The Law and the Prophets

Today we officially begin the summer season here at the church. We will be exploring the stories of the prophet Moses. Perhaps you know some of the basics of his story - freeing the Jewish slaves in Egypt, parting the Red Sea and receiving the Ten Commandments, but there is so much more than that. In Judaism Moses is the only person considered to have seen the face of God. He is said to be the most important prophet, even more important than King David. His story is still told thousands of years later because of his faith, his leadership and his writing. The scriptures we will read over the next few months from Exodus, along with Genesis, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are all said to have been from him.

But Moses is not just about ancient history. He has something important to teach us today. Just last week we heard about the Supreme Court reversing Roe vs. Wade, making abortion illegal in many states across the country. Moses’ story touches on such topics. Let’s hear from Emily our scripture from Exodus. This is the very beginning of the tale, even before Moses. Joseph (and his amazing technicolor dreamcoat) led to the extended family of Abraham relocating from Israel to Egypt. The family grew and grew for hundreds of years until they are a small nation and their relationship with the Egyptians goes from positive to downright destructive. This is from the Book of Exodus 1:8-2:10. Hear now the word of the Lord.

Exodus 1:8–2:10 NRSV

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, 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.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them. The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?” The 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.” So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.” Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. When 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. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him. The 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. When 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. Then 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?” Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’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. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

And from Matthew 7:12

Matthew 7:12 NRSV

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

This is the word of the Lord for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray: Lord, may we be an inclusive community passionately following Jesus Christ. Work in us as we pursue your love and a way of living with others that reflects your will. In Christ we pray. Amen.

In the 1960’s there were some big problems in this country. Perhaps the biggest was crime. You can see it in all the charts and graphs - from 1960 forward, property crime went up, larceny went up, as well as burglary and vehicle theft. It was an epidemic, with crime doubling and tripling into the 70’s and 80’s. Violent crime quadrupled from 1960 to 1991. What was our country to do? How could we end this awful violence?

Well it turns out we were able to do it. Since the 90’s crime has steadily decreased and in the last few years crime levels were nearly back to where they were before the 1960’s. Even as violent crime is back in the headlines in the last couple of years, the numbers are far below what they were three and four decades ago. You may not remember this but in New York City there were 2,200 homicides in 1990. Last year? 488. We are far better off today than we were back then. So what happened? How did we reduce crime?

There are several answers, some of which have a far smaller effect than you’d think. Increased police on the street helped some, repeat offenders put in jail for longer helped, and the end of the crack-cocaine epidemic. But there were a couple of reasons that seem totally unexpected. The first is so interesting I have to include it. We’ve always known lead can have huge negative effects on the brain and on a person’s behavior, that’s why old paint chips in the house can be so toxic to children. Lead also used to be in gasoline, but when it was outlawed, we started to see these reductions in crime. Properly taking care of our environment seems to have had a strong effect on reducing crime. Pretty interesting!

The other reason, though, is much more in line with today’s topic. Abortion, legalized across the country in the 70’s, connects to a decrease in crime. There’s a podcast called Freakonomics with an episode on Abortion and Crime if you want to learn more, but how does that work? Why would abortion impact crime? And the reason is something called ‘wantedness.’ Wantedness is the desire and perceived ability of a parent to care for a child. If a parent doesn’t want to have a child, and has to raise them anyways, how much love and support will that child get? Not very much, right? If the parent doesn’t have food or money or can’t provide early childhood education, how well will that child do later in life? Not very well. These deficits early in life can cause a person to commit crimes later. The love and care and nurture of a parent early on can make all the difference in a person’s life.

Now just because abortion reduces crime doesn’t mean its automatically a good thing. If you believe abortion is murder, its just as bad as these other crimes, so I thought I’d ask some folks who have seen a lot more than I have what their thoughts are. I had a chance to visit with some of our homebound members here at Grace and I asked them, ‘Roe vs. Wade was overturned; how do you feel about it?’ And these folks in their 80’s and 90’s who have lived through this history of legalized abortion and decreased crime, had opinions that ran the gambit. One person said they believed a woman has the right to choose. Government interfering in that decision seemed wrong to them. Another said the life of a child is more important than any other consideration. They valued life above all else.

