“This Moses whom they refused, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’ God sent as both ruler and deliverer by the hand of the angel that appeared to him in the bush. He led them out, having performed wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet from your brethren as he raised me up.’ (Acts 7:35-38)
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he looked to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king; for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the first-born might not touch them. By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as if on dry land; but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. (Hebrews 11:24-29)
In the Orthodox Church today a small portion of the Exodus account found in the Bible is read during Holy Week and on Holy Saturday. The Exodus narrative is being used to help prepare the catechumens for the sacraments of baptism and Communion which they will first experience on Holy Saturday. Thus, the catechumens enter into the Church by sharing in the salvation history of God’s people as recorded in the Scriptures. Baptism and Communion are our ways of participating in all of God’s saving events in history and thus incorporating us into the people of God. Roman Catholic scholar Jean Danielou writes:
The Old Testament gave us an eschatological interpretation of the Exodus, showing it to us as a type of the Messianic age. The New Testament proclaims that this typology has been fulfilled in Christ, who achieved the New Exodus foretold by the Prophets, by freeing men from the power of the Devil. The Fathers of the Church, while they uphold these two interpretations, are chiefly concerned to show that the Exodus is the type of those major factors in the life of the Church day by day, that is, the Sacraments, through which the power of God continues to achieve man’s redemption, typified by the Exodus, and accomplished by Jesus Christ. The Fathers first of all show that the passage of the Red Sea and the eating of the manna are the type of Baptism and the Eucharist received on the anniversary day of the departure from Egypt, and then go on to show how this interpretation widens to include all the events of the Exodus.
It is one of the most important themes of early typology that the crossing of the Red Sea is a type of Baptism, and this will be more easily understood when it is remembered that Baptism was administered during the night of Holy Saturday, in the framework, that is, of the Jewish feast which recalled the departure from Egypt. The parallel between the historical event of the departure from Egypt and the mystical rejection of sin by the passing through the baptismal font forces itself upon us. The Liturgical connection between the water of Baptism and the water of the Red Sea is not just fortuitous: we can only insist once more on what was said of the Flood; the significance of the baptismal water lies not in it being a rite of purification, but a rite of initiation. In any rite of initiation, there is always a certain ritual imitation of the historical event. Such was the case with Jewish baptism, which in the Christian era took the place of circumcision as the initiatory rite of proselytes to the Jewish faith. G. Foot-Moore writes: ‘this baptism was neither a real nor merely symbolic purification: it was essentially a rite of initiation.’ And the purpose of this initiation was to bring the proselyte through the same stages that the people of Israel had passed through at the time of the Exodus from Egypt. Even Jewish baptism, then, was an imitation of the crossing of the Red Sea and the baptism of the desert (Exodus 14: 30).
We have seen that the New Testament certainly sees in the departure from Egypt a type of Baptism. St Paul tells the Jews that their fathers ‘were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. And all in Moses were baptized in the cloud and in the sea‘ (1 Corinthians 10:2-11), and the Gospel of Saint John shows us how the great events of the Exodus were types of the Christian sacraments. (FROM SHADOW TO REALITY, pp 175-176)
This is the day of resurrection. Let us be illumined, O people. Pascha, the Pascha of the Lord. For from death to life and from earth to heaven has Christ our God led us, as we sing the song of victory. (Ode 1 of the Paschal Canon)
Fraternized 