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)
I’ve been to Singapore - it’s a beautiful city. Far greener than London with trees on balconies on every building. The air in cleaner. The roads are not congested. There are beautiful parks. It’s lovely. And because it is so well managed, you would never know it has twice the population density of London
It’s not reality that leads people to say “our country is full” - it’s fear, fear like Pharoah’s fear. And perfect love cast out all fear.
As Christians we need to stand against this . As Fr Timothy Radcliffe puts it - “It makes no sense to receive Christ in the Eucharist and to reject Christ in the visitor” (5)
We see fear preventing people from doing the right thing. As I write this (and events are moving fast) President Lukashenko is clinging onto power in Belarus after an election which everyone knows he lost - but which he claims he won. And why is he clinging on so desperately? Well he has seen what happened to Gaddaffi and Sadam Hussein and even the Tsar. The path for a dictator is usually from the throne to the firing squad. So they commit more atrocities to desperately hang on to power - and the more atrocities they commit the more revenge the provoke, until finally their doom becomes inevitable.
We see this in the story of Moses. Two generations of Pharoahs oppress the Hebrew people.
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.’ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.
Moses comes with the message “let my people go” - and Pharoah keeps almost doing so - and then pulling back at the last minute and oppressing the Hebrews more. Until Pharoah and his army end up dead on the floor of the Red sea as the waters rush back in.
There have been very few examples of dictators stepping down without bloodshed, and in each case the fear was taken away through forgiveness - perfect love casts out all fear.
The Apartheid regime in South Africa stepped down and allowed free and fair elections - feeling safe to do so because of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission approach.
The Chillian dictator General Pinochet stepped down and handed over to democracy - in return for an amnesty for all his crimes.
Spain moved (under the guidance of the young King Juan Carlos) moved from the dictatorship of Franco to democracy. And yes this was only after the death of Franco, but amnesty was at the heart of the process.
fear was taken away through forgiveness - perfect love casts out all fear.
Contrast the cycle of violence that happens when there is no forgiveness. The French Revolution in 1789 was followed by what was known as the Terror - those who had violently overthrown the King became more and more fearful of political rivals who might end of the revolution - sending them to the guillotine to protect themselves - until even the great revolutionary Robespiere ended up on the Guillotine
The same pattern can been seen in Stalinist Russia with his purges. Russia almost lost the second world war because all their decent generals had been shot by Stalin because he feared they would overthrow him.
We see that fear in Pharoah. We see that fear in Belarus. [at the time this sermon was preached the Belarusan President has just rigged the election and then arrested thousands who protested]
And we see it in our own lives.
Watch Midsomer Murders and you will frequently see a death - often an accident. But the responsible out of fear covers it up, gradually committing more and more murders to hide what they have done.
In our own lives - how many of us have lied to cover up something we did wrong? And if we are not careful the stuff we do to cover it up can be far worse than the original wrong. When you are in a hole. Stop digging.
The ancient Christian rite of Confession - in which a person comes and (in confidence but) without holding back confesses outloud what they have done wrong - and then hears through the mouth of a priest God’s unequivocal words “Yours sins are forgiven”. That rite is there for a purpose - because only forgiveness can break the cycle of fear and violence. Only God’s perfect love can cast out all fear.
God send Moses to rescue the Hebrews from Pharoah’s fear. But it is only part of the story because Pharoah remains a slave trapped in his own fear. The story only reaches its conclusion in the New Testament when sends Jesus to “let my people go” - and even the likes of the Murderer Paul can find forgiveness, an escape from fear and hatred and a way into the promised land. Amen
1) Cf "Yes:50 secrets from the science of persuasion" by Noah Goldstein, Robert B. Cialdini, Steve Martin.
2) https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/singapore-population/
3) https://www.statista.com/statistics/281322/population-density-in-the-united-kingdom-uk-by-country
4) London population density 4542/square kilometre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London
5) Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP Alive in God
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