Earth Day

Sunday, September 20, 2020

Sermon: Exodus/Wilderness Series 2, "Imago Dei," September 20, 2020


A Exodus 2 SJUCC 2020 
Psalm 107:39-43; Exodus 1:15-20; Mark 7:24-30 
September 20, 2020 

           At the press conference held by the family of Jacob Blake, the young African-American man shot seven times at point blank range by an officer of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, Police Department, Jacob Blake, Sr., his father, shouted words that should be self-understood, “He is a human being!”   He is a human being.  That remained etched in my brain because in the last month I have read three books which ask the question of what it means to be a human being.  Each book recognized this question as so critical because what we consider human, we give “the right to have rights.”[1]  Those people we do not consider human, we suggest they have no right to be at the table, not worthy to have voice and vote, not worthy to be treated with equal protection under the law, may her memory become a revolution.[2]

           In the Jewish creation story, human beings are created out of fertile soil (adamah) and Divine breath (ruach)—to be the imago Dei, the image of God, the shadow of God, in relationship with God’s good earth.  This is the truth of our existence.  You are a wondrous creation—made in the image of God.  I am a wondrous creation—made in the image of God.  We are a wondrous creation—made in the image of God.  Do not let any Pharaoh or Caesar or Sovereign tell you any different.  Repeat that until it gets deep within you and lodges within you so that absolutely nobody can tell you any different.  We are a wondrous creation—made in the image of God, God’s shadow in relationship with this good earth.

After Creator breathes human beings to life, Creator says, “Be fruitful and multiply.”  When Pharaoh seeks to commit genocide against the Children of Israel in Exodus, Chapter 1, by killing all the male children, he immediately shows himself to be God’s adversary, contrary to God’s command in the creation story. 

Pharaoh calls for all the male children to be killed--presumably because he does not consider the females to be a threat.  It is a huge mistake on his part—evidenced by the strength of the two midwives who break the law in an act of civil disobedience.  They oppose the genocide.  Shiphrah and Puah know that Pharaoh sees the Hebrews as nothing more than beasts of burden, less than human, and so they feed his ethnocentrism to spare lives—in the end, the life of Moses.  They say to him that “when the Hebrew women give birth, they are like lively animals.  The child spits right out before they can arrive on the scene.  What can we possibly do?”

           As the story goes, Pharaoh takes their word for it.  After all, he has already justified in his own mind the slavery of an entire people.  They are not human beings like Egyptians are human beings. 

           We could vest what it means to be a human being with human rights in empires.  But then Pharaoh decides that the Hebrews are too valuable as slaves to let them go out into the wilderness to worship their God.  We could, in an age of rights, let nation-states make decisions about what it means to be a human being with human rights.  But then we need an object of hatred and contempt.  So we sterilize African-American and Native American women, believing them not fully human.  We perform hysterectomies on immigrant and refugee women without their knowledge, tear children from their parents, and lock families in cages.  They are not human beings like we are human beings—right?  We are like Pharaoh—pretending that we can declare who is made of fertile soil and Divine breath. 

Warning.  As a faith leader, I am obligated to tell you.  It never goes well for God’s adversaries.

Recognizing that we need an understanding of human rights not rooted in political whim and opportunity to blame, political scientist, Ayten Gündoğdu, lodges the ultimate authority for human rights not merely in the nation-states that allegedly protect them, but in human beings themselves who demand those rights by migrating contrary to unjust law.[3]  Is Professor Gündoğdu’s definition not our Exodus story?  The Children of Israel know themselves to be created in the image of God by an exodus, migrating contrary to unjust law.  It is the Living God who calls them out.  Is this not the story of the Great Migration in our own country? --African American people who left the South in droves to arrive in places like Jackson, Michigan—human beings who migrated contrary to the unjust law in the South.

Hear the intentional language of the Biblical story.  Earlier in Genesis, the animals are created and become a swarm upon the earth.  The waters swarm with a swarm of living beings and all living beings created upon the land swarmed.[4]  In Exodus, the Children of Israel multiply, with intentional language that tells us they became a swarm upon the earth.  This swarming, almost as if the Children of Israel are animals, causes great fear in the heart of Pharaoh.  But it all begins with a Pharaoh who had no knowledge of the Children of Israel.

