Long ago, Moses was a tired fugitive who finally stopped running and sat down by a well. In that day and age, things happened at wells because that’s where people gathered; everyone needed water, whether for themselves or their gardens or their livestock. A group of girls brought their sheep and goats to the well to be watered, but they were chased away by boys—shepherds who believed their gender gave them privilege; besides, how better to prove you’re a man than to bully someone else. They were wrong (as such beliefs are always wrong). Suddenly Moses got up, made the shepherds wait their turn, and helped the young girls water their flock.
When the girls returned home, they told their father about the stranger who’d helped them. Immediately he sent someone back to find this man and invite him to dinner as an act of gratitude and hospitality. The story speeds up then. Within two verses, Moses is welcomed, married into the family, and the father of a young son. Moses went from being an outcast, wandering in the wilderness, to being a son-in-law in the big family of the priest of Midian, a father with seven daughters of which one, Zipporah, became Moses’ wife.
My wife Beth is the fourth of five children. Her father is a retired Presbyterian minister who served a church in Milwaukee when I was a pastor in nearby Racine, Wisconsin. When Beth and I started dating, I knew her father and her brother-in-law who was also a Presbyterian minister, and I’d met two of Beth’s sisters. But I’d never met Beth’s mother, who was quite anxious to check out this bachelor courting her talented daughter. So one day I was invited to the Johnstone house, and wouldn’t you know it, on that day all of Beth’s siblings just happened to be visiting—sitting around nonchalantly in the family room when I entered their house. For a moment, I wished I was huddled near a well in far off Midian, but soon we were talking and laughing and I was quickly welcomed lovingly into this new family.
There’s a cuteness in how I met my in-laws. There’s a cuteness in how Moses settled into the family of Reuel in the land of Midian. But Moses’ story also includes important themes of faith we can’t overlook—themes like justice for the weak, welcome for the migrant, and forgiveness for the criminal. Start with justice: As we heard last week in our reading from Exodus 1, Pharaoh wanted midwives to kill all boy babies. They refused, taking a stand for justice. Next Pharaoh demanded the male babies be drowned in the Nile, but his own daughter vetoed his unjust law and Moses survived.
In today’s passage, we are told how Moses strongly intervened when an Egyptian was beating a Hebrew. Later, Moses intervened a second time when two Hebrews were fighting, insisting on peace especially among his own people. Eventually Moses has to flee, and we are told about his intervention on behalf of the young girls being harassed by the shepherds. So we have a cute story—the stranger who protects the young women at the well and becomes a new son-in-law; and we have an inspiring story – a young man raised in Egypt who is committed to protecting the weak and acting for justice for all. But this is not a Hollywood drama. Moses is a migrant in a foreign country. And Moses is a murderer, a felon fleeing punishment in his homeland. So how do we come to terms with the messier parts of the story as well?
Migrants and migration are on everyone’s minds today. It’s a troubling, complicated subject, but there are many parallels to Moses’ story. He lived in an Egyptian nation that oppressed the Hebrew people. Moses fought back against that oppression and killed an overseer. Did Moses make the best choice when he did this? From our modern perspective, no, he didn’t. I’ll say more about this in a moment. But in the end, Egypt was no longer a safe place for him and Moses had to flee. Thank God for his in-laws. Thank God that a time of rejection and persecution transitioned into a chapter of welcome, domesticity and safety. Once more Moses survived through the intervention of others – and once more it involved people who were not explicitly part of the chosen people. God always paints on a canvas larger than one race, one nation, or one people’s history.
In March 2019, Cyclone Idai struck the coast of Mozambique. Within one day, almost 2 million people needed help; 100,000 people lost their homes, 1 million acres of crops were lost, $1 billion worth of infrastructure was destroyed. It was the worst storm in Mozambique’s history; yet our world faces a future where “unprecedented” storms are becoming all too common.1 The World Bank estimates that three regions of the world—Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia—will have 143 million migrants and refugees over the next 30 years, fleeing catastrophic weather events or humanitarian crises due to climate change. And this total doesn’t include those who are fleeing persecution from dictators, drug gangs or religious bigotry at home. Refugee crises are not going away. Neither of our political parties has an immediate answer to this challenge. Moses and his adoptive family remind us that to have this discussion about immigration we need to start from a place of compassion, of hospitality, of caring for the stranger as best we can so long as they stand beside us on our soil. For we are either all in this together or we will soon come to see that none of us has a sustainable path forward at all.
