Our Egyptian Identity?

A sermon on Exodus 12.1-14 by Alison Sampson, 4 September 2005

© LaughingBird.net

 

 

The advantage of preaching from the lectionary is that we don’t skip over the unpopular bits in the Bible. The disadvantage, of course, is that it can become difficult for us to follow a story or to take a wide view, because the Sunday readings leap from chapter to chapter. We are forever trying to keep up! Now, those of us who are using the study notes are focussing on the Exodus. As I’ve been writing these, I have been deeply challenged by the story, and have found myself asking questions about who we should identify with. So tonight I am aiming for a little clarity!

 

I want to step back from the lectionary reading, for the moment, and instead look at a wider issue. I want to look at the issue of identification.

 

Who tells a story? Who is the story about? Tonight as we look at the Israelites and the Egyptians, I invite you to consider with me which group we are most like. Flowing from that identification, we may find ourselves with a new understanding of our relationship to the story.

 

There are two usual ways that Christians approach the Exodus story. We will look briefly at these, but then examine a third.

 

The first way is to read it personally. The story is used by individual Christians who yearn for God to hear their cries and liberate them. And as I look around our congregation tonight, I know that many of us have experienced life on the margins of society at one time or another. Those of us who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual; those of us who are poor; those of us who are excluded from or discriminated against in the workforce; those of us who suffer from mental illness or physical incapacity; those of us who have been homeless or abused – many of us have experienced life at the edge of our society. The Exodus story can give us an identity as God’s people, despite our life on the margins. The story gives us hope that God hears our cries, and the dream that a different world is possible. And this is one useful way to read the story.

 

A second way is to read it corporately, identifying the Christian community as the Israelites, or the People of God. I myself grew up in a church that used the Exodus story to develop this identity. This, again, can be a useful way to read the story. In our culture, it challenges the cult of individualism, and invites us to take on some form of group identity. This way of reading tells us that together we are God’s people. As God’s people, we have responsibilities to each other and to God, and are the recipients of God’s promise of liberation to us.

 

However, I want to take another look at the text. I wonder if our identification as Israel, or the People of God, is not the best reading we can make, after all.

 

Now, the Bible has a couple of characteristics which are often overlooked in the Western context. First, it was compiled in a group culture. This means that it was written by groups, for groups. It is not primarily directed at individuals, but rather addresses nations or communities. Second, it was not written primarily as a ‘spiritual’ document, although of course it contains many spiritual elements. Instead, much of it is grounded in and addressed to specific historical and political situations, and describes God’s actions or call to action in those situations.

 

With this background, another way to read the Exodus story is to ask, Which group do we, as Australians and as Westerners, most resemble?

 

And when I look around at our church, our non-representative sample of Australians, I see privilege. As far as I know, we are all non-indigenous Australians. Most of us came here in private cars, a mode of transport forever out of reach of two thirds of the world’s population. We came from our homes which have plumbing, electricity and gas, heating for cold nights, and enough beds. We come wearing clothes we have selected from the many in our wardrobes. Our households contain televisions, VCRs and an assortment of other electronic gadgets. Even the poorer among us have material comforts and conveniences beyond what our great-grandparents ever imagined, and unattainable to most of the world.

 

And because we are so accustomed to this comfort, we believe that it is, somehow, our right. We have worked and earned wages, and out of those wages we have paid for our stuff. But what is the real cost of that stuff? Once we start asking these questions, our identity takes on a new perspective.

 

To recap the Exodus story to now: The Hebrews were invited by Pharaoh to live in Egypt. A later Pharaoh, who did not know them and felt threatened by their large families, forced them into slavery and gave them outrageous quotas to fill. As this did not adequately subdue them, Pharaoh developed a program of genocide directed against them. In last week’s reading, God heard the cries of the Israelites, and resolved to liberate them.

 

So how does this story relate to us and our wealth, comfort, identity? To begin with, we live here in Australia, a land taken by force from the original occupants who were then violently abused and subdued.

 

The United Nations defines genocide as

Killing members of a group.

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.1

 

White Australia spread disease, deliberately and accidentally, which decimated the indigenous population. We shot them when they killed our cattle, or when they became too threatening. We took their land, separated them from their ancestors and exiled them to distant places. We stole children from their families and placed them in white institutions. We introduced them to alcohol and cigarettes and refined sugar, which continue to cause immense social and health problems. Even now, indigenous Australians have such severe health issues, often poverty-related, that the life expectancy of an indigenous Australian is 17 years less than the non-indigenous average.

