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Hespeler, July 10, 2022 © Scott McAndless
Amos 7:7-17, Psalm 82, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37

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It all started for Amos in the oddest way that you could imagine. He was returning home from work one afternoon. He had spent his day dressing sycomore trees, a job that was normally done by itinerate workers like him. Sycomores produced a fruit that was considered to be of little value. It was also troublesome to grow because the fruit didn’t even ripen unless workers like him came around and pierced the husk around the fruit with a sharp stick at the right time of the year. The work didn’t pay well, but Amos actually didn’t often have much choice. In between short-term gigs working as a herdsman, it was often they only work he could find.

Though his situation in life often meant that people underestimated Amos, he did have a quick and curious mind. And as he was walking home that day, something did pique his interest. He came upon a man who was working on a house. The house was in pretty bad shape and this man had obviously been hired to do some long overdue repairs.

A Plumb Line

But what Amos found particularly interesting was that the worker was holding a strange contraption as he came up. He held a string that had a weight attached to the end of it up against one of the walls of the house. He was sadly shaking his head.

Amos, ever a friendly man, struck up a conversation with the worker and asked him what he was doing. That was how Amos came to learn that the device the man was using was called a plumb line. The builder used it to show Amos how the wall he was working on was in bad shape.

The Wall

“You see,” he said holding the line up against the wall, “the wall should follow the line of this string, but it is going off at a bad angle. There is too much weight resting on the top of the wall and not enough support from the smaller stones below and so the bottom is starting to crumble. This wall is not in good shape. In fact, if the owner of this house had waited much longer to call on me, I’m pretty sure it would have collapsed.”

For some reason, the image of that plumb line held up against that crooked wall remained with Amos as he continued on his way. He just couldn’t get it out of his head. In his dreams that night, it came to him again and then was followed by a vision of a collapsing house. When he awoke the next morning, he was convinced that there was a reason why he had seen that plumb line. It wasn’t just that construction worker who had shown it to him. He believed that Yahweh, his God, had shown it to him.

An Image Leads to a Journey

And that was really how it started. Because he couldn’t get the picture of a plumb line out of his head, a few weeks later Amos found himself on the road leaving his hometown of Tekoa. He was on his way to Bethel, which was the chief sanctuary of the Kingdom of Israel. After endless days meditating on that plumb line, Amos had concluded that it could only mean one thing. It was a message from Yahweh for the Kingdom of Israel.

Under its king, Jeroboam, Israel was living through a time of unprecedented strength and prosperity. It dominated the entire region both economically and military, so much so that Amos had constantly felt that influence even as a poor migratory worker in the neighbouring land of Judah. How often had he crossed the border looking for work and been mistreated? But the more that Amos reflected on the Kingdom of Israel and the things he had learned about it in recent years, the more it reminded him of that wall that he had seen on the verge of collapsing.

The kingdom had built its prosperity upon the labour of the farmers and workers and, yes, even upon the backs of lowly herdsman and dressers of sycomore trees. But it was the people at the top who had grown fat from all of this. The structure of the whole society was out of whack and Amos could see now that collapse would inevitably follow. Yes, Amos had a message from Yahweh and having received it, he knew he had to share it with the people of Israel before it was too late.

The Sanctuary at Bethel

Amos stood in the middle of sanctuary at Bethel, just off to the side of the main avenue. A larger crowd than he had ever encountered in his life was passing him in his filthy, second-hand shepherd’s robe. He had arrived here earlier this morning shortly after entering the territory of Israel from the south.

He had never seen anything quite like it in his life. There was a large altar connected to a sanctuary that contained a calf that had been covered with beaten gold. There were houses for the priests, a treasury and a huge collection of booths and tents that had been set up by all manner of prophets and seers who were selling oracles and divinations. There were also merchants who were hawking teraphim and idols as well as food and drink.

It was all rather overwhelming for a hick like him from Tekoa. But after a couple of hours in this strange place, he had begun to understand the social structure and interactions of this place. The great mass of the people who had come here for the festival seemed to be poor peasants, some of whom had brought a small lamb or heifer to sacrifice and feast on.

The Samaritan Elite

But there were also others who had come – men and women who were finely dressed and attended by large retinues of slaves and clients. They were clearly the elite who had come from the capital of Samaria for the festivities. As he recognized them for what they were, he knew that these were the ones, above all, that Yahweh had sent him to challenge and defy.

But Amos had yet to find his voice. He was having a hard time believing that anyone would care about whatever he had to say about the situation in Bethel, even if he did speak for Yahweh.

But just then there was a group of wealthy women from Samaria who passed in front of him. They were well-fed and had fine robes and painted faces. They were laughing and giggling together, but the thing that really bothered Amos about them was the fact that they seemed quite oblivious to all the people who surrounded them and who were anything but well-fed.

