Easter 6
25 May 2025
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
COMMUNITY: LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS
(From Creation to New Creation: The Biblical Story #4)
Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy
We are one-fourth of the way through the Biblical Story and we’ve only covered Genesis. Which is appropriate, because the Genesis stories are foundational to the entire biblical story. In the remaining 65 books, we will see the working out of the promises God made to Abraham and his descendants. This morning we cover the next four books of the Bible which include THE foundational event of Hebrew faith – the Exodus.
Since we concluded last week with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph having come to Egypt to escape famine, some 400 years have past. A new Pharaoh has come to power, one who does not remember Joseph and his family. This new Pharaoh looks around and sees how numerous the Hebrews have become. He grows concerned that they will become more powerful than the Egyptian army. So he makes slaves of them, forcing them into hard labor.
When people who are different from the majority grow in number, then the people in power feel threatened and seek to make life hard for them or get rid of them altogether.
But the more the Hebrews are oppressed the more they multiply. So Pharaoh issues a command to the midwives, ordering them to kill every male infant born to Hebrew women. But two midwives – Shiprah and Puah – “feared God and did not do as the king had commanded.” It is the first act of civil disobedience in the Bible. Sometimes it is right to break the law, especially when the law harms, enslaves, or discriminates. When Pharaoh learns of this civil disobedience he orders all the Hebrew baby boys that have survived to be thrown into the Nile River to drown. And here the story of one named Moses begins.
Born to Hebrew parents in slavery, his mother Jochebed hides him at home as long as she can. Then she weaves a basket into a little ark, places Moses in the basket, and sets him afloat in the Nile River behind some bushes. She stations the baby’s sister, Miriam, to watch out for him. One day Pharaoh’s daughter is bathing in the river and discovers the basket with Moses inside. Her heart goes out to him. Then Moses’ sister steps forward and offers to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the child. She runs and fetches Moses’ mother, who is then paid to nurse her own baby! – the newly adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter!
This Hebrew boy who should have drowned in the Nile finds himself living in Pharaoh’s royal palace and given the best education the ancient world has to offer. Though he was raised a prince of Egypt in Pharaoh’s palace, Moses does not turn his back on the plight of his people. He could have lived a long and easy life of leisure and wealth. Instead, his heart goes out to the cries of his people in the suffering of their enslavement. He risks everything to intervene.
It is the drama repeated throughout history, a drama God’s people are called to join: where people moved by divine compassion and justice act courageously on behalf of others who are demonized, ostracized, and cast aside.
One day Moses sees an Egyptian overlord torturing a Jewish slave. Rage consumes Moses, and he throws himself on the Egyptian and kills him. With a death sentence now hanging over his head, Moses flees far away to the desert around Midian. There he meets a girl named Zipporah. (You think he called her Zippy?) They marry and have a child and Moses becomes the keeper of his father-in-law’s flock.
Then one afternoon, Moses, now eighty years young, is tending the flock and observes a burning bush. He lingers long enough to see that while the bush burns it is not consumed. He could have just walked on by. But he turns aside to look. And in doing so he encounters the Sacred.
How often do we miss “God moments” along our way, failing to pause and turn aside, to look and to ponder, because we’re in a hurry, preoccupied by ten thousand things most of which do not matter all that much?
Moses walks closer to investigate, and from the bush a Voice calls out his name.
“Here I am,” Moses replies.
The Voice says, “Come no closer. Take off your shoes. This is holy ground. For I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I have seen the affliction of my children in Egypt and heard their cry, and I’m sending you to Pharaoh to lead my people out of slavery.”
There is no secret in the Bible whose side God is on between tyrant and captive, oppressor and oppressed, master and slave, the powerful and the powerless. While loving all people, God is always on the side of the downtrodden. This is why when white masters gave their African slaves a Bible the masters removed the first 15 chapters of Exodus about God demanding the freedom of slaves and they removed Paul’s letter to the Galatians on the freedom whose purpose is to love and serve. So the question is not whose side God is on but whose side we are on.
