I Have Heard Their Cry

Moses was in Midian, watching his father-in-law’s sheep, when he noticed a bush burning. What he noticed was that it wasn’t being consumed, it wasn’t burning up. So, he approaches the bush. And there, he has this conversation with God in which God tells him, “I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” and Moses responds, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Most stories about Moses’ reluctance to go focus on his claim, much later in the conversation, that he isn’t eloquent, slow of speech and tongue. But, I don’t think that is really why Moses asks in the first place. Moses is in Midian for a reason. Midian is here – the Red Sea makes a V – Midian is an area on the far East of that V, and Egypt is on the far West of that V. The Pharaoh, as best as scholars can tell, is Ramses II, who ruled from Memphis, along the bank of the Nile, just about 12 miles south of where the delta of the Nile begins, where Cairo sits today.

Important to the story is that Moses is living 422 miles away from Egypt, just a little farther to walk than from Germantown to New Orleans. Moses wasn’t just a little bit outside of Egypt. When he fled, he meant never to return. Remember what happened? Moses was saved as a baby by Pharaoh’s daughter after Pharaoh had ordered all the Israelite baby boys killed at birth as a means of population control. Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s courts. He was a grown man by the time he went out one day to see what life was like outside the royal courts. Moses watched as Israelite men, keep in mind they were all probably older than Moses because anyone his age or younger would have been killed when they were born, Moses watched as these Israelite men struggled to do the physical labor their overseers demanded. And then, he saw one of the Egyptian overseers beating one of the Israelite men. Scripture tells us he was kinfolk – whether they are actually related or related because they were both children of God, we don’t know. But Moses saw him being beaten and he looked around and didn’t see any witnesses, and moved by the injustice and the cruelty, he intervened and he killed the Egyptian and buried him there. Despite the fact that he didn’t think there were witnesses, he was seen, and word got back to Pharaoh, who wanted Moses killed. So, that is why Moses is in Midian when the bush burns.

“Who am I,” Moses asks, “that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
“I have heard my people cry.”

As I planned this sermon series, the outline for this sermon focused on God hearing our cry in the midst of this pandemic. The whole series is called “Mind the Gap: Exodus and the Space Between.” Historians are telling us that we are at a shift in history; we are living in a crack in the sidewalk of time. When history books tell the story of humanity, there will be a line at 2020 for pandemic…and we are on that line. In London, when you take the Tube, their underground railway system, the subway, a voice announces, “Mind the Gap” meaning don’t fall onto the track as you get on the train, pay attention. We are living in a gap, its scholarly name is liminal time, liminal means “threshold.” We are at the threshold crossing over into a new period of history.

For 40 years, the people of Israel were in a similar liminal, threshold, period as they wandered the wilderness, leaving the slavery of Egypt and preparing to enter the Promised Land. In Scripture, whenever we see 40, we know that it doesn’t mean 40 notches on a calendar, but that it means a time of preparation. So this series of sermons through June and July seek to ask, “What were the lessons the Israelites learned in preparation for entering the Promised Land?” and how do they teach us as we prepare to cross this threshold in history?

And so, the planned message was that God hears our cries. God hears how frustrated we are with not knowing what is safe, who is safe, when to go out, when to stay in – and for those on the frontlines, those who are exposed regularly to hundreds to thousands of people, those who are intubating people who are sick, those who are watching other cities with spikes that overwhelm and wait and pray here that we might be spared. God hears our cries.

God hears the cries of those who have been able to work from home and are now being called back, and those who are being told they can just stay home because there is no longer work for them. God hears the cries of business owners who don’t know how they will stay afloat, who are locking their door and walking away wondering if they will ever be able to reopen.

And then we saw the video of George Floyd calling for his momma, and for many, like for Moses, it was too much. He wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last, just like that Egyptian overseer and Israelite slave, but it was too much for Moses.

During this pandemic and this week, especially, the Scripture that has been the song of my heart is Psalm 13. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will me enemy triumph over me?” Four times, the psalmist pleads “How long?” and then demands, “Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’ and my foes will rejoice when I fall.”

I wonder if Moses thought, “You know I was there. I heard the cries. When I was a baby, my cry nearly got me killed. God, you know that I fought for my people it nearly got me killed. I ran for my life, where were you then, God? I’ve established my life here. I’ve gotten married, settled down – now you want me to reenter that fight? It’s been going on since before I was born! I tried when I was young. I have so much to lose now.”

I know I have talked to people in the last week who struggle with our nation not being beyond white privilege and systemic racism, or at least farther along in healing division and hatred, that we seem to have really made very little progress since the Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s.

One commentary on this passage that I read posited that the burning bush had always been burning, and that Moses just noticed that it wasn’t being consumed. When he went over out of curiosity, he got called into more than he ever bargained for.

My friends, there are fires that are burning that are not going to go out – because their fuel will not be consumed. God is in them. Will we notice and go over? God is just waiting to call us. To say to us, “I have heard my people cry.”

There’s a gap in Psalm 13. The Psalmist cries out “How long, O Lord?” four times – three would be conventional, the fourth places emphatic effect. How long? “Look at me and answer, Lord, Give light to my eyes, or my enemy is going to think he’s won.” And then there’s a gap.

My friends, we are in a gap. We are being called to respond to our kinfolk – our brothers and sisters who are suffering. At the same time we are facing societal upheaval, we are facing a pandemic, and as we stand at that burning bush, God is saying to us, “I hear your cries.” There is not a cry that God doesn’t hear. Here we stand, at a threshold. We are being called to journey out of what we once knew into a new time in history. We are on a mark in the history books that will define before and after. May we take our shoes off and mind the gap.
When Moses said, “Me?” God said, “I will be with you.”

As we cross this threshold, God is with us. And we, with the psalmist will sing, “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for you, O God, have been good to me.” Amen.