Feeling Alone in the River

Today's text - Exodus 1:8 - 2:10 

An angry, murderous king. 

Clever midwives. 

A frightened mother. 

A baby adrift. 

A pharaoh’s daughter with compassion. 

This story at the beginning of the book of Exodus, at the beginning of the life of Moses - this story is one of the classic stories in Biblical literature. It sets the stage for great things to come. It is a story filled with drama - and a happy ending.

 

I’d like this morning to ask you to join me in entering into the lives of the characters in this story because I think what they are going through can give us insights to what we are going through right now in our lives.

I’m not sure any of us would like to take on the character of the king - also called the  pharaoh - this ruler of Egypt who did not know Joseph. At least I hope none of us think it would be a good idea to drown the newborn babies of our perceived enemies. But we should at least keep him in mind. 

Those of you who were here last week may remember that Joseph - son of Jacob and Rachel, grandson of Isaac and Rebecca, great grandson of Abraham and Sarah - Joseph rose to power in Egypt, then brought his family there to save them from starvation and protected them in this foreign land. 

But now time has passed and this king only knows the descendants of Joseph as slaves, people upon whom they ruthlessly imposed tasks, making their lives bitter with hard service. You can understand why the enslaved African Americans in our country identified so closely with the oppression of the Israelites and the prospect of someone leading them to freedom. 

 

The king is worried that the Israelites are reproducing too quickly and soon may overpower the Egyptians, so he orders the Egyptian midwives to kill the Hebrew male babies. It’s a horrifying order.

 

Two midwives - Shiphrah and Puah - take it upon themselves to resist the king’s order. When he calls them in to question why male babies are not being killed, they concoct this story about vigorous Hebrew women giving birth before the midwife arrives.

 

They are the first heroes in the story. So imagine you are Shiphrah or Puah facing an immoral order from a ruler - or a boss. 

 

What would you do? 

How do you weigh the directions of God against the perils of the moment?

How do you choose to resist or undermine the things that put the lives of others at grave risk? 

 

Think of the people who first sought the abolition of slavery in this nation, those who gave their lives in the Civil War fought over stopping slavery, those women who were arrested seeking the right to vote, those people who marched for civil rights. 

 

Our acts of creative resistance to what we see as wrong may not be so historic but I think we can draw inspiration from Shiphra and Puah. We can find the places in our lives where we need to stand up against injustice. And notice that these two women stood together. It always helps to have allies. 

 

The king, however, was not going to be deterred. Those intent on protecting their own power seldom are. So he tries another tactic. He orders all his people to throw any newborn Hebrew boys into the Nile River - that great river that flows from Central Africa north through Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea. 

 

That brings us to the next character in the story - Jochebed, the mother of Moses. She is not named in this passage - notice how often women’s names get left out - but she is named elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. 

 

She already had two children - a son Aaron and a daughter Miriam. Now she was pregnant again and she surely knew of the king’s order and the danger this posed to her son. 

 

Imagine the worry on her heart. This beautiful baby boy would be taken from her and drowned in the Nile. So she came up with a plan - a desperate plan in the hope that it might save the life of her child.  

 

Jochebed used papyrus - a kind of thick paper - to fashion a basket. She put Moses in the basket and - along with her daughter, Miriam - carried Moses to the edge of the Nile River.

 

What must have been going through Jochebed’s mind at that moment? She was sending her infant son into danger. There was nothing she could tell him - no warnings like Black parents give their teens as they go out into a hostile work, no words of wisdom like I gave my teens about being responsible as they joined friends for the evening. Just the sounds of footsteps on the ground.

Beyoncé, one of the great musical artists of our era, has a new video out called “Black is King.” She uses music she sang in the 2019 remake of The Lion King, then adds video reflecting the life and culture of the nations and tribes of Africa. There is a powerful scene where Beyoncé takes on the persona of Jochebed, Moses’ mother. 

You see her smiling at her baby as she cradles him in her arms, you see her put him in the papyrus basket and then you see her carrying the basket towards the river. The look on her face is piercing - worry, grief mixed with determination.

Beyoncé sings a song called “Otherside:”

“Best believe me

You will see me 

On the other side.”

(Here's a link to the audio of the whole song.)

 

We know she will in fact see Moses on the other side. But at this moment, Jochabed only knows she is sending away her baby boy with the slimmest of hopes that this act will keep him alive. And yet there is that hope.

 

Think of how many people these days have sent loved ones off to hospitals, fearing they may never see then again, holding out hope that they will recover, that life can go on. Think how alone, how frightened we can feel at a time like this. And know that we stand along with Jochabed, doing what we hope is best, hoping against all odds that things will turn out OK.

 

Moses begins his journey down the river. In Beyoncé’s video, the river is anything but peaceful. There are rocks, there are rapids throwing the basket to and fro. Moses is too young to understand what is happening and unable to see out of the basket.