That was when the rage that had been building inside Amos since he had arrived finally broke through and he began to shout. He addressed the women directly.

“Listen to me you fat cows of Bashan who spend your days grazing on the slopes of Mount Samaria.” He pointed at them directly. “You, you are the ones who oppress the poor, who crush the needy. And how do you do it? You do it by ordering your husbands around. ‘Bring us something to drink! Bring us whatever we desire!’” (Amos 4:1)

Amos Gets an Audience

And just like that, Amos had an audience. Most of the people who were coming to the festival day after day were only too happy to listen to him. Indeed, as the days went on, many came specifically to seek him out and hear what he had to say. They had heard of the strange preacher from Judah who had come to Bethel as word of his oracles spread throughout the surrounding fields and villages. Most of them were only too happy to hear the way that he piled his abuse and scorn upon the Samaritan elite. So he often had them in the palm of his hand.

As for the members of the elite who were coming to the festival, they did what they could to quietly shut him down. They complained to the local priesthood and the authorities, but, for the moment at least, the authorities at the sanctuary could only see the simple fact that Amos was bringing more people out to the festival and so they only made half-hearted efforts at telling him that he needed to tone down his rhetoric.

A Oracle Against the Rich

“Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land,” he shouted out to the elite while a growing band of admirers egged him on. “Here is what you are saying, ‘When will this damn festival be over so that we may sell grain at a big profit? When will the Sabbath end, so that we may offer our big surplus of wheat for sale?” That one always got a big laugh; you know what they say, it’s funny because it’s true! But what Amos said next inspired much more anger than laughter.

“I know what you say to yourselves,” Amos screamed. “you say, ‘since we control the whole system, we will trick the people with false weights and measures. We will push people into debt over the purchase of something as small as a pair of sandals and then, when they can’t pay, we will make them our slaves. Why, we will even sell off the garbage we sweep up from the floor of our barns at a big profit. And there’s nothing anybody can do about it!’” (Amos 8:4-6)

A Dangerous Core

So did Amos preach through all the days of the festival. And, as long he was speaking in this way and mocking the rich while saying the things that the poor folk didn’t dare to say out loud, it seemed as if he was untouchable. The authorities of the sanctuary did not act against him for fear of driving the crowds away.

But there was a core to Amos’ message that wasn’t quite so popular and that was much more dangerous. It went back to that original vision of the plumb line. For Amos was not only saying that the rich needed to stop oppressing the poor as they had been doing, he was also announcing that the consequence would be the collapse of the society itself.

“Thus says Yahweh,” Amos announced, “‘See, I am setting a plumb-line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.’”

Amaziah’s Intervention

That was dangerous; that was treason. And the officials decided that they could not stand for it. Amaziah, the priest of the sanctuary, sent word to King Jeroboam of all that Amos was saying and he got back the authorization he needed. It was time to shut the prophet down.

And so Amaziah went, flanked by lesser priests, to confront Amos. He came up to him and cut him off in the middle of one of his rants. “O seer,” he said, “go, run away back home to the land of Judah. You can sell your oracles and earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”

Amos looked around at the various seers and prophets who were selling their oracles to the people. One of them, in a booth nearby, had a special on that day, two oracles for the price of one. Another was had an offer out; for just a half bushel of grain, he would tell you whether your wife would have a boy or a girl or give you the name of the man that your daughter would marry.

Amos’ Reply

Amos laughed. “You think that I am one of those charlatans and fortune tellers? You think I’m here to exploit these people like their wealthy overlords do? I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son. Know what I am? I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycomore trees. There is only one reason why I am here. Yahweh took me from following the herds, and Yahweh said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’”

“I am not under your authority; Yahweh has sent me here. Therefore, if you try to shut me down, I can promise you this: Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be parcelled out by line; you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.”

The First of a New Kind of Prophet

Amos is absolutely fascinating figure. In many ways, he is a man who changed history. Because he was the first. He was the first man who spoke for his God, Yahweh, in a very particular way. At least, he was the first one whose words were written down in a book.

But Amos didn’t see himself as a prophet or a seer. He knew he was just an ordinary person. Before him, prophets and seers were people who hung around at sanctuaries like the one at Bethel and made their money selling trinkets and oracles and auspices to the common people for a few coins or goods. But Amos spoke a message that was a warning to the whole kingdom – a warning that was as much political and economic as it was theological and spiritual. And that was what made him so very dangerous.

Is God Showing you any Plumb Lines?

But the really amazing thing, as far as I’m concerned, is what set him on that track. He saw a plumb line one day, it made him ask some questions about what was wrong with the Kingdom of Israel. And, when he figured out some answers to those questions, he knew he had received a message from Yahweh and that he had no choice but to go and speak it even at the risk of his own life.

