Sermonstudio

My name is Miriam. Perhaps you know me. You would be more familiar with my name if I had been born in another culture, for in other cultures the name "Miriam" is given as "Mary." But the way you would know me best, in any case, is through my brothers. I have two brothers. My brother, Aaron, is the leader of those who are priests for our people. And my brother Moses - well, you surely know my brother Moses. He is the leader of our people. If it were not for Moses, I think we would be no people at all. We would be slaves in Egypt, and we would by now be so deeply oppressed that there would be no hope of rediscovering our identity, let alone separating ourselves so that we could develop ourselves once more as a people, and become the people we understand that God means us to be. But that's a long story - a story which few persons but myself can any longer tell, because almost no one remembers it from the beginning, as I do. I'd like to tell you the story. To me, it's not only a fascinating story and a gripping story, but it's a story with so many overtones and undertones of meaning about our God, and about his plans and purposes for all his children.

Well, I said I remember the story from the beginning. Actually, I know it from even before the beginning. The story has a prelude from a time long before I was born, a time when our people were just one family, descendants of a man named Abraham and his wife Sarah. Abraham and Sarah had made a long journey to a special land our God had prepared for them. Our God promised Abraham that if Abraham would be faithful, he, our God, would be faithful to Abraham and Sarah, and not only to them but to all of their descendants, as many as grains of sand on the seashore, as many as stars in the sky. Abraham and Sarah had only one child, a son, Isaac. Isaac and his wife, Rebekah, had twin children, a son, Esau, and a son, Jacob, but the special promise of God was secured by Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons, so the family increased speedily then, and it was during a famine while Jacob and his family were living in Abraham's land that he and all of his sons decided to come to Egypt. Jacob's son, Joseph, had achieved a high position in the Egyptian government, and was able to obtain grain for food for his father and his brothers and their families, so they became settled and established in Egypt, and they prospered there for many years.

We're getting closer now to the beginning of my story, for my brothers and I are among those who descended from the children of Jacob, or Israel, as he came to be called later, after Jacob and his family had moved to Egypt. This Israelite family prospered wonderfully in Egypt, even during the time of the famine. And when plenty was restored, they prospered even more. But two things happened that changed life for them - for us - profoundly. We prospered so bountifully that the Egyptians began to see us not as a refugee-type family who needed help, but as an economic force which threatened them and their own interests. And beyond that, there were changes in the government as time went on, and the position of Jacob's son, Joseph, who from his position had been such a help and asset to our people, faded and was at last deliberately forgotten. The rulers of the Egyptians were called Pharaohs, and when the Pharaoh Ramses II came into power, it was a very bad day for us Israelites.

For Ramses said to his advisers, "We have to do something about these people. They are becoming more and mightier than we are!" And from that time on, our life in Egypt was changed. Ramses could simply have expelled us. He could have cast us out into the desert where at last we went, led by our God and by Moses. But he did not want to do that. Ramses wanted, as they say, "to have his cake and eat it too." He wanted to bring an end to the possibility that we could threaten the Egyptians by our numbers and our skills, but at the same time, he wanted to have our numbers and even some of our skills available for his own benefit and for the benefit of Egypt. He decided to put us to work in hard labor. He broke up our families, taking our men and young men into the construction service of Egypt. He even had our women making bricks, which he used in the building of great cities and great monuments. He made us help, in other words, to show what a great power Egypt was. The Egyptian taskmasters who were set over our people were cruel and kept us busy enough and separated enough so that the Egyptians felt sure we could neither organize in opposition to the government nor for an escape into the wilderness. Our people were angry and discouraged, but our God kept his promises to Abraham, and our God kept our people's spirits up so that they never lost their sense of who they were, nor their sense of relationship with one another and God.

In spite of the oppression, the hard labor we were put to and the efforts that the Pharaoh made to divide us from one another - in spite of all that, our people kept growing. It is written in one of the documents of those days, "The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread!" Pharaoh's plan was not working! He was getting labor out of us, but we were not submitting ourselves to him in spirit, nor were we losing our identity as a separate people and becoming the slave class that he wanted us to be. So his plans grew more severe. He determined that he had to start to kill us off selectively, and he directed that when Hebrew children were born, male children should be cast into the Nile River. Of course our people resisted this decree in every way they could. But with the overseers so much among us, it was hard to hide a baby very long - especially since the women as well as the men were often forced into slave labor.

