Biography
Robert McAfee Brown died September 4, 2001, in Greenfield, Massachusetts, where he and his wife, Sydney, kept a summer home.  They were residents of Palo Alto, California.  A Presbyterian clergyman, he was one of America's most respected liberal theologians.  Dr. Brown was a leader in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and wrote widely on liberation theology  He was a Protestant Observer at the Second Vatican Council and wrote 28 books of theology.  When this sermon was delivered on 30 Good Minutes in1989, Dr. Brown was Emeritus Professor of Theology and Ethics at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Our Uneasy Relationship with God" 
Robert McAfee Brown died September 4, 2001, in Greenfield, Massachusetts, where he and his wife, Sydney, kept a summer home.  They were residents of Palo Alto, California.  A Presbyterian clergyman, he was one of America's most respected liberal theologians.  Dr. Brown was a leader in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and wrote widely on liberation theology  He was a Protestant Observer at the Second Vatican Council and wrote 28 books of theology.  When this sermon was delivered on 30 Good Minutes in1989, Dr. Brown was Emeritus Professor of Theology and Ethics at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.

Then the Lord said (to Moses), "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their suffering, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians...

Moses is in a tough spot. Having grown up in Egypt, he has had to flee across the border to Midian, in order to escape from the long arm of "Cairo*s finest," the police, galvanized in his speedy departure by well-founded rumors that he has murdered an Egyptian guard. An "All Points Alert" has been circulated by the Egyptian F. B. I., offering a handsome reward to whoever tips off the authorities as to Moses* whereabouts. However, since there are no extradition laws between Midian and Egypt, Moses is gradually able to fade into the Midian woodwork, marry a Midian woman, and start to rebuild his life.

And then, just when things have wound down and he can begin to relax, the God whom Moses supposed he had left behind in Egypt, puts in a reappearance. The voice comes out of a bush in the desert that is burning, but not burning up. However, dealing with that phenomenon is child*s play compared to dealing with the words the voice utters from that desert inferno.

God* s first word is a reassuring word, designed to give comfort to Moses, a kind of "first the good news, then the bad news" approach. God says, "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their suffering, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians."

Moses is surely overjoyed to be cued in on God*s plans, with their assurance that all is going to be well. How reassuring: God has "heard the cry of the people"—a cry for justice in a situation of injustice—and has promised to "come down and deliver them." And with whatever problems we moderns may have with some of the imagery of that promise—a deity on a kind of celestial escalator between heaven and earth, apparently reversible at the whim of the divine will—with whatever problems that imagery poses for us, the bedrock assurances of which the passage speaks far outstrip the imagery with which they are surrounded: God is a God who is not aloof from the plight of people suffering injustice and oppression. God is a God who not only heard their cry, but as a consequence decided to intervene and turn things around. The good news is that the unjust situation will be redressed, the cry of the people will not have gone for naught, God*s righteousness will be vindicated, and the people’s plight will be overcome.

Quite an agenda—even for God. But an agenda because it is God*s, that Moses can believe in and applaud. He may even have gone on to think, "And when God gets all that done, maybe it will even be safe for me to go back to Egypt and settle in with the family once again."

But God hasn’t finished. There is more to the message. It sounds like a simple continuation of what Moses has heard so far, until the final line, which is the punch line, and in Moses* case a one-two punch. God continues: "And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people."

What a rude shock! Just as Moses is about to sit back and watch God move into high gear and free the Israelites, there is a second word, not reassuring this time bit dismaying to wit, that God is drafting Moses to go back to Egypt and do all the leg work for God, by taking on the Pharaoh himself. How inconsiderate of God! God is not taking Moses* personal plight seriously at all. Noses is supposed to go back to the very place from which he had fled with a price upon his head, put everything on the line (what if that "All Points Alert" of the F.B.I. is still in force?) and help a powerless people escape from a very powerful Pharaoh. Moses is to be the short-range means by which the long-range plans of God are to be fulfilled: God says, "Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people."

So it*s back to Egypt, into the maelstrom of court politics, from which finally (with some spectacular help, to be sure, from the Almighty) the Israelites escape from the long arm of Pharaoh, who discovers that his arm isn*t quite as long as he had thought. An old, quaint, story.

Why spend so long on this "old, quaint story" about someone who lived long ago, far removed from our time and place? Because, whether we like it or not, Moses* story is also our story. When we learn about Moses, we are learning about ourselves. In what ways, then, are we like him? Three brief points of contact:

"I promise you*ll make the pitching staff of the Cubs next year." (Great!) "But you*ll have to work all winter long, without any time off, perfecting a sinker ball." (Aw!)

