Exodus 1-3 So we are on to the second book of the Torah. The name "Exodus" comes from the Greek, meaning "The Way Out." This is the story of how God's people are rescued from slavery in Egypt.
There are several centuries of time packed between the last verse of Genesis and the 8th verse of Exodus. "Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph." Times change, and memories fade. The Israelites are no longer in a place of honor. They have grown too numerous to be anything but a threat to the Egyptians. So policies changed and the Israelites became slaves of the Egyptians. 1:10 reads: "Come, let us deal shrewdly with [the Israelites], or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land." This is really quite interesting in light of Joseph's dealings with the Egyptians in the time of their famine when he nationalized the Egyptian farmers' lands in exchange for giving them back the grain he had "saved" for them during the seven years of plenty. The rich always find ways to exploit the rest of the populace. Greed is an endemic sin...
Look at the words used to describe how the Israelites were treated: "oppress them with forced labor," "ruthless in imposing tasks," "[the Egyptians] made their lives bitter with hard service."
Then we have the brave Israelite midwives. (If anybody is looking for brave and uncommon girls' names, I'd suggest "Shiphrah" and "Puah"!) And the scene is set for Moses to be the survivor. Another instance of the fate of the Israelites hanging by a thread, a theme we see recurring through the entire Bible...
It is important later in the narrative that Moses is of the family of Levi (2:1), the tribe of Israel from which the priests and temple workers come. New Testament commentators have tied Moses' ride in the basket in the bullrushes (and also Noah's ride in the Ark!) to baptism, by which God saves us from drowning in sin.
2:11 "One day after Moses had grown up".... and more time passes! Moses accepts and owns his Israelite heritage, but discovers he's not really thought of as "one of them" by the Israelites. He flees, after committing a hot-headed murder, to the land of Midian. And he sits down "by a well" (2:15) where, in ways reminiscent of Isaac and Jacob, he meets his wife.
2:23 Then our attention is drawn back to the plight of the Israelites. "After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them."
And God begins his plan to rescue them by making Moses notice God at the burning bush in 3:1ff.
This is where God mysteriously self identifies with the words: "I will be who I will be" or "I am who I am" And the name, related in Hebrew to the verb for being, represented by four Hebrew consonants, YHWH, is never pronounced by traditional Jews, because God's name is sacred, holy, mysterious.
Very Orthodox Jews won't even write the word "God" with a capital letter, but prefer "G_d." In our English Bibles, whenever you see the "LORD" in all capitals, you are reading a translation of this unpronounced name for God, YHWH. It is an important reminder for us, who are often on really rather intimate terms with God, that it is also true that God is utterly transcendent, and a response of utter awe and amazement is also appropriate.
The LORD gives Moses an assignment, and the language that the Exodus writer uses reminds us of the language of the great Greek poet, Homer, who has certain poetic stock phrases (rosy-fingered dawn, the wine-dark sea among the best-known) that appear again and again. The LORD says in 3:17: "I will bring you up out of the misery of Egypt, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with Milk and honey."
Psalm 18:1-19 A psalm that speaks of God's act of delivery--quite a lot of resonances with the delivery from Egypt--though this act of delivery, according to the traditional comments that we don't see in our BCP presentations of the Psalms, was God's delivery of David from the hand of Saul.
It is a wonderful thing to be able to read and pray these psalms in the context of our own struggles. 18:6 "In my distress I called upon the LORD;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice
and my cry to him reached his ears.
God's response shakes the earth to its very core. Yet it was gentle enough to pull out the suffering psalmist from his suffering:
18:16ff "He reached down from on high, he took me;
he drew me out of mighty waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy,
and from those who hated me;
for they were too might for me.
They confronted me in the day of my calamity;
but the LORD was my support.
He brought me out into a broad place;
he delivered me, because he delighted in me.
Matthew 18 A child is an example of greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven. Children did not have the same social status that they do in our time. I'm looking at a current copy of The Atlantic (April 2014) featuring an article on "The Over-protected Kid." And I'm aware of all kinds of articles recently on "helicopter parenting." Children did not always confer social status upon their parents, or rule their parents' homes like young tyrants. When Jesus talks of being like a child, he had the first-century status of children more in mind.
After speaking about a child, and welcoming a child in Jesus' name, Jesus speaks of "little ones" in two more passages. Mental hospitals used to have people who had taken Jesus' words literally about "tearing out" their eyes, or cutting off their hands. But if we don't take Jesus literally here, we still need to ask: what do we need to leave behind that may feel essential to our self-identity if we are serious about being children of the Kingdom of Heaven? And are we ready perhaps to carry some wounds that won't be healed in this life?
Then we have the parable about the crazy shepherd who goes after the one lost sheep. (vss. 1-14)
And some practical advice about handling conflict in "the church"--is this an anachronism? or is this just a way of speaking of the "synagogue"?
Then the question about forgiving again and again and again and again... How does this advice from Jesus fit with our little saying of our time: "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me"?
Then the amazing parable of the unforgiving slave/manager. There is soooooooooo much to think about in this one chapter of Matthew's gospel! It is hard to read so fast sometimes!
No comments:
Post a Comment