Solidarity as Faith--September 21, 2021
"By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, unafraid of the king's anger; for he persevered as though he saw him who is invisible." [Hebrews 11:24-27]
Moses chose to side with the people being abused rather than the people brandishing whips, even though it cost him status, comfort, and safety, because he was convinced God was on the side of the ones being oppressed, rather than maintaining Pharaoh's kind of "order." What will we do?
It really is just that stark of a choice sometimes. And to be honest, I'm grateful that a voice like our author's here in Hebrews helps us to see that choice with such clarity. There were high stakes for Moses in choosing to identify with his people, even when he had the opportunity to pass for an Egyptian and stay comfortable and secure inside palace walls. Moses doesn't leave behind his old identity and privilege under Pharaoh's roof naively or without understanding the implications. But with eyes wide open, Moses made the choice to stand in solidarity with the ones who were being mistreated, exploited, and enslaved. Moses chose solidarity, because sometimes solidarity is the shape faith takes.
I would hope that we can see the sharp contrast between the sides of this situation from the Exodus saga, because they really are quite clear. Either one was ok with Pharaoh enslaving people to prop up his empire, wealth, and projections of national strength, or one has to say, "No!" to Pharaoh and say "Yes" to identifying with the people being treated as animals. No amount of gaslighting, no amount of smoke-screening, can be allowed to hoodwink us. Surely, Pharaoh would have insisted that it was "legal" to keep the Hebrews enslaved, to threaten them with whips, and to exploit their labor as an entire ethnic group, because it was his decree that made things "legal," and made their attempts to leave Egypt "illegal." Surely Pharaoh would have told his citizens that it was the Israelites who were the real threat to Egyptian society, because they were the outsiders, the foreigners, and the suspicious "others" who needed to be wrangled into submission and prevented from harming their way of life. Surely Pharaoh would have cast himself as the one meting out justice--or at least stability, which can be dressed up to look like justice--when he had his taskmasters corral the enslaved children of Israel or punish them for trying to get away and make their own new lives. But the writer of Hebrews isn't fooled, and we shouldn't be, either. There are clear sides in a situation like this, and it is never righteous to be on the side of people treating other people like animals.
The challenge for us--as the writer of Hebrews sees, too--is to make the leap from this ancient Bible story to our daily lives. It's pretty easy, I hope, to know that we are supposed to side, along with Moses, with the Israelites in the Exodus story. It should be pretty clear, I expect, to know we are supposed to root for the enslaved Israelites seeking freedom. And it should be obvious, too, that Moses does the right thing--the righteous, just, and faithful thing--by giving up his personal comfort to side with his people.
But there's a reason that the writer of Hebrews has been telling us all these stories of our faith-family history, and it's not because there will be a history test later. He's telling us these story to show us what faith may need to look like in our day, our times, and our situations. He's reminding us of what faith looked like in all these different situations, so that we, too, will know what we may be called to, as well. And in Moses' story, faith looks like the kind of love we call "solidarity"--standing with people who are being mistreated, rather than with the powerful, precisely because they are being mistreated. The question for us is how we will take the clarity in this story and see honestly in the situations around us in our daily lives.
Most of the time, we would hope, things are not going to be as dire in our daily interactions as they were in Pharaoh's Egypt. We would hope that we won't encounter literal slave-drivers oppressing and abusing people, and that we would recognize it if people would be dehumanized right before our eyes. We should see it, shouldn't we? We should know it when it happens, right? Except... most of the Egyptians in Moses' day were completely oblivious to what was being done right before their eyes. It's not that they weren't aware of the situation of Hebrews--they knew that Pharaoh's treasure cities and fortifications weren't being built by magic, or by elves in the night like in the children's tale. The Egyptians all surely knew what was happening with the enslaved Hebrews, but they could not longer recognize it as something they needed to change or speak up against. They had grown so accustomed to that system, and after having been told it was right because it was "the law," that they put up no protest. They had come to expect that their "greatness" as a nation, their comfort as a society, and their way of life as an empire, were worth the the cost if that cost was being paid by enslaved Israelites, rather than themselves. They could not see what was happening right before their eyes any longer--or at least, they could not see why what was happening should have any need to change.
That's the truth that haunts me from all of this. Moses, who had the most to lose from leaving his position in Pharaoh's house as the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter, was able to see that he needed to stand in solidarity with his people for the sake of faithfulness and justice. But just about everybody else in Egyptian society looked the other way, or insisted that the Hebrews had to be treated like animals, because otherwise it would undermine all that they held dear. Everybody else, who knew just as well what was going on, could no longer see how terrible it was, even while it was happening in real time around them.
Sometimes the fear that keeps me up at night is that there are terrible things happening around us, all the time, and it is so much easier for me to drown out the noise of it by turning the radio up or distracting myself on a screen, than to face what is happening and to take the costly step of standing with those who are being hurt or dehumanized. And if the Egyptians in Moses' day could all have become numb to the atrocities happening before their eyes, what will keep me from being desensitized when there are people brandishing whips and treating others as less-than-human in real time around me? What hope can there be for me--or any of us--to have Moses' faith that takes the form of solidarity?
Honestly, I don't have any easy or satisfying answers there. But it seems that the writer of Hebrews is on to something by telling us this story and preventing us from forgetting what Moses' faith led him to do. Because at least when we tell those stories and hear again about such costly courage, maybe we'll be more able to look at our own lives, our own situations, and the day's events unfolding right before our eyes in real time, and ask the questions of where we need to be, and with whom we need to stand. Maybe the work of solidarity is never finished in this life, but we need to keep asking the question, day by day, moment by moment: with whom is God standing right now... and therefore, where do I need to be in my words and actions?
Let's face that question today, then, with as much courage as we can muster.
Lord God, show us today the people with whom you are standing, so that we can know where we need to be as well.
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