When God calls Moses from the burning bush, Moses objects ferociously with claims of inadequacy. But God answers patiently with quiet assurance: Moses, I will be with you. When Moses asks for the name of this Voice, God responds with an unpronounceable name spelled
Y-H-W-H. There are no vowels in Hebrew, only consonants. So we guess at the pronunciation. Our best guess is Yahweh. Often translated: I Am Who I Am. A name whose meaning is wrapped in mystery, appropriately elusive and untranslatable, a name for the Holy One whose ways are not our ways, whose full essence is hidden from our sight. Old Testament scholar Toni Craven interprets the name this way: “Call me Yahweh, and I will teach you what it means!”
So with a staff in his hand and a Name in his heart Moses finally says yes and sets off to lead God’s people.
Moses and his brother Aaron plead with Pharaoh, “Yahweh our God says, ‘Let my people go.’” But Pharaoh’s heart is hard. He refuses to set the Hebrews free. So ten plagues come upon the Egyptians, each plague representing an Egyptian god, with the last plague finally breaking through the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart.
The night is now set for the escape from Egypt. A night filled with terror and excitement. The firstborn of every Egyptian family is slain. Hebrew homes “passed over’ and spared, thus the Jewish Feast of “Pass-over.” And with Pharaoh grieving the death of his son, he finally consents to let God’s people go.
Thus begins the Exodus, THE central event in the history of Israel’s people. The children of Israel depart out of Egypt into the wilderness, headed for Canaan, bound for the Promised Land. Soon after the Hebrews leave Egypt, Pharaoh changes his mind and takes off after them. The Hebrews find themselves boxed in – the Red Sea before them, Pharaoh’s troops behind them. The people panic, but Moses says, “Stop your crying, the Lord will save you.” Then Moses stretches out his hand and a strong easterly wind blows back the waters, and the people cross the sea on dry land. As Pharaoh’s horses and chariots follow, the waters are swept back and the Egyptian soldiers drown beneath the waves. And the Hebrews sing a song of deliverance. It is the first biblical image of baptism: seeing that which enslaves us drowned in the waters behind us as we walk toward freedom.
Moses leads the people through the wilderness toward Canaan. It will take forty years because if their stubbornness. The Hebrews are led by God’s presence in the form of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. A reminder that we are all led by a Hand – sometimes seen, sometimes unseen – that guides and keeps us.
It is no easy journey for the Hebrew people. Faced with their first trial of hunger they long to go back to Egypt. They complain to Moses: “Why did you make us leave? At least in Egypt we had plenty to eat.” Freedom at first did not feel like freedom. It was not our kind of American freedom whose purpose is “the pursuit of happiness.” We have to grow and mature into the kind of responsible freedom God gives.
Leadership wasn’t easy either. The people murmured and grumbled against Moses. At one point he cries out to God, “What am I to do with this bellyaching, faithless people?” (Many pastors down through the centuries have asked God the same question. Not any of your pastors, of course!)
When the Israelites complain about something to eat God feeds them manna. It stays good only a day at a time before it spoils. So they have to learn to live day by day, step by step, as all people of faith must learn to live.
Even after God sends them manna to eat, they bellyache some more. Which led the Jewish writer Elie Wiesel to ponder: “Who knows? Perhaps God’s decision not to let Moses enter the Promised Land was meant as a reward rather than as punishment.”1
They cross the desert to Mount Sinai where God says to them: “I bore you on eagle’s wings, and brought you to myself. If you obey my voice, you will be my peculiar treasure on earth. For I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Now to stay free, hear and obey my commands.”
We sometimes balk at commandments: Why not steal, cheat, and lie in a world where everybody else does? It’s the only way to get things done! Right? And God answers: “Because you are my precious treasure. Because one way leads to life and freedom, the other to bondage and death.”
