Blogging Exodus 15:1-21
1 Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this
song to the Lord, and spoke, saying:
“I will sing to the
Lord,
For He has triumphed
gloriously!
The horse and its rider
He has thrown into the
sea!
2 The Lord is my strength and song,
And He has become my salvation;
He is my God, and I will
praise Him;
My father’s God, and I
will exalt Him.
. . .
20 Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron,
took the timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with
timbrels and with dances.
21 And Miriam answered them:
“Sing to the Lord,
For He has triumphed
gloriously!
The horse and its rider
He has thrown into the
sea!”
Yesterday was Exodus
chapter 14. Yesterday, the most powerful military on the planet
surrounded the escaped slaves whom they intended to murder and/or
re-enslave. The Hebrews and the mixed multitude of
sympathizers with them were trapped between the soldiers and the lake or gulf
that they called a Sea but might as well have been an ocean because the Hebrews
didn’t have boats. Yesterday, they were all about to die.
But that was
yesterday.
This morning the Hebrews
had walked across the dried bed of the Red Sea but the armies of Egypt had been
drowned behind them.
And Moses stretched out
his hand over the sea; and when the morning appeared, the sea returned to its
full depth, while the Egyptians were fleeing into it. So the Lord overthrew the
Egyptians in the midst of the sea. . . But the children of Israel had walked on
dry land in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall to them on their
right hand and on their left (Exodus 27-29).
JOY! had come in
the morning. When Moses looked back with wonder and how he and his people
had got over from over from enslavement to emancipation, Exodus 15 says that he
wanted to sing. He wanted to shout! He wanted to thank the Lord for
all He’d done for them!
But there were no such
songs for Moses to sing.
The sons and daughters
of Africa snatched from their homes to serve European and American pharaohs brought
their songs and rhythms with them. In America, they adapted English and
remixed the content for censoring overseers but the flavor, the soul sung on
the sugar cane plantations of the Caribbean and in the cotton fields of the
Confederacy were the sounds of peoples who had traded with King Solomon when
their masters’ ancestors were praying to trees and stones.
But the emancipated
souls on the free side of the Red Sea had no such songs.
There are no songs in
Genesis. That doesn’t mean that no one sang before this moment in
history. Genesis 4:21 relates the birth of a musical tradition, and
Genesis 31:27 alludes to joyful songs for a going away party. But
there are no actual songs in Genesis, no psalms of praise survived from the patriarchs.
Genesis 15 found souls
bursting with praise and no established form for sharing it.
So Moses freestyled.
“I will sing to
the Lord,
For He has triumphed
gloriously!
The horse and its rider
He has thrown into the
sea!
The Lord is my strength
and song,
And He has become my
salvation;
He is my God, and I will
praise Him;
My father’s God, and I
will exalt Him (Exodus 15: 1-2).
There was no choir, no
order of service, no approved agenda for the bulletin on the shores of the Red
Sea. Moses sang without an organ, without a hymnal, without any
guide or limit on “the right kind” of worship music. WHICH MEANS
that right praise is NOT determined by a tradition. Right
praise is NOT confined to a particular portfolio of selections. All you
need for right praise is faith and a story of what God has done for you.
Moses finished his song
and Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron,
took the timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with
timbrels and with dances (Exodus 15:20).
Miriam responded the
call to worship by organizing the first women's praise dance team.
When someone praises God
from the heart, but their style doesn’t align with and established tradition,
the correct response from the congregation is not CRITIQUE. The correct
response from the congregation to faith-full, spirit-full, spirit-ual praise in
an unfamiliar style is ---- WORSHIP.
Moses spit the verse and
Miriam ad-libbed vamp.
And Miriam answered
them:
“Sing to the Lord,
For He has triumphed
gloriously!
The horse and its rider
He has thrown into the
sea!” (Exodus 15: 21)
The first song in
Scripture was a freestyle, an ad-libbed hook, and an impromptu dance routine
led by a prophet and a prophetess, performed by male and female with no
tradition.
Something to remember
when those young folks wanna “do something different” in praise and worship.
---Anderson T. Graves
II is a writer, community
organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership
development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves
II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the
popular blog: A Word to the Wise at
www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
Email: BaileyTabernacleChurch@comcast.net
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35401
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