 

There are surely days in this season that I feel that way. There are the rocks of the pandemic and the waves of the economy and the rapids of racial turmoil. I don’t know where this river is taking me. I cannot see outside the little container of my life. All of this leaves me with a sense of anxiety and uncertainty. And I certainly can feel all alone in the midst of this meandering journey.

 

Enter the princess in the story. 

 

Once again, she is not named in the text in Exodus, but later in the Bible, we learn that her name was Bithiah. Her father was the king, the pharaoh. Surely she knew of his order to drown all the Hebrew infant boys. She was one of the privileged ones in Egypt of that time - part of a powerful and wealthy family, servants coming with her to the river as she prepared to bathe. 

 

And then she sees a basket floating down the river. Perhaps she heard a baby crying. One of her servants grabbed the basket out of the water and brought it to Bithiah. She saw the baby. She recognized it as a Hebrew baby. She knew what she was supposed to do - throw him into the river. 

 

And yet…and yet…she hesitated. She risked defying her father to save this child. She used her power and privilege to help others.

 

As we get to the end of the story, we learn that Moses’ sister, Miriam, talks with the princess, reunites Jochabed with her son and Moses grows up in the royal home. Later, he will lead his people to freedom.

 

We also learn later in the biblical Book of First Chronicles that Bithiah marries one of the Hebrew men, has children with him and travels with the Hebrews to freedom.  She clearly had taken a stand that cost her privilege in order to help others.

 

That notion of helping others I think is one of the keys to this whole story. 

 

Shiphra and Puah used their creative resistance to save the Hebrew children.

 

Jochabed was accompanied on her journey to the river by her daughter, Miriam, who in turn would act to reunite Moses with his mother.

 

Bithiah and her servants worked together to save Moses from the river and to raise him in a place where he would be safe.

We know the worry of mothers like Jochabed, we know the uncertainty of Moses in a basket floating down a river, we know what it is like to be in a position to reach out to others. 

We know that by working together, we can make life better for those who are struggling, 

 

One of the wonderful things about this story is how it is embraced by all three of faith traditions that grew out of the family of Abraham. Of course it is in the Hebrew Bible, that we as Christians use as the backdrop for our own understanding of the life and message of Jesus. It is also in the Qur’ran, the sacred scripture of the Muslim faith, told in essentially the same way.

We can all appreciate the way this story sets an oppressed people on the path to liberation. We can all appreciate how God’s grace gives people strength and hope in even the hardest times. This is a time when we need God’s grace and each other’s help as we navigate the rivers of our lives. 

 

I am your brother, John

August 16, 2020, Belleville UCC - Genesis 45: 1-15 

Ah, Joseph. What a great character from the stories we read in the Bible. The stories have become the stuff of legend and musicals and children’s books and adult novels.

 

Joseph recognized by his brothers, by Léon Pierre Urbain Bourgeois, 1863 

The father who spoiled him, the brothers he tormented and their revenge, his rise to power in Egypt even in the midst of plots against him. 

And then, this moment where he and his brothers face each other after so many years.

Remember, when he was young, his brothers essentially sold him into slavery, covering their action by telling their father that Joseph had been devoured by wild beasts, bringing home the blood-stained coat of many colors. 

 

This, after all, is the archetype of the dysfunctional family. On those days when you think your family is spinning out of control, you might take a bit of comfort in knowing that others have been there before you.

 

Of course, the Joseph story seems to have a happy ending. In the passage that Mary read today, Joseph forgives his brothers, they embrace and cry and they seem finally reconciled to one another.

Those of you who had the chance to be here last week or watch the service during the week heard Pastor Laura tell the powerful story of a statue of reconciliation and then the Biblical story of the reconciliation between Jacob - that would be Joseph’s father - and Esau, Jacob’s estranged brother whom Jacob had cheated out of his birthright. Jacob and Esau met face to face and embraced with tears flowing.

 

In our story today, after all of the twists and turns involving Jacob’s children from different wives, the brothers hug each other and tears flow. 

The way this story often gets interpreted is as a call for us to embrace those we are estranged from, to move on together from the hurts of the past. That is certainly an ideal I think we all ought to strive for, even though the path to forgiveness can be a complicated one.

 

But I think this is also a story about power, how power shifts over time, how being conscious of how we use or are used by power is part of how we work our way forward as individuals and as a society. 

 

John Lewis knew a lot about power. When he was a young man, he was part of the Civil Rights movement in this country, often finding himself on the losing side of power as he was arrested and sometimes beaten. Later, at age 48, he was elected to Congress, now someone in a position of power.

 

You probably heard a lot about John Lewis during the past month as the nation honored him after his death on July 17. One of my favorite stories about him has an interesting parallel to the story we heard today about Joseph.

 

In 1961, John Lewis was part of a group of young people on a Freedom Ride across the South trying to end legal segregation. They stopped at a Greyhound bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Lewis, who was Black, and one of his white compatriots went into the whites-only waiting area at the bus depot. A group of young white men assaulted them, beating them bloody with baseball bats. Elwin Wilson was one of those young white men. He became a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

But in his later years, Wilson was haunted by his beating of the two men in the bus station and his other actions. A friend asked him if he knew where he would go when he died. “To hell,” Wilson replied. And began to look for a way to make things right.

