Waiting in Chains (Advent 2)
In Genesis 15:13-16, God is quite clear to Abram - his descendants are going to be enslaved in a foreign land for four hundred years. And so at the end of the Patriarchal narratives, the end of Genesis, we see Joseph, himself a liberated slave, bring his brothers to Egypt to live in the prosperity that God has brought him. Yet, as we turn from Genesis to Exodus, right after we are told of the numerousness of Abraham's descendants, the fateful words come:
Ex 15:8 And a new king arose over Egypt who knew not Joseph.
(The Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter)
I wonder how many of the now-numerous Hebrews in Egypt knew the prophecy and promise of Gen 15:13-16. Intergenerational transmission of anything is a fraught affair, but it can also be a powerful legacy. I am sure that for many, such words were passed down generation to generation, knee to knee. But for many others, I am also sure that they grew up entirely ignorant that both (a) there was an end promised, (b) that they wouldn't see it.
I honestly think it's nigh impossible for me to truly imagine what it is like to be born into slavery, to toil one's life away in slavery, and to have no sure and certain hope of deliverance. It requires more than my imagination can do. And yet, people _can_ sustain such a weight of suffering. We know, in more recent history, of enslaved African-Americans who emerged from slavery neither crushed nor broken, sustained by Christian hope, a hope that saw in the pages of Exodus the very same resources for hope that sustained the Hebrews.
That hope is written into the narrative of Exodus. Despite the slavery, despite the soul-crushing and body-grinding labour, despite the state-sanctioned genocide, it's right there in Exodus 2:
And it happened when a long time had passed that the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned from the bondage and cried out, and their plea from the bondage went up to God. And God heard their moaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God saw the Israelites, and God knew.
Ex 2:23-25 (The Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter)
They groaned, they cried out pleaded, they pleaded. And God heard, God remembered, God saw, and God knew. That last verb is so mysterious - God knew. Knew what? Knew them, knew their suffering, knew what to do. And the rest of this book is the story of God's liberation.
I think the Exodus narrative fulfils at least three functions for the Christian. Firstly, the paradigm of Exodus as liberation from slavery is transposed in the New Testament to a primarily spiritual motif: the liberation of human beings from the bondage of sin and death. We are a people freed and set free to live in response to that freedom. Secondly, the Exodus in the Old Testament always functions as a reminder that the Israelites once were slaves, and the way that Gentiles in particular are grafted in to the people of God means that in a curious and complex sense we should remember that our (spiritual) ancestors were slaves. This ought to shape our behaviour in the world. Thirdly, the Exodus narrative gives us great resources of hope in present sufferings for future liberation. We don't know when, we don't know if it will even happen in our life times, but there will always come a day when God will wipe away every tear, all mourning, crying, and pain, and make all things new.