Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] September 3, 2023 “Disrupted by Compassion” Exodus 1:8 – 2:4 – Common English Bible Now a new king came to power in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “The Israelite people are now larger in number and stronger than we are. 10 Come on, let’s be smart and deal with them. Otherwise, they will only grow in number. And if war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land.” 11 As a result, the Egyptians put foremen of forced work gangs over the Israelites to harass them with hard work. They had to build storage cities named Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they grew and spread, so much so that the Egyptians started to look at the Israelites with disgust and dread. 13 So the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites. 14 They made their lives miserable with hard labor, making mortar and bricks, doing field work, and by forcing them to do all kinds of other cruel work. 15 The king of Egypt spoke to two Hebrew midwives named Shiphrah and Puah: 16 “When you are helping the Hebrew women give birth and you see the baby being born, if it’s a boy, kill him. But if it’s a girl, you can let her live.” 17 Now the two midwives respected God so they didn’t obey the Egyptian king’s order. Instead, they let the baby boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt called the two midwives and said to them, “Why are you doing this? Why are you letting the baby boys live?” 19 The two midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because Hebrew women aren’t like Egyptian women. They’re much stronger and give birth before any midwives can get to them.” 20 So God treated the midwives well, and the people kept on multiplying and became very strong. 21 And because the midwives respected God, God gave them households of their own. 22 Then Pharaoh gave an order to all his people: “Throw every baby boy born to the Hebrews into the Nile River, but you can let all the girls live.” 2 Now a man from Levi’s household married a Levite woman. 2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She saw that the baby was healthy and beautiful, so she hid him for three months. 3 When she couldn’t hide him any longer, she took a reed basket and sealed it up with black tar. She put the child in the basket and set the basket among the reeds at the riverbank. 4 The baby’s older sister stood watch nearby to see what would happen to him. When we left off last week, Joseph had reconciled with the very brothers who threw him in a pit and sold him to traders on their way to Egypt when he was 17 years old – the bratty little brother who liked to tattle on them, who told them outrageous dreams about ruling over them, and who liked to rub in their faces that he was daddy’s favorite. After a subsequent wild ride of events, including 13 years in prison, Joseph interpreted two dreams for Pharaoh and ended up in charge of successfully preparing Egypt for seven years of famine, along with saving others from starvation too, including his unsuspecting brothers who came from Canaan to buy grain. Joseph told Pharaoh about his family and he invited them all to settle in Egypt. Jacob and his wives and his 12 sons and 21 daughters (yes, he had 33 children with 4 wives), plus their children, wives, grandchildren and great-children. They were invited to settle in the best land in the whole nation – Goshen. And the locals didn’t mind because Joseph was in the midst of saving their entire nation from starvation. But there’s an often-overlooked part of the story. In a famine that lasts seven years, you can imagine that people would eventually run out of money to buy more grain. It started happening. The people weren’t told to save up for 7 years of famine, Pharaoh was and he took full advantage. When the money ran out and all of the peoples’ silver had been traded for grain, Joseph traded for their livestock. And when the people had no more livestock, he traded for their property. And when all the land was in the possession of Pharaoh, the people “offered” to become slaves to save themselves from starvation. Joseph effectively turned the nation into sharecroppers. The people could still live on the land that once belonged to them, but they would have to pay back Pharaoh with the produce of his land. Without money, livestock, or land, they were completely without anything except his mercy. Perpetually in his debt. But then promptly, nothing more is said of that curious story or of the famine itself and suddenly it’s 17 years later and Joseph’s father Jacob is about to die. It is on a father’s deathbed that a blessing is conferred upon the oldest son to become the leader of the tribe. But you may remember that Jacob tricked his older twin out of that blessing. Jacob conspired with their mother to deceive their father out of giving his death-bed blessing to Esau. Jacob stole that blessing. And here it is, now time for Jacob to give his death bed blessing. He gathered all 12 sons around. Rueben was his oldest and the obvious family heir, but instead of blessing him, Jacob cursed him because – today’s soap opera detail – Rueben slept with one of his father’s wives. He was out. So, logically, the blessing would then fall to Simeon, or if not him, the next brother in line, Levi. But Jacob chastised them both: “Cursed be your anger, it is violent; cursed be your rage, it is relentless.” No blessing for them either. Judah was the next in line and it was this fourth son who finally received the favored status – the head of the tribe. It’s why Jews are called Jews, Judahites, and not Ruebenites. More about his story another time. Jacob continued blessing son after son, reserving the longest blessing for the first son of his favorite wife Rachel, still his favorite son, Joseph: “Blessings from the sky above, blessings from the deep sea below, blessings from breasts and womb. The blessings of your father exceed the blessings of the eternal mountains…” and on and on he goes for 19 lines. In contrast, he said to his son Issachar that he is a “sturdy donkey,” a funny compliment, and simply as a matter of fact, told Zebulun that he will live at the seashore. Even his beloved Benjamin, the baby brother, only got three lines. Bottom line, this is how Judah became the head of the tribe of Israel. Ruben slept with one of his father’s wives, and Simeon and Levi were hotheads. Jacob died was brought back to Canaan to be buried. His body was accompanied by all the elder statesmen of Egypt and their chariots and horsemen – a huge collection of people who mourned for seven days. Joseph continued to live a long life, 110 years, long enough to meet the grandchildren of his children. Upon his death, he was honored and buried in Egypt. But how soon we forget. Today’s reading began, “Now a new king came to power in Egypt who did not know Joseph.” How is that possible? Thanks to him, the country not only survived seven years of famine, they were now a wealthy nation, thanks to the wealth amassed from the desperate nations around them. At the time, Egypt was the equivalent of a global superpower. What else is going on? Somehow, scripture is continually relevant and this is a great example. Pharaoh needed a scapegoat. He