A Sermon for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost (RCL A) 8-21-2011
Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry
Title: The Plight of the Hebrews
It is not very often that you will hear me refer to the ideas of Charles Darwin as we reflect together here in worship. Not because I necessarily reject all of his thoughts and theories about the evolution of species, but because it is rare that his thoughts have any direct bearing upon our journey of faith as a Christian community.
But today is an exception. This morning, as we reflect together upon this story of oppression from the first chapter of the book of Exodus, I want to begin with a summary of Darwin’s thoughts about the process of natural selection: it is not the ones who are the strongest or who are the most intelligent which survive, but rather it is those who are most able to adapt to change who are the ones to survive and thrive.
However true this might be of biological processes, let me suggest to you that this is even more true in the spiritual realm, in the human journey of faith.
It is true here in the situation of the children of Israel during their sojourn in the land of Egypt.
Today’s reading from Exodus begins the cycle of state-sponsored violence and oppression of the immigrants which ends, finally, in God’s liberation of the people from the hand of Pharaoh.
For the first time in the Bible, the descendents of Abraham are here referred to as “Hebrews.”
Today, we are accustomed to thinking of this term as referring to the Jewish people, but at the time of the writing of the Pentateuch – these first 5 books of Moses, the term “Hebrew” in fact referred to any group of people on the margins of society who were landless and without social standing.
“Hebrews” were people who were distrusted and excluded from mainstream society, because they were different.
Wherever they were found, and from wherever they had come, the “Hebrews” were looked upon with suspicion by the majority of the dominant society around them.
God had promised life and land to the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and they were sent to Egypt by the hand of Providence in order to preserve their lives during a time of drought and famine.
But now, their presence in Egypt has become a problem. The very blessing of God upon them has become a threat to the Egyptians. The text states that the Israelites “multiplied and became very strong” because of God’s favor. The Egyptian empire rejected this blessing and sought to nullify it by human violence. Murder, genocide, slavery and oppression were the means by which Egypt was to adapt to this changing situation, but their methods would come back to haunt them.
Most of you know that I find great inspiration from the early thinkers and preachers of the Church who wrote mostly in Greek during the first 5 centuries after the Resurrection. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that one cannot understand the Church or the Gospel at all without some reference to the thoughts of these great men – and they were nearly all men, unfortunately.
But it was these men, after all, who have left to us the great Creeds of the Church, as well as our foundational understanding of who God is and who Jesus is.
Christ is the foundation of this house – this community called the Church. The apostles provided the basic structure of the house, and it is these great thinkers who have painted the house and have set it in order with useful rooms and furniture, so to speak.
But for all of their greatness, these early Church fathers have some very obvious weaknesses. Their complete immersion in the Greek philosophical worldview gave them an assumed framework of thinking outside of which they seemed hardly able to imagine anything else.
And so, in their commentaries on the book of Exodus, with its tale of Egyptian cruelty and enslavement of the children of Jacob, what we hear from the early fathers is classic Greek spiritual allegory: that is, how the Pharaoh represents the devil, and the mortar and bricks required of the children of Israel represents the deeds of the flesh that the devil demands from us in order to keep us from the worship of God.
For example, listen to this quote from a writing of St. Augustine: “We have been led out of Egypt where we were serving the devil as a pharaoh, where we were doing works of clay amid earthly desires, and we were laboring much in them. For Christ cried out to us, as if we were making bricks: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened.’” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy: P.3).
Now, in my humble opinion, that is a bunch of utter nonsense. I mean, what he says here is fine, I suppose, but it is shocking just how blithely Augustine can ignore the horrific reality of the situation!
The Israelites were trapped in slavery by the cruel hand of a powerful empire which required an abundance of cheap labor in order to build its monuments and cities and highways. Their babies were being killed by this empire, because of fear and greed!
And God was opposed to that empire; God intended for these slaves to be strong and free.
What is amazing to me is that Augustine and the other early church fathers could not see the most obvious connection between the oppression and forced labor of the Egyptian empire, and the slavery and forced labor of the Roman Empire which they themselves supported!
You see: historians estimate that nearly one-third of all the human beings in the realm of the Roman Empire were slaves in one form or another. That’s one of out every three people living in slavery!
The truth is that the supposed glories of Rome were impossible within the forced labor of millions of human beings, as were the previous glories of the Egyptian empire.
But this God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob is the same God of Christ and the apostles, and this God moved decisively to break the power of the slave-masters, and to set the captives free!
Augustine and the others could not see it. They could not see past the assumed worldview of what they had been taught as normal and acceptable.
This highlights the crucial reality that all of us must pay attention to our blind spots – that we must, if we are to be true, continuously question those things which we take for granted.
It is our assumptions that must be continually questioned. This, I believe, is one of the greatest gifts that Jesus Christ brings to us, and it is one of the gifts that can heal the world: the ability to look without fear and to see the truth which sets us free, to adapt and change without fear.
I remember the first time when God shined light upon the assumptions of my youth and forced me to consider the truth and falsehoods of my blind spots.
I was in Africa, in Botswana, and I had picked up a book called “The Challenge of Basic Christian Communities.” In this book from the 1980’s, one of the essays suggested that Christian people ought to look to Cuba as an example of what a Christian society could be.
Instantly, that seemed like the most ridiculous idea I could imagine. What? Everyone knows that Cuba is bad, right? Cuba is evil. Cuba is the enemy. That is what I had always been taught as a normal American child growing up here, and I had never even thought twice about it.
And yet, here was a respected Christian teacher suggesting that Cuba might be a model for a different, yet healthy Christian society.
That moment began for me a long process of questioning the unspoken assumptions of what I had been taught and of considering that there are other perspectives by which one can understand the world.
Please don’t misunderstand me: I am not trying to make a positive statement about the socialist government of Cuba. I am not a political scientist; I am a teacher of the Christian faith.
What is important here is that all of us have blind spots in our thinking and in our understanding of the world. All of us, even the greatest thinkers of all, the most intelligent people, carry unspoken assumptions about life and the world which have the potential to blind us to “the truth as it is in Jesus” (Ephesians 4:21), to close our minds to the fullness of God’s design and intention for our life.
Pharaoh assumed that he held the power of life and death in his hand, that he could use and abuse the powerless Hebrews however he wished. But he was wrong.
St. Augustine assumed that slavery was a normal and accepted part of a Christian society, that God was not interested in human freedom and liberty on this earth. But he was wrong.
Most Americans today assume that slavery is over, a thing of the past, and that freedom and liberty are growing around the world. But they are wrong.
Slavery continues to this present day, because fear and greed continue today.
A recent report highlighted the reality of slavery among tomato growers in Florida. In the last decade, 7 prosecutions have been successfully argued in cases of slavery by the Justice Department in Florida, and over 1000 people have been set free. In some cases, these people, these “Hebrews” in the most original and fundamental sense of that name, were being held in chains, were being sold, and if they refused to work as demanded, they were being shot and killed. (See http://www.gourmet.com/foodpolitics/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-tomato-slaves-follow-up)
Is this an acceptable part of the bargain of contemporary life, so that you and I can enjoy fresh tomatoes in the middle of winter, while ignoring the fact that they were harvested by slaves?
Have we as a people forgotten that God is the one who sets the captives free? Do we even care?
What are the assumptions in our minds that blind us to the truth in our world?
How will we adapt and change so that we can stand with the God who sets the captives free, and stand against the empire that demands cheap labor to build its wealth?
How will we live in order to show forth the power of God among all peoples?
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