Fear And Pharoah

Preached Sunday 23rd August 2020

Text - Exodus 1.8-2.10

A video of this sermon is available at https://youtu.be/kEV4_dkjmXE

Two advertisements -

“If you don’t switch to our cheaper mortgage, by the end of your mortgage period you will have thrown £20,000 down the drain. Do you want to be £20,000 poorer”

Contrast that style of advertisement with “our investment plan can make you money - in couple of decades time would you like to be £20,000 richer?”

I don’t know if it would surprise you but the first style of advertisement is far more successful. With the second style of advert - well it would be nice to be a but richer but you know we are busy people and twenty years is a long time and maybe I will apply later?

With the first advert - What? I could lose £20,000 pounds? That’s a lot of money to lose!

The irony is that both advertisements are offering you exactly the same deal - it’s just that one is phrasing it in terms of avoiding a terrible loss while the other phrases it in terms of making a nice gain.

Human beings have what psychologists call “loss aversion” (1). We are much more motivated by the Fear of losing what we have, than by possibilities that we don’t yet have.

But Jesus tell’s us “Perfect love casts out all fear”

Fear is the stalking bad guy in today’s old Testament reading. “Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people: ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.’”

All the cruelty in this passage begins with fear. What if ...the Hebrew ethnic minority turn on the Egyptians.

Why enslave them? Because the Egyptians are terrified that the Hebrews will turn on them and ally with their enemies so they decided to crush their spirits by turning them to forced labour.

But once Pharoah has turned the Hebrews from loyal subjects to slaves - now he has more to fear. What if the way they are treated makes them want to seek revenge. And although they are an ethnic minority now, their birth rate is higher than the Egyptian birth rate. Any statistician can calculate how long it will be until the slaves outnumber their masters. So the terrified Pharoah begins his plan of selective genocide.

Many of the greatest attrocities in the world have been motivated by fear.

To quote Master Yoda - “Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering.”

“Anger… fear… aggression. The dark side are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.”

But to quote Jesus

“Perfect love casts out all fear”

We see fear being used as a distractor. Perhaps Pharoah had his own problems with his Egyptian population and wanted the Hebrews to be a scapegoat? We don’t know. But we do know that politicians of all political parties are very keen to pull up the issue of fear of the stranger as a distractor when bad news is in the headlines.

So this week when things have not been going well for the government, suddenly stories appear about a very small number of people sneaking into the UK on dinghies.

“They’ll take our jobs. Our Country is full anyway. They’ll be different from us”

Yes they will be different from us, as the Hebrews were different from the Egyptians - and it was a Hebrew man, Joseph, who saved the Egyptians from starvation. Migrants coming into this country have saved us. When my mum was dying of dementia, who were the carers coming in to wash and feed her? All migrants.

“They’ll take our jobs”. Every good economist will tell you that’s a load of tosh. Migrants grow the economy which produces more jobs for other people. Just like the Hebrews built the store cities of Pithom and Rameses - growing the Eqyptian economy by producing a back up against Famine that meant less Egyptians had to be involved in Agriculture and could take on other jobs - so migrants grow our economy.

“Our country is full anyway”

Singapore has a population density of 8378 people per square kilometer (2) The Uk has a population density of just 275 people per square kilometre (3). That means there are thirty times more people per square kilometer in Singapore than in the UK. Even if you only include London There are twice as many people per square kilometer in SIngapore than in London (4)