We're at the point now where my own memory begins and takes over the story. My mother Jochabed was not only strong-willed, but she was very shrewd. My father Amram was, like all our Israelite men, in slavery to the Pharaoh, and all the men were in continual danger for their lives. Whenever the overseers saw any of the rules of Pharaoh being defied, the punishment was swift and utterly severe. There were more male babies destroyed than I can bear to think of, but it seemed to be a matter of letting the baby go or of the whole family being murdered. My mother, however, was not only hard to intimidate, but she was resourceful and wily. Mother had not been making bricks during the time just before my little brother was born, because she had been so weak and ill that she was no help to the crew. I had been pretty much in charge of things at home, which made it a little easier for us to keep the baby Moses unnoticed after he was born. Our neighbors were too involved with their own troubles to have gotten much involved in ours. We kept the baby hidden for nearly three months while all our family lived in constant dread. But Mother, always thoughtful, watched and waited for some opportunity, and finally it came.

Our little home - if such it could be called - was one of those nearest the Nile River, the very river into which male infants were supposed to be thrown. Not far down the river from our home there was a lovely little pool at the river's edge, surrounded by rushes so that it was private. Mother realized one day that the Pharaoh's daughter had discovered that pool and was coming often with her attendants to bathe. Mother developed a scheme in her mind, for she was beginning to realize that the baby Moses was growing to the point where we could no longer keep him hidden away. In fact, his strength and his beauty were the very things that would cause the attention of the authorities to be drawn to him and make him more vulnerable. Mother began to accumulate rushes from near the place in the river where the princess bathed and she started weaving them into the shape of a basket which looked like a little boat. We didn't know what was going on, but with my mother, one did not ask - one just waited and watched. Father was gone, laboring on a distant project of Pharaoh's. I was five or six years old then - at an age when I was not yet old enough or strong enough for overseers to take me away for labor, but old enough to do quite a bit for my mother. When the little boat which mother had made seemed large enough to her for the secret purpose she had in her mind, she took it down to the river and floated it out on the water. But it soon filled up and sank, much to her disappointment. Not discouraged for long, Mother brought it secretly back to our house and then began making trips in the dark of the night to the tar pit at the edge of the village, bringing home tar which she dabbed on the basket until it was covered outside. Again she tried it on the river, and this time it floated.

I could see that mother was both pleased about something and very distressed about something, but I did not know then what it was that was going on - I did not know that what had pleased her and what had distressed her were the same thing. She would hold the baby, looking at him with such love and such care that it sometimes frightened me. And then one afternoon she saw the princess coming to the river to bathe in the hidden pool. She wrapped my baby brother in his best cloth and she put him in the little basket she had made. As I watched, she took the basket with Moses down to the river and to the rushes at the edge of the pool. The rushes were thick and though Mother knew that the princess was in the pool, the princess could not see mother or the dark bundle Mother placed in the water. Mother made a sign to me to stay nearby. Then she jiggled the basket so that Moses woke up, startled, and she pushed the basket into the reeds and the rushes. Moses was old enough by then to know that something strange was happening, and he began to cry. Mother had been careful with Moses, keeping the secret of his presence to ourselves, and one of the ways she'd been careful had been to keep him as much as possible from crying by holding him and rocking him in her arms. Moses was used to Mother's arms and Moses knew that whatever was rocking him now in his basket, was not our mother. As he began to cry more loudly, Mother did what must have been the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. She pushed Moses further into the rushes and hurried away, leaving only myself playing at the water's edge and watching. For all Mother knew, this was not only the end of her time of joy with Moses, but it had every possibility of being the end of our little baby's life. It was a gamble with the highest possible stakes.

