If the search is legitimate, if it makes sense, if the reform of Egypt can be thought to succeed—then the exodus is proven redundant.
But the search for an “improved empire” is witless, and bound to fail. That “better system” cannot be summoned. There are no stories in our Bible to tell of such an event, to justify the effort. A mirage. Take note, American liberals, American Catholics, theologians, and “just war” phantasists.
¶
In an ancient empire, a prophet receives his commission from on high. In the order of “things to be done,” a fearsome emphasis, doubled, rests on the negative.
One named Jeremiah is commanded
to pluck up
and
to break down;
to destroy
and
to overthrow.
The NO! to things as they are is harsh, uncompromising, radical. Go to the roots. Not a word of reform, accommodation, gradualism or the like.
Then (but only then), after the fierce preliminary toppling, can a YES! be uttered in good faith.
Something new, structures in favor of “widows and orphans and strangers at the gate.” A new will, from the ground up. The task is abruptly stated, compressed. Now the same Jeremiah is commanded
to build
and to plant. (Jer 1:10)
¶
In our Christian testament do the dead tell stories—those whom Jesus must raise before they can utter a word?
To our ears, on the page of the gospel, they say never a word.
And with Moses, we are in predawn. Is it too early to raise the question, what stories the dead might tell?
Ask it anyway. You have a clue in the Exodus account. The equivalent dead, the race of slaves, against all odds will rise from death and tell their story.
Are we not then to embrace, and be embraced by, another tremendous Overcoming, those wounds that tell of death overcome—the wounds of resurrection?
¶
In April 1990, Fr. Michael Lapsley was the target of a letter bomb from South Africa. A friend writes of the scene in hospital a few days after the blast:
The one to whom we had come to minister, was ministering to us. I saw Christ there. . . . Christ in pain. Christ with his hands blown off. Christ speaking to us through bleeding lips. Christ with one eye . . .
Yes, I saw Christ lying in that bed, and I felt Christ minister to me. It was one of the most extraordinary spiritual experiences of my life.
I saw not one sign of bitterness or hatred . . . I stood and could but watch and listen as this Christian drama took the form of human flesh—scarred, burnt, dismembered human flesh in the form of a friend, pastor, fellow priest and comrade.8
—Michael Worsnip, May 7, 1990
¶
Before us stands young Moses, husband and father. Also, dare we forget (though to all appearances his god forgets), a murderer—probably with a price on his head.
Twice exiled—but no slave!—he is granted a vision of the God. And in that place and time a vocation is appointed.
Suddenly, and with no warning—but how could we be warned?—there is a God. Since the start of our story and the long enslavement in Egypt, we have heard little or nothing of this deity. What evidence we were given was sparse indeed; a series of disguises-in-action, deeds of a peculiar providence, hinted at through a veil of human interventions. A distant God, prescient, watching, biding time.
Was evidence secretly accreting, an unwonted act of compassion, an eye resting on the human scene with unwonted kindness? We ponder the merciful midwives, the kindness of pharaoh’s daughter—a hint of someone “other,” gentle, compassionate, courageous, feminine in fact.
The hero was lifted from the waters. The saving gesture, a slight insult to the scheme of empire—then out and out, like an expanding ripple in the Nile. An ever so gentle whisper of waters. The innuendo seemed to be: cast aside differences of status, religion, gender. Let a human sense arise, let arms succor the vulnerable and victimized. Slave or free, Hebrew or Egyptian, let hearts respond to a child’s wail. Save me!
And the saving act is presented as simply—human. Shiphrah, Puah, Amram, Jochebed and the daughter of Pharaoh, how astonishing they are! They create on the instant, for a lorn infant, a future.
They vindicate their humanity (and our own). In a contamination of mercy, they judge and convict the implacable “other,” the pharaoh, his inhumane system, the bureaucrats and slave masters.
¶
Of those midwives it was said only that they “feared God.” This, the author avers—and surely with an eye toward us—is enough. Or ought to be.
The women “feared God.” It is their sole credential. It is also thus far, the sole explicit “reference beyond” in our story.
To the intent of our author, it suffices.
What connection is drawn by these women, between saving infants and fearing God? Were they granted early on, an intuition to be uttered centuries later, by One who surely knew—to the effect that
God
is
God
of the living,
not
of
the
dead? (Matt 22:32)
¶
Verses 23–24
Now at length, lightning has struck. The divine intrudes, unmistakably. First, with a surge of pity for the enslaved,
The Israelites groaned and cried out because of their slavery. As their cry for release went up to God, he heard their groaning and was mindful of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob . . . (Exod 2:23)
¶
exodus 3
Verse 1 and following
Now, on to the savior. Moses is to be dealt with (surely in more senses than one!).
Fire, and a Voice. No shocking epiphany here. Nor by any means a bodily appearance (that will wait—Jesus). Here the divine intrudes through the lowly things of this world. A flora becomes the nest of glory: a bush, inflamed, unconsumed.
And an altogether extraordinary exchange is recorded, remarkable for omissions as well as substance. This God, this transcendent remembering One, is also the forgetting One.
With regard to memories retained or set aside, the deity must be thought—selective. And, perhaps, above all, surprising.
¶
Let us confess; we seek in the deity a consistency, a logic tighter than our own. And this, it seems, is a first error, perhaps a capital one. The god will reveal himself, witting or not, as a somewhat mixed blessing; malevolent at times, and avenging. In seeming whim he will choose and reject, embrace and cast aside.
And more, and worse; given time and occasion, he will create (or allow to be created in his name), a system of inside players and outsiders, victims.
¶
As concerns young Moses and the corpse he has buried in the sand—the desert winds scour and level all. It is as though the deed were not. And the memory of the god is blank as an unmarked grave. Forgiveness, or default?
Did not the