Latest / Belin Memorial UMC / Rev. Will Malambri - "Out of Fear"
Transcript
- Belin Memorial UMC: Before I read from the book of Exodus to you, I want to remind you of the context. Exodus, of course, is the second book in our Bibles. It reads something like a sequel to the book of Genesis. So I thought to remind you of what's in that book of Genesis, I would give you a tweetable version capturing the book. And I'm not talking about like the new version of Twitter or X, where you, if you pay enough money, can say as much as you want. I'm not even talking about the new free version that's 280 characters. I'm going way back to the original. 140 character limit. So here it is. The book of Genesis in less than 140 characters. Creation, good, sin, bad. Consequences, flood, promise, tower, Abraham, Sarah, covenant, descendants, Israel, Joseph betrayed, saves Egypt, hero. And don't tell those third graders, but you could read 50 chapters in than 140 characters. There it is. And what happens next is we turn the page and start realizing that Exodus builds on that and that that what happened with Joseph and his saving the people of Israel, but also the people of Egypt is he is in and his people are in a position of power and strength. They have been a gift to the people of Egypt. Then we find out that he and his brothers died. It would cause us to wonder what would happen next. But hope was not lost because the Israelites were fruitful and prolific. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them. And that's good news. It was a sign that God was still with the people of Abraham and his descendants, still with Joseph and his descendants, still with the people of Israel, even there in Egypt. Good news for us because those are our people, the people of our faith. Jesus was a Jew, and so by faith in him we are attached to the Jewish people. They're our relatives as our ancestors and our relatives as modern Jews. Now just as no individual gets everything right, no group gets everything right. So within the family, there is room for disagreement, but there is no room for hate. No room for anti-Semitism. That's true for any element of society, but it's most especially for Christians. We can debate the policies and the actions of the modern state of Israel, but undebatable is our concern for the welfare of all. And that includes our Jewish relatives. Sad we need to reiterate that from time to time, but as today's reading reminds us, memories can be short, especially when fear creeps in. Which is exactly why what leads to the problems of the story I'm going to read and what leads to the problems of the remainder of the book of Exodus. So let's be clear. Fear, which often leads to a desire to control, often leads to harm to others, and often leads to bad outcomes for all. And that's not just limited to the time of Egypt and Israel, way back when. In fact, it's not by accident that in the story I'm going to read, Pharaoh is not given a name, he had a name. The Bible does not provide it as a way of saying to us that if you know one, you've known them all. Because some version of this story is repeated throughout history, it is better to not be so specific for us to then dismiss it as too bad for what happened back then. There are too many groups with painful scars who would remind us it's happened lots of times since. It can happen in any era. It's happened in too many eras. So here's the untweetable version of how quickly things changed from Joseph the hero. to a frightened and frightening new king. To heroic women. Exodus chapter one. Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and in their the event of war join our enemies and fight against us and escape from this land. Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithum and Ramsees for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians subjected the Israelites to hard servitude and made their lives bitter with hard servitude, in mortar and bricks in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them. The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shifra, and the other Pua, When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them on the birth stool, if it is a son, kill him. But if it is a daughter, she shall live. But the midwives feared God. They did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but the boy let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, Why have you done this and allowed the boys to live? The midwives said to Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for the they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them. So God dealt with the midwives, and the and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. The Pharaoh commanded commanded all his people: Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter It's the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. If you feel like you've heard the story before Just told another way you have. After Jesus was born, the Magi revealed to to the Herod that they had seen a star, and the star led them to what would become, who would become a new king. And and Herod, out of fear, decided if they couldn't gather that new king up, then they should kill every child two years or under in Bethlehem. Same fear, different king. Ironically, Jesus' family took him to Egypt to escape Herod's cruelty. Disturbingly, Herod knew the story of the Egyptian slavery and the attempted killing of those children, and so he performed with What his Jewish family had lamented all of those years. Things we'll do out of fear. And the things we'll try to justify because of fear. That's where the new king began. Unaware of his nation's history with Joseph, indifferent to any appeals of how the Hebrew people have been and were being helpful to his people, he took what was a sign that God was with them, that they were fruitful in multiplying, and