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Like Moses, Aaron and the people of Israel, we are called by God and when we accept that call we are God’s chosen: a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

Like Pharaoh, we are called by God and when we reject that call we choose the world.

Sometimes – oftentimes – the two collide.  We choose God, just as Israel does, then the opposition sets in:

1 Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.’”
2 But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go.”
3 Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has revealed himself to us; let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God, or he will fall upon us with pestilence or sword.”
4 But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their work? Get to your labors!”
5 Pharaoh continued, “Now they are more numerous than the people of the land and yet you want them to stop working!”
6 That same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, as well as their supervisors,
7 ”You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves.
8 But you shall require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously; do not diminish it, for they are lazy; that is why they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’
9 Let heavier work be laid on them; then they will labor at it and pay no attention to deceptive words.”
22 Then Moses turned again to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you mistreated this people? Why did you ever send me?
23 Since I first came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has mistreated this people, and you have done nothing at all to deliver your people.”
1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh: Indeed, by a mighty hand he will let them go; by a mighty hand he will drive them out of his land.” Exodus 5:1-9, 22-6:1 (NRSV)

Today’s lesson poses questions regarding whether and how we accept God’s authority in a world that does not do so.  In our class, we discussed hearing God’s voice when we hear competing voices, when the status quo seems safer, when being true to God’s call doesn’t necessarily bring us into adversity and opposition so much as it makes us “uncomfortable”.  Compared to Christians in other times and even in other parts of the world, we have it easy.  We don’t worry about persecution or oppression – no, we worry about coming across as too “religious”.  We’re concerned that we not come across as “judgmental”.  Where Israel suffered a bondage of forced labor under Pharaoh, we endure a nowhere land between political correctness and apathy.   What do we do about this?

I wasn’t taking notes, so Otis needs to help me on this, but I believe he quoted Dominic Crossan stating that instead of saying “Go in Peace“, we should say “Go in Justice” and peace would follow inevitably.  Again, I’ll have to have help on this, but Linda mentioned a story about a man who saw a person in a river who was drowning and leapt in and saved the person.  He saw another person drowning a short while later, and dove in and saved that person as well.  After this occurred another few times he realized that he could keep on jumping in to save drowning people, or he could go up river and stop whoever it was that was throwing them in.

Here’s a quote from the New Interpreter’s Bible, “Given the identification of Yahweh with the slaves, it follows that biblical faith is inevitably concerned with political questions, with an inescapable tilt not only toward justice, but also toward liberation.”  Well!  How does this square with separation of church and state?  This isn’t a simple lesson at all.