Roanoke, Virginia February 24, 2019 The Plagues Exodus 10:20-11:1 George C. Anderson (Note: The last page of this manuscript has the bulletin notes that are alluded to in this sermon.) Elizabeth, Rachel and I have planned a Lenten Sermon Series which begins next Sunday, even though Lent doesn t begin until the Sunday after that. The series is called, Into the Wild: Becoming God s People in Desert Places. Like it or not, our identity, calling and sense of life s meaning usually doesn t mature when we are settled in and feeling secure. We grow the most in between times: times when, by choice or life s circumstances, we are dislodged. They can be times of adventure when we go to a new school, take on a new job, begin a life partnership, welcome a child into the world, enter retirement, or risk intimacy with a new friend. And they can be times of loss times when we sometimes beg for things to be as they once were but knowing somehow that where we need to be lies somewhere ahead. If we can only see it. If we can only get there. The passages on which our sermons will be based all come from a book of the Bible with a title that means exit, but can also mean sojourn or journey. The book is Exodus. If you know of anyone who is on a journey of their own, whether chosen or chosen for them by circumstances of life, let them know about this series. Today, I am jumping early into Exodus, only I will look at a passage that comes before the exit, the escape from Egypt. Abraham s descendants have for generations been enslaved in Egypt, toiling under the harsh rule of the Pharaoh, Egypt s ruler. There comes a day when the Pharaoh studies population trends and sees that, unless something is done, a minority population might one day become the majority. He sees the population growth of the Hebrews and settles on a population control measure. He instructs Egyptian midwives that year to kill all the boys born to Hebrew mothers. 1 Page
One baby, Moses, is spared. His older sister takes desperate measures. She sets him afloat in the Nile hoping that the Pharaoh s daughter, bathing downriver, will discover the baby and take pity. Can you believe it? The crazy plan works! Moses is adopted into the Pharaoh s own household. Years later, Moses, who as a young man had to flee Egypt to escape arrest, returns on a mission from Yahweh (Yahweh is the God of the Hebrews). He appears before Pharaoh and, speaking for the God of Abraham, demands that the Pharaoh Let my people go! Ten times he makes this demand, ten times he warns of a plague, and nine times the Pharaoh refuses. The first few times, it is said the Pharaoh s heart hardens. The last few times his heart is hardened, it is said, by Yahweh. It takes six chapters to tell the story of the plagues, so I will read only the story of one of them, the ninth. The ten are listed as a bulletin note and you might want to keep that list handy. The ninth one seems out of place. However, it might be the one that holds to the key to understanding them all. 21 Then the LORD said to Moses, Stretch out your hand toward heaven so that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be felt. 22 So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was dense darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. 23 People could not see one another, and for three days they could not move from where they were; but all the Israelites had light where they lived. 24 Then Pharaoh summoned Moses, and said, Go, worship the LORD. Only your flocks and your herds shall remain behind. Even your children may go with you. 25 But Moses said, You must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings to sacrifice to the LORD our God. 26 Our livestock also must go with us; not a hoof shall be left behind, for we must choose some of them for the worship of the LORD our God, and we will not know what to use to worship the LORD until we arrive there. 27 But the LORD hardened Pharaoh s heart, and he was unwilling to let them go. 28 Then Pharaoh said to him, Get away from me! Take care that you do not see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die. 29 Moses said, Just as you say! I will never see your face again. 11 The LORD said to Moses, I will bring one more plague upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go from here; indeed, when he lets you go, he will drive you away. As you look through the list of plagues, they get more and more serious, don t they? The first two, turning the Nile red and the infestation of frogs, are more inconveniences than anything. They are more protest actions. Put flowers in rifles, lay down in front of a tank, conduct a sit in, boycott a company s products... that sort of thing. Here is something unpleasant to get Egypt s attention and draw attention to the plight of slaves. Then, pressure is ratcheted up. A frog infestation on land is nothing compared to lice infestation on scalps. Ugh! Our family, I m sad to say, had to deal with that when our kids were in school. We had to use a certain kind of shampoo and an incredibly fine nit comb. What did the Egyptians do? My guess is that the bald look became a popular one. (No wonder Yul Brenner was cast at the Pharaoh in The Ten Commandments.) 2 Page