It makes me wonder, how many times has God shown us a plumb line or something else that illustrates what’s wrong with the economic or political realities of our kingdom? You see, a prophet is not someone who hears voices and knows without a doubt that this what God is saying right now. A prophet is a herder and a dresser of sycomore trees – an ordinary person who’s got a brain and can interpret what it means when he or she sees a plumb line or some other everyday object. Oh, that the Lord would send us more prophets like that!

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Hespeler, 3 July 2022 © Scott McAndless
2 Kings 5:1-14, Psalm 30, Isaiah 66:10-14, Psalm 66:1-9, Galatians 6:7-16, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

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In 1973, there was a bank robbery that took place in the city of Stockholm, Sweden. In the course of their crime, the bank robbers took four hostages. The hostages were eventually released unharmed. But the public, and particularly the media, were rather puzzled by how the hostages reacted in the aftermath. They defended their former captors and even refused to testify against them when they were put on trial.

For many, this reaction was so irrational that they decided that it was basically some form of insanity. They called it the Stockholm Syndrome, a term that is still brought out and applied in similar situations today. It is defined as a condition in which hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors during captivity.

Why we Like Stockholm Syndrome

Journalists love to talk about the Stockholm Syndrome whenever they report on stories about hostages, but the fact of the matter is that psychologists are rather skeptical that such a thing truly exists. A closer look at the events that did take place in Stockholm in 1973 inspires many doubts. It turns out that the hostages in that ill-fated bank robbery may have been more upset with the police than they were in love with their captors. They were, in fact, very angry with the callous way in which the police had acted and endangered their lives. That likely had more to do with their refusal to testify than did any love for the robbers.

Is it Actually Real?

But the idea of Stockholm Syndrome remains a powerful one. Something similar is often proposed in discussions of slavery – both in the ancient world and in the pre-civil war American South. “But slaves often loved and were devoted to their masters,” the protest goes. “Surely that is an indication that slavery wasn’t so bad.” But I rather suspect that, just as in the case of the robbery in Stockholm, if you look closely the whole thing about slaves loving their masters it is not so simple as that.

So let’s do that. Let’s look closely at one of my favourite stories of a slave that apparently did something out of love for her master

The Aramean Raid

Abriyah woke up screaming. It had been the same nightmare; it was always the same nightmare. In her dreams the Arameans had come yet again, storming into her village in the middle of the day. There had been no warning and no real opportunity for the people to prepare themselves. Abriyah had been out of her house fetching some water from the village well. She would never see her home or her family again. The men had come upon her and two other girls who were at the well. Before she even knew what was happening, her hands had been bound and she had been unceremoniously dumped into the back of an oxcart.

Later that same day she and the others were taken out of the cart and brought before the raiders as they celebrated. They were dividing up their spoils with each man claiming his share of the livestock, fruits and grain. Abriyah had no illusions that she was anything other than just another piece of plunder to them.

The Boogeyman

As she stood there in her ripped tunic, on display before the leering company, they all suddenly fell silent as one man stepped forward. He stood there with such an air of authority and power that there was no question he was the leader of the raiding party. She knew right away that this could be none other than Naaman, a fighter who was so cruel and effective that he had become something of a boogeyman to the people of Israel.

Parents would warn their children when they put them to bed that, if they didn’t settle down and go to sleep right away, that Naaman would come and get them and take them away. Well now, here the boogeyman was, as real as real could be. And he had finally come for her. She cried out in her sleep, cried out to her parents yelling that she was sorry and that she would be a better girl in the future. But she woke to discover that her parents were gone and that she would never see them again.

Life in Naaman’s Household

Naaman chose Abriyah as his plunder from that day’s work. It was indeed a chieftain’s share. He took her home and gave her to his wife as a servant. And Abriyah quickly found herself subjected to seemingly endless toil in the kitchen and around the house.

Naaman was everything that she had expected of him. He was cruel and completely self-absorbed. There was a haughtiness to him. He seemed to think that everything Aramean was better than anything anywhere else. The rivers of Aram were better than any other streams. The food of his land was far superior to what anyone else ate.

As a result, because she was an Israelite, he consistently treated Abriyah as if she were an imbecile. He was rude and crude and he never cared about her feelings because, as far as he was concerned, she was little better than an animal. She didn’t have human feelings.

Naaman Falls Ill

So, life was far from easy in Naaman’s household. But then it suddenly became so much worse. Naaman came home one day from his latest raid, and something was wrong. The skin on his arms and back and legs soon turned red and he scratched at them until they bled. If she had thought that he was a difficult man before, he quickly became unbearable. He was in constant pain and discomfort, and it quickly stripped away any patience or sympathy he might have ever had.

