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Well, it’s Lent again. So, it’s time for us to take some time and dwell upon that age old question of “What’s wrong with us?” It’s quite easy for us to look around at the world and point out the wrong that’s going on and ask “What’s wrong with them?”. We throw around labels like Tyrant and make diagnoses like narcissism, psychopathy, sociopathy, or insanity caused by late-stage syphilis. We believe ourselves to be basically good people, not perfect people and we scratch our heads in righteous indignation when we see the horrible “That” that “that person” or “those people” have done and continue to do. It’s quite easy to point the finger at everyone else but when it comes to ourselves…well, that’s a different story. Lent is the time of year for us to take up the spiritual disciple of looking within ourselves with brutal honesty. It is a time to ask ourselves how this disease of the mind called Sin affects “me”.
For the sake of time, I’m going to cut to the chase and give a quick answer to that question. This disease of sin embeds in all of us as our predisposition to be self-deceived with respect to who we are and delusional with respect to the extent of our own personal agency. To put it a little less academically, we are not honest with ourselves particularly when dealing with the question of “who am I” and we like to believe that Sinatra- mantra, “I did it my way.”
Looking at our passage from Deuteronomy, it doesn’t outright say that we are self-deceived and delusional, but it certainly implies it. This reading is a directive that Moses gave to the Israelites about showing gratitude after they had finally settled as a nation in the Land God had promised to give them and had been there long enough to plant and harvest crops. It was a simple task: take a little basket, put a little of the first fruits of their first crop in it, and go to the priest to give thanks to God. While standing before the priest, they are to remember who they are and that it was God who had brought them there and made that little basket of produce possible. Then, celebrate with the priest and any migrants that were among them.
It is interesting how brutally honest Moses asks them to be about themselves. The first thing they are to say about themselves is that my lineage is that of a wandering Aramean. The Arameans were just the common people who lived in what was called the Fertile Crescent in what is today the very dry areas of Western Iraq and Syria along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Back then, between 2,500-1,500 BCE, it was quite green. They use the word wandering which implies they were nomadic shepherds who just wandered from place to place with no place to call home. They had no property, no land. They were poor. Nomads were shepherds and yes, they would have been looked down upon. So, there with the priest, they remembered their people didn’t come from a line of powerful kings bred in entitlement, but were rather poor, uneducated, dirty shepherds who had no place to settle down.
Well, as if being descended from nomadic shepherds wasn’t enough, Moses also told them to remember that they were oppressed slaves in Egypt. Their ancestor, most likely referring to the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, eventually wandered down into Egypt and there became a great nation of people so numerous that Pharaoh considered them a threat to Egyptian national security. But even there in Egypt they were just shepherds and field workers. They were what we today would call migrant workers, strangers in the land looking after the hard work of agriculture.
It’s not hard to imagine how paranoidishly threatened Pharaoh must have been. He woke up one morning and realized that it wouldn’t take much for this people known as the ‘Abiru to rise up and take control of the breadbasket and the stockyards of Egypt where they had lived since they first settled in Egypt at a Pharaoh's invitation. Those former Pharaohs had let these ‘Abiru have way too much privilege. So, this smartest and greatest Pharaoh whoever was (probably a guy named Rameses II) rounded them up and enslaved them. He caravanned them to a different area of Egypt to live in concentration camps. He forced them to make the bricks to build the cities that he named after himself. Their taskmasters wore red headbands with MEGA printed on them. Living conditions were bad.
In slavery, the ‘Abiru became a great nation. There got to be so many of them that Pharaoh ordered the midwives to kill the little baby boys when they were born. Though many in number, they couldn’t rise up and deliver themselves, not against Pharaoh's army. Anytime they complained, the taskmasters made their working conditions all the harsher. Their only recourse was to cry out to the God of their ancestors whom they had largely forgotten the name of because they had grown too fond of the Egyptian gods.
This God heard them and remembered them and the promise he had made to their forefathers to make them a great nation living in a land that he would give them. He called Moses to speak for him and lead them. God delivered them. He plagued the Egyptians ten times in ways that showed the gods of the Egyptians were powerless. He parted the waters of the Red Sea for them to walk through and then drowned Pharaoh's army when they tried to pursue. For forty years they followed this God, a whirlwind by day and a pillar of fire by night, through the Wilderness until he brought them to the Land.
Back to our passage, notice that they were to emphatically remember that it was not by their own hand that they stood there with their little baskets of produce. No, it was God who had delivered them, and led them through the wilderness as they complained the whole way and longed to return to the familiarity of slavery in Egypt. This ritual of harvest thanksgiving forced them to be honest about themselves and to give credit where credit was due, to God. They were dirty, oppressed, hopeless slaves with no recourse other than to cry out to a God they had only heard about because the gods of Egypt couldn’t care less about these ‘Abiru, these wandering, migrant, Aramean aliens known for their lighter coloured skin, big noses, and strange language. It was not by their own hand, but actually in spite of themselves, that they came to this land. But by the hand of God, the LORD, the God of their ancestors. The God who hears…them…their cries. The promising God who remembers…them. The God who is for…them.
Moses has good advice for us. It’s hard for us to be honest with ourselves, about who we are. We either think too high or too low of ourselves. When we mess up and hurt ourselves or others, we instinctively set out to deceive ourselves to believe we’re in the right. We make ready use of the tools of self-justification, rationalizing, and blaming. When it comes to our successes, we claim it all. I did it my way. Or, we chalk it up to luck or something. We try to build relationships like they are job interviews; competitively emphasize our strengths and list credentials and accomplishments. But you know, we’re all slaves to something. We’re all powerless before something. Brutal honesty with ourselves doesn’t come easy.
Let me be brutally honest with you about ourselves. We are beloved children of God. Each of us is beloved by God. Yes, we are all self-deceived. We are all enslaved to something. But God hears us when we cry out for deliverance. God wants to and will heal our brokenness. But we have to take up the cross of self-denial and follow Jesus through a wilderness along a path of unconditional love and brutal honesty giving credit to the One to whom it is due…and there will be true friends along the way to help and support us. Amen.