You can hear echoes of the national debate here. Some are on one side and others on another. So what might the story of Moses contribute to this? How might he help us move beyond this split both in the church and across the country? His saga begins with the oppression of the Jewish people by the Egyptians. They don’t like how quickly the foreign population is growing; they especially don’t like that the Jewish people are increasing in power, either. The Egyptians do everything they can to undermine Joseph’s decendants, and even go so far as to kill all of the baby boys just as they are born. There’s a little bit of history behind this - Egyptians used something called a birth stool. It wasn’t actually a chair - it would be two large rocks that a woman would sit on. If you think giving birth in a hospital bed is tough, imagine how bad it would have been back then when rocks were considered to add comfortable.

Like today, the midwife or doctor would be the first to hold the baby. That is when the Hebrew midwives were told to kill the baby boys. The midwives don’t do it, so the Pharoah comes up with an even more sinister plan. Instead of the deaths of babies looking like an accident, he demands that they are ripped out of their mother’s arms and intentionally drowned in the Nile River. That’s when we hear what happens to Moses - he is born and hidden for months. Finally, when the risk was too great she made a small basket, placed her baby in it and pushed it down the river. I’m sure she prayed every second of that process. How awful to be forced to give up your child when you love him so much.

And so Moses floats down the river and is caught in the reeds. The Pharoah’s daughter sees the baby, takes pity and a young Hebrew girl speaks up. This is Moses’ sister, and she says “do you want me to get you a Hebrew woman to nurse the child for you?” And when the princess agrees, Moses’ sister goes and gets…Moses’ mother. And Moses’ mother gets paid to take care of her own son. Pretty fabulous right? The only drawback is that when Moses is old enough, he must go and live with the princess as her son. He will be a prince, and he will not grow up with his Hebrew brothers and sisters.

I imagine this made Moses feel like an outsider. He isn’t with his people, but he isn’t like the Egyptian royalty either. We’ll have to come back to this theme later in our series, but one thing is for sure - his survival is an unlikely one. This happened to Jesus, too. When he was born King Herod feels threatened by the wise men coming and looking for a Messiah, so he orders all the children two and under around Bethlehem to be slaughtered. Jesus manages to survive, and like Moses he is a savior, but not just of the Hebrews. Jesus is to save the whole world.

Now I know neither of these stories talk about abortion directly; that idea isn’t really found in the Bible. So what we have to do is try and interpret the stories and passages we have and take a next step in what that means for how we live our lives. We have to ask what should we, as Methodists, think about this topic? When babies are ordered to die, and brave women resist, what does that mean for us? When tragedy strikes and we are left with no good options, what is the right thing for us to do?

Our Bishop, John Schol, wrote a letter about the Supreme Court ruling this week with an interesting point in it. He said we as a church have different thoughts. Both former president George W Bush and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton are both Methodists in good standing in our church. We are a wide and diverse church. He then went on to quote the Social Principles, a book that shares our stance on these complicated issues. It says,

“Our belief in the sanctity of unborn human life makes us reluctant to approve abortion…But we are equally bound to respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother and the unborn child.”

Another phrase in our statement on abortion says so much about how difficult this topic is. It says “we recognize tragic conflicts of life with life...” How can you choose the mother over a child, or a child over the mother? How can you say one human is more important than another? These are tragic decisions that can have awful effects on both sides.

Years ago my sister had a recurring dream. In it my mom was holding a baby that was not one of my brothers or sister; my mom had another child. And in this dream the baby died tragically. After weeks of this dream happening over and over, my mom took all of us out to Denny’s for breakfast. She told us about my sister’s recurring dream and that my mom had a confession to make. When she was younger, before she met my father, she had had an abortion. I will never forget our stunned faces, and my mother weeping with tears of regret. What would life have been like had she not done that? She wouldn’t have met my father; I wouldn’t exist, nor my own family. That tragic choice led to so much good in my life, and for my wife and for my children. How do you measure the worth of a baby and the weight of raising that child to do good in this world?

