But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the boys live. Exodus 1:17
Today we begin a series based on one of the greatest cycle of stories we have in our religious heritage. Each week we shall focus on an episode of the life of Moses and his leading of his people out of slavery into freedom. This event is both Exodus (Latin for the “way out”) and Pilgrimage. These events also disclose the nature and presence of a God who has compassion on those who suffer and who acts as companion in the arduous wilderness trek to a new life of both freedom and bounty. We shall also see how the Exodus has clear parallels with the Christ story in which the themes of slavery, redemption, pilgrimage, covenant and destiny are all entwined together.
Today we start with THE INFANT MOSES and his escape in the bulrushes. We are reminded that the Egyptians’ “solution” to a perceived ethnic threat from the Hebrews was to oppress them even more harshly and then to resort to a kind of “ethnic cleansing” by slaughtering all the male Hebrew infants. Moses escaped because a mother’s loving ingenuity opened a door to his adoption to the royal household.
Jonathan Barker