Exodus 1:6-22 (NIV)
6 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, 7 but the Israelites
were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that
the land was filled with them.
8 Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt.
9 "Look," he
said to his people, "the Israelites have become much too numerous for
us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more
numerous
and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave
the country."
11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and
they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they
were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to
dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives
bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the
fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.
15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah
and Puah, 16 "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them
on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her
live." 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king
of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt
summoned the midwives and asked them, "Why have you done this? Why have
you let the boys live?"
19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, "Hebrew women are not like Egyptian
women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive."
20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more
numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their
own.
22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: "Every boy that is
born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live."
__________________________________________________________________
Abraham Lincoln once noted: "Nearly anyone can stand
adversity, but if you want to test a person's character,
give them power."
And Henri Nouwen wrote: "What makes the temptation
of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power
offers an easy substitute for the hard
task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control
people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. Jesus
asks, Do you love me? We ask, Can we sit at your right hand
and your left hand in
your Kingdom? (Mt.20:21). ... We have been tempted to replace love with
power.”
(Henri Nouwen in Mornings with Henri J.M. Nouwen, quoted in Christianity Today,
February 8, 1999, 72.)
Power!
So tantalizing.
So longed for by so many.
So mysterious.
So dangerous.
Power, in and of itself, is like many things: not inherently
good nor inherently bad. It’s actually neutral.
Used properly it can liberate, strengthen, encourage, bless and make life
better for all.
Abused it can oppress, demoralize, control, plunder and even kill, not only
individuals, but millions and millions of people.
It’s something that’s a part of life. We all
have power of some kind and we are all under the power of
others.
The use of power impacts us every day—such is its importance, yet we
don’t often talk about it.
But, we’re going to talk about power this morning.
Power is at the core of our Scripture lesson from Exodus
1.
As the Book of Exodus opens things have changed for the Hebrew people living
in Egypt. The last chapters of Genesis were devoted to the story of Joseph.
Joseph—the one with the multi-coloured coat.
The one whose brothers, in a fit of jealousy, sold him into slavery in Egypt.
The one who, through God’s intervention, rose to great power in Egypt.
The one who brought his family to Egypt to save them from a great famine in
Israel.
Joseph and his people thrived in Egypt but at the end of
Genesis Joseph’s
death is noted.
At the beginning of Exodus things had changed for the Hebrews.
Time had marched on.
Kings had come and gone in Egypt.
Power had shifted.
Joseph, long since dead, had been long since forgotten.
His people, though, had continued to thrive—at least in numbers. The
promise of God to Abraham had been that the people of Israel would be fruitful
and multiply—and that’s exactly what they did!
So when another new King, or Pharaoh, came to the Egyptian
throne he didn’t
see a people whose history and leadership had helped Egypt. He saw a potential
problem.
There were so many Hebrews in his country that he worried.
The Hebrews, after all, weren’t like him and his people.
They were different.
They were numerous.
They were a threat.
What would happen if a war broke out and the Hebrews sided
with Egypt’s
enemy?
The logic of fear because of numbers and the assumption
of disloyalty in case of war would seem to have no basis
in reality but since when does prejudice
have to be logical. Since when do assumptions have to be proven when you’re
dealing with people who are different.
And so the Hebrews were oppressed.
It started out with forced labour.
The Hebrews became slaves for their Egyptian masters.
They were worked ruthlessly planting and harvesting crops, even building cities.
Still the Hebrews continued to grow in number. If they
hadn’t been
a threat in the beginning turning them into slaves made them a potent enemy.
Still frightened, the Pharaoh ordered that male Hebrew
infants must be killed. Slavery wasn’t enough. Genocide
was the new solution to the threat.
The Hebrew midwives, of course, wanted nothing to do with this plan. They
did whatever they could to get around the blood thirsty orders of the frightened
Egyptian despot. God blessed them for it.
One of the male infants, who would be saved by the midwives, was named Moses
but at this point he was just about to be born. And so it would be a very long
time before Moses would lead the Hebrew people out of the oppression and slavery
they were facing in our lesson.
Sadly human behaviour hasn’t changed that much down through the ages
so the Pharaoh’s attitude and behaviour offer us an understanding
of the reasons and methods of oppression today.
Pharaoh had power and he didn’t want to lose it.
He had power and he abused that power in an attempt to keep himself comfortable.
He had power and yet he was plagued by fear and insecurity.
He had power and he saw holding on to the perks of power as more important
than anything else he could possibly do.
Fear, insecurity, selfishness, ego, greed, prejudice, hatred,
the love of privilege and believing that privilege is deserved—a
combination of any of these attitudes can lead to the abuse
of power.
And, the abuse of power can lead to oppression and even
genocide. What the Pharaoh attempted to do has been attempted
regularly down through the ages
and it hasn’t stopped yet.
In an excerpt from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide
we find this definition:
"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring
about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
A quick internet search reveals that within the last couple of generations
we have seen genocide and attempted genocide in the Holocaust, Cambodia, Armenia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guatemala, Chechnya and Rwanda.
Sadly there are many other examples.
Currently in Sudan there remains great concern about genocide
in the Darfur region—something we’ve heard about
but perhaps not as much as we should:
“During June 2005, CNN, FOXNews, NBC/MSNBC, ABC, and CBS ran 50 times
as many stories about Michael Jackson and 12 times as many stories about Tom
Cruise as they did about the genocide in Darfur.” (http://www.beawitness.org)
The abuse of power can be a horrendous thing. It’s often the motivation
behind “man’s inhumanity to man”.
We see it when groups seek to destroy other groups because they are different—because
they have long standing grudges against one another.
But it’s not just expressed through genocide.
We see the abuse of power when governments infringe on the freedoms of its
people.
And we see the abuse of power when companies set up monopolies to ensure excessive
profits.
We also see it in the everyday. Parents can abuse their
power as they verbally, emotionally and physically abuse
their children. Supervisors abuse their power
when they manipulate situations to get an advantage over those who work
for them. Leaders abuse their power when they seek to persuade
or intimidate followers
for their own gratification—sexual or otherwise.
Our society emphasizes that it is good to have power. But
our society doesn’t
emphasize enough the need for people to use power appropriately and positively.
Martin Luther King Jr., who knew something of power and the abuse of power,
once said:
“Power without love is reckless and abusive. Power
at its best is love implementing the demands of justice."
A Christian understanding of power has power, love and
justice working together. When they don’t go together
we need to ask questions and make demands.
We need to ask ourselves how we understand power when we are the ones who
wield it?
We need to demand the best from ourselves when we are in powerful positions.
We need to ask ourselves how we feel when we are the victims of an abuse of
power?
We need to demand justice for ourselves when we have been manipulated or abused.
We need to ask ourselves how much we know about the abuse of power on the
world stage?
We need to demand that the torture and killing of innocent people stop wherever
it is taking place by whoever is doing it.
Upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, Holocaust
survivor, Elie Wiesel encouraged listeners to "Take
sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
We need to be willing to take sides—to take a stand
against oppression.
Take a stand by using our own power appropriately.
Take a stand when we are victims of someone else’s
abuse of power.
Take a stand when we see others who are victims, whether they are someone we
know personally or are a group of people we have never heard of before, on
the other side of the world.
Power is too important to be approached with a laissez faire attitude.
Power is too much a part of life to escape accountability.
I conclude with a Franciscan Blessing which is my prayer for us all:
“May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers,
half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may
live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,
so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection,
starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
turn their pain into joy.
May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make
a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot
be done.”
(1640)
© The Rev. Dennis Cook, St. Timothy’s Presbyterian
Church, Ajax, ON, Canada