I may not have a good answer for what kind of laws we should have in this nation, or how to answer the problem of abortion, but I am certain of one thing. Wantedness matters. Caring for and loving children well matters. If we are going to move forward as a community and as a nation, we have to support children not just in utero, but in every step of their journey, from good health care for pregnant moms, at birth and beyond.

I’m very proud of our preschool here at Grace. Formal education in the first few years of life can have a profound impact on a child. You might think preschool means kids do better in school, which might start out true, but after a few years most children are all about the same academically. The real impact of preschool is lifelong. Preschoolers are far less likely to be arrested, more likely to graduate high school and college; they are less likely to struggle with substance abuse. We aren’t just making kids a little smarter; we are helping them chart a course for a lifetime of fulfillment.

I mentioned our search for a Sunday School Superintendent earlier. Sunday School can make a world of difference in a child’s life, too. Children and youth that are an active part of church are less likely to do drugs. They are more likely to wear their seatbelt and get less traffic tickets. Less likely to shoplift or be in trouble with police. They skip school less and get less detention. They are more likely to volunteer in the community and participate in student government. This is every parents dream for their child and their is cold, hard data to back up all these benefits. We are doing our job to support children from birth to adulthood when we have a great Sunday School program.

We aren’t just interested in grandstanding against abortion, or for a woman’s right to choose. We won’t be satisfied until every parent gets the support they need to raise beautiful healthy babies. We won’t stop until every child has the advantages that comes with Sunday School and a caring community that will do everything in its power to make life better. Jesus said “I have come so that you might have life in its fullness.” Abundant life is the goal, and that means we fight for life at every turn. For mothers, for the unborn, for children, for those that don’t have enough food today, or clothes for tomorrow. We keep working until every child feels the joy of wantedness, because Jesus wants every child to know God’s love.

[As followers of Jesus Christ, our lives are meant to be oriented around life for all; at birth, in childhood, in marriage and singleness, for families of every shape and size, even unto death. How can we bring more life even as people face daunting odds, and terrible choices? We do it by listening well to the needs of others, by staying present even when things are tough, and by loving others no matter what choices they may make.]

There’s a documentary called “the drop box” about a pastor. Pastor Lee leads the ‘God’s Love Community Church’ in Seoul, Korea. He and his wife saw abandoned babies in the city streets and so they decided to do something about it. They built the baby box, a small box in the wall of the church where you could leave your child, instead of the street. It had a warming light and it would make a buzzer sound so someone in the church could come and get the child. Pastor Lee didn’t think anyone would use it, but he was wrong. Some had special needs, others were perfectly healthy. One mother left a note were her child, “please don’t try to find me. I am sorry, I am so sorry.” Where others have ignored the issue, Pastor Lee has taken these abandoned children in. His church now runs an orphanage with dozens of children, having saved hundreds of lives. All it takes is one person who cares. These are human beings, like any other and they deserve love. Even the person who made the film was transformed by this orphanage. He always thought of himself as a Christian, attending church on Christian and Easter with mom, but seeing Lee’s compassion and sacrifice, he realized that Christianity means more than showing up to church. It means helping those who are helpless, and loving even when it seems impossible. The director, Brian Ivie, ended up giving his life to Christ, committing to living more like Jesus.

That’s my hope for all of us. That in the most challenging situations we seek life; when society has given up on people, we don’t lose hope and we keep working toward better answers, better solutions that benefit as many people as possible. Moses’ mother made a hard choice, and somehow God was able to work that out toward the good. May we, too, be people who work for God’s good, to bring life in its fullness to every situation. Amen? Amen.

communion (open to all, we welcome Hawthorne UMC)