Resistance as Faith--September 20, 2021

Resistance as Faith--September 20, 2021

"By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful; and they were not afraid of the king's edict." [Hebrews 11:23]

Sometimes saying "Yes" to God--and to the people God loves entrusted to your care--means saying a clear "No" to the powers that be.  Sometimes faith takes the shape of civil disobedience, whether in public acts of protest or private acts of conscientious objection to whatever Pharaoh or Caesar says.  Sometimes, in other words, resistance flows directly from our faith, not in spite of it.

Now, that can open quite a can of worms.  And to be sure, we need to listen closely to this story from the book of Exodus that our author is riffing on here in Hebrews, because this is not a blank check for declaring whatever thing you don't want to do a matter of faith, and therefore demanding protest, resistance, or civil disobedience.  (In our day, for example, the impulse to claim a "religious exemption" to wearing a face mask in a school or at work among some ostensibly Christian voices seems like a pretty clear abuse of this train of thought, because there is literally nothing in the Christian faith that precludes wearing a face-mask for the sake of your neighbor's well-being.  And yet, wow, it sure is easy to get riled up and dress up that hot-button issue among some into a matter of religious persecution.)

So, okay, that's the challenge for us today: to navigate the roadway between two ditches on either side, and to avoid never resisting the powers of the day as an outflow of our faith on the one hand, and on the other, to take our personal pet peeves or soapboxes and try and baptize them into matters of faith that demand civil disobedience.  Everybody wants to think they would have stood up against the Nazis or against Jim Crow, and yet it's pretty clear that in those different contexts, there were actually an awful lot of Respectable Religious folks who turned the other way or actively supported the status quo, rather than being voices of faithful resistance.  And on the other hand, everybody wants to think that their own politics are divinely approved, but an honest look for each of us reveals how often we cover over our own blind spots to avoid inconsistencies between a party's platform and the implications of our faith in the God we know in Jesus.  The challenge is finding the right course without falling into either ditch.  And this example lifted up from Hebrews might give us some direction.

The story is from the infancy of Moses, the son of two enslaved Hebrews living under the rule of a cruel Pharaoh in Egypt.  Pharaoh had become so afraid of foreigners overpowering their culture--and had stirred up that fear among the Egyptian people, we should be clear, too--that he had gotten popular support to enslave the Israelites. And then when he was still afraid of their growing numbers and the changing demographics of his country, he began a policy of killing the baby boys born to the Israelite mothers, in order to cut off the threat of losing his power. (It is interesting, of course, that he assumes the only threat was from boys, when it turns out the Hebrew midwives--women--Shiphrah and Puah, and women like Moses' mother and sister, were the ones who set into motion the liberation of the Hebrews, right under Pharaoh's nose!) I can't help but hear echoes of Pharaoh's fearful rage in the unhinged manifesto of the perpetrator of the mass shooting in El Paso a few years ago, who was so fearful of outsiders becoming an "invasion" and an "infestation" (in his words) that he felt compelled to go on a shooting rampage outside a Texas Walmart--it is the same fear of losing power and cultural importance that pushed both the shooter and Pharaoh to think that killing the ones deemed a "threat" was morally acceptable.  We have not learned much, it seems.

Pharaoh's edict meant difficult choices for any Hebrew parents who had a boy (not unlike the heart-wrenching choices put to parents under China's former one-child policy, in a way).  But Moses' parents loved their son, and they dared to believe that it was right to keep their son alive, even if that meant breaking the law, than to let their child be killed by Pharaoh's police force.  They hadn't been given some angelic message that their child would be kept safe, and they didn't know yet that their son would be the one to lead the Israelites out of slavery.  They just knew that their love compelled them to act, and they were confident that the God of their ancestors was on the side of saving life rather than destroying it.  So they chose to hide their baby rather than have him killed by Egyptian officers who might have come to their door.  Their faith in a God who cares about such things, and their love for their child, led them to make the choice to break the law--to resist.

I want to suggest that this is a helpful guide for our own wrestling with questions in our day.  Yes, sometimes our faith will lead us to resist the decrees or actions of the powers of the day--but the way to tell has everything to do with the character of the God we have come to know in Jesus (and in stories like the Exodus) and with acting out of love, and very little to do with baptizing our partisan platforms or sanctifying our selfishness in the name of "my rights." Moses' parents resist a decree of Pharaoh that would literally have killed their son, simply for his very existence as a Hebrew boy.  It isn't that his policies were inconvenient, or uncomfortable, or made everybody go a little bit out of their way for the sake of helping neighbors.  It was that Pharaoh was codifying murder, and Moses' parents would not participate.  Note, too--their resistance was not about killing someone else pre-emptively.  They didn't think they had to go killing Egyptians to make their point--they were simply willing to take the risk of defying Pharaoh, including bearing whatever consequences might occur if they were caught, as a means of protecting the child whom they loved, whom they believed was beloved of God as well.

This seems like a helpful model for us as well.  The more we are shaped by the character of the God we know in Jesus (and the God of Moses and Miriam, too, for that matter), the more we will know where we have to resist Pharaoh's rottenness, and also where we can distinguish between our personal preferences and the dictates of obeying God.  The more we ask, "Is this issue a question of love in the way we have come to know love through Jesus, or is this about me not wanting to be made uncomfortable for someone else's sake?" we will be able to discern when it is time to resist--risking that we will bear the consequences for our actions--and when it is time to live with something we just don't happen to like.

And that's a humbling thing, too:  learning that being human in this world means sometimes things happen that I don't like, but that does not necessarily mean I am being persecuted.  When my faith in the God of the Exodus and the cross leads me to stand up, to resist, or to defy Pharaohs and Caesars, okay, we will have our "Here I stand, I can do no other," kinds of moments.  But those will be shaped by love that looks like a cross rather than a Don't-Tread-On-Me snake logo.  It is love that leads Moses' parents to hide their son in defiance of Pharaoh, and it is faith in a good God that gives them hope that their defiance is not doomed to failure.  But we are not given stories in the Scriptures of people whose mere individual self-interest or personal comfort is reason enough to form an angry mob.  Tracing the path of Moses' parents and how they arrived at their choice to resist Pharaoh may give us solid guidance for how we face whatever the questions of our day are, and whatever the issues of tomorrow will be.

Today, then, it's worth asking the question: Where does my faith in God lead me to say "yes" to things happening around me, and where does my faith in God lead me to say "no"?  And then the follow-up is important, too--where I am called to say "No" to the situation around me, or some Pharaoh or Caesar's claim, what shape does that "no" take?  And how, in all things, can I be a reflection of the love I have come to know in Jesus?

Turns out Jesus is one again the touchstone for us--for how we navigate those questions and challenges of our daily life.  Good thing we've got him. Or rather, good thing he's got us.

Lord God, give us the courage to know where our Yes to you means a No to the order of the day, and give us the honesty and humility to know where we are trying to use you as an excuse for things we just don't like.