Unraveled:
Pharaoh Had a Plan
Exodus 5:1-2, 7:8-23
October 3, 2021
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Graphic image by Lauren Wright Pittman; Anti-Creation Narrative
(Pharaoh hardens his heart to Moses’ requests); © a sanctified art | sanctifiedart.org |
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT3fiP8hxvM
It was 1989. The anti-apartheid movement was gaining momentum in South Africa. It was a time of high anxiety and repeated violence. Black activists often died in custody or at the hands of police. Bombs exploded in shopping centers. Bishop Desmond Tutu had received the Nobel Peace Prize for his peacemaking efforts. He had also been arrested and had his passport confiscated more than once.
When the government cancelled a political rally, Bishop Tutu organized a “Ecumenical Defiance Service” at St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. Riot police and armed soldiers swarmed the streets outside. Inside Tutu confidently proclaimed that the evil and oppression of the system of apartheid would not prevail. The South African Security Police marched in and lined the walls of the cathedral. They were a special unit of law enforcement linked to torture, forced disappearances and assassination. They were openly recording his words on the tape recorders they held, threatening him with consequences for any bold prophetic utterances. They had already arrested Tutu and other church leaders just a few weeks before and kept them in jail for several days.
Meeting their eyes, Tutu pointed his finger right at the heavily armed police “You are powerful, indeed very powerful, but you are not God!” he said “And the God whom we serve, cannot be mocked. You have already lost!”
Desmond Tutu is 5’ 5”, just an inch taller than me. On that day, in that moment, he came out from behind the pulpit and flashed his fabulous smile. Still speaking to the Security Force, he said “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side.” He said with warmth and friendliness, but also with a clarity and boldness that took everyone’s breath away. Jim Wallis, who was there, called it the most extraordinary challenge to political tyranny he had ever witnessed.[1]
Years before apartheid ended, when its menacing henchmen were still obviously in control, Desmond Tutu claimed to be on God’s side, the winning side. Here on this World Communion Sunday, we can look in any almost any direction and see the threat of evil, the powers of death and destruction, division and hatred, seemingly firmly in control. It might seem ridiculous, laughable, to assert that God will prevail and even more foolish to trust that somehow we will endure on God’s side.
Such was the bold faith of Desmond Tutu and millions of other black South Africans. Such was the bold faith of Moses and Aaron as they went to Pharaoh to demand release. The first time they went, Pharaoh said, “I don’t know this Lord. I will not comply.” Before they went, Moses had asked God for God’s name “who shall I send is sending me?” God had said “I AM. I AM who I AM. I will be who I will be. Say that I AM has sent you.”
God’s name and God’s actions convey a fundamental understanding of God’s nature which is freedom. God will be who God chooses to be. God will act as God chooses to act. No one controls God. I AM is free. I AM is sovereign.
Human beings, every human being is created in the image of God. “To be created in the image of a God who is free means that the human person is meant to be free.”[2]
Kelly Brown Douglas, writing about the faith of black people not in South Africa, but in America, says this: “The exodus story points to the fact that God chose to free a people from circumstances that were contrary to whom God created them to be. God’s choice was motivated by the very freedom that is God. [The exodus story in black faith] confirms that God’s intention is for all people, including black people, to be free to live into the goodness of their very creation. It is only in freedom that people are able to reflect the very image of a God who is free from all human forms of bondage.”[3]
God is free. The will of God for shalom, for deep abiding peace for the whole creation, begins with freedom. This is deeply understood by oppressed people of faith and probably not as deeply grasped by those like me, who are not oppressed, but stand in solidarity.
Pharaoh did not know this God. Pharaoh, for all his power, was not free. He was under the control of fear. What would happen if he released the enslaved Hebrews? Would he be seen as weak? Would his country falter? Without their labor, would production keep up with demand? Would there be enough? In bondage to his fear, Pharaoh hardened his heart.
When Biblical people talked about the emotional center of a person, they usually located it in the bowels or the gut. They did not locate it in the heart. They considered the heart to be the controlling center of human actions. Thoughts, intellectual activity, personality all come from the heart. The state of one’s heart reflects one’s essential character. One scholar says that hardening of the heart means “the willful suppression of the capacity for reflection, for self-examination, for unbiased judgments about good and evil.”[4]
Have you read any comments on social media lately? Have you heard public conversations amongst pundits and policy wonks? “The willful suppression of the capacity for reflection, for self-examination, for unbiased judgments about good and evil.” It turns out that hardening of the heart is still a great way to describe the moral atrophy of those who fail to lead for the common good.
Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. He did not know the God of freedom and he would not let God’s people go. There are Pharaoh’s all around us. Those who occupy seats of great power, those who have limited authority over others, but exercise it as bullies. Some are actively harmful. Others are callously indifferent to the suffering they cause.
And here we are, on another World Communion Sunday, bearing witness, claiming solidarity, raising our voices, and quite possibly, feeling overwhelmed by the hardened hearts of those in power. It is sometimes hard to see what God is doing in the world, difficult to trust even that God is at work at all.
But I think about Moses and Aaron before the Pharaoh of their time. I think about Desmond Tutu speaking to the front lines of apartheid evil – “You have already lost!” And I gain a bit of courage.
One more Desmond Tutu story . . Someone once called him an optimist and he said, “I’m not optimistic, no. I’m quite different. I’m hopeful. I am a prisoner of hope.”
Prisoners of hope is God’s term used by the prophet Zechariah for the people in Exile whom God promises to restore.
So beloved ones, we are created in the image of God who is free. Humans are meant to be free. Working for our freedom and the freedom of others is one way to join God’s work in the world. On our best days, we will boldly exercise and celebrate that freedom. But on the other days, when freedom seems diminished, when peace does not prevail, then may we be prisoners of hope, trusting that we will endure on God’s winning side. . . Amen.
[1] Jim Wallis in God’s Politics excerpted here https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7220860-the-former-south-african-archbishop-desmond-tutu-used-to-famously
[2] Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. ( Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2015), p. 151
[3] Kelly Brown Douglas, p 158-9.
[4]Nahum M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Origins of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 1986) p. 64