Hello, friends -
I hope you all have been having a great week! Life has been full at Pelican Rapids this past week - meetings, hospital visits, sermon preparation, confirmation, visiting Luther Crest Bible Camp, and more . This week my supervisor is going down to Luther Seminary for continuing education as he participates in the seminary's "Celebration of Biblical Preaching" event - he'll be coming back on Thursday, just as I'm headed down to Cannon Falls for a few days with family, and to drive to Iowa to participate in Waldorf College's 2015 Homecoming. Tomorrow through Thursday, I'll be in charge - but I'm looking forward to the experience of having everything on my plate. A foretaste of what is to come, no doubt! Here's my sermon manuscript from my sermon this morning, preaching on Exodus 1:8-14 and 3:1-15. I did weave in the Oregon community college shootings towards the end.
Sisters and
brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and God’s Son Jesus the
Christ. Amen.
A lot has happened since last
week. Last week we found ourselves in Genesis 32, with the story of Jacob
wrestling with God. Now today we find ourselves in Exodus 1, we have jumped
several generations, descendants of Jacob are multiplying, and we are placed
firmly in the story of Joseph’s people in Egypt. Joseph is Jacob’s son, the 11th
born, who rose to power in Egypt after being sold into slavery by his jealous
brothers. In Exodus, this story we are brought to today is based in fear. The
king who has risen over Egypt does not know the people, and did not know Joseph
nor his legacy, and is worried. He is worried because Israelite people living
in Egypt were prospering. He said to the Egyptians, “Look, the Israelite people
are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with
them, or they will increase, and, in the event of war, join our enemies and
fight against us and escape from the land.”
To keep them under his command,
the king orders brutal, hard, manual labor. Working with bricks and mortar,
building whole cities for Pharoah. The Israelites lives, the text says, were
made bitter. The king of Egypt is fearful, so he turns to and wields the
instrument of oppression. The king is scared of the masses, so he attempts to
silence their potential influence. He’s fearful something might be up, that there
could possibly be something in the air.
This fear enacts an onslaught of
killing to counteract the Israelite’s continued growth as a people – the
Pharaoh commands that every boy born to the Hebrews be thrown into the Nile,
but to keep the girls alive. This sets the stage for Moses, who escapes death
in a papyrus basket. We meet him here in Exodus 3 after he has grown up, and is
living as a shepherd in exile. God appears to him in a bush set ablaze, but not
burning. Moses answers God’s call simply with a “Here I am” and listens to God
tell the story of Israel’s suffering. God then calls him to a pretty simple
task – going to Pharaoh and demanding the release of the Israelite people. The
same man who ordered the deaths of babies, who is determined to keep the
Israelite people underfoot. God tells Moses that he is to go to Pharaoh and
order that slavery be ended. God has plans, and they don’t include servitude in
Egypt. Not anymore. To God, this is all part of the grand scheme – to bring his
people to a broad place, flowing with milk and honey. To Moses, it seems like
an insurmountable, terrifying task. “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh?” he
asks.
God, in that moment, makes a
promise – “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I
who sent you; when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship
God on this mountain.” This dialogue between God and Moses, of being called and
not feeling adequate for this task – continues on for another 27 verses, but
the premise is the same. God called Moses even though he didn’t feel up to the
task. Leading a people out of an oppressive situation is really hard work, and
Moses is just an exiled shepherd who is afraid to return to the Pharaoh. That
doesn’t matter to God, though. Dale talked last week about how God calls those
who are ordinary, dirty, scummy, exiled people, and the same rings true here.
Moses has already killed an Egyptian. His sense of justice for the Israelite
people is evident, and God uses him all the same.
God establishes Moses’ role in
this story by reminding him that God is not only his God, but also the God of
all ancestors – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They faithfully followed God’s
calling in their lives, so now God asks the same of Moses. There is a rich
lineage here of promises and callings and faithfulness that has been fulfilled,
so God just asks for a bit of faith. Leaving Egypt and facing Pharaoh and his
people might seem like a monstrous undertaking, but Moses’ action is essential
to the completion of God’s promise.
By and large, these texts leave
us with the feeling that something – an uprising, a release from servitude, and
a turning over of power – is just a few moments away. The air in Pithom and
Rameses is shimmering with discontent and the drowned baby boys flowing down
the Nile is nothing short of a warning that God will act justly and God will
act swiftly and God will do it through human hands, through those least
expected. Out of Egypt an exiled shepherd man will lead them.
This
text leaves us with many things to consider. How often are we playing the role
of Pharaoh – when do we oppress others, when do we manipulate and control or
wish harm? Do you see Moses, who stands up and stares injustice in the face?
How often do you feel inadequate when faced with a life situation that seems
impossible to navigate? How often do we see the sinfulness of this world and
wish to be delivered from it, to see it cease? Too many times we forget that we
have a God who says “I am who I am”, who is more powerful than we expect or
believe some days. Too often we forget that we have the same God who lived
among Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and that God continues to work today as we
see sin live among us – in racism, classism, in lies, in murder, in cheating,
and in all other ways the brokenness of this world persists.
Our
answer, my friends, lies in Jesus. As God delivered Israel from Egypt through
Moses, so God makes our world right through Christ. Moses was a shepherd, Jesus
a carpenter’s son – nothing like the king or royal savior the people at large
expected. We as ordinary people who feel like we only lead mediocre lives and
don’t have it all together and feel that we might be a bit more sinner than
saint live in a time where the kingdom of God is at hand, but it is not quite
here in full. That is where we come in, as the Body of Christ. We’re an
imperfect people gathered together by God through Christ to do his work – to
see people brought out of their slavery to sin and into God’s new promised
life. Like Moses, we’re called whether we want to be or not. We’re chosen by
God to bring relief to this world by being the hands and feet of Christ. God
comes to down to each of us and says, “Yes. You – broken and imperfect. You’re
just who I’m looking for.” And to that I say, thanks be to God. Amen.
Have a great week, friends!
In God's Peace -
Dean
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