“Salvation in the Reeds” - Sermon for September 29, 2019

We humans tend to look for salvation in grandeur and radiant splendour. Rarely do we consider salvation sleeping in a simple manger, dying on a cross, hiding in a valley and being fed by ravens... or being placed in a basket in the mud and reeds of a river. Today's Lectionary story is the famous one of the Pharaoh of Egypt ordering the deaths of every male Hebrew newborn, and he would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling kids. For after a desperate mother trusted her son to a tiny ark upon the Nile, it is the children who took the risks of making a new, liberating outcome where hope seemed hidden beyond recovery. As Rev. Tom describes, both Pharaoh's daughter and the baby's sister, Miriam, took actions against a system that kept the Hebrews oppressed. It's not only in the Bible that we see a minority population treated as "other" - second class citizens, foreigners speaking a different language, who can't be trusted. But these two - females with no political power and no hope of changing the system - would save the child Moses, and draw out salvation from the unlikeliest of circumstances. (Bible reading - Exodus 1:8-17; 2:1-10)