God Promises Freedom by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

If you have been to a worship service during Holy Week, on the night we call Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday, then you have definitely heard the story of Passover. It’s the meal Jesus and his disciples, as good Jews were celebrating the night he was betrayed. Perhaps you have even been to a church where they have done some sort of reenactment of the Passover seder which is the special meal associated with Passover. Or maybe you have had the privilege of participating in a Passover seder with a Jewish family.

Passover is a high holy festival among Jewish people as they remember the time over 3000 years ago when their people were led out of slavery and into freedom. The name Passover comes from these instructions from God. Each family was to slaughter a lamb and prepare a meal. They were to take some of the blood and mark the door frame of their house. They were also supposed to bake unleavened bread. This is to signify that the next day they left in a hurry, no time for bread to rise. They ate bitter herbs, again as a symbol of their pain and suffering as slaves. And they were to eat with their sandals on and a walking stick in their hand, ready to leave in a hurry. 

At midnight every first born in Egypt, even down to the prisoners in the jail and even the animals was struck dead. But God passed over all the homes with blood marking their door. This was a sign that the Hebrew slaves were to be set free. 

Pharaoh called in Moses and Aaron and ordered the Hebrew people to leave immediately. They were free! After 430 years of living in Egypt, much of it as slaves, they could go home. And so to this day, every year, Jewish people celebrate the Passover of God. They celebrate the day that God, using Moses, defeated Pharaoh and led the people into freedom. When Jewish people suffered the atrocities of the Nazi Holocaust, they remembered this story and held onto this story. Our God led us into freedom once, and God will do it again. 

When Africans Americans suffered as slaves in this country they held onto this story of being led to Freedom.  And when they continued to suffer under Jim Crow laws in the south, this story of freedom was a source of strength and hope. Our God will save us. Our God has heard the cries of the people who were slaves in Egypt. God did not forget them and God will not forget us. God will lead us into freedom. This story inspires us when we feel trapped.

However, I must confess I find this story troubling.  There is something about this story that I do not like. I do not like God’s tactics in this story. God is judgmental. God is violent. I know, we sometimes try to deal with stories like this by saying, “This is the God of the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, after Jesus comes along, Jesus shows us that God is more compassionate.” But the God of the Old Testament IS the God of the New Testament. The people had some misunderstandings of what it meant to follow God in Old Testament times, but there is only one God.

So what do we make of a God who comes by night and strikes dead the first born of every Egyptian family? Biblical scholar Terence E. Fretheim explains it this way (Source Exodus: Interpretation A Bible commentary for Teaching and Preaching, by Terence E. Fretheim, John Knox Press, Louisville, 1991 pp.141). We have to go back to a statement in Exodus 4:21-23, the story we read last week, when Moses is still tending sheep on the Mountain of Horeb and God calls him to go to Egypt. “God said to Moses, “When you get back to Egypt, be prepared: All the wonders that I will do through you, you’ll do before Pharaoh. But I will make him stubborn so that he will refuse to let the people go. Then you are to tell Pharaoh, ‘God’s Message: Israel is my son, my firstborn! I told you, “Free my son so that he can serve me.” But you refused to free him. So now I’m going to kill your son, your firstborn.’”

Remember that Pharaoh had tried to kill all the first born of the Hebrew people, Moses’ people? These are the people of Israel, they are God’s first born, and God’s chosen people. If you kill all the first born this equals genocide for the race. Pharaoh was trying to kill off God’s children (ibid). This angered God.

Now, what God had in Pharaoh was a leader who thought he was in charge of a people. He was dedicating the children to their own gods. By putting to death the first born of Egypt God was threatening the future of the Egyptian people. This was a game changer. Something to get their attention. To let them know that the one true God was their God too. The God who created the universe created them too. And by the way, God was no going to tolerate Pharaoh making slaves of the Hebrew people (ibid).  

We can debate whether or not we like the idea of God putting to death so many Egyptians to get their attention. Just like we can debate whether or not bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the way to end WWII. We can debate whether or not we think this story is literally true or some sort of metaphor. I’m cool with that. The point of the story, is that something big happened. The Egyptians were finally crippled. This was the final blow to the tyrant Pharaoh. And the Hebrew people finally had a chance to make their run for freedom. God had sent Moses to free the people and now, finally, they were able to be free. 

