Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
I’m disappointed that the lectionary shortchanges the Exodus. We had the birth of Moses, the burning bush, then this week, we’re jumping to the Passover. This is hardly enough time to deal with the difficult truth at the heart of this story. That Genesis ends with Joseph saving the world from years of famine and the next book begins with a Pharaoh who “doesn’t know Joseph”. It is a tragedy in every sense of the word.
We see the bloodlust and paranoia of Pharaoh and the ingenuity and strength of the Hebrew people. We see oppression and resistance. We meet a Moses who lives between both worlds and struggles to embody either. He is fully Hebrew, raised in an Egyptian home with a Hebrew nursemaide and an Egyptian name. And he finds solidarity with his true people, not only because of his bloodline, but because of what that makes him.
We shouldn’t jump to the Passover without the many times Moses tries to talk to Pharaoh at the behest of God. How he tries to prevent the plagues. How freedom wasn’t won. Nor is it truly earned. These aren’t the words that depict the time with the depth it deserves.
Empires cannot be good. Because then they wouldn’t be empires. And Pharaoh, like every modern Pharaoh, like every person who would control the flow of information and own the world, cannot resist total dominance and supremacy. He’d risk it all rather than lose one single slave to liberation.
To this, God says No More!
With love,
Drew+
