Moses and deciding that other people are your business

I really, really love this Exodus story. A reconciled relationship between the Israelites and the Egyptians under the leadership of Joseph as they weather a famine, turns sour when a new Pharoah comes in and looks around at the growing number of Israelites in their midst and fear takes him over.

At the core of it is a nationalistic problem - how do the Egyptians relate to the Israelites? What does it mean that the people who are in power- the Egyptians- are outnumbered by the people who are not in power- the Israelites? What does it mean that Shiprah and Puah and Pharoah's daughter all hold within their bodies, a sympathy that is outlawed by the people who lead them. What does it mean to be asked to do something heinous by the people who rule over you? Is this not a perennial problem for blended societies full of people who are different from one another and who are beset by the human conditions of greed, envy, fear? Is this not a question that every generation has had to ask and answer for themselves all the way back to Pharoah and Moses?

It is one of the central questions of the religious life: who are other people to me? What do my neighbors have to do with me? To what extent are they my responsibility? Am I my siblings' keeper? It is a really really big question, that we don't always slow down and zoom out long enough to confront in religious communities. I feel so caught up in the other stuff at the start of a semester- we gotta get the signupgenius put together and the email newsletters and what's the bible study theme going to be and I need to get a new banner printed and I need to edit the email newsletter template and and and.... and all of this stuff that we do here at church, day to day, and week to week, it all points to a couple of big central questions: who are we to each other? How do we live in a society without killing each other? To what extent are other people my responsibility?

Scripture is full of examples of this tension:

• Remember in Genesis chapter 4 when Cain kills his brother Abel, God goes looking for Abel and asks Cain who replies, "Am I my brother's keeper?" the reply from God being, like, YES, you are!

• Remember the story of the Rich Man who everyday stepped over the poor man, Lazarus, who lived at his gate, and after they both die, the Rich Man and Abraham have a dialogue across the chasm about how the Rich Man really fell down on the job of caring for Lazarus, out of his excess?

• Remember in last week's Gospel reading how Jesus articulated sort of plainly, and maybe surprisingly, "I am here only for the lost sheep of Israel" and how when challenged, he relented and said, you know what, I can be here for you too.

• Remember in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus is asked "Who is my neighbor?" and he answers with the parable of the Good Samaritan, pretty thoroughly and patiently explaining that what it means to have a neighbor is to have mercy on whomever you come across? It is a tall order.

Scripture is full of this question, it is asked from the beginning of the bible to the very end of it: what is my responsibility to other people? And when you live in a society, like Shiprah and Puah, that is organized around the idea that nobody owes anybody anything, or worse maybe that the only people you owe anything to are your own kind, this question becomes all the more urgent to ask and answer. I don't want you to hear me saying that you all need to go to the river bank and pull a baby out of a basket, but scripture is that serious that that is what we are called to do. Scripture is consistently clear- in the Good Samaritan, in Exodus, in the Rich Man and Lazarus, that we are supposed to give and care to the point of disruption, that we're going for broke.

I'm not telling you to go for broke- I come before you to simply to say that scripture - in it's commands and instruction to care for our neighbor - gives us a pretty tall order, and I wonder too how we take that seriously and follow in the footsteps of Shiprah and Puah and the Samaritan and Jesus [without just tearing our lives apart?]. I come before you simply to wonder what it would be like if the 235 million Christians in our country all went for broke, took the call as seriously as Pharoah's daughter did? How different would it feel out there? You don't have to do it all, I don't have to do it all, we don't have to do it all. But we each have a piece to do- what would it feel like out there if everybody, if every Christian, did their piece?

This is a big, big tall order and if you takes you your entire life to solve it, you'd be ahead of the game. But on a week like, my immediate concern is that our Mary Washington students have all just moved back to campus - or moved to campus for the first time! - for the fall semester. We've got this good group of students, and a new campus ministry building that we're working with in addition to The House, and my job is to figure out how to hold these people together, to arrange meals and make the space for friendships and walk with them through some big complicated wonderful years of their lives. And every year, on the cusp of a new semester, I wonder who is going to present themselves as a new member of our campus ministry community, and I wonder how it is that I will be called and blessed with the opportunity to show them care and fellowship. I'm still learning how to do it well.

For us, there is perhaps no more literal definition of neighbor than the people who live next door. And so at the start of this school year, I want to challenge you, Trinity, to wonder not just this week, not just at the start of the semester, what does it mean to have the University of Mary Washington as your neighbor? Those Mary Wash kids outnumber Trinitarians thirty-to-one. There are so many people over there who could be looking for a gentle, loving, theological rich community full of intergenerational relationships and care and companionship through these big complicated and wonderful years of their lives. Some of them have just left and miss churches just like this one, and others would be shocked and relieved to know that churches like this one exist. I know because I've met them. And I know because I've met all of you. And I hope they get to meet you too. What do you want it mean when they meet you? Amen.

"This must be one of the Hebrew's children" becomes "This must be one of our children." There is something so centrally Judeo-Christian to see someone else in trouble or even just to see someone else vulnerable and say "this is my problem now too", and in fact it feels like the central task of the religious person, to decide that other people's well-being is tied up in your own.

I don't think it really resonates thematically, so play with me here, but there is something kind of mathematically resonant

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Pharaoh's daughter takes Moses in

1:8Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

1:9He said to his people, "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we.

1:10Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land."

1:11Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh.

1:12But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.

1:13The Egyptians subjected the Israelites to hard servitude,

1:14and made their lives bitter with hard servitude in mortar and bricks and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

1:15The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,

1:16"When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live."

1:17But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.

1:18So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this and allowed the boys to live?"

1:19The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them."

1:20So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very strong.

1:21And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.

1:22Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live."

2:1Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman.

2:2The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months.

2:3When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river.

2:4His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

2:5The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it.

2:6When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. "This must be one of the Hebrews' children," she said.

2:7Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?"

2:8Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Yes." So the girl went and called the child's mother.

2:9Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed it.

2:10When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, "because," she said, "I drew him out of the water."