Not Just Extras from Central Casting

Exodus 1: 8 - 2: 10; 3: 1 - 15

 

Have I mentioned lately that these are BIG stories?

 

This week, we have rocketed through the Abrahamic ancestry stories, past all the drama between Joseph and his brothers and the family’s arrival in Egypt, all the way to the beginning of the story of the Exodus – a time when the Hebrews (the descendants of Abraham) leave Egypt to slowly but surely return to the Promised Land.

 

Names have played an important role in all of the stories we’ve visited over the past four weeks. 

·      We had the first human naming the different animals. 

·      We had Abram and Sarai being renamed and bearing a son Isaac, named for their laughter. 

·      We had Jacob wrestling with God and being renamed Israel. 

 

Following the theme, it makes sense that we would linger this important moment in which God shares God’s name.

 

It is of note that our text today begins with a character that is very distinctively without a name, only a title. “There arose in Egypt a pharaoh who knew not Joseph.” This Pharaoh is nameless. 

 

It’s a little hard to appreciate the weight of that statement without recalling the Joseph story. Because of his God-given dreams, Joseph was able to prepare the Egyptians for a season of hardship and famine. He was the trusted advisor to Pharaoh and it is because of that relationship that the descendants of Abraham found themselves living (quite well for a time) in the land of Egypt. And Egypt still exists at this point in the story, in some way, because of Joseph. Joseph SAVED Egypt.

 

Now we meet the nameless Egyptian Pharaoh who does not know Joseph’s name. 

 

We should pause here and wonder what it means to forget our past. 

 

·      How much time had passed in Egypt?

·      What circumstances caused the Egyptians to forget? 

·      What happens when we forget those who go before us?

 

The Hebrew people are now slaves in Egypt, building its cities so that Egypt can prosper. The Hebrew’s lives are “bitter.” But in the midst of that hardship, the text tells us that the Hebrews are ruthless in the tasks imposed upon them. They have also been fruitful and multiplied – and the more they are oppressed, the more fruitful they become. 

 

Amidst this fruitfulness, we meet two characters– Hebrew midwives named Shiphrah and Puah. Unnamed Pharaoh asks them to kill all the male babies as they are born to the Hebrew women, but Shiphrah and Puah know God and honor God and mount their own civil disobedience, telling Pharaoh that the Hebrew women are so strong and robust that they deliver their babies before the midwives can even get there.

 

Next we are introduced to a cast of characters that are not named. But they are vital to the story. A Levite man and woman (descendants of Jacob’s son Levi) give birth to a son and hide him away. When they can hide him no longer, his mother sets him adrift in a basket in the river. 

 

But the boy child’s sister keeps watch over the floating basket, and when it is retrieved downstream by the Princess’s servants to be raised in Pharaoh’s own house, the sister pops up to suggest that she knows the perfect wet nurse for the boy.

 

So…just to review, because of a watchful sister and an unnamed but empathetic princess in the Pharaoh’s family, the baby, who the princess names Moses because he is drawn out of water, is going to be raised in infancy by his own mother – and once weaned he will grow up in Pharaoh’s home, presumably in a place of some privilege.

The things that only God can do

…and to be clear, God’s people play a role. They move the action                                 forward.

 

Moses is because of Shiprah and Puah, because of his sister’s watchfulness and a princess’s concern.

 

We pick up a little later in the story as the adult Moses, now separated from the Pharaoh’s family and living in the land of Midian because he’s killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave, comes upon a bush that is burning but is not consumed. 

 

Intrigued, Moses draws closer to the burning bush. God “sees” that Moses has drawn near, and commands him to come no closer. Moses is to remove his sandals because he is standing on holy ground. God goes on to describe how Moses is part of Abraham’s family…part of a chosen race.

 

God announces that God has “seen” and “heard” God’s people. God “knows” their suffering and as a result God has “come down” to deliver them to a land that is good and spacious and flowing with milk and honey. 

 

Take note here: This is God’s work throughout scripture – old and new testaments, right? God sees, hears, knows and comes down. Let’s not miss how this work continues through to the birth of Jesus. It is work that continues still today.

 

It turns out that God’s plan is to send Moses back to Egypt to appeal to Pharaoh. Moses will take on the risk of God’s deliverance…and like any good human would, I think,Moses resists – not once, but twice in this episode. Who AM I to do this work, Moses asks. 

 

God’s assurance is that he will be with Moses all the way.  Moses continues to resist - How will the people trust that you, God, are with me? You are behind all of this? Who shall I say you are?

God’s answer is “I AM WHO I AM.” When people ask, tell them that I AM has sent you. 

 

Now…we need to get bible geeky here because the name of God is tricky.

 

In the Jewish tradition, the name God revealed to Moses is so sacred and so holy that it is not spoken aloud. In the Hebrew scriptures, where that name appears, observant Jews will substitute the word Adonai (meaning my LORD) or hashem, a word that means “the name.” In other places, it will be replaced with an all caps rendering of LORD…and that is part of the trickiness – God’s name (which you will hear in non-Jewish circles pronounced YAHWEH) is without gender – and the word LORD applies gender. That has complicated perceptions of God for millennia.

 

So God shares God’s name with Moses so that Moses can share it with the people, so that Moses can lead the people to freedom from the oppression of a nameless Pharaoh.

 

God’s name will help Moses to lead God’s people. Perhaps you know the rest of the big story – it is not an easy story. Moses continues to resist. Moses is helped by Aaron, he doesn’t do the work alone. The people resist. And eventually…eventually, Moses’ sister - likely the one unnamed here in the beginning – Moses’ sister Miriam dances in praise and thanksgiving when the Israelites cross the Red Sea.

 

It is easy to rush to Moses and a burning bush; it’s easy to rush to God’s voice and the sacred name. But we wouldn’t get there without other players in the story. 

 

God’s people play a role. They move the action forward.

 

Moses is because of Shiprah and Puah, because of his sister’s watchfulness and a princess’s concern.

 

How many other lives does it take for Moses to know the name of God?

 

Yesterday, 24 of us gathered for most of the day here at Faith to imagine what we are becoming as the body of Christ. While there were a lot of themes that came up, one that surfaced was the tradition of nametags in worship. We even have beautiful racks for those nametags downstairs. Bill Maas cited another church’s best practice of making sure everyone who walked in the door got a nametag – as a visitor, yours would be handwritten on the first week, but by the next week, there would be a printed nametag waiting for you.

 

There is something poignant about knowing and caring about someone’s name – pronouncing it correctly, working to remember it, saying it aloud when speaking with them. One of my greatest joys as a pastor is looking folks in the eye as I hand them bread at communion and speak their name:

Nancy, the body of Christ given for you. 

John, the body of Christ given for you. 

Alice, this is the bread of heaven.

 

If our work is to share the name of God with others, if our work is to remember, point to, share and give thanks for the ways that God sees and hears God’s people, the ways that God knows the suffering of God’s people, the way God came down and still is present with God’s people to deliver them into a good and broad land, one flowing with milk and honey…

 

If that is our work then, I wonder how remembering one another’s names, taking care to learn the names of those in our midst, so that we can speak those names aloud – I wonder if this is actually one way that we begin to share God’s name.

 

I don’t know…it’s just got me thinking of the power of a name. God’s name, yes. But also the power of every person in the bigger story. Their names matter too. And there’s no harm in nametags to help us do the work…

 

Each week we take a moment to silently soak in God’s movement, God’s name, God’s word for us. Let’s hold silence together.

 

May it be so. Amen.