Sermon on August 23, 2026, Proper 16. Based on Exodus 1:8-2:10.
Today, I am finally out of Genesis and into Exodus. While Genesis tells us about the birth of the patriarchs, Exodus narrates the great story of the creation of the nation of Israel. The story as we currently have it was assembled during and immediately after the exile, when the leaders of ancient Judah were forcibly removed from Jerusalem and held hostage in Babylon before being allowed to return as a Persian client state. The history of the Jewish people circles back again and again to oppression beneath a stronger overlord: Egypt, Babylon, Persia, the Seleucids, and Rome.
The story begins with a Pharaoh who “did not know Joseph.” More broadly, he did not know history. He did not know that the Hebrews were important to the well-being of his kingdom. They were once welcomed; now, they are enslaved.
Pharaoh sees the Hebrews as a problem to be solved. The easiest way to exterminate a people group is to kill their children. Defenseless babies. Specifically, killing the sons in a patriarchal society meant that family lines could not continue, and so eventually, the Hebrews would just melt away into the Egyptians.
Shiphrah and Puah, by contrast, saw the Hebrews as beloved children of God. Problems are complicated and solvable; people are complex and call for connection and support. So, the midwives embarked on the first documented act of civil disobedience. Pharaoh says, “Kill the baby boys!” Shiphrah & Puah say, quietly but firmly, “No.” Oh sure, they make an excuse, but no ruler worth the name of Pharaoh would believe them. He knows that they are refusing to help him in his quest for power over the Hebrews. He also knows that there is nothing he can do about it, though. Childbirth was a women-only activity where men were not welcome, so Pharaoh was powerless over these two shrewd women.
Consider what risk these two women were taking. Pharaoh has shown himself to be ruthless and vindictive. Had he chosen to do so, he could have had Shiphrah and Puah cast out of their positions, thrown in prison, or even executed. They risked their livelihoods and their lives for the sake of the Hebrews. And, it’s not entirely clear that they were Hebrews themselves. Their names are Egyptian in origin, and the text is a little unclear, so it’s possible that these were Egyptian women designated to serve as midwives for the Hebrews. Still, they valued the lives of the women and babies who were under their care. They knew that in the birthing room, there is no Egyptian or Hebrew, or as Paul said, no Jew or Greek, or as we might say today, no white or Black. There are just a woman and her new child, blessed by God as we all are. The midwives saw humanity where Pharaoh saw a problem to solve.
So, Pharaoh decided to take another angle on it. If the midwives won’t do it, the overseers would. You can hide a baby for a little while, but not forever. Eventually, someone would see the baby boys and cast them into the Nile.
Now, the trickery of our forefathers is turned around. Jacob tricked his brother and his father for financial gain. Moses’s mother Jochebed and sister Miriam used similar trickery, but this time, it’s to save Moses’s life. They know that a forthright defense of the defenseless baby boy would fail, but that there must be another way. They put Moses in the Nile as commanded, but with protection. Noah built an ark, called a tevah in Hebrew, to save humanity. Jochebed fashioned a waterproof basket, also called a tevah in Hebrew, to save her son. And then, she and Miriam relied on compassion.
Pharaoh’s daughter came along. She saw Moses in the tevah, she heard his cry, and she felt compassion for him. Like Shiphrah and Puah, she saw the baby not as an enemy to be exterminated, but as a blessed and defenseless child who needed her protection and salvation. And so, Pharaoh’s daughter rescued poor baby Moses.
Major works like an opera, ballet, or musical often begin with an overture, in which themes from the work are interwoven and introduced. This allows the audience to be prepared to hear the themes in all their fullness later on. Today’s reading is basically the overture for Exodus, which itself is a microcosm of the whole story of the Bible.
Moses was defenseless. Pharaoh’s daughter saw him, heard his cry, and felt compassion for him. In the same way, God sees the Israelites, hears their cry, and feels compassion for them. God sees them: God has not abandoned his covenant people. A fuller covenant comes later, but God has already made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants. God will not abandon the children of Abraham, but will bring them back to the promised land of Canaan. God has been watching them throughout their 430-year sojourn in Egypt.