 

In 2009, he called the local newspaper in Rock Hill, told them what he had done and began his search for the two men he had beaten in the bus station. The white man, Albert Bigelow, had died in 1993. And then, to Wilson’s surprise, he learned that the other man - John Lewis - was now a member of Congress. The power dynamic had certainly changed.

Wilson arranged to visit Lewis in his Congressional office in Washington. He brought along his now middle-aged son. When they entered Lewis’ office, he got right to the point: “Mr. Lewis,” he said, “my name is Elwin Wilson. I’m one of the men who beat you in that bus station back in 1961. I want to atone for the terrible thing I did, so I’ve come to seek your forgiveness. Will you forgive me?”

Lewis, recalling that moment, said, “I forgave him, we embraced, he and his son and I wept, and then we talked.”

 

ABC News went back to report on that visit. I’d invite you to watch this brief clip from 2009. (During the sermon, I played the section from 0:21 to 1:20)

 

It’s a story of repentance and forgiveness that gives me so much hope. As John Lewis would say later, “People can change…people can change.”

 

It’s also a story, like the story of Joseph, about how power can shift in our lives.

When Joseph was a young man, he had plenty of arrogance and he thought his father’s protection gave him some sort of power. But it was brothers who really had the power. They were the ones who essentially sold him into slavery. And then thought they were rid of him.

Now Joseph has the power. At first, he uses his power to taunt his brothers, since they do not recognize him. He has accommodated so well to the royal life in Egypt that he is unrecognizable. Power can do that to a person, after all.

 

But Joseph also recognized that he could use his power for good. He finally revealed himself to his brothers, had them bring Jacob and his extended family to Egypt where there would be enough food for all. (Joseph’s mother, Rachel, had died by this time.) 

 

You might think this puts a happy ending on the story. But in time, these Israelites who had moved to Egypt became the slaves of the Pharaoh. Power had shifted again. We’ll hear more about that next week.

For now, I’d just like to play with the notion of how power gets used not only in this story, not only in the story of John Lewis, but in our lives as well.

 

There are places in all of our lives where we have power. 

And there are places where others have power over us. 

There are places where people need to depend on our using what power we have wisely. 

There are places where we need to depend on the wise use of powers by others.

 

Remember the twists of power in Joseph’s life.

 

As a slave to a captain of the Egyptian guard named Potiphar, Joseph did such a good job of winning his master’s favor that Potiphar put him in charge of his household. 

 

And Joseph did such a good job of exuding charm that Potiphar’s wife repeatedly tried to seduce him and finally framed him as having tried to assault her. 

His power was gone. He was in prison. He was victimized by the power of another and once again at the bottom of the power equation. 

 

But he used what abilities he had to make friends among his fellow prisoners, interpreting their dreams. One of them eventually returned to his post in the Pharaoh’s court and eventually told the Pharaoh about Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams.

 

Once again, Joseph moved into a position of power and used his power to help Egypt prepare for the famine that he anticipated.  In the process, his power and stature rose.

Power is like that, after all. It is not like motives and results are always pure. Joseph helped the people of Egypt. He also helped himself. Was he doing this for his own benefit first or for the community’s benefit?

That's the kind of question that is useful to ponder as we look at the ways we seek and use power in our lives and judge the use of power by others.

 

It’s a question that is never easy to answer, especially in the political arena where power seems to be used so much for personal aggrandizement, yet where that power also can protect or improve the lives of those who are most vulnerable. 

 

Power exists in places other than the public arena, though. It exists within our families as well. 

 

Families are not free from power struggles, whether between partners or between parents and children. The power dynamics change as children grow older, as they find themselves caring for aging parents. It’s never a smooth ride.

 

So we continually wind up considering the questions of what power we have and how best to use that power. 

 

In our own families, I suspect we often take for granted the power we have and the way we use, abuse or ignore that power.

 

We are neither all powerful nor totally powerless. If we are looking for some touchstones on how we might think about power, the life a Jesus is a pretty good place to start.

 

Even before Jesus was born, his mother Mary was singing a song we call the Magnificat. She said that God had brought the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. We know the story about Jesus being born in a stable. Yet we also know the stories of how he used his power to help so many people that he encountered along the way.

A woman washing his feet with her tears and hair is elevated to honor. A tax collector is invited to take a step back serve Jesus dinner. His followers tell of how he calmed storms. And then, at his last meal with his closest followers, he washes their feet and tells them, “You call me Lord and Teacher…so if I, your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, so you ought to wash one another’s feet.”

When we feel powerless, we need to seek allies. When we feel powerful, we need to embrace humility. When we misuse our power, we need to seek forgiveness. 

 

And wherever we are, we need to remember that God’s grace is with us, Jesus’ life offers signposts and God’s Spirit will carry us along.

 

Like Joseph, like John Lewis, we have to struggle with the uses and abuses of power and we have to struggle with what it means to forgive and to be forgiven.