Sermon Sun 30 Oct: Wk9 'Freedom'...WMRBW

1st READING: Exodus 1:1-14
2nd READING: Exodus 2:1-25
3rd READING: Exodus 3:1-15

SERMON ‘Go down Moses’
Let’s pray:
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations
of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We’ve zoomed through the Book of Genesis:
explored the beginning of all things,
and met up with some folk on the way –
Noah, called by God to rescue animals,
and preserve that which was good about creation;
Abraham, called by God to travel in faith from his home in Haran, off to unknown territory...
Abraham whose descendants would be many.
We briefly met with Isaac, the much-looked for child of promise,
and discovered just what Abraham was prepared to give up to follow God.
Here we are now, in the Book of Exodus, in the land of Egypt,
and encountering those descendants of Abraham now living under the yoke of the Pharaoh –
slaves shoring up the economy of Egypt.
But how did we move from promise to imprisonment?

Let’s go back a little:
Abraham and Sarah eventually die, and the story continues with Isaac.
He eventually marries and has sons Esau and Jacob.
Jacob is a bit of a con-merchant, a shyster,
always on the lookout for ways of gaining an advantage.
He cheerfully cheats Esau out of his birthright, for the price of a plate of lentil stew.
Esau’s not the sharpest tool in the took-kit.
Later, Jacob manages to cheat Esau again, stealing the blessing intended for Esau,
and, in the process, quite happily deceiving his old dad, Isaac – who’s frail and nearly blind.
Naturally, the brothers fall out, there’s a rift, and then separation.
Eventually, after many years, there’s reconciliation.
But from this point, Esau’s effectively out of the picture.
Jacob marries, and has many sons and one younger son, especially, is his favourite –
and this favouritism causes a big stooshie:
big enough that Andrew Lloyd Webber saw fit to create a musical:
‘Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat’ 

The brothers get so annoyed with this wee brother, that they decide to kill him.
In the end, they decide to chuck him down a well, but traders happen to be passing,
so they sell him into slavery instead.
Lesson here: if you're a younger sib., don’t be annoying!
Joseph ends up in Egypt.
He gets a reputation for dream interpretation,
and, happily Pharaoh happens to be having some quite troubling dreams.
Joe helps out and is richly rewarded for his troubles, organises a plan for upcoming famine,
and, when it comes, manages to keep Egypt from going hungry.
His brothers are sent to Egypt to find food,
eventually reunite with Joseph, and all settle happily in Egypt, with the Pharaoh’s blessing.
Phew...
And that’s where we find ourselves at the beginning of Exodus.

Years pass, and Joseph and his family prosper.
Generations come and go, the Hebrews have grown in number...
and Joseph’s story has been long-forgotten.
We find ourselves in a time where a new king is on the throne,
a new king who thinks something needs done about all these Hebrews living in Egypt...
a new king who creates an atmosphere of fear and mistrust:
‘if war breaks out, they will join our enemies.’
Clearly, for the powers that be, these immigrants need controlled.
Some things don’t change...
And so, the Hebrews are forced to become slaves –
and the country prospers on the back of slave labour.
In the words of the old spiritual:
When Israel was in Egypt land
Let my people go!
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
Let my people go!

Yet in the midst of their oppression, the Hebrew population grows.
They are worked harder.
And then, a plan for gradual genocide is put into place:
kill off the male children, and you gradually kill off the race.
It is in this place and time, that a boy child is born –
but hidden, not killed.
Eventually the child is too hard to hide, and to give it at least some small chance of surviving,
the desperate plan is hatched to float him down the Nile in a water-proofed wicker basket.
Ironically, the child is rescued by the daughter of the very one seeking the destruction of the Hebrews: Pharaoh, and is raised as a prince in Egypt –
which Disney saw fit to create a movie – it’s great, I happily recommend it!
The child is named ‘Moses’.
As we discover, in the rest of our readings, this child has a destiny:
Go down Moses
Way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh to
Let my people go!
Moses is to liberate God’s people from slavery and oppression.

