"Passage of the Jews through the Red Sea," by Ivan Aivazovsky, 1817-1900, Armenian.
One of the great religious stories in history is the biblical story of the Exodus, the story of a people being set free from slavery, passing miraculously through the Red Sea, and finding themselves standing in freedom, on a new shore.
Most of us are familiar with this story. A nation of people, Israel, was living under the burden of slavery in Egypt for many years. During all those years, they prayed for liberation, but for more than 400 years none came.
Then God acted. God sent a man, Moses, to confront the pharaoh who was enslaving the Israelites and when the pharaoh resisted, God sent a series of plagues, which eventually forced the pharaoh to release the people from slavery and allow them to leave.
Moses began to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, but as they were leaving, the pharaoh changed his mind and with his armies began to pursue them, catching them just as they found themselves trapped on the shore of the Red Sea, unable to go forward.
It is then that God performs the great miracle upon which the Jewish faith is grounded. He miraculously parts the water and lets the people walk through the sea on dry ground. Then, as the Egyptian armies pursue them, the waters flow back and drown the entire army, so that those fleeing slavery now stand free of their oppressors, on a new shore.
Both Christians and Jews believe that this miracle actually happened historically and is one of the two great foundational miracles God has worked in history. For Christians, the other great foundational miracle is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The Jewish faith depends on the truth of the miracle at the Red Sea and the Christian faith depends on the truth of the resurrection of Jesus.
Moreover, both Judaism and Christianity say these great miracles (which happened historically only once, in one time and place) are intended for all time and all places and can be participated in through ritual (in a way that is real, albeit outside of history).
In Judaism, the algebra runs this way: In parting the Red Sea and letting the Israelites escape, God performs a miracle, physically altering reality. However, even though historically only one generation of people actually walked through the Red Sea, this is a miracle that goes beyond time, place, history, and normal metaphysics. It is timeless and can be participated in by subsequent generations.
How? Through ritual, through ritually commemorating that original miracle through the Passover supper.
When religious Jews celebrate the Passover supper, they believe that they aren’t just remembering something that happened once when God parted the waters of the Red Sea; they believe that each of them, all these centuries later, is actually walking through the Red Sea. They aren’t just remembering a historical event; they are actively participating in that event.
How can this be explained? How can we explain how an event can exist outside of time and space? We can’t. Miracles, by definition, don’t have an explicable phenomenology. That’s why they are called miracles. Hence, we can’t explain either the historical parting of the waters, nor the availability of that event outside of time.
Christians believe the same thing about Jesus’ exodus through death to resurrection. We believe that this happened once historically, for real, in an event that miraculously altered the earth’s normal physics. And, like our Jewish sisters and brothers, we also believe that this onetime event, Jesus’ death and resurrection, can be participated in, for real, through ritual, namely, by the ritual commemorating of it through the Scriptures and especially through the celebration of the Eucharist.
For Christians, this is the specific function of the Eucharistic prayer at a Eucharistic celebration. The Eucharistic prayer (the Canon) is not just a prayer to make Christ present in the bread and the wine; it is also a prayer to make the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection present for us to participate in.
Just as Judaism believes that at a Passover supper those present are actually walking through a miraculous passage God created for them to walk through en route to a new freedom, so too as Christians we believe that at the Eucharist we also are really (actually) walking through the miraculous passage from death to life that Jesus created through his journey from death to resurrection.
And, in this there’s an invitation to all who participate in the Eucharist: as the Eucharistic prayer is being prayed, ask yourself: What forces are enslaving me? What pharaoh is keeping me in bondage? A bad self-image? Paranoia? Fear? A certain wound? Trauma? An addiction? Can I journey with Christ to a new place that’s free of this slavery?
The miracle of Jesus’ resurrection, like the Exodus, happened once historically, but it is also outside of time and place and available to us as a way to leave behind the pharaohs that enslave us, so as to arrive in freedom, on a new shore.