The days of Joseph were over … a distant memory. The days of feasting upon the stored up grain in a time of famine were nothing but a passed down story. The days of Joseph’s heroics, the people of Israel’s favor with Pharaoh were no more. Maybe a story they told over campfires as they bandaged their wounds and rested their worn down bones. Maybe a song sung softly to mothers as they watched their babies taken from them and thrown into the river. Maybe a dream imagined before the breaking of dawn and the breaking of backs. As they laid the bricks for structures that were not theirs, carried out orders for a people not their own, cried out in agony from a foreign land, maybe it was somewhere stored in their collective memory. A story of identity, a glimmer of hope, a possibility of a different life. Maybe they told each other the story so that their spirit would not be crushed along with their will. Somehow, somewhere, some way they had hope enough to cry out. Under the weight of Pharaoh’s oppression- the people of Israel, enslaved, unheard by all earthly powers, cried out to their God. The God of their ancestors, the God of the stories they told to one another, the stories that lived on in their collective memory. The God of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob … Joseph. They cried out for the next chapter of their story. The story of God and God’s people. Come now, save us, help us, continue in your relationship with us.
And God hears them. It may not have looked like it at first. When Pharaoh ordered all of the male babies born of Hebrew women to be thrown into the river. God’s will may not have been clear when the midwives protected new lives, or when a baby was rescued from a basket and given a chance at life. Fear and confusion may have blurred out hope and direction when the bush was in flames. But God hears them.
This story is so epic, so well-known, so true to human experience and played out over and over again in human history. The Exodus was as real for the slaves fleeing to the north in our own country as it was for the slaves fleeing from Pharaoh in Egypt. A fight for freedom, a fight for survival, a plea to God … the Exodus has happened many times in our history.
As I watch the images of Syrian refuges fleeing war I think of the Exodus. As I saw that image of a small boy washed up on the beach, drowned when his family attempted to leave the fighting in Syria, I thought of the Exodus. The baby boys thrown into the river. The cruelty of oppression, the violence of the world, the human cost of power games. I wonder what it looks like as those many, many Syrian refugees desperately look for safety. As they leave their land and hope to find impassible barriers parted for their safe passage. The story of the Exodus did not end when the people of Israel left Egypt.
It is a story that we cling to any time we find ourselves up against something that is just too big to change. When we find ourselves without a way forward, desperate, beat down, afraid, unsure of where to go. When the task ahead is impossible, too painful, too difficult, too unjust. When we are up against a force much bigger than ourselves. Like when someone in a position of authority makes decisions that hurt us and there is nothing we can do about it. Or when we are the victims of an injustice.
Maybe we find ourselves clinging to the story of the Exodus when we feel crushed and all we can do is cry out to our God. A close friend of mine recently went through a really difficult time, a painful, impossible, devastating experience. She was a church member in Woodville when I was the pastor there and some of you know her. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and then after treatment it quickly spread across her body. She was very beloved, especially by her husband and three young children. She was a wonderful writer and so many many people felt like they were part of her journey with her. When she was waiting for test results or receiving news or having to tell her children bad news she would put out a request for big, loud, noisy prayers. And people prayed them. We prayed those big, loud, noisy prayers. Prayers from a place of desperation and pain. Prayers from broken hearts unable to see a way out. Prayers that sounded like those desperate cries to God from the people of Israel. The ones from their broken hearts. The ones they were praying when Moses was picked up from that basket, when the bush was on fire. The ones they prayed that God heard.
The story of the Exodus- the suffering, the crying out, the response by God. It is epic. It is pivotal to the Bible. Over and over again throughout the Bible it is referred to. It is taught, told, celebrated, sung, prayed and remembered over and over again. Over and over again the Bible says “this is who we are. Do not forget. We were oppressed, we suffered, we were foreigners. We cried out to God. God heard us and delivered us. Teach this to your children, write it down, never forget.” This story is a story of survival, relationship, hope and triumph.
This story is about the people and God. They both act. And that is important. First the people cry out. They ask for help. When we ask for help we admit that we are dependent. We can not do it on our own, we are in desperate need of God’s grace and mercy. We accept our humanness, our brokenness. In acknowledging that we are not God we can reach out to God, open our hearts to God. We can fall on our knees before God and take comfort in knowing that we are not alone. It is ok if we can not carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. We are weak, we suffer, we hurt, we fail, we are human. We are on our knees crying out to God.
And God acts. God hears and when the people call out, God calls back. “Moses, Moses …” In the middle of the ordinary, in the leaves of a bush, God becomes known. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God reveals Gods self right here in human existence, and calls out. This is an amazing thing about the God we pray to- God works with us. God calls back, invites us to be part of God’s saving work, to journey with God.
Moses is the connection between God and the people. The way in which God responds to their cries. That baby floating down the river becomes a bridge between heaven and earth. In his address to Congress last week, Pope Francis said this about Moses:
“On the one hand, the patriarch and lawgiver of the people of Israel symbolizes the need of peoples to keep alive their sense of unity by means of just legislation. On the other, the figure of Moses leads us directly to God and thus to the transcendent dignity of the human being. Moses provides us with a good synthesis of your work: you are asked to protect, by means of the law, the image and likeness fashioned by God on every human face.”
A powerful way of understanding the work of Moses- leading us directly to God. Witnessing to the transcendent dignity of the human being, the human ability to transcend our earthly existence, our mortal bodies and communicate with God. In the flames of a bush, Moses transcends the God/ human divide, he communicates directly with God. And over time is given the task of protecting the image stamped by God onto every human. Moses becomes the connection between a desperate people and their God. The path between their struggles and the God who journeyed with their ancestors, who made them who they are, who created the world.
Their broken backs, tired hearts and desperate pleas are met with a baby thrown into a river and a bush on fire. God hears their cries, God is at work, calling out. Even when the task ahead is as insurmountable as mighty Pharaoh, God is at work. There is a way forward.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe. I know that on that journey with Moses sometimes the people had a hard time believing. As mothers feared for their babies lives, wept for the ones not plucked from the river, the way forward must have been hard to see. It can be hard to see anything when your eyes are swollen from tears. For the Syrian refugees the way forward is unknown, invisible and far off.
This week as I heard the news of another school shooting, saw pictures of another group of students huddled together, shaking, crying in front of police vans-it felt like too much. It felt like too much some years ago when the students huddled together were five years old. Too many shootings, too much violence, too much pain, too many children killed, too much politics, too much disagreement, fighting, hatred, no way forward. No exit from our current situation. No balm for the broken hearts. Insurmountable.
Don’t forget. Our story. What God did. The God we believe in. Write it down, sing it, say it, teach it to the children. The people cried out and God heard their cries. Moses lead the people out. A way forward, a land of promise and hope. God walked with them.
And what about my friend I mentioned who asked for the big, noisy prayers during her cancer treatment? There were times and are times when the way forward is hard to see. The night she died it was hard to see much with swollen eyes from crying. We fell on our knees, we prayed, loud, hard, passionately. Where is the way forward? Don’t forget. Our story. What God did. The God we believe in. Write it down, sing it, say it, teach it to the children. God does not abandon us, God hears our cry. I tell myself that when I learn from her memory, when I see her children smile, when I see the difference she made on so many lives, when I think of her faith, when I believe in hope beyond the grave. A way forward, somehow. A path for the refugees, a hope for the hopeless, a possibility for the peace of the world, the peace of the children in our schools, healing for grieving hearts. Remember our story, hold on to it and keep walking forward, but don’t forget to remove your sandals.
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