One of the longest sagas in the Scriptures is about Joseph, his brothers, and their father Jacob. It is filled with arrogance, duplicity, kidnapping, almost adultery, starvation – it could be a blockbuster movie. The story has a happy ending, and Joseph, the most powerful man in the land, reconciles with his jerky brothers, hugs his dad, and saves his people, Israel. Then, as often happens in happy stories, things go wrong in the sequel. That entire generation dies, and a new Pharaoh who did not know Joseph came into power (Exodus 1). The first thing this Pharaoh saw was that the people of Israel were strong and prosperous, and he and his leadership are afraid of them. Pharoah sets out to oppress these people, but the more damage he causes, the more they thrive. The next step is infanticide, but the midwives of Egypt subversively rise up against the tyrant, allowing the babies to be born. All of this leads to Moses being saved by his mother and sister, which leads to his being raised in Pharoah’s household. The rest is history.
Today’s truth was best put by philosopher George Santayana in 1905: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And as a recent meme has pointed out, those who refuse to teach history want the past to be repeated. It is so easy to see something unfold and refuse to acknowledge its resemblance to the past. It is too easy to say, “That could never happen here!” Meanwhile, the playbooks of tyrants are being used in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to fool the public. And other nations. But some of us are not fooled. Some of us see the past re-emerging before our eyes, and our cries of warning are going unheeded. All I can hear is Roger Daltrey screaming, “We won’t get fooled again!” But we are being fooled, Roger, we are.
In the story of Moses and his emergence as savior, God doggedly nags Moses until he says yes. Moses then nags at Pharoah to let the people of Israel go. Sometimes Pharoah gives in, but then he changes his mind (I don’t for a minute believe that God made him do that – that’s just dumb). Pharoah’s arrogance would not allow him to let his property leave, yet I think he could see that something different was happening that he could not control. He would allow Moses and the people to go but then have second thoughts. His frail ego could not handle the loss. His hubris, in the end, led to his army getting stuck in the mud of the Nile. In the case of Egypt, God was not pro-life.
Memory is a funny thing. Our stories change as we age; our history gets changed in textbooks by whoever is paying for them to be printed. Our laws change, often without consideration of the consequences of the past. It isn’t too late to stand up and speak against the times we are devolving instead of evolving. Like the Irish proverb warns us: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. If we aren’t careful and vigilant, we absolutely will get fooled again. Shame on us, if that happens.
Prayer -Holy and merciful God, keep us focused on truth and justice, not selfishness and arrogant religious views. Amen.
Today’s art is “Moses” by Elena Kotliarker.