And now, God hears their cry. For many years, the Israelites flourished in Egypt in the land of Goshen. It was good, fertile land for their herds and flocks. No reason for God to be concerned. But then, a new Pharaoh arose who began to oppress the Israelites. He enslaved them and forced them to make bricks and do other hard labor. He tried to exterminate them—the first attempted genocide of the Jews, but certainly not the last! When the Israelites cried out to God with prayers of lament, wondering if they had been forgotten and forsaken, God heard their cry. They may not have been worshipping God properly. They had not been circumcising their males in honor of Abraham’s covenant. They didn’t even know God’s name. But none of that mattered. They were still God’s chosen people, so God heard the cry of the oppressed and felt compassion.
Through Moses, God will take action against the powers and principalities that are oppressing the Israelites. God will rescue them and turn them into a mighty nation. The themes of Moses’s miraculous rescue will be repeated on a larger scale.
And as I said, the Exodus is, in a sense, a microcosm of the whole story of God’s relationship with humanity. When Moses was in trouble, Pharaoh’s daughter saw, heard his cry, and felt compassion. When the Israelites were in trouble, God saw, heard their cry, and felt compassion. And when all humanity was in trouble, God saw, heard our cry, and felt compassion. Moses was saved by Pharaoh’s daughter. Israel was saved by Moses. And all humanity was saved by Israel, through the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
A frequent theme throughout the Hebrew Bible is that Israel is supposed to be a priestly nation. What do priests do? They bridge the gap between God and humanity. When Israel fell short, God sent judges and prophets. God tried everything to teach them, but they kept failing. Eventually, the nation was split, the northern kingdom disappeared from history, and the southern kingdom was exiled to Babylon. After all that, the remnant tried harder—they rebuilt the Temple and revived their worship practices. But still, they fell short of what God had in mind. They failed to bridge the gap between God and all humanity.
And so, God heard the cry not only of Abraham’s descendants, but of all humanity suffering oppression. God felt compassion for us all and sent a savior to bridge the gap once and for all. What Pharaoh’s daughter did for Moses, and what God and Moses did for Israel, our Triune God did for all of humanity through the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the everlasting flow of the Holy Spirit.
God came in the person of Jesus so that we might all be free. Free from oppression. Free from exploitation. Free to live as we choose. Free to love as we choose. Free to build a society modeled on God’s eternal kingdom, a world of universal human flourishing.
There are many types of freedom. The first way to categorize them is into freedoms from or freedoms to. Freedom from fear, from want, from poverty, from societal constraints, from social conditioning. Freedom to choose, to speak, to express yourself, to think and to believe. There is also freedom to be: Freedom to live as your authentic self, unbound by society’s expectations and constraints. Love who you choose to love, live where you choose to live, pursue the career and vocation you want. Be a parent, don’t be a parent. Be an engineer, be an artist. Be who God intended for you to be.
Here’s another way to think about freedoms: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Physical freedom: we live in a world where not everyone is physically free, whether because of an inability to flee a war-torn nation, or because of incarceration for something they did not do or for a punishment that exceeds the crime. Mental freedom: are you free to explore every thought and idea that the human mind can conceive? Or are certain thoughts off limits? Are your unique contributions valued? I read plenty of articles about churches where questioning the orthodoxy is punished, where even thinking differently from your peers is a sign that you don’t belong.
Emotional freedom: are you free to feel what your heart pulls you to feel? Can you love freely? I mean “love” in every sense of the word. The second half of the Great Commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. Are there certain neighbors that you are not really allowed to love? There are certainly social groups in which acknowledging the humanity and equality of someone of a different race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality is unacceptable.
And finally, spiritual freedom: are you allowed to bask in the light of the Divine? Are you able to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? Are you able to approach God in prayer with all your struggles, your desires, your questions, and your doubts? Are you able to enjoy the fruits of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Are these valued?
See, freedom extends so far beyond physical freedom. You can be nominally free—not in prison, not constrained by any legal barriers—and still feel bound by your family, your church, your social group, or your career.
