The Cry of the Oppressed - Chapter One

Egypt, the superpower of its day, was ruled by Pharaoh, who responded to the threat of the growing number of Israelites in his country by forcing them into slavery. They had to work every day without a break, making bricks, building storehouses for Pharaoh.

Egypt is an Empire - built on the backs of Israelite slave labor.

But right away in the book of Exodus, there is a disruption. Things change. And the change begins with God saying:
“I have indeed seen the misery of my people… I have heard them crying out… I have come down to rescue them… I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them…”

A God who sees and hears. A God who hears the cry. The Hebrew word used here for cry is sa’aq, and we find it all throughout the Bible. Sa’aq is the expression of pain, the ouch, the sound we utter when we are wounded.

But sa’aq is also a question, a question that arises out of the pain of the wound. Where is justice? Did anybody see that? Who will come to my rescue? Did anybody hear that? Or am I alone?

The Israelites are oppressed, they’re in misery, they’re suffering – and when they cry out, God hears.

This is central to who God is: God always hears the cry of the oppressed.

Egypt

What started in a garden is now affecting the globe.

The word for this condition is anti-kingdom.

There is God’s kingdom – the peace, the shalom, the good that God intends for all things. And then there is what happens when entire societies and systems and empires become opposed to God’s desires for the world.

Egypt is an anti-kingdom. Egypt is what happens when sin builds up a head of steam. Egypt is what happens when sin becomes structured and embedded in society. Egypt shows us how easily human nature bends toward using power to preserve privilege at the expense of the weak.

Exodus… is about liberation from occupation.

God sends a shepherd named Moses to lead them out of Egypt. But that’s not the end of the story.

It’s actually a beginning. Their journey takes them to the foot of a mountain – a mountain called Sanai. And what happens at Sinai is revolutionary.

Sinai

It’s here, at Sinai, that God speaks.

God hasn’t talked to a group of people since Eden.

Sinai is the breaking of the silence. God is near. God is about to speak. It’s believed that this is the only faith tradition in human history that has as its central event a god speaking to a group of people all at one time.

Rescue, redemption, liberation – it’s all received from God. It’s all grace. It’s all a gift.

God invites the people to be priests. It’s an invitation to show the world who this God is and what this God is like.

Sin always gains a head of steam when it goes unchecked. And that always leads to institutions and cultures and structures that are anti-kingdom. This leads to dehumanizing places, like Egypt had become, which these former slaves standing at the base of Sinai know all too well. And God’s response is to form a different kind of nation, a “holy” one shaped not by greed, violence, and abusive power but by compassion, justice, and care for one’s neighbor.

It’s as if God is saying, “The thing that has happened to you – go make it happen for others. The freedom from oppression that you are now experiencing – help others experience that same freedom. The grace that has been extended to you when you were at your lowest – extend it to others. In the same way that I heard your cry, go and hear the cry of others and act on their behalf.

God measures their faith by how they treat the widows, orphans, strangers – the weak – among them. God’s desire is that they would bring exodus to the weak, in the same way that God brought them exodus in their weakness.

Exodus 22