Remember this quote: There are years that ask questions and years that answer. It’s from Their Eyes Were Watching God by African American novelist Zora Neale Hurston. Nowadays I hear a lot of people say that they just don’t know what tomorrow holds. Kids are going back to college—will they be safe? Schools are doing nine weeks of remote learning—but then what? Can the family owned business, the local restaurant, the behind-in-their-payments renter survive another three months or more of this pandemic? What does the future hold for us here in Pittsburgh, in America, and frankly in the world around us?
The year 2020 is shaping up to be a year that asks questions. Think about it. It has asked fundamental questions about the way we’ve all been living up until now. We’ve long been a consumer culture—but what happens when buying things doesn’t solve our problems? We’ve long been a tourism culture, flying everywhere and burning lots of fossil fuel in the process—but what happens when we can’t safely travel? For decades, we’ve relied on a flawed, inequitable health care system that is inefficient, awash in paperwork, and doesn’t provide basic care to every American. The pandemic has highlighted these problems and raised the serious question, “Can we do better for everyone going forward? What can we learn from 2020?”
2020 is a year that asks questions. Maybe this entire year was meant to be a time when we finally asked ourselves, “Must police brutality against people of color be allowed? How can I slow down the busyness of life so I can truly stay connected with the people I love? If church is no longer defined as one hour a week spent in a sanctuary, can I discover new ways to live out my faith and rejoice in God’s presence all around me?” Maybe the silver-lining of 2020 is that it is calling us to ask these questions without expecting an answer right away—calling us to grapple with, think about and pray over these things, so that perhaps 2021 can be, in Zora Neale Hurston’s words, “a year that answers.”
Now, far be it from me to speak for God, but I have it on pretty good scriptural authority that God is known for taking the long-view of things. There’s the famous verse from 2 Peter about how “one day is like a thousand years with the Lord” and Psalm 90 talks about how “from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” God is always focused on the “big picture,” moving from the dawn of creation with a plan of redemption that touches each generation of human history between now and the horizon at the end of time. Sure, our focus may be on August 2020 and God is both aware of and concerned about “right now.” But God’s awareness and concern is shaped by a larger, big picture, loving desire that is working to heal the world and bring fullness of life to as many as possible between now and the end of time. Let that concept sink in for a moment.
For example, we heard today the birth of Moses story found in Exodus 1. But Exodus isn’t the first book of the bible; Genesis is. Genesis—with its story of the seven days of creation; Noah’s family saved in their tiny ark; Abraham and Sarah called to a new land; Isaac and Rebekah giving birth to Jacob, who with his wives gave birth to the children who would become the twelve tribes of Israel—including Joseph, whose leadership saved the Hebrew people when famine forced them all to move to Egypt. The long history of Genesis doesn’t go away when we turn the page and start reading Exodus 1—when we discover a new king rules in Egypt who not only doesn’t remember Joseph, but who wants to destroy all of Joseph’s people. The God of Creation, taking a long view of history, is now confronted by a Pharaoh of Anti-Creation, a king wielding weapons of destruction that run directly contrary to God’s plans.
Back in the time of Moses, a years’ worth of questions came from the lips of the Hebrew people in Egypt: How long must we endure harsh taskmasters, ruthless in their demands, who turn us into their slaves? God heard those questions and God acted to bring them an answer—an answer that came through five women: a pair of midwives, a mother and her daughter, and one princess. In each case, they had a choice to make and they chose life over death—it was as simple as that. That formula worked for them and it will still work for us today.
Pharaoh’s first edict tried to turn two midwives, Shiprah and Puah, into murderers. He said, “If you sit on the birthing stool and see that the child to be born is a male, kill him.” That went against their core values, their community identity and their faith, so they refused—choosing life over death. Seeing this plan fail, Pharaoh next said, “Throw every male child of the Hebrews into the waters of the Nile,” decreeing a genocide that would have wiped out God’s people in a few generations. Moses’ mother did put her male child into the waters of the Nile, but she set him adrift in a papyrus basket with prayers to God—once again choosing life over death. And though the Pharaoh’s law was for everyone in the land, his own daughter chose to rescue the crying baby boy who floated by her—choosing life over death and effectively putting an end to her father’s ruthless and unjust policies.
Three things guided these women: compassion, justice, and courage. Compassion led the midwives to honor their callings and protect the vulnerable children; justice led them to insist on doing what was right as opposed to surrendering to despair and helplessness; and courage prompted them to speak truth to power, to act faithfully, and to choose life over death. It is a simple ethical formula that still applies to each of us today. We need to daily ask ourselves: Will this action of mine show compassion or not? Will it be just or not? And if it is challenging something that is unrighteous and oppressive to others, can I muster up the courage to do what needs to be done?
I’m a big fan of Barbara Tuchman’s writings, especially a book of hers titled The March of Folly. In it she describes the times in history when governments acted against their own best interests, stubbornly sticking to counter-productive policies even when there were other known options they could have chosen and even when people around them warned them against such acts of folly. Pulling the giant, wooden horse inside the walls of Troy was an act of folly. The decadence of the Renaissance popes that provoked the Protestant Reformation was a sad period of folly. British incompetence in their treatment of the American colonies, and American ineptitude in pursuing the Vietnam War are examples of folly. Too often we don’t learn from history. We act in ways that are short-sighted and self-destructive. Long ago, the king of Egypt tried to destroy the Hebrew people through genocide. But his folly only led to actions by five women that ended up rescuing Moses and setting him on a path as God’s agent who would both free the Hebrews from slavery and bring down the power of Egypt. Centuries later, King Herod would again seek to murder all the young Hebrew male children in the land, but the child Jesus would escape his decree and come back to free an entire nation from bondage to sin and worldly oppression.
Gaining big-picture perspective is crucial when trying to navigate a difficult season like the one we’re in now and avoid acts of folly. Big-picture perspective can be found when we remember God is the Lord of all time—active from the beginning of creation through all our days and far into the future. God works in surprising, sometimes subversive ways—planting seeds now that only bear fruit months or years later and using unexpected people as agents for holy change. In this divided political season, we need to remember that God is no respecter of persons nor more aligned with blue states than with red states. God has been at work in students protesting racism and police violence in urban streets and in households in rural communities trying to pay bills, avoid opioid addictions, and raise families in a changing, difficult, global economy. Demonizing the left by the right or the right by the left serves no long-term Godly purpose. Remember what the apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 1: God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are…so let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. God used two midwives, a Hebrew slave and her daughter, and a palace princess barred from sitting on the throne in a male-dominated kingdom to protect the life of the infant Moses. And years later, God came into the world through an unheralded carpenter’s son from Nazareth, who healed and served in humility and grace that all the world might be saved, set free at last.
If 2020 is to be a year of questions, then recognize the difference between the short-term questions we ask that serve our own needs and the long-term questions we are called to ask on behalf of the world. The women in Exodus who helped birth a new chapter in God’s plan for history call on us today to ask three simple questions: “Is your choice compassionate? Is it just for all? And do you have the courage, by God’s grace, to act on what you believe—to speak truth to power and choose life over death?” We need new midwife schemes and faithful acts of defiance so that a better world may yet be born this year and for years to come.
AMEN