“Liberating Fear”
Exodus 1:8-2:10
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
9/7/14
There’s a new Pharaoh in town, and he has amnesia. Or maybe
he’s been too hastily cast upon the throne, or been poorly schooled in his
nation’s history. Or maybe he’s just willfully ignorant. Whatever the case, the
new Pharaoh has neither memory of nor appreciation for Joseph, the Hebrew
servant-turned-prisoner-turned-royal confidante and economic deliverer of
Egypt. Because the past appears to be irrelevant to this new king, the
unknowable future yawns before him like the dark maw of some terrifying beast.
Such fear is understandable enough, but it creates
problems. When we choose to live in anxiety and dread, we inevitably project
our personal fears onto other people and other things. We blame and often
persecute whatever them most closely
represents our fear – different races
and religions, different political parties and economic classes, spiders and
snakes. The categories are as numerous as our anxieties.
Pharaoh chooses the Hebrews as the source of everything
frightening and evil. Once convinced of the righteousness of his fear, he can
justify trying to solve the problem of fear by creating more fear. So he says
to the Hebrew midwives, “Kill every Hebrew baby boy.”
“But,” says Exodus, “the midwives feared God.” So they keep
delivering boys and girls alike. And the Hebrew people keep growing and
thriving.
There are two kinds of fear in this story, and they cannot
be more different. Yet they both impact the present, that continuing now which represents the threshold of a
past that offers rich witness, and a future we hope will offer its own
richness, but which lies beyond our control and beyond our knowing.
When the witness of the past has been forgotten or
dismissed, more than likely the future becomes a threat. So we slash into that
future with swords drawn and tongues afire. In the face of an unnerving
present, some will try to control the future, or beat it back. “We just don’t
know where this will lead,” they say. Now, I do understand that. Uncertainty
often overwhelms me, too. Not knowing what the future holds can cause us to
imagine all manner of foreboding outcomes. It is much more comfortable to stick
with what we know – or what we think we
know – and to try to ensure that the future remain as much as possible like
the past as we romanticize it, or at least like the present as we endure it.
The reality, of course, is that such preservations are not
possible, especially not with God, whose work of creation, redemption, and
re-creation never cease. Humankind must remember the past, but we cannot live
there. Blind to the gracious reality of that truth, the terrified Pharaohs of
the world frequently turn to indiscriminate violence. And they cloak it with
equivocations such as “necessary evil,” and “collateral damage,” or even “in
God's name.”
But the midwives
feared God.
Here we meet the other kind of fear. I call it liberating fear. In refusing to obey
Pharaoh’s orders, the midwives defy the anxious dread of the visible, tangible,
and brutal Powers That Be. They opt instead to trust the inscrutable power that
continues to create, that continues to bring forth the new life and liveliness
that they help to deliver into the world every day. Their bold stance of faith
declares to every Pharaoh, including the Pharaohs within us, that God’s power
to create and renew always outmaneuvers and outlasts Pharaoh’s power to
intimidate and destroy.
The fear of the midwives does not represent the anxiety and
dread we almost always associate with the word fear. Precisely the opposite, the fear of the midwives proclaims
their complete trust in the gracious
purposes of God. Sure, they lie when Pharaoh asks them why they have not been
killing baby boys. Nonetheless, they are willing to be found out. The
liberating fear of trust equips the midwives to risk their own executions for
the sake of delivering love into the present. And doing so, they remember the
past with gratitude while leaning hopefully toward the future.
The creation is rife with Egypts and Pharaohs, isn’t it?
Anxiety and dread define much of our daily experience. And if that’s true for
the likes of us, how much more so for those who truly know poverty, abuse, the
constant threat of violence, and the dehumanizing sting of prejudice and
apathy? It’s the Pharaoh’s fear within humankind that so enslaves us to anxiety
and dread that we become forced laborers. We
build his “supply cities” and all the violent systems and means required to
sustain them.
Among the many quotations for which Albert Einstein is
famous is this gem, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that
created them.”1 To me, that sounds like a first cousin to Paul’s
admonition to the Romans: “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.” (Romans 12:2)
You and I, we are called to the new-minded, liberating fear
of the midwives. We are called to live in bold, death-defying trust that God is
not only real, but faithful, loving, and just. We may not, in our lifetime,
witness the final revealing of God’s fullness, but through our intentional and
daring trust, God equips us to help deliver into the world one new promise
after another – even when Pharaoh says “Kill them! Who knows what will happen
if they continue to increase?”
In a few minutes we are going to participate in a dramatic
enactment of liberating fear. We are going to take a loaf and a cup and declare
to Pharaohs without and within that we entrust ourselves, the creation, and the
future itself to God’s grace. “Come what may,” we declare, “Jesus is Lord, and
his here-and-now kingdom is our home.”
As you pass the elements to one another, I challenge you to
claim and proclaim your trust by saying to your neighbor, “Trust this gift.
Live this promise.”
1http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins121993.html
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