It gets progressively worse: animal attacks, boils, locusts eating crops finally death. If General von Clausewitz was right in saying that War is politics by another means, then maybe these plagues are labor negotiations by another means. But then there is that ninth plague, the darkness for three days. It seems out of place, like a return to an inconvenience. Yet, though out of place, this ninth plague might provide the clue to understanding them all. To explain what I mean, let s return to those early plagues that seem to be inconveniences. If I had read to you the passage describing the first one, you would have heard that Moses first confronts Pharaoh on the bank of the Nile, the river where he was discovered by Pharaoh s daughter. He tells the Pharaoh to follow the example of his daughter and be merciful by letting Yahweh s people go. And you would have heard why Pharaoh is to do this. Of course, it is to give slaves their freedom, but for this reason: so that they could worship Yahweh. I suggest that this is more than a trick. It isn t merely about pledging allegiance to a different god either. It is about living with a different moral vision and by a different moral code. Stay with me and I think you ll see what I mean. Pharaoh refuses, and Moses thrusts his staff into the Nile. The river flows blood red and fish rise dead to the surface. Terrible, and also terribly symbolic. In Egypt, the Nile is a great source of life and commerce and is personified as the god Hapi. Look at the drawing of Hapi in your bulletin. The god offers wheat just as the Nile waters land and allows crops to grow. Hapi is a god of fertility, fertility of the land. The one who has been most blessed by Hapi in Egypt is the one who owns the land, the Pharaoh. In driving his staff into the river, it can seem as if Moses is driving a stake into the heart of Pharaoh s god. But what is really happening is that Pharaoh s god is turning against the Pharaoh. The Nile, the source of life, becomes an agent of death. Fish rise to the surface to later rot. 1 We see the same dramatic point being made with the next plague. There is a drawing of the Egyptian goddess Heket in your bulletin. She is a goddess of fertility as well not of the land but of the body. Always depicted as having the head of a frog, she is a midwife goddess who attends to the birth of children. Pharaoh who commanded midwives to murder children, now has his midwife goddess turn against him with the infestation of frogs. With these first two plagues, Pharaoh becomes the victim of his own gods his own morality. He is denied what he has denied others. The evil is not so much in the deities but in him. That these deities are basically gods of nature makes the point that if you are abusive with nature, nature will one day abuse you. From the beginning, then, we see that Moses not only is showing leverage-muscle in his negotiations with Pharaoh, he also is making a statement about Pharaoh s morality. The Pharaoh expects his gods to be his gods and work on behalf of his oppressive agenda. On the other hand, 1 I was helped with this insight, and others, by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. His insights can be found in his Covenant Conversations book on Exodus, which are also summarized in this article: http://rabbisacks.org/against-their-gods-bo- 5779/. 3 Page
you have Yahweh, this God of slaves; slaves who have no king and no nation to which to pledge allegiance supposedly a weak God with a weak morality in that it is a morality that calls for justice for slaves, for the weak; a god who expects that power and privilege is to serve justice, compassion and human dignity. If you and I think it is hard to surrender what we count on in life but which quits working for us, imagine how hard this is for Pharaoh. The protests of inconveniences are not enough. The plagues grow more and more severe. And then we come to that out-of-place plague, the ninth one, the darkness that lasts for three days. It is a return to what seems to be an inconvenience. Let s be clear: three days of darkness is an awful inconvenience. Did you hear how this darkness can be felt? What probably is going on here is a khamsin, a sandstorm caused by a violent southern wind that blows in from the Sahara Desert and can last for several days. It fills the air with blinding and stinging sand and can be so thick it blots out the sun. Still, though painful and destructive, khamsins do happen occasionally in Egypt. They are horrible, but not uncommon. Painful, but bearable. This plague truly is an inconvenience and is out of place