And Abriyah was often the one who was closest when the rage hit him. She was certainly the one that he could attack without consequence. The life of a common slave that she had once had in the household now seemed almost like a lost dream. She began to dream of escaping back to her homeland, but she knew that escape was impossible.

Finding Comfort

Whenever Abriyah found a few moments of respite in her miserable life, or when she lay awake in her bed at night, too afraid to go to sleep for fear of her nightmares, she tried to comfort herself with memories of her home. She told herself the stories that her parents had once told her – stories of Abraham and of Moses. But she found particular comfort in the popular stories that were told in her village about the prophets, especially the stories about Elijah and Elisha. People eagerly told these tales because they were so exciting and because these men were still alive and might well pass through the village at any time.

Abriyah had always felt as if these men were her protectors, or at least they would be if they were given the chance. Again and again, they had taken on the enemies of Israel, including the Arameans, and had triumphed in surprising and fantastic ways. Why, it was even said that once the prophet Elisha had defeated an entire Aramaean army by striking them blind and leading them into a trap! She began to dream of the possibility that Elisha, who was still living the last she heard, would find out about her plight and come and save her.

Talking About her Hope

Once finding some small reason to hope – no matter how unlikely her salvation was – she found that she simply could not stop thinking about it. That also meant that she could not stop talking about it either. She began to talk to all of the other slaves in the household about how Elisha was going to come and save her and about how he would be able to help all of them too.

And then one day, she even spoke to her mistress. She came upon her at an unguarded moment in her chambers and found her weeping. She suddenly realized that, even though she had the status of wife and freewoman, in some ways her mistress was no less a captive in this household than she was. The mistress was certainly not spared from the cruelty that Naaman could dole out when he was taken up in his pain and misery.

And so, Abriyah went to speak to her mistress. That was when something came to mind that she could say to comfort her. “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy. And then perhaps you could find some peace.”

To Israel for a Cure

Much to her surprise, Abriyah’s comment caused quite a stir in the household. Both Naaman and his wife were feeling pretty desperate lately. She went running to him immediately with what she had heard. And, even if Naaman had a hard time believing that anyone from Israel could offer anything of value, he was desperate enough to follow up. He did it in the most typical way possible for him. He was arrogant and demanding. He put the king of Israel into a very compromising position that the prophet Elisha had to save him from. And then, when the prophet told him that he had to bathe in a filthy Israelite river in order to become clean, he almost lost it.

But then something happened. Something broke through and Naaman was healed. In many ways, to tell the truth, the biggest miracle wasn’t the fact that his skin condition suddenly improved. By far, the biggest miracle, at least as far as Abriyah and the rest of the household were concerned, was that something had finally broken the arrogance that Naaman carried in his heart.

After he Returned

Naaaman returned to his household bringing with him two mule loads of soil that he had collected in the land of Israel. He understood, everyone understood, that certain gods belong to certain places. You could only worship a god in the place that belonged to that god. But Naaman had decided that now he had to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel, who had healed him of his skin condition. So, he had brought a little bit of the land of Israel so that he could set up an altar upon it to worship the God of Israel.

I wish I could tell you that, after he returned, Naaman was always kind and gentle with Abriyah and the others in the household. Many things about him didn’t change. He continued to be a fearsome war leader and raider. He did sometimes forget the lesson that he had learned, the lesson that people from other places might actually know things or have things of value. Sometimes the old arrogance did shine through. But there were times when he did look at Abriyah and remember to consider the possibility that, even though she was an Israelite, she might know a few things about the world.

The life of a slave remained the life of a slave. Abriyah did not find that her labours or fears were lightened at all. But I will say that her nightmares got better for one reason. She did have the opportunity to worship when Naaman worshiped upon the piece of Israelite soil that he had brought back. And so, in that place, she did find a connection with her home and with the God that had felt so very far away. And that brought her some comfort.

What is this Story About?

For some reason I remember hearing the story of the slave girl who served Naaman’s wife back in my Sunday school days. I remember how I was told to read that story. That little girl – who, of course, doesn’t have a name in the Bible and that I simply had to give a name to in order to tell her story – was held up as the example of a perfect evangelist. She was lauded as someone who did what we are all supposed to do and tell other people about Jesus.

Now, on one level, I don’t really have a problem with the idea that people should be willing to share with others how their faith in Jesus has helped them in their life. I don’t appreciate how some people do that in an imposing or coercive way, but just sharing that honestly can be a wonderful sharing of your own life with somebody else. But I am going to suggest that, if that’s all you get from the story, that might be a bit of a problem.