Fannie Lou Hamer famously said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” God did not free the Israelites from Egypt just for their own sake. God helped them achieve physical freedom so that they could achieve mental, emotional, and spiritual freedom, and then demonstrate it to the world. We have inherited that same expectation.
We Presbyterians are pledged to pursue the six Great Ends of the Church, which start with the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind. We have been called, and have accepted the call, to proclaim the good news that God has set us free. All of us. Not just the ancient Israelites, not just the lost sheep of Israel, but everyone. Salvation is freedom. Freedom from oppression and exploitation, and freedom to love and serve the Lord by loving and serving all God’s beloved children.
I am less concerned about what we are saved from than what we are saved for. Some say that we are saved from eternal conscious torment in a lake of fire. Perhaps. Some say that we are saved from annihilation on death. Perhaps. Some people, like me, say that we are all ultimately saved. But truthfully, I don’t really know what happens when we die. Nobody does.
I do know what happens when we are living, though. I do know that some people are living in hell right now. In some cases, it’s a hell of their own making. In most cases, it’s a hell created from broken relationships, scarce resources, our frail bodies, and a society that fails to value each person as a beloved child of God.
And so, we turn to two other Great Ends of the Church: the promotion of social righteousness and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. Righteousness is alignment with God’s will; social righteousness is alignment of not just individuals but also systems and laws and culture to God’s will. The kingdom of heaven is universal human flourishing; the Church is here to demonstrate flourishing of ourselves and to foster that flourishing in others.
How can we do that? Pharaoh’s daughter gives us the model. She saw Moses, she heard his cry, and she felt compassion—and then she acted. I know many people who have done the same. My friend Ashley saw the homeless, she heard their cry, and she felt compassion—and then she became the executive director of the Mission where she continues to build a place where they do God’s work of healing broken lives. I saw the LGBTQ+ community, I heard their cry, and I felt compassion—and then I acted, helping to create an organization that continues to serve people who would otherwise have none of the social connections that are essential to flourishing. My friend Lucy saw the ICE detainees in Phelps County Jail, she heard their cry, and she felt compassion—and then she helped to create and ultimately lead Abide in Love to preserve the emotional and spiritual connections that have otherwise been broken by a system that devalues their humanity.
My question for you today, and each day: Who do you see? Whose cries do you hear? For whom do you feel compassion, and how will you act? The Mission gets criticized for who they choose to help. Abide in Love gets criticized for their focus on immigrant detainees, rather than US citizens in prison. The best response to the detractors who point out other people in need: Well, why don’t YOU help them? In this finite world, we all have limits on who we can help. There are only so many hours in the day, we each only have so much money and other resources, and so forth. The world has more needs than I could possibly list. We must prayerfully consider the best way to invest our limited resources to further God’s kingdom. Nothing great ever results from one person’s efforts. Only by working and praying together can we make a difference in our community.
My calling is not your calling. Ashley’s calling is not your calling. Lucy’s calling is not your calling. What is God calling you to do? Who is God calling you to serve?
We are not required to solve every problem, or even to try. But we cannot use our inability to reach everyone to help no one. We must rely on our discernment through prayer to choose how to use our limited resources. We are obligated to exhibit the kingdom of heaven to the world. We cannot exhibit it in all its fullness—not yet—but we can provide little glimpses of it. Those glimpses appear each time we see someone in need, hear their cry, feel compassion, and ACT.
Last week, I preached on resilience, reconciliation, and restoration. Ming said to me that we need to go one step further to revival. The root of revival is to hear God’s calling to us as individuals and as a congregation, and the fruit of revival is a changed world. God calls to us through the hungry, the naked, the prisoner, the oppressed—all those who are marginalized, all those who are in need, all those who have not experienced flourishing in God’s kingdom. True revival is the Holy Spirit empowering God’s people to bridge the gap between God and humanity and to bring everyone the freedom that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us pray that God would give us eyes to see and ears to hear people who are crying out for God’s salvation, and let us pray that the Spirit would empower us to act. Amen.
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