Sermon For August 29, 1999
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
HEBREW TESTAMENT: “Moses Learns God’s Name” ~ Exodus 3:1-15
If Pharaoh had had his way I would not be here today. Wqhen I was born, Pharaoh was killing the babies. My mother and my sister put me in a basket. They set me in the water near the shore. My sister waited and watched. Pharaoh’s daughter found me. She picked me up and held me above her and said, “Look, a beautiful baby.” She decided to make me her own. My sister was there, hiding. She came out and said, “Could I help you, princess, find a nursemaid for the baby?” It was years later, as I became a young man, that I discovered that nursemaid was my own mother.
At first I thought that I was a pricne of Pharaoh. But there were times when my mother was tired of upset, and she would say things, say things about, “Well, if you were really my child.” The servants would sometimes call me “Hebrew”. Hebrew. I knew the Hebrew’s were the slaves fo Pharaoh. As I realized what all the whispers where about, I wanted to find my fammily. It didn’t take me long to find my sister and my brithwr Aaron, and my mother. My mother and my sister laughed when they told me the story about the basket in the water, and how my sister had come to get my own mother to be my nursemaid. I had many happy conversations, talking about my family and my people, and our God. After that I watched things more carefully. I saw how Pharaoh treated the Hebrew people. He was very cruel. One day I saw one of the bosses whipping a slave for a small mistake. The man fell to the ground and said, “Please, stop, your are hurting me.” But the whip came down again, and again, and I felt anger rise up inside me. I could not control myself, and I went and I hit the boss as hard as I could. He dropped to the ground, dead.