           Whether it be in a well-written novel, a movie, or a Biblical story, not having knowledge of a people has led to sometimes well-meaning but heartless mission strategies, city planning, national agendas, or foreign policy.  The late Pat Buchanan used the term “swarm” to refer to the population of undocumented workers or, to use inappropriate language, illegal aliens in our country. 

And I remember the day when I was watching Lou Dobbs, way back when he was still on CNN, he started in and I knew it was coming.  I distinctly remember watching and saying, out loud, “Don’t say it, don’t say it, he said it.”  He referenced an “invasion of illegal aliens” was bringing “highly contagious diseases” to our country in an April 14, 2005, broadcast on CNN.  We were warned, as Pharaoh contemplated in his own heart for Egypt, that these hoards have come to reclaim the land for Mexico.[5]  “Swarms,” “hoards,” and “invasion” all begin to make people sound less than human.  You would not be surprised then to learn that a number of articles written about the children coming across our border described it as “a swarm”—all so that it might get into your head, under your skin, and into your bloodstream that violence can be done to these children because they are less than human.[6]  We used the same language to destroy democratic and human rights movements in the very countries from where these children now are making that exodus. 

In the Biblical story, Pharaoh worries that, as Rev. David Lose puts it, these people who once were allies and honored guests may become terrorists in the land.[7]   This story sounds vaguely familiar.  The Southern Poverty Law Center came out with a report stating that the guest worker policy and practice in our country is “close to slavery.”[8]  Pharaoh begins to understand the Children of Israel as something less than human—without complexity, born for slavery, willing to do the jobs the Egyptians would rather not do.

Beware the people who do not know the plight of another.

But again, two women flip the script, and these two women do what Rev. Lose refers to as the “Butterfly Effect” in justice-making.  Lose writes,  “[The Butterfly Effect] is a courageous act of civil disobedience that changes history, for one of the boys that is spared will be called Moses and he will lead the Israelites out of Egyptian captivity.”[9]  Every justice-making movement needs Hebrew midwives who will wisely and resolutely stand against the bullying, flip the script, and help give birth to God’s plans for liberation and freedom.   Pharaohs will forever claim that the world is not ready.  Midwives forever see the world pregnant with God’s promise.  As midwife, Bernice Reagon would sing, “There’s a new day coming.  Everything is going to be turning over.  Everything is going to be changing over.  Where are you going to be standing when it comes?”

The wording used for the Exodus story is critical.  Throughout this prologue, the Hebrew people are not referred to as slaves but as strangers.[10]  The Hebrew people, the Children of Israel are referred to as strangers in the land of Egypt.  Said then 36 times[11], 36 times!, in the Torah, the heart of Jewish morality, as an injunction to Jewish understanding and spiritual practice is how the Jewish people should treat the stranger.  Said over and over again, “Remember you were once strangers in the land of Egypt, so you should treat the stranger in your own land.”   In other words, do not de-humanize, do not minimize, do not trivialize the people . . . the people or beings or things that are not like you, for it is the beginning of violence and will get into your head, under your skin, and into your bloodstream so that you can justify bullying, evil, and contemptible things—as those things were done to you. 

In reality, the stranger is the one who is necessary for our moral and spiritual development as compassionate people.  Our moral and spiritual lives depend on our relationship to the stranger.  As Jesus taught in the Good Samaritan story, it is the stranger who saves our lives.  As the Syro-Phoenician woman changed the heart and mind of Jesus, it is the stranger who broadens and enlarges our table and saves us, makes our hearts more full of compassion. The stranger teaches us things about the breadth and width and length of God’s love that we could not have imagined. 