Failing to Support Victims

You see, the Christian tradition has a history of putting people who have been victimized in various ways into a position where they feel an obligation to endure their suffering without complaint in the service of the gospel. There are too many stories of abused women, for example, who were told to remain in their abusive marriages as a gospel witness. There are too many stories of people victimized by the church in some way who were forced to be quiet about it because it would somehow damage the witness of the church. That, I must say loud and clear, is simply wrong and the very opposite of a good witness.

So I am not, in any way, willing to read the story of this girl in a way that minimizes the trauma and abuse a captive at that time in history would have suffered. Any sort of simplistic understanding of this story that turns her into someone with Stockholm Syndrome, someone who only loves her masters, is a failure to struggle with some pretty dark history. I have to read her as simply doing whatever she can to hold on to her identity and save herself in a horrible situation. That is what we all need to do.

And if God manages to bring some good out of a horrible situation for ourselves or for anyone else, well that’s just the amazing kind of God that we have. But none of that should be taken to mean that it is God’s desire or will that anyone be a victim or tolerate abuse. That is simply not the kind of God that we have. And I think that that needs to be said

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June 26, 2022

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Hespeler, 26 June 2022 © Scott McAndless
Exodus 2:1-10, Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20, Galatians 5:1, 13-25, Luke 9:51-62

When powerful people decide that holding onto their power and wealth is more important than things like justice and the rights of others, evil things can happen. And the big question then becomes what people can do to resist. What can they do when they have no power or voice? That is not a new question. It is one that comes up again and again throughout the history of the world.

It is true, of course, that we do not have to deal with anything quite as evil today as an order to toss an entire generation of a particular ethnic group into a river in infancy. But just because the evil of our world hasn’t risen to the level of active genocide doesn’t mean that we will never have to deal with the question. I mean, if we wait until that point is reached, we may be too late.

Biblical Heroes

So, I do think it would be helpful to look at some biblical heroes who dealt with that very challenge and who won. And when it comes to that, I can hardly think of better examples than three extraordinary women in the Book of Exodus.

I know that we have often come to think that the Bible, produced as it was in a very patriarchal society, has a habit of dismissing women and suggesting that they really have nothing that they can contribute. But this story, I believe, is a perfect demonstration of just how wrong that assumption is.

Pharaoh’s Problem

Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, had a problem, a big problem. But it wasn’t necessarily an unusual problem. In fact, it was a problem as old as civilization itself. Ever since the beginning, you see, civilization has had a big built-in problem. Civilization, the building and inhabiting of cities, was something that was only possible because of the development of agriculture to such a level that societies were able to produce a surplus. Season after season, more food and goods were produced than the workers themselves needed to survive.

Civilization was this incredible invention that allowed a small elite to take control of that surplus and keep it for themselves. Yes, they also provided something in return for taking it – they provided security and they took care of matters of administration. Above all they provided a religion that gave meaning to the endless toil of the great mass of people. Surely the people should be grateful for that.

On His Own

But the people weren’t as grateful as they should be. Sometimes they were restive and rebellious. And that was the root of the problem because Pharaoh was aware of one inescapable fact. There were more of them than there were people on his side – a lot more. In fact, it was almost as if it was Pharaoh alone against all of them.

Yes, he had priests and retainers and troops. He had a whole class of nobles underneath him, but none of them benefitted from the system more than he did. He really was the 1%, except it was more like the 0.001 per cent. And as soon as all of the rest figured out that simple fact and found a way to work together, he was done for.

The Hebrew Problem

So, this was a problem that Pharaoh had been constantly aware of, but one particular aspect of it had been troubling him of late. There was a group of people who had been put to work constructing the vast complexes where Pharaoh stored his ever-growing wealth. They were nothing but slaves, but they had begun to form a cohesive identity.

They were called Hebrews and the thing that united them, above all, was the worship of some wild desert god who was beyond the control of the Egyptian religion that was dominated by Pharaoh. Everyday that they grew in strength and in numbers. If they only realized the strength that they had because of their unity of purpose and identity, they had the potential of bringing down the entire system. Pharaoh had to do something about them.

A Failed Plan

He had already attempted to slow the growth by asserting government control over which women could and could not have children. He did this by ordering the Egyptian midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill all of the male Hebrew children at birth. But somehow, Pharaoh was still trying to figure out how, the midwives had betrayed him and allowed the boys to live. But they had clearly double crossed him, and so it appeared he was going to have to come up with a much more open approach to this problem.

Jochebed

When Jochebed, the wife of Amram, heard about Pharaoh’s decree, she was horrified. Pharaoh’s plan that all of the male children born to the Hebrews should be cast into the Nile River, was not only cruel, it was a clear attempt to wipe out the very identity of a people. The Nile River was not just a waterway for the Egyptians, after all, it was a god. With its annual flooding, the Nile River brought life to every single person who lived along its course.

