God the Liberator, and We the … Willing to be Liberated?
Reading The Story (Exodus to Deuteronomy):
Now that we have come to see that in
this life we live inexorably in covenant with God because God is determined to
live in covenant with us, we pick up the story of the people of Israel through
whom we learn – and grow into – this reality.
For better and worse the people of Israel become embedded in Egypt. Better: as a family and a people, in Egypt they survive the drought that decimates their land, and find a home where they prosper. Worse: as they prosper, the Egyptians begin to hate them, dis-empower them, and adopt a genocidal policy of ordering Egyptian mid-wives to kill baby boys born to Hebrew women.
The mid-wives disobey. One baby boy in particular is secretly adopted into the pharaoh’s household. He is named Moses, who as he grows up rises to a place of authority in the Egyptian imperial service.
In his work he sees his people suffer, and one day sees an Egyptian supervisor beat a Hebrew slave to death. Moses kills the Egyptian officer, the king hears of it, and Moses flees Egypt to the Sinai wilderness and the land of Midian. He gets a job as a shepherd, and settles down there. The end?
The Hebrew people, still in slavery in Egypt, start crying out for help. Their cry goes up to God, God remembers his old promise to their ancestor Abraham, and God opens his heart to them.
Moses very reluctantly agrees. Back in Egypt he has a hard time convincing the pharaoh to let the people go – which the pharaoh agrees to only after God through Moses sends ten plagues upon the Egyptians.
Moses also has a hard time convincing the people to go – to cross through the Red Sea, overcome their fear of Egyptian power, enter the wilderness, and trust God to lead them and feed them as they need. Many times the people are ready to go back to Egypt; at least there they knew their place and were fed. Even Moses is ready at times to give up in fear that God will leave him to lead the people by himself, and Moses forces God to give him clear signs of his commitment to stay with them.
God and Moses persevere in helping the people leave Egypt behind and commit to the journey to the promised land. At Mt Sinai – God’s mountain in the wilderness, they are given Ten Commandments as a foundation for a way of life more open and loving to God and to other people than any way of life they had seen or experienced in Egypt. Along the way there is lots of other instruction about how to liver well in their new home – laws for worshipping God, respecting the rights and property of others, curtailing greed, and being open to outsiders and marginalized people of all kinds. It’s a blueprint for a new normal meant to set them apart in the world as a new kind of people with a new and good way of living on Earth. The end?
Having a Conversation:
1. About the story
The story of the exodus (escaping from enslavement, and journeying through the wilderness to the promised land) is the foundational story / experience that more than anything else constantly shapes the Hebrew people’s sense of themselves, God, and what it means to be God’s people.
In conversation we saw it as a hopeful story with its vision of the promised land and God helping Moses to lead the people there and teach them need to learn along the way. And we saw it as a hard – maybe almost hopeless story – because … forty years!? That ‘s a long time to be on the way and learning hard lessons. We were not sure hoe we would handle having to commit to that.
2. About the people called to let themselves be liberated
One possible focus of conversation we kind of ignored – or avoided – is the question of enslavement:
· - how it happened that Egypt, at first the people’s salvation and a comfortable place to be, ends up enslaving them and turning them into a far lesser people than they are meant to be
· - how and why it is hard for them to commit to liberation, and to break the ties and attachment they have to their captors and their own enslavement
· - how this resonates with us today
Perhaps we know all this well enough already? And wanted to talk about something more hopeful? Something less regrettable than attachment to enslavement?
Maybe the question of who is a true and good leader is a more live question and concern today?
3. About Moses who led the people out of enslavement and into a journey of liberation
Much of the conversation was about Moses and the authority of a leader like him:
· - How does he know what is true and what is illusion along the way? Is his sense of authority and his proof of what is true, internal in his own spirit, or external in signs and proofs?
· - In his prayer / conversations with God, does Moses ask God to prove himself according to Moses’ criteria? Or does Moses let himself be changed by God, and have particular parts of his own spirit affirmed and strengthened by contact with God?
· - In his life Moses is familiar with both the Hebrew and the Egyptian experience; at times he is also rejected and unwanted by both the Egyptian and the Hebrew. How is this significant in his being able to envision and lead the way towards liberation?
· - Are there any Moses’s around us today – or ahead of us, calling us to follow to freedom? How do we know them? How do we know the voice and vision of true liberation?
· - Does Moses ever claim to really know God in a thorough, secure way? Or is Moses’ knowledge of God always a bit insecure, partial, full of doubt? (Note how God refuses right from the start [Ex 3:13-14] to give a clear name that would give Moses the power to control God; how Moses has feelings and times of deep doubt and anxiety all along; and how when he asks to see God, is allowed not to see God’s face but only God’s back [Ex 33:12-23] …and somehow this partiality of knowledge is not only enough, but maybe exactly what is needed for him to be the leader and liberator he is.)
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