This past week I was at a conference center located right on the shore of Lake Tahoe. The lake, which is beautiful, played a significant role in human populations from the time of native Americans coming to the area on to the present, which is not really surprising, because water is obviously important to us as humans for survival. So perhaps it’s not surprising that according to the national institute of health, that 50% of the population on the earth live within 3 kilometers of freshwater, and only 10% of the worlds population lives more than 10 kilometers away. That’s true even with the increasing urbanization of the population, because the majority of large cities are also close to water. That was just as true in Egypt, and the Nile River played a crucial role in the life and activities of the people. While water can bring destruction and death, as see in storms and flooding, water is seen as a giver and protector of life, and so the Pharaoh’s instruction at the beginning of the book of Exodus to have male Hebrew children thrown into the Nile to drown stands in strong contrast to how the Nile was seen. Rather than being a source of life, he wants to make it, to turn it into, a source of death, but his actions are thwarted by four women.
Now perhaps that is not surprising that it is women who choose to protect life, and to even keep the water as a symbol and source of life. Even more striking, or important, is that other than the instruction from the Pharaoh handed down that all Hebrew male children are to be killed, there are no adult males in this story of Moses, and the fact that women play such a prominent role is not because this is a birth story. In fact, the story of Moses’ birth is just half a verse, half a sentence. It’s the role the women play in saving a life, in direct contradiction to the edict laid down the by the pharaoh himself. They are counteracting the rule which would distort the purpose of the Nile, the meaning of the Nile, to bring about death, rather than life. And so, Moses’ mother, who is not named, although Moses is not actually named yet either, makes a basket that is covered in bitumen and pitch, so that it will be waterproof. The Hebrew word translated here as basket, is the same word used to refer to Noah’s ark, and so we are called to see that this is a new form of salvation taking place here. Then the mother takes the basket, the ark, and places it amongst the reeds in the Nile. Now later when Moses will lead the Egyptians out of slavery, contrary to popular opinion, and some translations, he leads them not across the Red Sea, but across the Reed Sea. Again, we are called to see the story of the Israelites, of salvation, of freedom, of life, being played out here in this initial story of Moses.
But, it begins with the mother placing the baby in the basket, and then continues with the Pharaoh’s daughter discovering the basket and sending her maid to recover it, and when she discovers that it is a baby, we are told that she takes pity on this child and says, “This must be one of the Hebrew’s children.” And then a final woman, a girl appears to make the next move, and we know that it is Moses’ sister who asks Pharaoh’s daughter if she would like her to go and get a nurse from among the Hebrew women to nurse the child. Now, at this point the story could go either way. Of course, we know how it’s going to turn out, but that’s not how it originally was known, because clearly the woman knows the law, after all she is the Pharaoh’s daughter, and as such perhaps there is an even more compelling reason for her to follow the law, and yet she doesn’t. Instead, her humanity takes over, perhaps her own maternal instinct, although we are not told that she has any other children, and instead of ordering the child to be killed, or even just putting him back in the Nile for whatever might happen to happen, instead she has pity, knowing exactly who he was, and she saves his life, and then adopts him as her own son. Moses’ life begins with a resurrection story, the salvation of the Israelites begins with a resurrection story, our story begins with a resurrection story, because of an adoption, and so I thought it appropriate as we talk about resurrections, and mothers and important women in our lives to hear some stories of adoption….
Pharaoh’s daughter did not have to do what she did. She didn’t have to get involved. She could have just ignored the basket, presumably knowing what it probably brought into her life. She could have just followed her father’s decree, and she certainly didn’t have to adopt the child when he was old enough to make him her own, and yet she did. She went above and beyond. We can certainly speculate about the reasons why she chose to do what she did, and yet we can also think of the women in our lives who have done similar things. Who may have literally adopted some of us, and in other cases those who figuratively adopted us. And so, on this day we celebrate our mothers and all that they did for us and continue to do for us if they are still around. I said to someone this week when we were talking about our kids that I now know why the things my mother kept telling me not to do because they drove her nuts, why they drove her nuts, and I have even more appreciation for my mother, and she will never get enough credit or love, and we should certainly appreciate our mothers more than on just one day of the year. And yet there are all the other women in our lives who have also influenced us and impacted our lives, from our earliest days until now. Women like the Pharaoh’s maid or Moses’ sister who were maybe peripheral, and yet choose to make a difference.
In my own life there are teachers who clearly helped make me who I am today, and my career in the ministry has been supported and strengthened and encouraged by a collection of female clergy, who do not often get that same support from others, especially other male clergy, but who had pity on me in some cases, or just respect in others, who made a difference, and then of course there is my wife and the mother of my own daughters, those born, and the new one coming this fall, who continues to push me and make me better and supports me. I would not be here this morning without Linda. But this isn’t about me, it’s simply an illustration because I know if this message was being given by you, you could tell similar stories. And so, I’d like us to take a moment this morning just to lift up the names of some of the women who have made a difference in our lives.
But there is one more piece of the story from Exodus to point out, and that is that God is not one of the characters. Later on in Moses’ story, he will have direct interaction with God, speaking with God and being led by God, but in this part of the story, God as a lead character is not there, and yet we also know that God is there. That God was playing a role in this story of salvation, in this story of resurrection, in order for it to be a story of resurrection and salvation and life, and for those things to also play a role later for Moses, his family and the people. And so, I asked where Ruth and Carol where they saw God in their story….
Now when Paul is talking about adoption in the passage we heard from Galatians this morning, he is not talking about adoption the way the way we think of it, which is to care for a child. It’s not that they didn’t care for children whose parents were lost or who couldn’t care for their children, because that happened, as we see in the Moses story. But, they weren’t being adopted as such. Children, actually only reserved for male children, were adopted for inheritance purposes. So, if a family had some financial means, but they didn’t have a son to inherit, they would adopt a son to another family. The son who was adopted would take on the name of their new family and become the legitimate heir to everything. But, an important thing to know is that this could be advantageous to both families, in that the adopting family would get someone to inherit so that the estate wouldn’t be dissipated, and if the son being adopted was coming from a family that was in debt, the son would not carry that debt over into the new relationship. By being adopted, his debts were wiped clean. He was freed. Do you understand then what Paul is saying and why it’s so important to us? By being adopted by God, we not only become heirs, because of the ultimate sacrifice of love by God, but all our past debts are wiped away. We become new people, with a new identity and a new beginning, and everything that we were is wiped clean and we begin again anew. That’s why we say that we are reborn in the waters of baptism.
I know that most mothers can’t imagine giving up a child, but sometimes that is the greatest gift of love there is, just as God so loved us that he gave us his only son, because in that act of love, greater love was available and given. God chose us. God chooses us. God adopts us as beloved sons and daughters because God loves us, even more than our mothers do or did, and that’s hard to imagine, and we become adopted children of God through the waters of baptism. And one of the things we talk about when we baptize is that this water reminds us of Noah and the ark, it reminds us of the Israelites being led through the waters to freedom and Mariam and the women rejoicing and singing, and then crossing the Jordan river into the promised land. It reminds us of Jesus’ own baptism, and it also reminds us that in the fullness of time, I love that phrase, that Jesus was nurtured for 9 months in the water of the womb. That Jesus was born, just like us, and was loved and nurtured and loved by his mother, Mary. Yesterday it occurred to me that wow is simply mother upside down. And so today we remember, and we celebrate God’s love for us as best demonstrated by the sacrificial and self-giving love of our mothers and all the other women who have made a difference in our lives, so we give thanks, but may it not just be this day, may we give thanks to God for everyone who has made us who we are every day. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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