But there are a few twists and turns before that eventually happens.
The child, reared in the privilege and pleasure of the palace, becomes a man:
knowing of his Hebrew heritage, but having grown up, culturally, as an Egyptian.
He has a foot in both camps, if you like.
This changes.
One day, wishing to see where his own people were,
he watches an Egyptian beating one of the slaves.
He is moved to action, and kills the Egyptian.
He hopes nobody has seen.
His hopes are dashed and news gets around.
Mistrusted by the Hebrew slaves,
and having betrayed the Egyptians who raised him,
Moses now belongs in neither camp, and is forced to flee.
Eventually he marries, and settles down, and yet, never fully belongs:
his first child is named Gershom, which means ‘a stranger there’.
Years pass.
Pharaoh dies.
Moses tends his father in law’s flocks...
And then, one day a strange thing happens:
the God of the Hebrews is revealed to Moses –
he spies a bush, on fire, and yet, not burning up,
or, as our Church of Scotland motto notes:
‘it was not consumed’
An odd sight indeed, and Moses, being curious, daunders up to have a closer look.
Even stranger, a voice seems to be coming from the bush,
a voice that knows his name.
To demonstrate just who Moses is listening to,
the voice then instructs Moses to take off his shoes –
this is a gesture of humility:
Moses is told that he stands on holy ground,
and is being addressed by the god of his ancestors Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
So, here we have the man who at one time felt he belonged to both Hebrew and Egyptian cultures;
the one who was later alienated from both,
now being shown where he truly belonged - where his true identity lay,
by the God of Abraham.
And, with that revelation of belonging comes a task:
God says:
‘I have heard my people cry... 
I have come to rescue them...and... 
I am sending you to do it.’
You can picture Moses standing, or possibly prostrating himself, listening to God saying:
‘I this’
and ‘I... that...’
and even, possibly nodding along thinking:
‘Good stuff, good on you, God.’
So, it’s got to be bit of a jolt when God talks of liberation
and then says Moses is the man for the job.
What then follows is an awesome list of reasons given by Moses as to why
this plan of God’s is a very bad idea.

Excuse one: the humble bumble –
‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh...?’
Who is Moses to do this???
Well, he's a former high-ranking member of the royal family.
Who else could do this?
So, that excuse won’t wash.

Excuse two: the need for I.D. papers.
Essentially, after the ‘who am I’ fails,
Moses says ‘who are you?’ to God,
asking for God’s name on the basis that the Hebrews won’t believe him
unless he gives them the name of God.
But God won’t, can’t, be boxed in by a name.
Instead he says
‘Tell them, ‘I AM has sent me.’
Otherwise translated:
‘I will be what I will be’
You can’t pin God down.

Beyond our readings for today, the excuses continue.
And each time Moses makes one,
God rebuts.
Says Moses: ‘What if they don’t believe me?’
God responds: ‘Show them this sign, and then this one.’
Says Moses: ‘But I’m not particularly eloquent – and, I stammer.’
God responds: ‘I’ll help you speak.’
Says Moses: ‘Please send someone else.’
God responds: ‘aaaaaargh... okay, your brother Aaron is on his way to meet you.’

This story, of the calling of Moses, stands in stark contrast to the call of Abram.
Abram, without any lengthy havering, packs up his family and worldly goods, and sets off.
Moses, on the other hand, is desperate to run swiftly in the opposite direction.
And you can’t really blame him: the task he’s given is pretty overwhelming.
Basically he’s to: ‘tell ole Pharaoh ‘let my people go!’
Moses is asked to go before the seat of great power and to challenge that power:
to decry the abuses of slavery and oppression in Egypt,
right there in the very court of Pharaoh.
To place himself in great danger.
And, to do so, for a people who may, or may not, throw in their lot with him.
He’s seen by one side as a traitor, and by the other, as a colluder in oppression.
The job isn’t going to be much fun.
Go down Moses
Way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh to
Let my people go!
Eventually, he agrees, heads back down to Egypt, encounters the hard-hearted Pharaoh,
God brings a host of plagues upon the land, and finally, finally, liberates the Hebrews.
They head out from Egypt and on, in time, to the Promised Land.

Throughout the bible, there are many stories of God calling people
out of their everyday lives, to follow in faith.
Some go willingly,
others, like Moses, go much more reluctantly.
Moses, and later, the prophets, and much later, Jesus,
are given the task of speaking up –
of challenging institutional power:
power that has been gained, and maintained at the cost of others lives.
We find, in the story of Moses, that God is on the side of the powerless –
seeking to liberate the captives.
Hundreds of years later, a young rabbi, at the beginning of his ministry,
will stand in a local synagogue and read the words from the prophet Isaiah:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
because he has anointed me to bring 
good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ 
And, having read it, this young rabbi will say:
‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
That same young rabbi will challenge authority, to tell those in power to
‘Let my people go!’
To demonstrate, in word and in deed, what the kindom of heaven on earth would look like;
to show the people of God that they are called to speak truth to power,
to tell those who are modern-day Pharaohs to ‘let my people go!’
...As God's people, each one of us is called by God to share the good news that liberates -
that liberates all who are bowed down,
all who are held captive in whatever way;
to proclaim God’s love to those who are powerless, those who are vulnerable.
How will we respond to God’s call?

Let’s pray:
In the wilderness of life we find holiness. 
In the wilderness of our hearts we seek godliness. 
In the empty places, and the busy places: 
God is...
God will be who God will be.
As we seek, we find unexpected blessings, unanticipated presence, 
for where we go God is with us: 
faithful companion
as we travel along the road of faith...Amen.
                                               [prayer adapted from Spill the Beans]

...and a wee soundtrack to the sermon...