After Moses receives The Ten Commandments on top of Mount Sinai, he comes down the mountain. And when he gets back to camp he cannot believe his eyes. His people are dancing and singing around a golden calf that has been formed by melting down the jewelry they had carried out of Egypt. Moses had been gone so long that they turned to a god they could see and touch and fashion with their own hands. And who was leading them in this idolatry? None other than the minister of music, Moses’ brother Aaron. Musicians!
Now we may easily criticize the Hebrews for their behavior, but when we’re honest we admit that we understand and sometimes follow in their footsteps. When times get hard
and God seems nowhere to be found, we search for comfort, guidance, and assurance in those things we can see and touch. Golden calves are often preferred to a God that seems hidden and silent. We say with our mouths and money and license plates: “In God We Trust.” However,
our lives often reveal a truer trust in Wall Street and the Pentagon – powers we can see.
Moses is so angry when he sees what’s going on that he smashes the tablets containing the commandments into a hundred pieces. I wonder: Is this where we get the phrase “breaking the commandments”? Is this act of Moses a symbolic gesture of what the Hebrews have done with their lives, of what we do with our wayward lives?
Well Moses has just about had enough. He asks for a little reassurance, some sign that God is still with him. And God obliges. God sweeps by, hiding Moses in the cleft of a rock, sheltering him with God’s own hand. This brief mysterious shining moment of God’s presence was enough to keep Moses going for the rest of his life. And from this experience comes one of the most beloved verses in scripture, the John 3.16 of the Hebrew Bible, found in Exodus 34.6: The Lord is a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
After forty years wandering in the wilderness, Moses has finally led the Israelites to “Jordan’s stormy banks” at the boundary of Canaan. God takes Moses to the top of Mount Pisgah, and from that peak God shows him the Promised Land. Moses sees it all: the Dead Sea, the River Jordan, the Lake of Galilee, even a glint of the Mediterranean. It takes his breath. His heart is a pounding drum. But then come the words that break his heart: Moses, this is the land I promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I have let you see it, but I will not let you enter it. From breathtaking joy to heartbreaking sorrow all in a moment. Life! Moses will not be allowed to lead his people in. For reasons difficult for us to understand, his people will go on without him, the younger leader Joshua will take the helm.
When Moses, at 120 years of age, realizes the end is near, with a lump in his throat the size of Texas, Moses thinks back as far as he can remembering his long, turbulent, God-driven life. He spends his last hours blessing the tribes of Israel one by one. His final sermon is the Book of Deuteronomy – which is the law of God from Exodus reinterpreted for a new generation.
Then he begins his climb up Mount Nebo to die. Slowly he enters the cloud that covered its summit and there he waits for God. Looking back, he can no longer see his people. Emotion fills his eyes. Jewish tradition describes the death of Moses this way: Moses laid down and folded his arms across his chest. Then, silently, God kissed his lips. And the soul of Moses found shelter in God’s breath and was swept away into eternity.2 As scripture says, So Moses died . . . by the mouth of Yahweh.
I wonder: Is this the way we all die? Even those on the battlefield? in cancer wards? Kissed by infinite love. Swept away into eternity sheltered in God’s own breath?
Moses was one of the most heroic figures in all of scripture. The one who helped free a nation of people from slavery in Egypt. The one who brought the law of God down from Mount Sinai. When Moses died, the people of Israel gathered at the foot of the mountain and wept for thirty days – partly out of guilt for the way they had treated him, partly out of grief for the loss of their leader and what he had brought into their midst.
And from that time, deep within their hearts was born a hope, a hope that Another would come, a New Moses greater than the first, who would bring a new law, this one written not on stone but on their hearts, a law based not on frail human will but on the boundless grace of God. The New Moses would indeed come Jesus of Nazareth, with a New Covenant – not to abolish Moses and the prophets but to embody and fulfill them. And with a right foot of Freedom and a left foot of Grace we walk faithfully together with this New Moses toward the Promised Land.
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- Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God, Random House, 1976,199
- From the Midrash, cited in C. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, eds., A Rabbinic Anthology, London: Macmillan, 1938, 243