How is this stuff even here?

I love the Exodus. The only connection to the readings is that the Ten Commandments are recorded after the liberation of the Jews from Eygpt. As a people of God they are now called to live it out. Now saying "I love the Exodus" is a geeky seminarian thing to say. I mean come on, where but a seminary do you hear such things. I don't know about you but I never hear those things in the world. "I'll have 6 cheeseburgers and three sodas and by the way, do you like Exodus?"

Since yesterday I've been mulling over the 400 years it took for the Israelites to be freed. Regardless of the time they spent in captivity, they recorded their escape from captivity as deliverance. They understood their liberation not in social terms but through theology. I am more and more impressed with their leaving Egypt. What kind of courage does it take to throw off the chains of your captors? Even if you get a mountain of miracles to show you that God is involved it still takes courage to leave your home in pursuit of something you are not sure will show up. Yet they did. What always strikes me about the biblical texts is that we're still reading them. While it easy to get caught up in the ongoing debates about what happened when and did this really happen, we're still examining them. I mean we're not being confronted with the story of the ancient alaskans, the people of Sri Lanka, or even the ancient Egyptians. If longevity of a peoples story were attached to empire somehow we should be deeply engaged in the religions of Egypt or Rome.

Yet we're not. Exodus is part of the religious history of a people who by empire standards should not even be remembered. That fact alone gives credence to the idea that maybe God has been involved all along.