But it seemed as if Pharaoh couldn’t stand the idea that the Nile shed its blessings upon all the people regardless of their station in society. It watered the fields of the peasants as well as the gardens of the rich. And that was simply unacceptable. And so, Pharaoh was determined to transform the life-giving Nile into a ravenous instrument of death. That would teach the people, all of them, that they must look to no one but the king himself to sustain them.

Her Plan

In the face of such unmitigated evil, Jochebed came up with a plan. The decree had gone out when she was only a few months pregnant. She knew, somehow she knew, that it was going to be a boy. And so, she laid her plans. By the time she was beginning to show, she withdrew from all social life. No one must know that a child was on the way. And then, once her boy was born, she managed to keep him hidden as long as she could.

But, by the time he was three months old, she knew that she could not keep him hidden any longer. That was when she made a fateful decision. She would do as Pharoah had decreed. But it would be a malicious compliance. Oh, she would throw him into the Nile alright. But she would also do a couple of other things.

Into the River in a Basket

First, she would place the boy in a basket that she wove out of papyrus (a gift of the Nile itself) and plastered with bitumen and pitch. This would turn the river from the ravenous beast that Pharaoh had declared it to be into a cradling womb for the rebirth of her son.

Second, she would do this in faith – with the trust that there was a God (even if she did not yet know what that God’s name was) who was more powerful than the Nile or even than the divine Pharaoh. Even more importantly, she did it with the faith that such a God cared about her people who had no other protector in the land of Egypt.

The Princess

When the princess caught sight of the basket bobbing in the river, she knew that her day was about to change completely. She knew very well what people thought of her. She was nothing more than a princess – an adornment to the household of Pharaoh. She was just there to be beautiful and to be quiet. She was supposed to spend her days wallowing in luxury and taking endless baths in the Nile.

But she was more than just a pretty face. Pharaoh would have been shocked to hear it, but she actually had a brain, and she understood the very real threat that Pharaoh was trying to counter with his latest decree. But she had real problems with what he was doing.

A Hebrew Baby

When the basket was brought to shore and the princess looked inside, she knew without a doubt that it had to be a Hebrew boy. She understood how desperate Hebrew mothers had grown. What other possible explanation could there be?

But, realizing that, the princess knew she had a choice. On one level, she knew that she was supposed to side with her own people and her own class. The Hebrews were outsiders, and they were a potential threat to the stability of the system. But the princess also knew that she was a woman. And as a woman, she was an outsider to power in her own country. That made her feel as if she might have more in common with the poor woman who, in desperation, had thrown her young son into the Nile. But she simply did not know what she ought to do.

Miriam

Miriam might have been nothing more than a little girl, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t know what was going on. She knew what people in the community had been talking about, about the terrible thing that had been demanded by the pharaoh. And for months now she had been a witness to the anguish of her mother.

Miriam had done her part, of course, to keep the birth of her little brother from being noticed. She had often taken care of the child when Jochebed and Amram couldn’t be around. She understood how important it was to make sure that nobody outside of the house could hear the noise that he made. Of course, that had only been getting harder and harder as time went by.

Her Part

And so, when Miriam had seen her mother leave the house carrying the child and silently weeping, it wasn’t that hard for her to guess what was happening. She followed and she observed from a distance as her mother laid the child into the small basket and pushed him out into the current. Once she had done this, Jochebed collapsed in despair. She had done what she could do and had to leave the rest in the hands of her people’s God.

But somehow Miriam knew that she still had a part to play. She kept her eyes on the basket as it moved at a steady pace through the reeds that lined the shores, moved towards the place where the royal party often came down to bathe during the day.

Her Courage

And so, she saw the princess arrive. She saw the excitement and consternation as the basket was discovered. And even from the distance, she could see the confusion and indecision on the face of the princess as she contemplated the child.

And that was when Miriam, that poor slave child, that person with the least possible power and influence in this entire story, did the bravest thing she would ever do. She ran forward, past the guards who protected the princess, and then cried out to her in broken Egyptian. “I go and I get you nurse? I get Hebrew woman to nurse baby for you?”

You see, sometimes when people are struggling with a choice – sometimes when they know what is the right thing to do but are seized by indecision because they have never dared to be bold before, all they need is a little push. All they need is one small action that they can take towards doing the right thing because, if they can take that one step, the next will be easier and the next after that as well. Soon they have set themselves on a path towards doing the right thing, the thing they truly want to do. Miriam had provided the princess with that. All she needed to do was nod her head yes and Miriam was off like a shot to find her mother and present her as a wet nurse to the princess.

