In present-day culture we use sarcasm a lot, but we tend to expect that every story in the Bible is written in straightforward fashion: direct prose, without any sarcasm or hyperbole that we’d need to watch out for. As it turns out, however, sarcasm has been around for many many centuries. Today’s reading gives us a fine example, in the complaint the people of Israel made against Moses: “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (Exodus 14:11). With the Egyptian army marching hard on their trail, it looked like certain death for the children of Israel, and they were afraid. And that fear got expressed with sarcasm.

It would certainly be all right if they had expressed their emotion directly, saying “We are afraid” or something similar. But as it turns out, they expressed this with sarcasm, blaming Moses for their danger. It is interesting to imagine the dynamic that would have resulted, if they had been able to say, clearly, what they were afraid of: when families are in conflict, that is often the most effective thing to do. Sarcasm, on the other hand, is usually not that effective. It functions mostly to irritate the person on the receiving end. Still, we keep on using it, often with unhappy results. On this occasion, though, Moses managed to look past the sarcasm and recognize the fear, and he tried to calm them, explaining that the Lord was going to rescue them, so they did not need to be afraid (14:13-14).

The text does not report to us what all Moses said to God about it, but it appears that he had a complaint or two of his own in his prayers. That seems to be the suggestion in what the Lord’s response to Moses: “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground” (14:15-16).

Moses may have been looking for more confidence from the people and more sympathy from God; yet in the end the sea got divided, and the children of Israel got across to freedom on the other side. There’s a lesson in this. When neither the people nor God seem to be appreciating all my efforts, the temptation is to respond with my own smart remarks so that I can prove that I’m right. Yet almost always the most important thing is to figure out how to keep moving forward and get the project accomplished, rather than figuring out how to get the last word and win the argument.

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You have freed us from bondage, O Lord, on the outside and on the inside; and often all we have offered in return is complaints. Teach us gratitude; teach us responsiveness; teach us to live in the awareness that in the end you will bring us through to the glorious freedom of the children of God.