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Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 8/31/08
Birth of Moses
Exodus 2:1-10
Romans 12:1-8
This morning I want to start not with the first verse (which offers such a powerful image of discipleship) but with the second: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
The Apostle is highlighting two distinct standards. On the one side we have the standards of this world – don’t be conformed to them, he says. On the other, the standards of God; what is “good and acceptable and perfect”. What he is saying is that there are going to be times when these two standards are very much at odds.
Sometimes the distinction is very clear; when, for example, students gang up to tease or bully one of their classmates. Such bullying may be a cultural norm for that school or for that age group, but we immediately know that it is contrary to God’s intent.
Other times, however, the distinction seems a great deal hazier and far more complicated. What do we do, for example, when it is not our classmates, but the nation itself that is doing something contrary to God’s standards? What is the higher calling here: to be a good citizen; or to take a stand? This isn’t just a theoretical question. Seventy years ago, it was precisely this question that faced so many Christians in Germany as the Nazis rose to power. In the confusion of that era the answer for many was far from obvious.
When we look at our first lesson, at this story of Moses’ birth, we find several instances of civil disobedience – people taking a stand against what they believed was an unjust or immoral standard. Pharaoh told them one thing, but each of them did something else. Each, in their own way, was responding to a higher calling – a higher moral mandate.
It began in the first chapter. Pharaoh was concerned about the growth of the Hebrew population out on the borders of his empire. He realized that with such numbers, they could create all kinds of chaos if they chose to join with some of Egypt’s enemies. So he began to persecute them. He enslaved them and put them to hard labor building his supply cities. When that didn’t reduce their numbers, he went the next step; ordering the midwives to kill every male child as it was born to the Hebrew women. It was the midwives who were the first to disobey, making up an excuse when Pharaoh called them to account.
In our text, we come to the second and third acts of disobedience. It is there in the choice of Moses’ mother to preserve the life of her child; and there in Pharaoh’s own daughter choosing to adopt rather than destroy the Hebrew child she discovered.
Moses lived because of these women. He lived because they chose to break the law. You and I read this from one perspective and applaud these women. We know that it was their brave choices that prepared the way for that later miracle which was the exodus. But what of the Egyptians? They wouldn’t have seen these women that way. They would have seen them as traitors; their choices inexcusable and outrageous. Following this higher call isn’t always going to be clear or easy. It is not necessarily going to be supported or understood by our neighbors or even our friends.
In late July of 1846, the town jailer showed up at Walden Pond and arrested Henry David Thoreau. For four years he had refused to pay his taxes, believing that Massachusetts was supporting not only an unjust war against the Mexicans, but also an abomination in the form of slavery. But his friend and mentor, the highly respected Ralph Waldo Emerson didn’t get it. This same man who had actually provided his Walden acres for Thoreau’s experiment, believed Thoreau’s refusal was “mean and skulking and in bad taste.”
Thoreau was undeterred. He had hoped, through his imprisonment, to bring his cause before the public. The very next day, however, someone (most likely his aunt) paid his taxes and he was released. And so he had to settle instead, for taking his case to the public by writing his famous essay on civil disobedience.
In the midst of this election, Thoreau’s words, towards the end of his essay, bear repeating: “If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations. ”
The problem, the great danger with this train of thought, is that it can lead so easily to anarchy – to every person acting on their own; insisting on their right to follow their own best understanding. Yet our history on such issues as slavery, on women’s suffrage, and in the civil rights movement affirms the importance of that higher call. Our history affirms the crucial role that those who have embraced this call have played in helping our nation become what it is today.
Think about what we’ve seen just this past week. On the same day that we celebrated the forty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech, we heard Barack Obama accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States. While Obama’s nomination is an indication of just how far our country has come, it is hard to imagine that ever happening without the work, the civil disobedience, of Martin Luther King and others like him. Today we are building on that foundation which was created by those who took their stand years before; took their stand based not on what this culture deems acceptable and right, but based instead on that far higher standard of what is good and acceptable and perfect in the sight of God.
Today, just nine weeks from the election, consider our two candidates. On the one side an African-American, on the other a man who has served this country with honor and distinction – a man who not only endured the horrors of imprisonment, but who has taken a very public stand against the use of torture. In their own ways and to my mind, these candidates, for all their flaws, embody so much of what is best about our nation.
Thoreau got it right: it is this capacity (built into our system) for the people of this country to inform and correct our legislators that have helped make this nation great. It is the people of courage and conviction who have shaped this country, calling it to something higher and better. Just as it was in Moses’ time, so today, again and again it has been people like us – people willing to stand for what is good and acceptable and perfect in God’s sight – who have offered this country that moral compass which sets this nation apart.
Where is God calling you to stand for something higher, for something better? Where are you encountering a gap between what is, and what God calls us to be? We don’t look for our standards in the norms or practices of our own community. Our standard lies somewhere else. Our standard lie here in the pages of Scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience, (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1960), p. 256