The basket, with Moses now crying loudly, drifted deeper into the reeds, toward the women. I could not see everything that happened, but I could tell when the young women first began to be aware that there was a strange sound - a baby crying near them in the water. Then I saw the princess stand and point, and one of the attendants came in among the reeds and found the basket with our baby. I did not know whether to be happy or frightened, for Egyptian law then said that male Israelite babies should be put to death, and our baby was going into the hands of the princess of Egypt! But Mother had known exactly what she was doing. Mother had calculated about how Moses was such a beautiful baby that he would catch the interest of any young woman, and that is exactly what happened. I saw the basket being lifted out of the water and I saw the princess peer inside. I could hear Moses growing quieter as he sensed that the rocking of the river had stopped and that something new was happening. Soon, as I watched through the rushes, the princess was lifting Moses out of the basket and into her arms, and our baby was hushed as she held him. I heard her saying something to the young women with her about "this Israelite baby," and my heart nearly stopped. But the princess seemed to be holding Moses protectively against her, and I understood then that this was exactly what Mother had planned for and hoped for.

Soon there was excited, even agitated conversation in the group, and I was bold enough to move on down the shore nearer the women. I could not understand all their words, but something - perhaps even our watchful God himself - led me to think that they were wondering what to do with a baby! I had then one of the brightest thoughts I've ever had - perhaps that thought, too, came from beyond me. For I thought, "Why don't I offer Mother to care for the baby!" I will never know whether the princess knew what was going on - somehow I've always thought it was too obvious not to be understood, but she never acknowledged a thing, nor even questioned why a child like myself happened to be so near at the very moment when, while she was bathing, a Hebrew baby floated into her pool. As soon as I made my suggestion of a Hebrew woman to care for the baby of the princess, the princess said, "Of course; go right now and get her." Mother could not believe it when I ran into the house, out of breath, and told her what she was supposed to do. Her plan had not included this!

But she came eagerly - almost so eagerly as to give the whole thing away. Yet there again, the princess showed no sign of understanding. She said simply, "Take this child and care for him. He is mine, and I will pay you for the care you give him. I will want to see him often, and when he is older, he will come and live with me." To Mother, that was not bad news, for she had wondered if she might be leaving Moses to the fate of sudden death, and instead, he would now have life and she would be part of it. I'm sure, as I look back, that Mother sensed the hand and the power of our God in this whole enterprise. Mother sensed even then that Moses was special in more ways than being our beautiful baby. Mother somehow understood that he must at all costs be cared for and protected.

All that was nearly a lifetime ago now, and I have neither the time nor the strength to tell you the rest of the story. Perhaps you know some of it - how Moses grew up in Pharaoh's household but never forgot where he had come from; how he attacked and killed one day a particularly harsh Egyptian overseer of the Israelites, how he then fled to Midian and lived for many years in Midian until the day when our God met him in the wilderness and spoke to him out of the burning bush. Perhaps you know how Moses then returned to Egypt and took Aaron with him to Pharaoh to plead for the release of the Israelites. Pharaoh held out for a long time, but our God was on the side of my brothers, and at last Pharaoh said to Moses, "Take them and go!" Perhaps you know how the very sea waters parted under Moses' hand, so that we could escape from Egypt to the wilderness of Sinai. That was when I led the women, singing praise to God for our deliverance.

And I'm sure you know how long it's taken Moses to teach and train our people to grow from what they had been there at the last - just a crowd of slaves - and to become what God meant them to be, his people. It was those laws which my brother brought down from the mountain that seemed to be the one thing most necessary to our people's life together when at last they would get back to that land which Jacob and his children left so long ago. The time for that is nearly here now - I can tell. Our people at long last are nearly ready. I don't think I will get there, nor will my brother Aaron. Perhaps even Moses himself will not in the end get to that Promised Land - perhaps his work will have been done before that goal is reached.

That promise our God made to Abraham is a promise to everyone in all the world. The baby brother I helped rescue in the rushes, who became a leader in Egypt and became our people's leader is just part of God's larger plan and God's great purpose of delivering everyone, of making all people his people. I don't know how all this will happen, but I am so grateful that I've had a little part in all of it, and I'm more grateful that I've seen a little bit of what it means, and where it's going, and what will come! Amen.