When Evil Plans are Laid

When powerful people do horrible things in order to maintain their power and position, the powerless often feel as if there is nothing that they can do. And it may be true, especially if we stand alone as individuals, that there is very little that we can do. When the weak stand alone, the powerful only need to pick them off one by one.

But the story in the Book of Exodus tells of three women who were quite powerless. Two of them were slaves, one of them was not even an adult and one was nothing more than an ornament for the powerful pharaoh. They did not conspire together, but they acted. They acted in faith, and they acted in solidarity. Though they might have had every reason not to find that solidarity. The princess in particular had no reason to find kinship with a Hebrew slave. But, simply by choosing solidarity and faith, they each played a key role that put pieces in place to disrupt all of Pharaoh’s evil plans. Now, if only we could find such courage. If only we could embrace such solidarity.

You can find our worship for June 19, 2022 here.

https://youtu.be/y8xAq_TmXxY

Hespeler, 19 June 2022 © Scott McAndless
1 Kings 19:1-15a, Psalm 42 and 43, Galatians 3:23-29, Luke 8:26-39 (Click to read)

We are told in the Gospel of Luke that one day, Jesus got into a boat with his disciples, and they sailed off and they landed on the opposite side of the Sea of Galilee in a place called the country of the Gerasenes. Jesus was a stranger there, an outsider. But they had perhaps at least heard of him and the notoriety he was gaining on the other side of the lake.

I know that many communities, if they were visited by people who had a certain amount of celebrity, would generally make a point of ensuring that some of their leading citizens would be there to meet them and make sure that they got a good impression. That is why I think it is rather significant that the first person that Jesus met in that country was about the worst representative that you could imagine. He was greeted by a very troubled young man.

The Man who Met Jesus

It was a man who had a fraught relationship with things like clothing and with housing. He tended to walk around naked and had set up a homeless encampment in the local graveyard. What is more, the Gerasenes clearly weren’t quite sure what to do with this man who caused no end of trouble. They had tried everything they could do as far as they were concerned, locking him up in chains and shackles and putting him under guard, but nothing prevented him from ruining their lives.

It makes me wonder. If Jesus were to come rowing up to the shores of our city, our society today, who could we imagine being the first one to go out and meet him? I could nominate a few people who would fit the bill. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence either that just about everyone who comes to my mind is also a young man. Society seems to have a long history of troubled young men.

Who Would Meet Jesus Today?

So, who might Jesus meet as he came to shore? Perhaps the young man who, five years ago, walked into a mosque in Quebec City and began to gun down worshipers there. Perhaps it would be the self-proclaimed involuntarily celibate man who, two years ago, ran down eleven people with a van on the streets of Toronto.

Or, in light of more recent events, how could we fail to mention the man who felt so threatened by the mere existence of black people in his country that he drove over 300 km to find a majority black community in Buffalo so that he could kill as many of them as possible as they shopped in a grocery store. And how could we fail to mention the very troubled young man who celebrated his eighteenth birthday by purchasing two high-powered high-capacity rifles and using them to shoot up an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas?

The Reaction to Troubled Young Men

I believe that, in many ways, we today react to such young men much like the Gerasenes did. Oh, we have tried all kinds of measures in order to prevent the devastation that they cause. We put them in chains, we lock them in shackles, we increase guards and security measures on every school and every other vulnerable place in our society. In some jurisdictions we put them to death.

But somehow it just keeps continuing to happen. Somehow another troubled young individual comes along sooner or later. And, while I agree that maybe taking a few steps towards making it harder for such troubled people to get their hands on highly effective and efficient killing machines, the truth of the matter is that even that is also treating a symptom and can only be a part of treating the underlying disease.

Jesus’ Approach

But Jesus came along that day with a different focus than the local people. He wasn’t there to punish this troubled young man. Jesus wasn’t interested in band aid solutions to the problems that plague us. Jesus was a healer. He did not simply deal with the symptoms of the problem – the fear and the violence that the presence of this young man caused in the community. Jesus was always interested in dealing with the underlying issues. That is what true healing is all about, after all.

So, what did Jesus do when he came on the scene? First and foremost, he engaged the young man as he was. The first words of Jesus that are reported to us form a simple question. “What is your name?” he asks. But, as the answer makes clear, he is not asking the young man to identify himself. He is asking for the name of the demon that possesses him.

Demon Possession

And we should be careful to understand what that means according to the understanding of that time and place. I know that we usually assume that we understand what they meant back then when they spoke about demon possession. I mean, we have all seen movies like The Exorcist, The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby. They have led us to believe that, those who believe in demon possession, always think of it as some sort of malevolent supernatural being that takes control of somebody’s body.

Now, it is true that there were people in Jesus’ time who believed that such things happened. But that is not the only kind of trouble that they described using the language of possession. You see, they understood most every ailment and trouble that people dealt with – including those we understand in medical terms – in exclusively spiritual terms.

