"Who do you say that I am? and Exodus" - Sermon for Aug 27th, 2017

Sermon:

Text:

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who creates, saves, and promises to always be God.

            I always ask the question that Jesus gives to the disciples and Peter answers as one of the final confirmation paper questions. Who do you say that I am? And I love Peter’s answer, the messiah, the Son of the Living God.  Jesus is the Messiah, which means the anointed one to save God’s people. Now, Jesus ends up saving Peter, the disciples and us in a different method that Peter was thinking, one of sacrifice and servanthood on the cross vs one of might and power as a warrior, but that’s a different sermon.  I bring this up, because as we are reading through the Old Testament, it’s often thought of as a history book, or a science book, or merely a how it all happened book. But, that’s not the purpose of the Old Testament or the whole bible. The primary reason for the bible is to tell us about who God is. Who God is as our creator, as the one who formed us, who saved Noah from the flood, who promised Abraham descendants like the sands of the sea, who establishes the tribes and people of God, the Israelites through Jacob and saves them from Famine through Joseph in Egypt. That’s the whole book of Genesis. It’s an answer to the question, who do you say that I am. The answer is God is a God who creates, who saves, and who keeps promises.

            We’ve reached Exodus today, starting the story of Moses, but before we get to Moses direct story we see two little passages that remind us again of all that God has done. The first section is God working through the least to confront the powerful. The new Pharaoh, generations later, doesn’t remember what Joseph did for Egypt, instead he’s the one in power and he looks around himself and sees this minority group, the Hebrews, growing larger and larger, and through that become more powerful, and the Pharaoh gets afraid, he’s worried about his power and influence being taken away by this group of others. So, he starts to enact measures to limit and reduce them. He tells the midwives, who would be the lowest of the low, to kill all the male Hebrew babies as they are born, but they don’t. These lowly women stand up to the mighty pharaoh. God uses two small women to save the whole people. Who do you say that I am?  God is one who works through the lowly, the small, the powerless.

            It’s interesting to note these two, Shiphrah, and Puah, are named while Pharaoh is not, and also that these two save the people just as much as Joseph did from famine, and Moses will deliver than later. And yet we don’t remember the names Shiphrah and Puah as we do Joseph and Moses.

            The next section is where we first meet Moses as a tiny baby. Pharaoh has gotten even more fearful at this minority group that he sees as threatening his power. So, he says, just go out and kill the sons of the Hebrews, but you can let the girls live. And again, Pharaoh’s attempts are thwarted by females, this time Moses’ mother and sister.

As we look at this section here with Moses we see a few things that help us recall the reason for the bible. Who do you say that I am? Who is God?  It’s lost in our translations a bit, chapter 2:2 in our text says, when she saw that he was a fine baby, but the Hebrew wording is the same as we find in the creation story in Genesis. And she saw that her baby was good. And God saw that it was good. This little phrase reminds us of one moment of who God is, God is the one who creates and makes all things good.

            So, she sees her son, her good son, and hides him for three months, but he finally gets too old and too big to hide. So, she makes a small basket for him to place him in the river. And again, through our translations, and how the story has been told growing up, we miss a call back to another story of who God is. The word for this basket that Moses is placed in is the same word for the Ark that Noah builds. Moses is placed not in some basket, but an ark, a thing used to save from the flood. God is the one who remembers promises, that God will no longer flood the world, and it recalls other promises, God promises Abraham descendants. God will provide means for the Hebrew people, the chosen people, to be saved from anything earthly rulers like Pharaoh can throw at them.

            And so, Moses mother places him in the ark, and sends it down river right into the area where Pharaoh’s palace sits, Pharaoh’s own daughter is there, sees the ark and finds Moses. Moses sister, who we will learn is called Miriam later, asks the Pharaoh’s daughter, do you need someone to nurse him? Yes, I do! I know someone. And she gets Moses’ own mother to be his wet-nurse.

            Pharaoh seeks death for the Hebrews and yet God creates a situation where the very person who will lead the Hebrews away from this slavery is now to be raised in Pharaoh’s own household.

            That’s an answer to Who do you say that I am? God is one who says to earthly powers, people who work to remove and destroy because of their fear, God is always on the side of the least and oppressed. God is the one who saves the people from the flood, who creates, who promises to always be God.

            It shows to us who we are. We are people who no one else can claim true authority over. No Pharaoh has true power over us, no king, no president can claim us stronger than God claims us. When we are the least, oppressed by the world, downtrodden by those in power God watches over us. God is the one who Claims us.

            But, it also warns us, when we’re the strong, when we react through fear at those different, those who we think are taking our power and so we lash out in anger, in hatred, in racism, in fear. God says, I’m with those others. I am the God who created all people in my image, I am the one who saved through the flood.

            We have to ask ourselves Jesus’ question, Who do you say that I am? And then ask ourselves, do we follow that? Do we hear the words of warning? To not act as if we are God, to not react through fear as if we were the ones who have power over others created in the image of God?

But more importantly, Do we hear the words of Grace? That God created us, God saved us, God loves us and claims us, and through that we can never we destroyed, God provided an ark to bring safety, and a cross that destroyed death.

Amen.