This is a story of freedom. God wants us to be free. God created us to be free. God wants all people to be free. 

So why is it that we try so hard to control one another? We need some order, Fair enough. We create traffic laws and street lights so that we don’t have chaos on the roads and won’t run into one another. Parents set boundaries for children because children’s brains have not fully developed. They don’t have impulse control. They can’t handle complete freedom. Psychopaths that are a danger to themselves and others have to be in places where they will be safe and others will be safe from them. Okay, I don’t think God wants freedom to the point of anarchy. 

But God did not create us so that some people would rule over others and live in luxury while others sweat and toil and suffer with no space in life for beauty and joy. The story of Exodus shows us that God will not abide that sort of imbalance in creation. God gets angry and God acts to set people free.

God wants each one of us to be free, free to be the person God created us to be. But if some other person is controlling us or holding us back in some way, that person is going against God. And if we participate in letting that person control us then we have some responsibility to speak up, and work to get balance in that relationship, or leave, to be free. Because God wants us to be free to be the person God created us to be.

Now, if a system perpetuates an oppression of a group of people then that system is going against the way of God because God is not an oppressor. God loves freedom. Let me give you some examples of systemic oppression. 

“While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes.”  Source: “The Top 10 Most Startling Facts About People of Color and Criminal Justice in the United States.” http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/03/13/11351/the-top-10-most-startling-facts-about-people-of-color-and-criminal-justice-in-the-united-states/.  That is systemic oppression. 

Just ask any African American person you know and they will probably tell you a story of being pulled over by the police for no apparent reason, or being arrested for no probable cause, or they may know someone who knows someone who has been roughed up by the police or worse. I am not blaming the police here, they are part of a bigger picture of systemic racism in our country that goes all the way back to slavery. 

Our country was founded on the premise that white people could go to Africa and take free people from their homes and force them to come here to work. Our American economy was built on the backs of slaves. There is no getting around that. The freedom of some was built upon the slavery of others. Our country is still suffering from that history. I have, of course, never owned a slave, but I enjoy the privilege of being white in this country. It means I was more likely to grow up with opportunities for a better education and access to opportunities and more wealth. And in this country money brings power and control over others. 

But here’s the thing: God does not want one group of people to control another group of people or one single person to control another person. God wants people to be free. But we have a culture that values money and gives power and control to those with money. In many ways we all still live on the plantation where the one with the most money makes slaves of the rest, because we all want to be the plantation owner. “the one who dies with the most toys wins,” right? 

There is no place in scripture that says money and power will bring us eternal joy. I challenge you to find that.  Rather, God created each one of us to be the person God created us to be. All this striving to be someone else, or the picture of perfection is for nothing. We can never attain some imaginary vision of what we think is perfection. In God’s eyes we are already perfect. I know we say there are no perfect people. That means we all make mistakes. What we do is imperfect, but who we are… well who we are is perfect. In God eyes, we are good. Each one of us free to be the good creation that God created us to be.  

God wants you to live out your calling and that means that the person sitting next to you has to be free to live out his or hers. Until everyone is free, no one is free. Our freedom is interconnected. If one person is enjoying a lavish life at the expense of someone else’s suffering then “WE” are not free. 

So how do we seek freedom for everyone? We value community. We can’t just look out for ourselves. That is not freedom. Looking out for yourself is self-interest but it is not free. Freedom is the security of knowing that you are being the person God put you on this earth to be and so is each and every other person around you. Because when they are being who God created them to be, they will be content, and you will be too. We won’t be fighting with each other because that is not what God wants. God wants each one of us to be blessed and full of joy and using our gifts. 

Now, we can’t force everyone else, today, (or ever) to decide to live into God’s desire for them. If we have a good relationship with them, then we can invite them to do that and we can walk beside them. That is a great thing to do. We can do this today: we can decide for ourselves to live into God’s desire for ourselves. We can be set free: free from the control that anyone else is trying to have over us, free from any systems that would oppress us and others. We can believe that we are free. We can put our trust in God to guide us. 

If you will, I invite you to say these two sentences with me:

I want to be the person God created me to be.

I will be free.