in the pattern of escalating severity. But when we understand what truly is being communicated, we will see that this plague makes a final and definitive point about Pharaoh s morality and Yahweh s, and thus fittingly precedes the final and devasting plague that breaks Pharaoh s will. Of the Egyptian pantheon of gods, no god is greater than Ra, the Sun-God. Pharaoh s name is Ramses ii, which means Son of Ra, Son of Sun-God. Pharaoh is seen as semi-divine, the child of the greatest of Egypt s deities. The obliteration of the sun is a sign that even the father-deity, Ra, has turned against Ra s son. It is a devastating rejection of a morality that turns one man, Pharaoh, into an absolute ruler with the ability to rob people of their dignity to the point of enslavement and to the point of genocide. With the darkness, Ra is not overcome so much as Ra turns his face away from his son. The Pharaoh s own morality turns against him. 2 And then comes the tenth plague and it is terrible. The Pharaoh is warned that if he does not free the Hebrew slaves, the same fate will come to Egyptian first-borns as what the Pharaoh once commanded to be done to Hebrew baby boys. They will be killed. Jews and Christians have for centuries struggled with this part of the story where Pharaoh s horrendous act of violence against children seemingly justifies Yahweh s eye-for-an-eye act of violence against Egyptian children. Jesus, from the cross, said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. When the narrative says that Yahweh hardened Pharaoh s heart, a surface reading would say that Pharaoh has lost control of his own moral decisions and knows not what he is doing. Why should understanding this plague be easy? I find it impossible when trying to understand this plague on the level of Yahweh s will. But when we consider this final plague (and, indeed, all of them) in a realistic, historical and personal light, there are some harsh truths we can own. 2 Ibid, phrases borrowed from Rabbi Sacks. 4 Page
First of all, only childish stories have clean plots of untainted goodness and evil. Human history is messy. Human life is messy. When there is gross injustice, and when there is rebellion and revolution against that injustice, there has always been the tragic reality of the collateral suffering of innocents. Children often are the victims of adult issues. The Pharaoh was once under the delusion that he could do what he wanted to the children of another people and there would not be any real consequences for his own. But chaos sown has a way of coming home. Selfish gods can get bored and turn against you. Second, willful decisions to serve a morality of selfishness instead a morality of justice and grace can eventually stop being choices one makes and become choices made for you. Follow gods of greed or selfishness long enough and, without even knowing it is happening, one can become the slave of one s own hardened heart. That is true for oppressors and the oppressed. In a way, the Hebrew slaves are slaves not only to the Pharaoh, but also to Pharaoh s gods. They think that if they can only have the table of history turn, if fate would only smile in their direction, it will be their time on top of the pyramid. It will take decades of desert wanderings for them to die to those dreams and fully awaken to what it means to be a people of a God of justice, grace and human dignity. It will take decades before they will gain the power they hope for in having their own nation with a king but also be a nation with prophets, a nation with a conscience. Exodus, you see, is not anti-power or even privilege, but it is all about how power and privilege, if gained, are to be used in serving a God of justice and grace. Next Sunday, Rev. Thompson will tell of the actual Exodus, the exit that begins the journey in the wilderness. Sunday by Sunday through Lent, it will become even more a personal journey because each of us will be invited to identify what in our own life is lost, or needs to be lost; what we grieve or need to grieve because we need to let it die; and what might be gained when we realize that in the desert there can be found surprising manna on the ground, living water in the rocks, and love and meaning within a community that finds its life in God. Exodus is about the journey to being human in a moral universe. Let s explore together what that means this season of Lent. 5 Page
The Ten Plagues in Exodus 1. Water into blood (7:14-24) 2. Frogs (7:25-8:15) 3. Lice (8:16-19) 4. Wild animals (8:20-32) 5. Diseased Livestock (9:1-7) 6. Boils (9:8-12) 7. Thunderstorm of Hail and Fire (9:13-35) 8. Locusts (10:1-20) 9. Darkness for Three Days (10:21-29) 10. Death of Firstborn (11:1-12:36) Egyptian Deities in the Time of Moses Hapi, God of Fertility Heket, Goddess who attended Ra, the Sun God and of the annual flooding births as a midwife (and fertilization of the Nile) 6 Page