10th Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 21 August 21, 2011 Year A

Pharaohs Daughter Finding Baby Moses, 1855 Konstantin Flavitsky

Exodus 1:8—2:10

      The book of Genesis ends with Jacob’s family relocating to Goshen in Egypt, and this is where Joseph is buried.   God’s promise to Joseph’s great-grandfather, Abraham, that he will be the father of a great nation has been fulfilled as his family grows and prospers in Egypt.  But that was only part of God’s promise.  Goshen, Egypt is not the land that God has promised to Abraham and his children.   The book of Exodus which we begin today is the story of how God fulfilled the second part of his promise to the children of Abraham.

      The story of Joseph full of highs and lows and ups and downs for Joseph and his family ends on a high note.  Joseph is considered a hero in Egypt for saving the nation from starvation and he and his family are well regarded.

      But as we open the book of Exodus several hundred years later, we find things have changed.  Joseph has been forgotten.  Egypt was very good at forgetting their history.   If a Pharaoh followed a Pharaoh who was more successful or who did things he didn’t like, he would simply have all references to that Pharaoh erased.  Egyptian history writings say nothing of battles they lost.  So there’s no record of Joseph and his work left.   All that’s left are these foreigners.  People, who look different, act different, stick to themselves, and who keep having more and children.  Worse than that, they are successful.  They are a threat.  They are an easy target for everything that is wrong in Egypt.  If it wasn’t for these foreigners taking up all our resources, we would not have the problems we have.  The practice of scapegoating is very old indeed.  It was no doubt not the first time, and certainly not the last time that one people would scapegoat another people and decide that the answer to their problems is to get rid of those people.

      Pharaoh decides the only way to save his power is genocide.  Get rid of the boy babies and pretty soon there will be no more Hebrew people to worry about.   First he tries to enlist their own people, the Hebrew midwives into his plan.   It’s surprising how often oppressive regimes are able to keep their hold over a people by getting people to help oppress and exploit their own people.    It’s an old tacit – divide and conquer.  Turn a people against themselves and they won’t notice who the real enemy is.  People will allow themselves to be used against their own because they believe it will ensure their own survival.  But there is a price to pay.

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?  Matthew 16:25-26

     
      The Midwives Shiprah & Puah understood this.  Their vocations were to bring life, not to take it away.  They will not obey this order from Pharaoh.  And so we have perhaps the first recorded instance of an act civil disobedience.  Shiprah and Puah?  Do you recognize their names?  No?  And yet are they not the brave heroines of this story?  

      If the Pharaoh wants to murder the infant sons of the Hebrew people, he will have to do it himself.  And so he enlists all the Egyptian people to kill the boys.  And the Egyptians are more than happy to comply and turn on their neighbors with whom they have lived peacefully for hundreds of years.
     
          In the midst of this horror one mother turns to desperate measures to save her son.   She places him in a basket and sends him down the river, hoping someone will find him and take care of him.  Given the choice between keeping him and watching him die, or letting him go in the chance that he will live, she chooses life for him, even if it means she may never see him again. This is love at his most desperate and unselfish and most hopeful.  Moses' mother is the second heroine of the story after the midwives.

      But she doesn’t just send the baby off blindly – she sends his older sister Miriam to watch and make sure nothing bad happens to him.  And that’s when the third heroine of the story enters the picture—the Pharaoh’s daughter.

      She sees a crying baby and takes pity.  She knows it’s a Hebrew baby.  She knows what her father is doing to the Hebrew babies and she knows that some mother has done this desperate thing to save her baby.  And she has compassion.  And in this instance compassion trumps fear and hatred of the Other.  Compassion trumps loyalty to the cruelty of her own father.  And like the Hebrew midwives disobeyed the order of the Pharaoh, the Egyptian Princess disobeys her own father.  She sends the baby home with his own sister to be nursed  and raised by his own mother, only now under her own protection.  No one will harm the child Moses.  When he is grown up he is brought to  the princess’ own household and adopted by her.

      The story begins in darkness and horror.  When the story begins it looks like God’s promises have gone astray and God is nowhere to be found.
     
      Where is God in this story?  Later on we will hear from God and there will be dramatic signs of God’s presence and actions in burning bushes and plagues of locust and frogs, and parting seas. 

       But for now, God’s presence is more subtle.  God is in the courage of the Hebrew midwives who will not kill the babies they are called upon to bring into the world.  God is in the unselfish love of a mother who will give up her child rather than watch him die.   God is in the tenacity of an older sister who dares approach an Egyptian Princess and offer to take care of her own baby brother for her.  And God is in the compassion of a privileged woman who shows pity for a child oppressed by her own people.

      God is definitely present and working in the story.  And there will be no quick and easy answer to the suffering of his children.  The sons and daughters of Abraham & Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob and Leah and Rachael are in for a long ordeal.  Through this ordeal they will emerge a people with a covenant with their God.  What is about to take place will be THE defining events of who they are and how they relate to their God.
    

But it began with women who dared to say no to Pharaoh. No we will not kill the baby boys.  No I will not let you kill my son.  No I will not turn my back on this crying child.  And the story pushes us to ask ourselves, where are we called to say no to Pharaoh?  Where can God use our courage, our tenacity, our selfless love, and our compassion?   The first heroines of this story are not people with much power – midwives, a mother, a sister and a daughter.  And yet if it were not for them, there would be no Moses, no Exodus.
      Amen.