Now, the most challenging part of this bible story is coming to terms with the fact that Moses was a murderer; he was someone who took someone else’s life with intentionality. The Old Testament writers do not automatically condemn Moses for this act. They stress that because Moses struck down an oppressor and fled into Midian, it prepared the way for his encounter with God at the burning bush and the eventual freedom of the Hebrew people. Today I don’t think we can so easily condone Moses’ act of violence. Thanks to the Civil Rights Movement, to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and John Lewis, we trust in the power of non-violent campaigns. But the fact remains – Moses was, in effect, a felon guilty of murder, a fugitive seeking a new beginning in a foreign land.
Even as people of faith, we find it difficult to talk about forgiveness when it concerns people caught up in the tangled web of our criminal justice system. For far too long, we have been comfortable with racist rhetoric about “law and order,” “three strikes you’re out” and “just lock ‘em up” policies. We have been slow, if not indifferent, when it comes to forgiving and welcoming home returning citizens whose time behind bars is finally over. Felons have a wicked hard time finding jobs and housing once they’re released—as they have to keep checking a box acknowledging their criminal record—as they learn they are ineligible for any student loans—and as doors of opportunity remain locked to them even on this side of prison bars.
And let’s expand this conversation to touch on related problems: Right now the largest mental health facilities in America are our jails. The National Alliance of Mental Illness estimates that between 25-40% of Americans with mental illness will be jailed or incarcerated at some point in their life.2 Or consider this: For people struggling with opioid addictions, it takes on average eight years of on and off again treatments to get one year of sobriety for a drug addict.3
So can we finally do what is right? Can we forgive, welcome back the returning citizen, provide resources beyond prison for the mentally ill, intervene and support families as their loved ones relapse multiple times trying to break drug habits? What does Moses’ welcome into a stranger’s home tell us about how we must treat the alien, the immigrant, the troubled soul waiting by our modern day wells, hoping for a path forward?
The final verses of Exodus 2 say that God looked upon the Israelites groaning under slavery and God heard their cries. God took notice of them. That’s the first step in this shared journey of faith—to notice. Moses acted for justice and set his people free, but he was only saved because he was noticed by strangers—the Pharaoh’s daughter who plucked him from the Nile waters, the Midianite priest who called him from the well to a new home and new beginning. God used those acts to create a future for Israelites and Gentiles alike, for ancient Hebrews then and you and me today. Later a similar transition from man of violence to gospel proclaimer of the Prince of Peace happened in the life of Paul—an apostle whose witness to Christ’s liberating grace was only possible because others first forgave and welcomed him.
Ask yourself: How many times have you been forgiven? How often have others welcomed you in, given you a second chance when you messed up, opened doors for you that you might succeed, be safe, be loved? A marriage is the blending of two families. Becoming the body of Christ involves blending lots of families, lots of stories, giving and receiving acts of compassion that all might be welcomed and know the redeeming love of Christ.
Every week we say the Lord’s Prayer—”Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” It’s not a contract—promising to forgive precisely the number of times we’ve been forgiven. Rather it’s a covenant, a way of life and humility that knows we are called to forgive others. That’s why it is right for us to do what we can for the stranger, the migrant, the returning citizen; to notice and welcome the marginalized, the neglected, the lonely.
God paints on a canvas wider than just our story because God sees all; God hears, God notices, and God cares for all. As children of God, redeemed of Christ, may we go and do likewise.
AMEN
1 John Podesta, “The Climate Crisis, Migration and Refugees,” July 25, 2019;
https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-climate-crisis-migration-and-refugees/
2 Matt Ford, “America’s Largest Mental Hospital is a Jail,” Atlantic, June 8, 2015.
3 Beth Macy, Dopesick, p. 174.