Lafayette Ave. Presbyterian Church

From Exodus 1:8-2:10Exodus 1:8-2:10
English: World English Bible - WEB
8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who didn’t know Joseph. ⁹ He said to his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. ¹⁰ Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it happen that when any war breaks out, they also join themselves to our enemies, and fight against us, and escape out of the land.” ¹¹ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. ¹² But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out. They were grieved because of the children of Israel. ¹³ The Egyptians ruthlessly made the children of Israel serve, ¹⁴ and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, all their service, in which they ruthlessly made them serve. ¹⁵ The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah, ¹⁶ and he said, “When you perform the duty of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth stool; if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.” ¹⁷ But the midwives feared God, and didn’t do what the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the baby boys alive. ¹⁸ The king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and have saved the men-children alive?” ¹⁹ The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women aren’t like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous, and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” ²⁰ God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied, and grew very mighty. ²¹ It happened, because the midwives feared God, that he gave them families. ²² Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, “You shall cast every son who is born into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.” ^{2 1} A man of the house of Levi went and took a daughter of Levi as his wife. ² The woman conceived, and bore a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. ³ When she could no longer hide him, she took a papyrus basket for him, and coated it with tar and with pitch. She put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river’s bank. ⁴ His sister stood far off, to see what would be done to him. ⁵ Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe at the river. Her maidens walked along by the riverside. She saw the basket among the reeds, and sent her handmaid to get it. ⁶ She opened it, and saw the child, and, behold, the baby cried. She had compassion on him, and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” ⁷ Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?” ⁸ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” The maiden went and called the child’s mother. ⁹ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away, and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” The woman took the child, and nursed it. ¹⁰ The child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Moses” sounds like the Hebrew for “draw out”. and said, “Because I drew him out of the water.”

This week, I felt like we were in just a little bit over our heads.

Actually, that’s putting it too mildly.  Let me be honest.  I felt some despair this week.

Why?  Basically, because I spent a lot of time listening.  Here’s some of the stuff that I heard and saw this week.

• A person with a terminal illness has to care for another family member, who also has a terminal illness.
• There are others among us facing illnesses, and some of us will likely recover, even if the treatment is difficult, while others have to do the hard work of living with these illnesses.  I won’t do this because it is too depressing, but I am pretty sure that even in this small community, for every major system in the human body, I can tell you somebody that has a problem with that system. 
  
• Another person needs a car to do her job, but money to get her car.  There’s a catch-22 and in the meantime, kids need to be cared for.
• This person is not the only one who needs more cash.   A significant number of people in this congregation are either under-employed or un-employed.  Too many of us aren’t sure how to pay the bills.
• At least two families in this congregation are undergoing a transition in parenting.  This is hard for the adults involved, even when they are doing the right thing, and for the kids, who have to adjust to new reality.

Despite all of our problems, or–more accurately–in the midst of that, we are called to demonstrate in word and deed God’s kingdom to the world around us.

Vacation Bible School was supposed to do this, but we need to be honest and confess that we missed our target audience.  We did not share the good news of Jesus Christ with anybody that did not here it before.

Of course, why should we expect anything different from VBS?  Consider how well we are doing as grown-ups!  I’m proud to say that over the past year we have welcomed new church members, and we’ve even nurtured people to grow in their relationship with God.  We’re growing together, but I don’t think we can even say that everybody on the street has heard the good news of Jesus Christ, can we?

I’d be willing to bet that there are people even on Lafayette Avenue that don’t know what we are about.

Now do you want to be really depressed?  I was reflecting on this last week as I drove home after VBS, and I realized that despite our problems, we are actually doing better than many other congregations.   Wile I’m disappointed that sometimes that we don’t always live OUT our mission, other churches don’t even KNOW their mission.

The average person of my age has a distrust of the church.  Bill Maher is about to release a film that documents how much harm religion does.   Not too long ago, The church was a trusted center of the community.  Now we are on the fringe, and we are feared.

As individuals, most of us are in bad shape.

As a congregation, we are in bad shape.

The greater church is just as bad.

Can we relate now, to the Israelites?

Living in a foreign land, they once held privileged.  Joseph was second to Pharaoh.  He brought his family to Egypt, and was a blessing to both his family and the Egyptians.

