The beginning of the story of Moses

This service was a church anniversary, reception of new members and a 'taster' for lego church...

Exodus 1:8-14.

This might seem a very gloomy reading with which to start our anniversary service, but we’re taking our Old Testament reading in three parts today to help us reflect on the way life can be; the help God sends us; and the way we see God in action.

This first part helps us reflect on the way life is, sometimes… Joseph’s life certainly had its ups and downs (even if you just think of the events recounted in the musical version “Joseph and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat”). He was the favourite of the 12 sons, his brothers plotted against him which led to him being sold into slavery in Egypt, he was wrongly accused of attacking Potiphar’s wife and was imprisoned, he managed to gain respect as a prisoner because of his ability to interpret dreams, which led to him being summoned to the Pharoah, made an official in charge of food distribution in a time of famine, so that he could then bring his whole family to Egypt.

But now time has elapsed and from the time of Joseph – a great blessing and power for the descendants of Israel  - the years have passed and we have come to time of hardship & persecution.

The debt of the past is forgotten, the king of Egypt fears what might happen, since these foreigners are becoming more numerous. He suggests to his people that as well as being overrun with foreigners, they could conspire against the Egyptians with enemy people, and ‘escape form the land’. There is a deep-seated fear of the other in what the King of Egypt decrees, and also a desire to use them as forced-labourers, performing hard tasks to keep them oppressed and economically useful to the land of Egypt. This is a terrible story of the misuse of power to build up a fear of the foreigner which can lead to sub-human treatment.

This is the way the world can be -the way it all too often is – a friendly history is forgotten, lies are told and believed, people are treated badly and hatred wins the day. We only have to think of the situation in Ukraine; in Israel and Palestine; some of the discussion around migration across borders; the way the original workers on the Empire Windrush were treated.

And yet the story of the book of Exodus is the story of a God who sees the way the world is and who inspires people to act. To work alongside God to change the world for the better. 

- Prayers for the world – 

Exodus 1: 15 - 21

Two women – Shiphrah and Puah – turn out to be heroes in this part of the story. When the account in Exodus tells us that they ‘feared God’ – it doesn’t mean that they were afraid that God would hurt them if they did the wrong thing – it means that they cared what God thought. They worshipped God, they tried to live as people who remembered that God lived them, and they tried not to do anything that God would not want. 

God definitely would not want these babies to die, and so they trick the King of Egypt into thinking they couldn’t kill the baby boys, when really they wouldn’t kill them – they helped all the mothers and let all the babies live.

God steps in to preserve life. And unusually we know the names of Shiphrah and Puah who stood up for what was right and through their actions, worked for God.

We have heroes in the past of this chapel. Those who met, before 1800, in farms around this area, and then in this chapel, which was built in 1814 -  209 years ago. And all the heroes who have been part of the life of the chapel since – continuing to worship God and seek God’s guidance through all that has happened in those 209 years. God uses ordinary people to do his work in the world – we can all be heroes.

We are going to welcome four new heroes today – except we will call them members, because ‘heroes’ might make them blush. 

- Baptism and Reception into Membership - 

As the children have a go at making a part of the story of Moses in Lego bricks, we hear it again in a more traditional form.

Exodus 1:22 – 2:10

We heard how the Pharaoh tried to grind down the people of Israel by ordering them to build great cities. This is the world sometimes, a place of hardship and oppression

But throughout the story, we see God’s work of building, too. Using the heroism of the midwives, God thwarts the first plan of Pharaoh, to kill the baby boys of the Israelite women at birth.

Now as a new campaign of killing begins, God uses new people to build a plan to free all his people.

It begins with the baby’s mother’s fundamental instinct to save her son. She has a clever, if desperate plan to hide him in the reeds on the river, placing his sister on guard.

Next God uses the curiosity and the care of Pharaoh’s own daughter, to draw the baby out of the water & name him Moses.

The final brick in God’s plan is to give Moses sister the courage to suggest Moses’ own mother to nurse and bring up her own child, safe in the protection of the Egyptian princess.

Like building with Lego bricks, God uses the people who are available, to be built into a great plan. All shapes and sizes can be used - they have only to be available .

God works in the same way today.. in this pastorate God can take each of us and build us together in his plan. We rejoice today in the addition of new bricks, new members. We give thanks at this anniversary for the firm foundations of the past, on which God continued to build. We offer ourselves to be taken and used for God’s kingdom-building. All of us and all our gifts can be used, together forming God’s greater plan so that the love of Jesus Christ may be known in our world. 

- Prayer of thanks for past years & dedication of ourselves -