turned that into a way for that to be a threat, a danger against them. It was a rationale he used to oppress, and then ultimately to attempt genocide. The strange thing is that his stated fear that the Hebrew people would grow so numerous as to be able to leave the land and therefore take lots of the workforce was sought to be fixed by doing the very thing that would get rid of his future workforce, killing off those baby boys. Well, that's the thing about fear. It does not have to make sense or to be true. It just has to be something that can be sold to those who are so vulnerable feeling that the proposed solution sounds right. The summer our family took a trip to Washington DC. We wanted to go see our son. He was working up there for the summer and we thought it'd be a nice little vacation. We only had a short period of time. So when we were talking about what we might do, our daughter, eighteen year old daughter, suggested we go to the Holocaust Museum. I said, you we're only going to be there a couple days. We're going to enjoy some time with your brother. That's not like the Smithsonian Museums. It is not going to be fun. Is that really what you want to do? She insisted it was. So we went. I'm grateful we did. Of course it was not fun. It was a sad reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust, but also of the use of fear that made the Holocaust possible. The ways groups of people were mischaracterized. How differences were accentuated in order to use them as weapons. How repeating exaggerated claims about the Jews made it easy to convince those looking for people to blame for their own problems in their lives that the Jews were the ones to blame. Seeing the photos of the death camps, reading the descriptions and the unfathomable numbers, looking at the piles of shoes worn by the victims was sickening. What helped us get through was knowing that people are still lining up to know the story and to learn from it. It was coming across stories of people the museum highlighted, those who actively worked against the horrors of the Holocaust, people whose fear of God led them to not be persuaded by the fear the Nazis were putting out there and instead by God's call to act. They were the Shifras and the Pewas, the the the Pharaoh's daughter of their days, the ones who out of fear of God, not fear of man, saved lives. Rescued would be victims. They were the ones who, like the midwives and like the Pharaoh's daughter, as Martin Luther described, ones who were faithful enough to be disobedient to the king, because faithful people worked to help, not harm. They could have done differently. So many have. They could have believed the narrative that the Israelites were going to overtake them and acted out of fear for their own future. They could have recognized that helping the Israelites would not only put them at odds with the Pharaoh, but would have put them at odds with their neighbors. They could have acted out of fear of others' opinions. Instead, they acted out of fear of God. Fear out of, as in respect, fear as in obedience, fear as in devotion. That's why the Bible names those two midwives, Schifra and Pue. It's something to honor them. That's why we know the names of Oscar Schindler and Cory Tin Boom. It's one of the main reasons we know of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Here's a name you don't know. Eugene Sheshewski. I call him Ja Ja. He was my stepgrandfather. And when I was a child he impressed me because he ate Cheerios every morning. He loved dogs. And he was an avid follower of professional wrestling. Ja Ja was very disappointed when Hulk Hogan turned bad. He's a Polish Catholic who immigrated to the United States after spending time in a concentration camp. As a young man, he was moved by the Jews' plight. And so he and his family would sneak food and supplies to the Jewish community. And that's what led to him spending time in a concentration camp, which he somehow survived. He made it with the help of Jewish friends to our country. where he kept his sleeves rolled down so as to not show the number tattooed on the inside of his forearm, and worked his way into becoming a successful pharmacist. If he didn't dress so oddly and have so many quirks, he would have been the kind of grand step grandfather to take to a show and tell day, 'cause his stories were so interesting. Like those other names we know better. Perhaps like the less famous people you've known or know of. Maybe like Queen Esther from the Bible. Jaja might have been where he was when he was for such a time as this. But he did not wait until such a time as that to develop the faith and character needed to act on behalf of others. None of them did. They did not they did the daily work of keeping up The elements that cause faith to be strong enough to not lose heart. They did the daily work of keeping their hearts soft enough so as to not be calloused and to no longer care. They did the daily work that put them in a place to make a real difference in the lives of real people. Like them we are called to do the little things, the daily things that help us resist the unfaithful fear that some will use to against us. And to grow the faithful fear of God that will help us to be used for Him. We're to develop the character that helps us regularly look for ways to help not harm. So that when our such a time as this arrives, acting out of the fear of God, not fear of others, will be so natural, such a habit that we could not Schifra, Pua, Corey, Oscar, Dietrich, Cha Ja. They weren't uniquely equipped to push back against horrible oppression. They were just people with a healthy enough fear of God as to respond to be helpful for others. They were just people. People like you. People like me. Who saw serving God meant helping the most vulnerable neighbors? grateful for them. So with those they help.