"You are going to be a very successful politician." (Great!) "But you*ll have to work sixteen hours a day, seven days a week and lose your first three tries for public office." (Aw!)

So who wants extra demands? It*s hard enough just to live a decent, ordinary life without heroics. And so we, like Moses, start bargaining with God: "How about if I just do the disciple bit on Sundays?" "I’ll work for peace, but I don*t have to stick my neck out do I?" As with Moses, so with us: we like promises bit we dislike demands.

(2) Let*s press a little harder. There*s a second reason we are like Moses. As with Moses so with us: we particularly dislike demands that involve us in conflict.

After that conversation with God, Moses must have thought all of a sudden, how wonderful it would be just to stay out in the desert and feel God*s presence in the world of nature. And we would prefer to do the "God thing" (to borrow from Washington terminology these days) in the reassuring atmosphere of pew four, left aisle of our local church or synagogue. Or, like Jesus* disciples, and Peter especially, we love it on the Mount of Transfiguration, with Jesus appearing in a radiant glow, and Moses and Elijah coming back to be part of a group-process—and no contact whatever with such rude realities at the bottom of the mountain as epileptic boys, or going on to Jerusalem and maybe getting crucified. Religion, we insist, is supposed to warm us, give us serenity, help us fulfill our human potential—and for all that we need lots of time alone, and an absolute minimum of conflict.

But it doesn’t work that way. Conflict seems to be the name of the game as far as God is concerned. If anything was sure for Moses, it was that going back to Egypt would put him slam bang in the midst of conflict. The idea was for Moses to tell Pharaoh to let God* s people go, and it could be taken for granted that Pharaoh would find the idea repugnant. Who would build the pyramids? Who would repair the potholes on Charioteer Way in downtown Cairo? Who would clean up after all the banquets to Iknehton? No way, Moses. Irreconcilable conflict.

It is not surprising that this story has emerged as one of the basic Biblical resources of our sisters and brothers in the Third World, for whom the rallying cry of the whole story, and the whole Bible, and the whole gospel is...liberation. Freedom. Which means throwing off the chains, the shackles. Which means disagreeing with the leaders of your nation. Which means saying "no" to Pharaoh, the epitome of injustice, because you have to say "yes" to a God who is the epitome of justice, and who won*t put up with Pharaoh*s injustice, and tells you that it is your fight as well as God*s fight.

So, keeping the imagery of the story, we have to reflect on what it means to serve in Pharaoh*s court, which is where we are located, a court that supports and sanctions many things God surely calls us to challenge.

If you look far enough, you can find Christians and Jews on all sides of such questions. This is not the time or place to debate the rightness or wrongness of individual answers. But this is the time and place to insist that those are the kinds of issues that God calls upon us to be involved in, as those who serve in modern-day Pharaoh*s courts, and have to do that serving responsibly, reminding all those in Pharaoh*s court that there is One higher and mightier even than Pharaoh, whom we are called upon to serve, no matter how inconvenient, no matter how threatening, no matter how disruptive of the comfortable shells we have around our individual lives. There is no other way to go with the Exodus story than that.

Moses doesn’t leave God out in the burning bush and arrive in Egypt all alone. When he gets to Pharaoh*s court, God is already there. The story tells us that God is not just found in the nice, tidy, inspirational corners of life, bit in the midst of the ugly, messy and threatening centers of life.

For Jews, the Moses story makes the point very clearly. God doesn’t stay aloof, but comes down into the midst of the trouble. When God hears the people*s cry, the message from the divine throne is not, "What a pity things fell apart down there," but "I'll come down and work with my people in the midst of the trouble." And for Christians one of the main messages of Jesus* life, and particularly His death, is that he is right where things are toughest and least "pretty," in the midst of an ugly execution ordered by the Pharaohs of his time, Herod and Pilate—an attempt (unsuccessful, as it turned out) to dispose of Jesus by killing Him.

So with whatever different imageries, Jews and Christians can affirm together the presence of God in the midst of everything that we have to go through. We are not alone. The power of God is not somewhere else, but here. We don*t "find God," as the quaint saying goes, (assuming that God has gotten "lost") by running away from trouble or hiding with a pious religious cloak. We discover, whenever we are trying to work for justice, that God has, once again, gotten there before we did, and has been waiting (sometimes not too patiently) for us to show up and get into the struggle too.

So the word to Moses and to us is not just promises, devoid of demands. But, equally it*s not just demands devoid of promises. It*s both. And that, when all is said and done, is very good news indeed.

Prayer:  O God, it*s hard, but then you never promised it would be easy. You promise that you wouldn*t forsake us during the hard parts, and that makes things a lot easier. So keep prodding us and pulling us, bit also keep supporting us and empowering us, for the sake of your children everywhere. Amen.