,.

./

MOSES AND HIS MANY CRISES

Sermon. Opening Worship. L'CM-CWA 'vational Convention. Silliman University. 20 May 20/ O.

Ben S. Malayang

III

I invite you to recall with me today the life and times of Moses.

Moses was born into a poor family. His family and his people were in
captivity. Things were not looking good for them. They had not looked
good for a very long time. The future was dark and hope was dim. There
was no reason to hope. And when he was born, Moses, a baby boy, was
to be among those to be massacred on orders of a ruler who feared a
challenge to his power. He did get a lucky break, when he was adopted
by the princess and he became a prince. But he lost it. Because of his
temper, he killed an Egyptian and had to flee from the Pharaoh. From a
baby hunted to be killed, he became a person of privilege and power.
Then he became a fugitive.

Before encountering God in the burning bush, this guy Moses was a
loser. In fact, if he were with us here today, at the time before his
encounter with God, I don't think he will readily stand out. He will be
just like you and me in many ways: feeling helpless, feeling oppressed,
angry at many things, had barely enough, had some lucky breaks, but

But Moses became a giant in the faith and in history. He moved a whole
nation from bondage to freedom. He led a people through the wilderness
and into a promised land. He was despised by many and many times
abandoned by friends. But he was loved by God.

Moses was a man caught in a whirlpool of crises. His people were in

crises. They were in bondage and unable to be free and govern
themselves. They faced an economic crisis in that they remained poor
and dependent on others. They were a society of slaves. They also faced
a religious crisis of having limited opportunities to openly practice their
faith. And Moses himself was beset by personal and inner conflicts. He
was an Israelite yet was enjoying the privileges of an Egyptian. He was
born from an enslaved people and yet he acquired power among their
enslaving rulers. He was a man who would rather flee and yet was being
asked by God to go back and to free his people.

What made Moses tick? What made a difference in his life so that he
was transformed from a man who fled to a man who freed, from a man
mired by crises to a man that resolved crises?

Three things made Moses a different person. Three things made him
successfully overcome his many crises.

First were the women in his life. He could have died as a baby as many
babies do today. But Moses did not die because his mother refused to be
intimidated by the powerful Pharaoh and to give up on her baby. He did
not die because his sister defied danger and looked after her baby
brother. And he did not die because the Egyptian princess boldly defied
the order of her own father and instead rescued the Israelite baby boy in
the basket. These women defied the odds, dared to face danger, dared to
do what is right over what was safe, and to do what was good rather than
what was self-serving. They dared ~d~

~tn

man to instead

follow the law of God.

Second were the men who stood steadfast along with him in his work for
God. When told by God to confront the Pharaoh, his brother Aaron
stood by him. Aaron carried the staffwith which Moses did his miracles.
His father-in-law Jethro stood by him and counseled him to leave the
safety of family and to obey God. The Levites dutifully carried the Ark
of the Covenant everywhere they went in the wilderness, following
Moses and trusting him.

But the third and perhaps the most crucial influence on Moses was
Moses himself. When God called him in the burning bush, he did not run
away. He stayed to listen to what God had to say. When he heard what
God wanted him to do, which was to go to the Pharaoh and to ask the

Pharaoh to free his people, these seem impossible tasks to Moses. But
instead of imposing on God what he thinks, or telling God that he had a
different vision of what he would rather be - a vision of being
comfortable

and safe by remaining in the wilderness of Median - he

asked God questions to fully understand what God wanted. And he

bared to God his fears, his hesitation, and his shortcomings.
God into a conversation

He engaged

and into diligent search of what God is saying to

better understand what God wants from him. And when he understood,
he trusted God fully that without any more second thoughts, he went
ahead to confront the Pharaoh.

From all human points of view, it was foolhardy and entirely insane for
Moses, a fugitive from the Pharaoh, to instead go to the Pharaoh and to
tell him - demand from him - to let his people go. It was absolutely
stupid when measured against human standards of reason and logic. But
he was following God, and Moses knew that to follow God could often
mean defying what seems humanly insane.

What lessons might we learn from the story of Moses? I think three:

One, being mother, sister or daughter is a special ministry to God. Being

a woman is not to be weak. It is to be a repository of strength and
boldness that could change history. Without his mother, sister and the

princess, who all chose to obey the law of God so that they chose to do
what are right and good, over the laws of men which are too often
serving only the interests of the rich, the powerful and the oppressor,
Moses would not have survived to later become God's instrument for
freeing his people. The Israelites' crisis of slavery and deprivation and
of hardships as a captive people, would have not been overcome by the
tlM.dMA~y

Israelites had Moses died while still a baby. The boldness and daring of
I

these women allowed for God to make a miracle out of an entire nation.

The second lesson I think is about the men who were with Moses.
Following his encounter with God in the burning bush, Moses received
counsel from his father-in-law Jethro, for Moses to obey God. And when
Moses finally decided to obey God, his brother Aaron stood by him and
went with him to Pharaoh. These men did not distance themselves from
Moses who was about to do what indeed would have been a very
dangerous encounter with Pharaoh. Many would have began to move
away from Moses so that they don't get involved in what Moses was
about to do. But these men chose not to stand aside. They chose to stand
beside Moses, and so Moses was able to do God's work and to achieve
what was humanly impossible.

The third lesson is about Moses. He succeeded to overcome his crises

and the crises of his people because he listened to God and he obeyed

God. He made the effort to correctly discern or to correctly understand

what God was saying to him. He did not insist to God his own vision of
how to liberate his people. He listened to God even if he first argued
with God that what He, God, was saying seems contrary to human
reason. He acquired the power to liberate himself and his people by
stripping himself of all pretensions

of power and made himself entirely

po verless and placed himself wholly in the power of God. His full trust
in

VI.

hat Goo said

his subsequently

even if contrary to the dictates of human logic

and

full obedience to what rind was telling him to do, gave

him the ultimate po ver to liberate. Powerlessness

to God gives power to

free a people.

There is nothing special in Moses the man. Yet he became a great

instrument of liberation when he sought to hear God, to interrogate God
and to search for what God has to say, and then fully and
unconditionally

obey God. He became a man that led a people to

freedom because there were women and men around him who kept the
faith. They chose to do what are right and good rather than cower in the
intimidations

of human oppressors.

Moses led his people into freedom because he chose to lose his freedom
and to instead surrender himself entirely to God. And he was in a

community of women and men ~ ho dared to defy what was unsafe in

the eyes of the world, to be safe in the eyes of God.

A well-informed

faith created the fundamental

lead his people to freedom.

condition for Moses to