creative order of evolution, the gradual development of something as it adapts and interacts with its current environment. This beautiful rhythm is hard wired into the essence of all matter and implicates us all in the trajectory of its progressive change. 

When Moses told the people to ‘move on' he wasn't just barking out a marching order, but was confronting the resistance that all people feel when their past is trying to restrain them from moving into the future. 

The Hebrew people had been held in captivity as slaves by the Egyptian overlords for hundreds of years and had finally escaped, only to find themselves standing in front of the Red Sea as their enemy army bore down on their new found freedom. After agreeing to their release, and retrospectively realising that he had lost the services of his slaves the Pharaoh back-tracked on his decision, setting out with his trusty charioteers to retrieve his workforce. Much to the chagrin of the Hebrew people they were now painstakingly stuck in the middle between two overwhelming obstacles….the past and their future.

'When the future is about to open a way for us the past makes a last ditch effort to drag us back into its well-worn path of security and safety'. 

Moving on is about letting go, not because the past is bad, old or no longer beneficial but because the future is reaching its hands out inviting us to embrace a new reality.  Letting go is about making room in our lives for new ways of seeing, understanding and experiencing what God has for us.

In a strange kind of way Egypt originally represented a type of salvific grace for the Hebrew people, rescuing them from famine through their ancestor Joseph who was sold into slavery many years before. After finding favour in the eyes of the Pharaoh he become head of food resources of the nation. In our sacred narrative, Egypt on a few occasions was  a place of a divine sanctuary for those who sought refuge.  Unfortunately places of sanctuary can be temporary due to the fickle nature of the successive governing powers who often end up feeling threatened or intimidated by these new found immigrants, and in order to maintain the balance of power they create regulatory restrictions to limit their powers. 

Slavery: A legal incarceration that disempowers a humans rights in order that exploitation can have its way.

To broaden this analogy, if we do not let salvific grace continue to evolve our understanding and experience of God we can become enslaved to a certainty and security that becomes fixed in a very rigid view of the divine. Salvific grace that does not continue to transform us will eventually deteriorate to an institutional construct.

Slavery is the result of a society that refuses to evolve into a transformative servant of the greater whole. The tragic outcome of this refusal often results in the  exploitation of the marginalised and less fortunate. After a long period of time this oppressive culture eats away at the psyche of a society reducing peoples sense of dignity by creating a class system of hierarchy that demoralises and depletes its ability to fight back.

Because of life's trauma we are all slaves to our past, hounded by a kind of abuse victim mentality that keeps us wanting to revisit old ways and old stories instead of write new stories and venture into new places of risk. Maybe letting go is just about embracing the little freedoms that appear along the way?

Trust is the energy and confidence we must find to remain on this pathway of progressive change. For when fear and anxiety, which is often caused by a conflict of interest between the past and the future comes crashing in on us, we need to be careful not to catastrophise about possible outcomes. Trust helps us to relinquish our hold on the security blankets of our childhood and clothe ourselves with courage. Your children’s children will thank you for it. 

Moving on also means moving into the new space of understanding and experience that God has for us.  This can be very uncomfortable for some as we have all been conditioned by a certain kind of rationale that suggests that God doesn’t change. At a fundamental level you may believe that God doesn’t change but at an experiential level God changes, especially as we reflect on the redemptive hermeneutic of our  scriptural narrative. Jesus highlighted this by saying, “You heard it said but I say” an encouraging reminder of how life takes on new meaning in an ever increasing way.

Moving on is about the personal transformation we undergo in our interaction with the divine and its providential leading in our lives. In order to do that we need a mantra that keeps us focussed and unifies our quest. 

Meister Eckhart the German theologian, philosopher and mystic said in one of his famous quotes,

“I pray God, rid me of God”

In my humble estimation he is saying that in order to keep growing, moving, evolving, and transforming as a human race we must understand and experience God in ever more healthy and honest ways leaving behind the old notions and ideas of a primitive and archaic deity who is somewhat disappointed or upset with humanity. Instead we must embrace a God whose grace finds goodness in everything and everyone.

Moving is not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it is the only way to avoid a stagnant faith that retreats back to Egypt in difficult times rather than stepping into the unknown wilderness of uncertain possibility.

Titiro whakamuri Kokiri whakamua  (Look back and reflect so you can move forward)

Greg Burson