 

It is fair to describe our colonial history, and our society’s continuing marginalisation of indigenous Australians, as genocide. Although none of us are active agents in genocide, like the Egyptians in this story, we all benefit enormously from it. Because of genocide, we have land here. Because of the continued oppression of indigenous Australians, we continue to farm and to mine the land of their ancestors and thus contribute to our Gross National Product – an accurate description if ever there was one. In this way, we are like the Egyptians, who participated in genocide and benefited from its effects.

 

But what about slavery? This is even harder for us to see, as our economic system keeps us many steps removed from the people who produce our goods. But start asking questions, and you will quickly realise that almost all of our consumer goods are produced in conditions of indentured service that very closely resemble slavery; and many items are produced by literal slaves, such as the quarter of a million debt slaves in Pakistan.

 

The working conditions in Economic Protection Zones, that is, areas within developing nations which are completely unregulated and untaxed, are almost unimaginable to us. Children play underneath factory tables. Men sleep under their workbenches at the end of 18 hour shifts. Workers are prevented from forming unions, or even from discussing their workplace with journalists and other observers. Our jewellery is made from diamonds dug out by poor black labourers in Botswana who work without basic safety precautions or health care and die young from horrific accidents or miner’s lung. Our cheap fruit and veggies flown in from overseas, even from the United States, are often grown by unregistered immigrant workers, who work without the protection of unions, minimum wage or the law and are given little or no protection from carcinogenic pesticides. To my shame, I have just found out that these Australian-made jeans, which cost an outrageous sum, were made by outworkers who are paid less than $3.60 an hour. I bought them because they were made in Australia and thought that the cost meant a fair wage for the workers, but they and I were duped.

 

There is no meaningful difference between the Israelites making bricks under impossible quotas and unsafe working conditions, and the average factory worker in an Economic Protection Zone, locked down in a firetrap for 18 hours a day churning out outrageous quotas of clothing, footwear, or electronic equipment.

 

The truth is that our material wealth and access to consumer goods are a result of our domination over workers in the developing world. We can go to great efforts to buy fair trade clothes or coffee, but where do you find a fair trade shower curtain? Toaster? Petrol???

 

As Australians, we are enmeshed in a history and an ongoing web of violence and power that is almost impossible for us to escape. In stark summary, our way of life, this beautiful Australian way, is founded on genocide and the ongoing enslavement of others.

 

So who do we look like now? The Hebrews, who worked in slavery and were systematically targeted for extermination, or the Egyptians, who benefited from the work of the Hebrews and allowed genocide to continue in their name? The third way of reading is, I suggest, to identify as a group, not with the Israelites, but with the Egyptians.

 

So at last, I will turn to tonight’s lectionary reading. Tonight’s reading is about the Passover. Traditionally, we Christians have read this and celebrated the heritage of religious ritual into which we claim membership. Garry’s sermon a few years ago did just that. But what happens when we read as Egyptians? Suddenly, verses 12 and 13 stand out. I will read them to you. God speaks:

 

12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

 

This is God dealing death. We don’t have the space here to examine all the theories explaining this, but there are some good ways to think about it. I want to focus on one.

 

We need to remember that the story of Israel in Egypt is not told by the Egyptians. It’s told by a ragtag bunch of ex-slaves, perhaps over a campfire in the middle of the desert. What it might reveal, more than literal truth, is how much the slaves hate the oppressive Egyptians. Even more, it reveals God’s righteous anger at the horrific way that they have been treated. And we need to hear this.

 

If we, as non-indigenous Australians, appropriate the Israelite’s story, we run the risk of endorsing genocide, slavery and oppression. When we understand Australia as our promised land, we endorse genocide; when we count our material wealth as God’s blessing to us, we ignore the oppression of those who produce it.

 

But if we, as non-indigenous Australians, instead hear these hard and difficult words as God’s anger, anger against our oppressive and abusive system, then we have a hope. We have a hope of change. When we acknowledge the horrors of our past, and when we engage with the horrors of our present, we are given an opportunity to choose a different way of life.

 

In future weeks, as we read more of the Exodus, pay attention the Egyptians featured in the text. There are not many, but they are there. We have already met Pharaoh’s daughter, a powerful Egyptian woman who allowed Moses to live and helped pave the way for liberation. When Israel is preparing to leave Egypt, Egyptian neighbours give them silver and gold because they look on the Israelites with favour. And when Israel finally leaves, a vast multitude of non-Israelites, who could have only been Egyptians, goes with them.

 

This is a great and generous gift that we, the powerful, have been given. God has given us a story of liberation in which we are invited to act, invited to participate. It is not just the Israelites’ story. Even the Egyptians are invited to engage. For in the end, all of us, Hebrew and Egyptian, indigenous and colonial, oppressed and powerful, are invited to act against violence and exploitation. We are all invited to leave behind the oppressive ways we have known and walk towards a new way of life.