needed someone to blame for some indiscretion or some incompetence… something that would deflect attention. He needed an enemy and found the perfect target. Several years ago, Alan Alda starred in a Michael Moore movie called Canadian Bacon. It’s one of my favorite movies. He plays a hapless president plagued by poor poll numbers. His advisors convince him he needs to create a war to cover up a faltering economy, but they didn’t want any real consequences, so they declared war on Canada. They stoked suspicions and the fear of Canadians walking secretly among us. Americans were suddenly pouring maple syrup onto the streets, Anne Murray was banned from the radio, and TV stations couldn’t show hockey anymore. The president’s approval ratings soared and any memories of our long friendship with Canada were forgotten. Pharaoh tried to alarm the people by claiming, “There are way too many of these foreigners for us to handle. We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to devise a plan to contain them. Otherwise, if there’s a war, they might join our enemies,” and as one translation adds, “or just walk off and leave us.” That’s such a curious line. I mean, if there are too many, why not just let them leave? Could it be, maybe, that he needs their cheap labor? They were put into work-gangs and made to perform hard labor. However, the worse they were treated, the more children they had. There had been too many and now there are even more! So, they went a step further and enslaved them. They piled on work, trying to crush them under a cruel workload — making bricks and mortar and back-breaking work in the fields. But nothing was working. They couldn’t be broken. So, Pharaoh told the two Hebrew midwives to kill all the boys as they were being born. Shiphrah and Puah respected God too much to do as they were ordered so they made up a story that the Hebrew women were so strong, they gave birth before the midwives could show up. When that idea didn’t work, Pharaoh gave an order to all his people: Throw every newborn Hebrew baby boy into the Nile River. He tried torture. He tried to enslave. Nothing was working so Pharaoh turned the entire nation into a killing machine against the people who had saved their ancestors from starvation. Was it really that a new king didn’t know who Joseph was? How could they do that? The nation had lost its collective memory. Or perhaps they were forbidden to learn their history. As one liberation theologian said, “Ordinary people don’t set out to oppress and exploit. That can only happen if those in power can skew or even obliterate the corporate memory of the people. Those who are to be victimized must be perceived as a threat. People will accept the oppression and exploitation of a people because they have been frightened by the powers that be to scapegoat that people.” It’s a playbook dating all the way back to ancient Pharaohs and once again, ancient scripture remains relevant. Throughout history, immigrants have conveniently played the role of scapegoat. A nation that forgets is dangerous and will do it again and again. Pharaoh found a target. But one person disrupted his plans. We now transition from a summer of stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – stories about Sarah and Hagar and Rebekah and Rachel and Leah and Bilhah and Zilpah. And don’t forget Uncle Laban. Stories of Dinah and Joseph and his 11 brothers. Of tricksters and dreams and wrestling in the night. Stories about why were they in Egypt. How did they become enslaved and how will they get out? Hopefully you can see how this has all been leading to the great sweep of stories about Moses and burning bushes and plagues and so much more. Scripture is full of admonitions to remember, exhortations to remember. God repeatedly cautions, warns – do not forget who you are and where you came from. Once you were a stranger in a strange land. And every time they chose to forget, God admonished them. And so, the story begins with the birth of a beautiful Hebrew boy. But every Egyptian citizen had been ordered to kill just such a child, so his mother tried to hide him. One day, his mother put him in a basket to float down the Nile, just downstream of where the Pharaoh’s daughter was known to bathe. His sister stood nearby to watch what would happen. Why her, I don’t know, but Pharaoh’s daughter noticed the basket and sent one of her servants to bring it. The boy was crying and she felt compassion. Just then the baby’s sister “happened” to pass by and asked, “would you like me to go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” It was an absolutely brilliant set up. The girl went and “found” a woman, the boy’s actual mother. And then Pharaoh’s daughter offered to pay this “anonymous” woman to nurse it. I love it. After the child was weened, Pharaoh’s daughter, even though she knew it was a Hebrew boy, the target of her father… she adopted the child as her own son and named him Moses, meaning, I pulled him out of the water. That’s the story of Moses’ birth. The birth of great heroes often include miracles. In fact, Moses isn’t the only hero to have been pulled out of the Nile as a baby. But there’s more to this story than his birth. In this long sweep of history, the story demonstrates how the seeds of freedom for the slaves were sown years before through the sophisticated use of civil disobedience by women – the midwives who defied Pharaoh, by Moses’ clever mother and sister who carefully plotted a way for him to be rescued, and then by the daughter of the very Pharaoh who decreed his death. Whether she intended to or not, she made a fool out of her father. The evil schemes of one man were disrupted by acts of rebellious women – acts of rebellious compassion. It inspires in me again an appreciation for how small personal acts multiply into great acts of liberation. When we feel overwhelmed by hatred or violence, nothing is worse than feeling like there is nothing we can do, worse than even anger. But each act of compassion, rebellious compassion, inspires another. That is what makes this ancient text relevant today. We too can remember and reject what is fearful. We can engage in acts of rebellious compassion toward the people we are told don’t belong here, toward people who are different in any way. We can name what Pharaoh did – his blame-pointing, fear-mongering, power-grabbing – and disrupt and defeat it. With compassion. As Paul told the Romans: “If possible, to the best of your ability, live at peace with all people. Don’t try to get revenge for yourselves. Leave that to God. Instead, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if she is thirsty, give her a drink. By doing this, you will pile burning coals of fire upon their head. Don’t be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good.” Like the women who saved Moses, engage in the kinds of acts of compassion that plant seeds of liberation which may blossom long after us. And for God’s sake – literally, for God’s sake – don’t forget our history. Don’t forbid the teaching of our history. As scripture teaches, it will lead to terrible things over and over. That’s why God repeatedly pleads with us to remember it all.
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