WHICH GOD WILL WE SERVE?

I've been reading through the Pentatuech for a class I’m taking, and one of the topics I found myself circulating back to is the notion of God as master, specifically in direct juxtaposition to Pharoah as master. There were multiple angles to view this concept from, all of which are interesting, compelling and new to me in my study of the Exodus story. This reiteration of God as master, in comparison to “Master Pharoah” can be seen through both the calling out of the Hebrew slaves by Moses and the plagues in Egypt.

In one of my texts, Christopher Wright points out from Exodus 4:22-23, where God tells Moses to speak these words to Pharoah, “Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, ‘Let my son go, so he may worship me’”. There is ambiguity on this word, worship. Some translations read it as “serve”; this would imply that the Hebrew people’s service to Pharoah was preventative to their “service” to YHWH. As Wright states, “Israel’s bondage had a spiritual dimension; it was not merely political, economic, and social”.[1] Their bondage was to be to YHWH, no longer to Pharoah.

It makes sense then, that from this angle, African American liberation theology was so intrinsically tied to the Exodus story. It was not just a political, economic, or social deliverance[2] that was needed, but a spiritual deliverance as well. The slave owners of the American south functioned as a true-to-life Pharoah that prevented black slaves from serving their true master, YHWH. The same God, who was master of Moses, was their master too.  They sought not only deliverance from the obvious, physical servitude they lived in, but spiritual deliverance as well.[3]

While I spent countless hours in Sunday school as a child hearing about the plagues in Egypt, the plagues had never been presented to me as a countering of the Gods of Egypt, nor the “God of Pharoah”, as Pharoah would have been perceived during the time of the Exodus. Through the plagues, YHWH dismantled Egyptian deities, one at a time, and ultimately dethroned Pharoah as God with the last plague.[4] By the end of Genesis, God had asserted himself as master not only to the Hebrew people, but as master over all nations. 

Reading Exodus in this way has profound theological implications for Christians, specifically in their reading of the New Testament. When we read of Paul’s “bond-servant” status, he is likely harkening back to the servitude of the enslaved Hebrew people, instead yoking himself to a chosen “slavery” to YHWH, manifest in the person of Jesus Christ. It directs our indebtedness for our freedom and creates missional implications as a redeemed and freed people. As Wright explains, 

God’s redeemed people are called to redemptive living in the world. And in view of our exodus understanding of the full breadth of what it means when God acts to redeem, there must be equally broad implications for our understanding of the quality of mission that responds to, reflects, and in some ways embodies the redeeming purposes of God[5].

As a redeemed people, we must emulate the steps of the Hebrew people into our own, Christ centered mission as one that includes the economic, social, political, but also profoundly spiritual mission of redeeming all people back to their rightful master. 

Brothers and sisters, we are God’s redeemed people and he is removing idols that we have placed before Him. He is dismantling our God of production, consumption, and busyness. We are simultaneously releasing the demands placed on those who serve in those areas of our economy.  He is showing that while we were economically and politically enslaved to productivity, and busyness, we were spiritually unable to fully serve our master, YHWH and his son, Jesus Christ.

I pray that our church, made up of predominately white people who are participants of broken, racist systems, would understand that we have an opportunity to lay those systems aside and use our privilege to Sabbath so that those around us may Sabbath as well.  May we provide food or money in our time of relative wealth to give space for essential workers around us to also Sabbath.

We can function as Pharoah, demanding our systems (and the people in those systems) work FOR us.  Or, instead, we can use the privilege we have, admit that our systems had enslaved people into the bondage of busyness and unrest, and instead invite them into rest with us. The Hebrew people would never find rest until Pharoah gave them that rest, or until they were freed from Pharoah’s system altogether. 

Are we willing to let go of our power and build a new nation where truer equity and freedom might be found?  

- Emily Thien

[1] Christopher J. Wright,  The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Biblical Theology for Life), Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010 (101).

[2] Christopher J. Wright,  The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Biblical Theology for Life), Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010 (99).

[3] Huge R. Page, Jr., Randall C. Bailey and Valerie Bridgeman, eds, The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009 (Chapter 3). 

[4] John H. Walton, Chronological and Background Charts of the Old Testament, Revised and Expanded, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994, 85. (Referenced in Ingrid Faro’s notes, pages 7-8, April 13, 2020.

[5] Christopher J. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Biblical Theology for Life), Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010 (109).