Exodus as Intentional Family Curriculum

These are notes from a Sunday Morning class I taught on October 26 at North Street.

I want us to spend some time in Exodus.  This is the foundation for a series of lessons I plan to preach in March and April of next year.  This is gleaned from a lecture by Walter Brueggemann.

Grandparents help grandchildren remember.  Exodus is an antidote to amnesia. Exodus is about tracing out connections.  Exodus is about tracing our moral codes, providing expectations for life, painting the picture of a river of belonging.

What if we read this as a key to the whole?

Exodus 10:1-2 (NRSV) ¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his officials, in order that I may show these signs of mine among them, ² and that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I have made fools of the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them—so that you may know that I am the Lord."

 

Exodus is intentional family curriculum.  It depicts the competition between Pharaoh and Yahweh. Youth (perhaps in every age) have no feeling of debt to the past. All of our grandparent’s stuff becomes antique and obsolete. 

Was it about amnesia?  The empire has a vested interest in local amnesia.  It makes for a group of people easy to control (or easier anyway).  Look to the theme of Deuteronomy 8, Don’t forget.

This was always in play.  The forces of forgetfulness would say, Join Alexander, Join Rome, forget particularity, jettison memory.

 Exodus

 1. Remember the midwives.  They are named Shiphrah and Puah. Pharaoh is not named.  The midwives are significant.  They refused imperial fear and coercion.  The future comes down to mothers.  They have seething courage.  They are the ones to hold up the pictures of the Disappeared (of Argentina).  These are the mothers who take a casserole to the grieving. These are the mothers who made fools of the commandos of Pharaoh.  They are HISTORY MAKERS. 

2. Remember the terrorist activity of Pharaoh (and Moses).  Someone had to act.  The action did not come by innocence.  It was in Moses’ mis-adventure (murder of the Egyptian) that he challenged the status quo.  The truth is that oppression, forced labor, and exploitation requires confrontation. How?  We wrestle with that!
3. Remember the theophony. The bush burns.  The Voice of Holiness calls.  It is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  We can expect an interruption from God.  He answers the cry of his people.  Exodus 3:10 (NRSV) ¹⁰ So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt." 

1. Who? Me?  Yahweh says, “I will go with you.”
2. What is your name?  YHWH.  Tell them.
3. I have no power!  What if they will not listen?  What is that in your hand?  Put your hand in your cloak.  It will be a contest of power against power. (I am thinking he will need that with Zipporah, too!)
4. And there will be a renovation of the economy.  The Nile will turn to blood.  The cattle and the land and the laws of inheritance will all be demolished.
5. I can’t speak well.  I will speak through you.
6. Send someone else.  No! 

4. Remember the Bricks. 

1. Produce bricks, and when it seems you have too much time, time for worship on your hands, then you could work harder.  Meet the quota.
2. It is oppressive.  It is coercive economic theory.  That is true in academics, sports, sales, and church.
3. There is no oasis unless you depart!!
4. We have a tendency to absolutize the present power arrangements. If our grandparents knew that this was not always the way things were they could give us hope in the face of acquisitive power. 

5. Remember the death of the Firstborn and the Passover.

• The death of the first born raises a loud cry!  Every arrogant power is humiliated.  Pharaoh says, "Rise up, go away from my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord, as you said. ³² Take your flocks and your herds, as you said, and be gone. And bring a blessing on me too!" Exodus 12:31-32 (NRSV).
• Truth and pain are brought against power by YHWH (not by rebellion, not by force of arms, but by ‘the death of a first born – Jesus).

When the people LEFT what they knew, they were afraid.  I understand that.  It is the place where you lose control.  They grumbled.  Moses told them, ‘You have only to be still.’

On the other side of the water we hear a moment of song. 

In chapter 15 Miriam sings.  The Lord will reign forever.  There is a regime change.  There is a new order.

There is no short cut for this story.  You cannot begin to live this out where you wish.  You have to live it out.

Michael Walzer, ( Exodus and Revolution, 149)

• first, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt;
  
• second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land;
  
• and third, that “the way to the land is through the wilderness.”  There is no other way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.