Our Understanding is Different

We know that conditions like depression or addiction or anxiety disorders may have a whole host of medical, physiological, psychological and perhaps spiritual causes. Well, they only saw the spiritual causes of such things and so the only language they had to talk about them was spiritual language.

I don’t think that they were completely wrong in their approach – there are spiritual dimensions to such problems. But I also believe that we can only bring true healing to someone who is struggling when we address the whole person – body, mind and spirit. And I believe that Jesus, in his healing activities, did understand that. So what was Jesus doing when he asked the name of what it was that was plaguing this man? He was demonstrating an openness to consider that whole person and what he was struggling with. And the answer that he received spoke volumes.

Not One Single Cause

“Legion,” the young man said. And that was, first and foremost, a clear acknowledgment that all he was struggling with could not be reduced to a single cause. The cause was legion. I know that that is always going to be the temptation when there are populations struggling in our society. We always want to find just one thing to blame it on: violent video games, broken families, drugs. There have even people who’ve tried to blame it on abortion or the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people.

But you should be suspicious of any attempt to place the blame on one thing. It is almost never an attempt to come to terms with the real causes but rather an attempt to advance the speaker’s agenda and to keep everything else in society unchallenged and unchanged. The issues are always more complex. They are legion.

The Legions

“Legion,” the young man said. And I suspect that it was no mistake that he used the Latin term for the Roman troops that were occupying the whole territory. What were the legionaries there for if not to make sure that the people who were in charge remained in charge?

We are not told, of course, what events had led this young man to spiral into his violent and self-destructive way of life, but I think, given that his troubled mind went immediately to the word “legion,” it is very likely that the structure of his society, maintained by the legions, had something to do with it.

Structural Issues

And as we think of our troubled young people, we have to be willing to take into account the ways in which they have experienced a system that feels like it is stacked against them. They were raised in a world where it was considered normal to have active shooter drills in their schools – where they were taught to expect that there would be people who were trying to shoot them. They are living in a situation where few people like them have any reasonable path to afford their own home or have job security. They have lived their whole lives wondering whether the environment, as we have known it, is going to be able to maintain their population.

These are systemic problems and I realize that not every young individual will experience them in exactly the same way. Any one of these issues alone might not be an insurmountable problem, but when they are legion they do become overwhelming.

The Problem with Healing

The story of Jesus and this troubled young man is ultimately a very hopeful one because Jesus does bring healing to him. Jesus does this by addressing the whole person and that is what we need to do. But there is another aspect of this story that is rather troubling we need to face up to it. We have to recognize that there is enormous resistance to that healing power in the story.

The story ends like this: “Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind… Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.”

Now how does that make sense? Here they have feared this man and the havoc he has caused for a long time. But now that Jesus has apparently eliminated this terrible issue, they are upset and they want him gone. Why, it is almost as if they do not like the fact that this man has found some healing.

Healing Disrupts

I believe that that is exactly what is going on because, in order for this man to find healing, the system that was at work in that community had to be disrupted. How else can we understand the destruction of the entire herd of pigs being necessary to the healing? There is no question that such a destruction would have dealt a savage blow to the local economy.

But there is more to it than that, something systemic. People have long wondered why there might have been such a large pork industry in that region. I mean, they weren’t raising hogs in order to sell to the Jewish population, so who were they selling to?

They must have been selling to the foreign occupying troops. They must have been selling to the legions. Yes, they were dependent on the industrial military complex for their local economy. They were deeply embedded in a system that relied on everything remaining exactly the way it was. And the way that Jesus had healed this man had demonstrated to them that his healing required a disruption of that system. So, yes, of course they wanted Jesus out of there.

Why we Don’t Fix Things

And that is precisely the problem with where we are when it comes to dealing with this never-ending crop of troubled young men who are wreaking havoc in our society. Healing is possible; something better is possible. The problem is that such healing will only come with our willingness to change the systems that are maintaining this status quo. And there are certain powers in our society, very influential powers who profit enormously from the way that things are set up right now, who are dead set on making sure that that doesn’t happen. They won’t hesitate to run the healer out of town.

So there we are; that is the challenge that is before us. But let me just say that the hope presented in this story is real. Jesus did bring healing to that young man because he didn’t care about how much it cost. And when troubled people of any age and any gender encounter people who have that kind of sense of priority, I really do believe that healing is not only possible, it is nearly inevitable. It is a question of priorities and it is a question of us being willing to engage people with a compassion and a level of commitment that knows that there are things that are more important than just maintaining things the way that they have always been. Such disruption, in fact, has always been very much at the heart of Jesus’ message about the kingdom of God

If you missed worshipping with us on Sunday, you can view the service here.