Lake Edge United Church of Christ

Moses, the liberator of his people, was born a slave baby. As the child of two slaves, Hebrews of the tribe of Levi, he was himself a slave, born at perhaps the worst possible moment. Pharaoh, the leader of Egypt, the most powerful empire in all the world, had decreed his concern that the Hebrew people who served him as slaves were growing too numerous for safety. Though he loved the labor they provided, he was fearful that if there were too many of them, they would revolt, and much would be lost as the rebellion was put down. And so he decreed, with Moses still unborn, that all male Hebrew children would be killed in order to slow the growth of the population. For this reason, Moses’ mother hid him at his birth, and when she could no longer hide him safely in her own home, she found the basket for him, and waterproofed it, and set it floating among the bull rushes at the site in the river where Pharaoh’s daughter took her ritual baths. His mother knew that a king’s edict from on high was one thing; and that a woman holding a baby in her arms was another. Counting on the hope that no woman, not even Pharaoh’s daughter, could resist a cherubic little baby boy, she put her Moses where he would be discovered by the one weak link in the oppressive chain of the slave holders.
And, because God is good, and because God has a great sense of humor, and because God is the ruler of this world, an end run was made around the cruel forces of the Empire of slavery. Moses, whom God would choose to set the people free, was raised in the very home of the great slave owner.
The Hebrews hadn’t always been slaves, of course. The sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had found their way to Egypt following the mysterious hand of their God, who had arranged for their ancestor Joseph to be sold into slavery in Egypt long before them. By the hand of God and by his quick wits, he had been removed from Pharaoh’s prison, and raised to the number two man in all the Empire, planning for the coming famine. And so, when his own brothers were starving in Palestine they came to Egypt seeking bread and God had paved the way, setting their brother Joseph up to receive them. The reunited family had settled in Egypt, and raised families there, and served Pharaoh until at last a new king emerged, who conveniently forgot all that Joseph had done to save the Empire, and who gradually, over the course of years, turned the Hebrews from loyal free subjects into abject slaves to be used as he thought best.
Now likely that was not the norm in the ancient world. Free people got turned into slaves by some calamity: they lost a war, or fell deeply into debt, or they were simply taken by force. Free one minute, they were slaves the next. But it seems not to have been so with the Hebrews: they lost their freedom by turns, by degrees, slowly over time, the victim of selective memory on the part of the Pharaoh.
Well now, if that’s how it happened, if the Hebrews became slaves gradually, by degree, we can understand their plight, because the forces that we serve, to whom we are slaves, achieve that power over us only gradually, so slowly that we scarcely notice that we have given up our freedoms. No person who is a slave to alcohol becomes one instantly; it takes time to become an alcoholic. No one who is a slave to narcotics becomes so overnight; tolerance to the drug builds gradually until it takes more and more to give us the same relief and only when our tolerance levels are highest do we become slaves to the drug. No person who is a slave to debt, working today to pay off yesterday’s spending got there overnight. Debt is most often acquired gradually, by degrees, a bit more today to help with the squeeze caused by yesterday, until we work not for a future, but to keep the past from overwhelming us. As a society, we did not become addicted to fossil fuels in an instant; it took generations for us to lose the capacity to think about life without the instant, easy energy that petroleum provides. Those of us who are chained to the past by bad habits, or by work postponed most often did not even notice the noose at first; we accepted a bit more pressure today than yesterday, and a bit more tomorrow than today until at last we cannot breathe and we see that we are not free, and are not making our own choices. We did not learn to accept the government listening into our conversations and reading our emails just after 9/11; no the way had been prepared by generations raised in the fear of the Bomb, the Communists, the Terrorists so that now we barely notice how much less free we actually have become.
It is said that a frog placed in a large basin of water being heated slowly by a single burner will never leave the water. If the rise in temperature is gradual enough the frog will stay in water and be boiled to death having made no effort to escape. Drop the frog into boiling water and he will fight to escape. Make the water boil gradually around him and he will adjust himself to death.
If someone were to descend on our sanctuary and put chains around our necks, we would resist, would fight back, and would cry out for freedom. But enslave us slowly, day by day, and we will become slaves even as we insist that we are still free.
So it was with the children of Israel in the days of Moses, enslaved without truly noticing, until the soldiers came seeking their male children, and their mothers were reduced to hiding their beloved sons in the bulrushes along the river.
But we listen to this story, and we can learn. For even as the slaves were reduced to hiding their children, their God, who had promised their ancestor Jacob that he and all his descendents would be blessed, their God was working to effect their liberation. The leader, the one whom God would call and work through, was saved from Pharaoh’s noose and better yet, brought into the slave holder’s house, to grow up and to gain there the skills that he would need to bring about his people’s freedom. This God of the Hebrews has a sense of irony, and humor, moving God’s people out of slavery and into freedom by the very hands that enslaved them.
And we listen to this story and we laugh, and we rejoice for God’s protective hand on Moses and God’s liberating work in and through him. But if we think that this is just a story from the dead, dark past, we miss the point. For the God who ensured that the slave holder would raise up the people’s liberator is our God, too. And therefore we know that the chains of slavery that bind us have their days numbered, too. We can and must be free from the chains that bind us. With the help of God we can become free from the chemical chains of alcohol and nicotine and narcotics that enslave so many. With the help of God we can become free from our enslavement to fossil fuels, breaking the logic that says there is no answer but more oil, and bigger armies to protect its supply. With the help of God we can break old habits and family traditions that bind us and keep us from being free to love with our whole hearts. With the help of God we can regain control of our finances, wanting only what we need, buying only what we can afford, owning less so that others can live more fully, too. And with the help of God we can resist becoming enslaved by the fear of the communists or the terrorists or whichever –ist is currently fashionable, and we can again be free to think and to decide, to say yes or to say no, and to take responsibility for our freedom before our God.
And this all sounds deadly serious and I suppose it is. But listen: for our God even now is laughing at the pretensions of those who would enslave. Our God is the God of liberty and freedom and our God is ruler of this world and all the habits and fears and worries and troubles that enslave us, and our God holds in derision the forces of fear. Even now God bids us put our hopes for freedom into God’s own hands for protection. As his mother did for Moses, so we may do for our tender hopes, trusting that our God reigns, and that the fears of this world amount to nothing in the face of the one who lives and loves and liberates. Praise be to God! Amen.