But time passed, and Joseph was forgotten.  After a while, the Israelites were seen as a just a bunch of foreigners.

And even though they had once done good for the Egyptians, these foreigners were feared.  This Xenophobia progressed to slavery.

But even when they were enslaved the Israelites scared the Egyptians.  So Xenophobia became slavery, and slavery became genocide.  The midwives were commanded to kill any Hebrew boys, but they lied to the Pharaoh and told him that they could not get there in time.  God blessed them for saving the lives of the Hebrew children.

So Pharaoh got even more desperate.  Now, instead of just using the midwives against the Hebrews, he unleashed terror against the whole population.  A public decree was issued, and ANYBODY who saw a Hebrew boy was to throw that child into the Nile to be drowned.

This is where the public tragedy becomes the personal one.

Because as horrible as it is when babies are being killed somewhere, it’s a whole different thing when somebody wants to kill YOUR baby.

And Moses’ mother was in just that situation.  She gave birth and hid her baby for a while, but as he grew, he became harder and harder to hide.

So her plan?  She put the kid in a basket, and put the basket in the river.

Let’s pause for a second to think about this.

Where were Egyptians supposed to throw the babies?

And where did she leave her baby?

She left him right in the danger zone.

And it worked.

In part, it worked because she was so crafty.  She knew that if it was a battle, or a fight–if the Egyptian army discovered the baby during a raid, then Moses would surely die. 

Instead, she allowed Moses to surprise somebody in the river.  To shock her with her humanity.  To allow instincts to take over–and that’s just what happened.  When Pharaoh’s daughter saw Moses floating in the river, she didn’t think for a second about tipping his basket over.  She hurried to take care of him.

The other reason it worked, of course, is because God showed her and Moses grace.  She had to trust God in this situation, and so she did.  It’s worth noting that the word for the basket that she put him in is the same word that was used for the ark.  Like Noah, Moses would be rescued by God’s grace, through the waters. 

Most people would run and fight and struggle against the Egyptian army, but Moses’ mom didn’t conform to this pattern.  She confronted evil with love.

Hearing about the struggles of the Israelites and of Moses’ mother put our own struggles in perspective, doesn’t it?  I mean, I don’t want to pretend that we are on easy street, but nobody wants to throw our babies in the river!

It was in the middle of all of that struggle, with a helpless baby, that God chose to start a mighty act of liberation.

It didn’t have to be that way.  Exodus tells us that the Israelite slaves were already great in number.  God could have raised up a leader from the best of the Israelites to lead them in open rebellion against the Egyptians.

Instead, our story begins with a baby.  And his sister,  and mother.  and midwives.  And a new, adoptive mother.

This is not the normal pattern of this world.  This is a new way, a transformed way of doing things.

Likewise, in a church that is full of messed up people, of different people, of sick people, overworked people, and poor people, the pattern of this world is to ignore people like us and focus on “real” leaders.

But that’s not the way of Jesus Christ.

Because Jesus Christ had Peter, impulsive, disloyal, stupid Peter.  He took that guy, who just knew enough to say that Jesus was the messiah, even if he didn’t know what it meant.  He said to him, you are a rock!  and on this rock I am going to build this church!  He gave Peter, the one who would later betray him, the authority of the keys.

We don’t ignore the poor people and sick people and messed up people in the Kingdom of God!  We can’t even consider doing something like that, because that is the pattern of this world.  We don’t even look at people with pity and “find a place for them.”  No.  Our minds are being transformed and so we look for faith, and when we find it, that faith is the rock that the church is built upon.

You see, In the midst of all of our trouble, in the midst of all of our failure, in the midst of all of our worries, God is still God!  And because God is God we don’t need to run and hide.  Instead, just Like Moses’ Mom, we can bravely confront the things that scare us.  We can look directly into the eyes of WHATEVER it is that is scaring us, and still know that God will care for us. 

We can make up a basket and go lie down in the river, because even though it might mean death by the edict of Pharaoh, we know that God delivers us through water.  God will bring us life!

By the patterns of this world, we should be afraid.  But we are being transformed by the renewing of our minds.  It might be as small as a baby in a basket, but where there is faith, there is a rock.  And God will build his church upon it.