A colleague of mine in seminary, Samuel Lubongo, a pastor from Kenya, encouraged me to go on international mission trips, “Because,” he said, “because, Mike, if you stay in your own country, you think only your own mother cooks well.”  We learn of the expanse of God’s love through the stranger.  But it is against strangers that we have dug the deepest trenches, built the highest walls, and constructed the largest prisons.[12] 

Over and over again, this Biblical story is told in our wider culture.  We are deciding every day what it means to be “human.”  Corporate lobbyists are humans, afforded full protection of Pharaoh.  Hobby Lobby is considered a “person” afforded protection of religious freedom.  But when prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, invoking the same protection given to Hobby Lobby, asked for religious freedom to pray during the Obama Administration, the Justice Department argued that they should not be afforded these same protections because they are not human beings.  Defense attorney Jon Eisenberg said: "It is truly grotesque for the Obama folks to insist that a for-profit corporation is a person, but a flesh-and-blood human being at Guantánamo Bay is not."[13] 

I relate that story because it is critical to recognize that we know that this betrayal of the imago Dei is not Republican or Democrat, did not begin with Stephen Mitchell or the Trump Administration.  No, it is a disfiguring of the imago Dei within us, a violence and an open wound found within who we are supposed to be as human beings.  We too often look to people who are enemies on the playground, across the aisle, and those who disagree with us at church and see them as less than human beings.  We are prepping ourselves—getting ready to do violence to others.  That violence becomes even more manifest when our fear overtakes us to make city, state, and national policy about who is a human being and who is not. 

It is instructive that the first thing Moses asks Pharaoh to do is to let his people go so that they may only make a three day journey in the wilderness to worship and pray to God.[14]  Pharaoh, afraid of the swarm, with no knowledge of God or these people, enjoins the Children of Israel to work harder.  “They are lazy!” he says, “Work harder, work longer, bring your children.”

A whole group of people are seen as beasts of burden, marked as lazy, and the only antidote is for them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, is to work harder and longer with less resources--Arbeit macht frei, work brings your freedom, that infamous phrase above the gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp.  We de-humanize to justify our bullying, our violent behavior.  Pharaoh’s words and language are being repeated regularly, consistently, and persistently so that words might be forged into action and action might then define who we are and turn our neighbor into a stranger we do not know. 

But, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins . . . there is good news.  What the Exodus story teaches is that God’s purposes are being worked out by people who flip the script to midwife new life and a new day.  Pharaoh does not carry the day.  Already, from underneath, there are people who transform stranger into neighbor, teach nonviolence, and stand resolutely in that new day.  Pharaoh does not carry the day.  There’s a new day coming.  Everything’s going to be turning over.  Everything’s going to be changing over.  Where you going to be standing when it comes?  A new birth is happening.  Midwives are needed.  Thanks be to God for Shiphrah and Puah.  For you are made in the image of God.  I am made in the image of God.  Glory hallelujah . . . we are made in the image of God.  Amen.  



[1] Coined by Hannah Arendt
[2] An ode to Justice Ginsburg.
[3] Ayten Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in an Age of Rights:  Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants  (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2015). 
[4] Genesis 1:20-21.
[5]  Eric Pfeiffer, "Buchanan warns of flood of illegals," Washington Times, August 22, 2006, referencing Pat Buchanan’s book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (New York:  Thomas Dunne Books, 2006).
[6] A quick search immediately brought up:  “Illegal women, kids swarm US via Mexico after home countries report Obama ‘amnesty,’ free legal aid”; “Why they come . . . the children swarming our borders”; “Children swarming southern border prove a test to Obama’s immigration policy”; “Illegal Alien Children ‘Swarm’ School Registration Center Near Atlanta.”  Those were the first five articles that appeared on a google search, all from conservative/Tea Party perspectives.
[7] http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=501
[8] That, in fact, is the title of their report, “Close to Slavery.”  It can be found here:  http://www.gpn.org/splcenter.org.SPLCguestworker.pdf
[9] http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=501
[10] Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses
[11] Cf. Exodus 23.9; Rachel Fabiarz, “Treatment of the Stranger:  Our Existential Relationship to Our Ancestors and How We Learn Empathy,” My Jewish Learning. http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/Vaethanan_ajws3.shtml.
[12] Rev. Aric Clark, “Make Haste to Be Kind,” Fort Morgan Times, http://www.fortmorgantimes.com/opinion-columnists/ci_26161863/aric-clark-make-haste-be-kind.
[13] “Headlines,” Democracy Now!  July 14, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/14/headlines#71415
[14] Exodus 5:1

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