2023.09.10 | Mixed Multitudes
Mixed Multitudes
Exodus 12:1-4; 11-14; 29-38
Preached by
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, CA
10 September 2023
The story that never gets old. The youngest one gathered around the table for Passover seder has the distinct honor of asking, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”
The Babylonian Talmud quotes four questions: why matzah is eaten, why maror is eaten, why meat that is eaten is exclusively roasted, and why food is dipped twice.
We won’t dwell on these particular questions of the Passover, commemorated in the spring in the northern hemispheres, often overlapping with our own holy rendition, Easter.
Both have their unique story to tell to the world, and both are rooted in liberation and overcoming forces of death and oppression, primarily empire.
Before we get to the parting of the sea of reeds and the bogging down of Egyptian city chariots in backcountry escape routes, let us recall the migration of semitic peoples into Egypt. But first, I’ve just gotta say, all those folks with their fancy clampers at Burning Man a couple weeks ago might have felt like Pharaoh’s chariot men, wheels stuck in mud, watching only those on foot able to escape—always know your escape route, especially in aquatic situations, be they seas or precipitation.
While our new Bible Study group, Texts & Contexts, did not make it to Burning Man, we are examining the Bible and Migration this fall—and we promise it’s a whole lot more fun than being stuck in the mud too. Join us Thursdays at 7:30pm. We explored together this past Thursday, Abraham’s migration from Haran in modern-day Turkey to the Levant, where he and Sarah had to conceal parts of their identity as they were vulnerable migrants in uncharted territory dealing with unknown authorities. And we traced the children of Israel’s migration to Egypt. Where, through Joseph’s connection, they were allowed to take root in the land of Goshen with other semi-nomadic peoples. It was there that they, as Exodus 1 tells us, became fruitful and multiplied.
We also recall from Exodus 1, a new Pharaoh, to whom Joseph meant nothing, grew concerned regarding the fruitfulness and multiplication of the Hebrews—and probably not just the Hebrews, but the whole conglomerate of semi-nomadic folks that we would today term “migrant laborers” residing in the land of Goshen. And according to Egyptian historical records, this Pharaoh’s concern was perhaps not unfounded. There’s a backstory to why Joseph tells his brothers that “all shepherds are detestable to the Egyptians” (Gen 46:34).
The Exodus story is probably set during the illustrious reign of Ramesses II. He, like Herod more than a millennium after him, was given the title “Great” and was known as a great builder who oversaw the building of the cities of Rameses and Pithom, where the Hebrews and other migrants labored in construction. This year the de Young Museum had a wonderful exhibit of him, entitled, “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs.” He ruled a mere 67 years and was regarded as a god on earth. Which is why when we read the plagues section of Exodus, we read over and over again, “So that all the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.” It was a real battle of the gods.
Now here’s the backstory about why Egyptians didn’t take too kindly to semi-nomadic shepherds from the east. Ramesses the Great belonged to a period known as the New Kingdom of Egypt, and he was part of the 19th Dynasty. A few centuries prior, during the 15th Dynasty, the Hyksos ruled Egypt. The Hyksos were foreign shepherd kings from the east, from where Joseph and his brothers and his father Jacob and his grandfather Abraham were emigrating. These semitic shepherds ruled Egypt for about a century; long enough to sear collective memories into Egyptian culture. Worthy of note is that the capital of these foreign shepherd kings was known as Avaris, in the northeastern region of the Nile Delta, not too far from—you guessed it—the land of Goshen. And this is the area where Ramesses the Great picked to construct his capital, Pi-Ramesses, which shepherd migrants, among them Hebrews, helped to construct. As the capital, it was the most populous city with around 300,000 inhabitants, about a third of the population of San Francisco proper, but the outskirts were multiplying.
Now, another interesting fact about Pharaoh. We get the word straight from Greek, Φαραω. But before Greek, it entered the Hebrew language as an Egyptian loanword, פּרע. Before the 18th Dynasty it was a reference to the regal palace, but beginning with the New Kingdom it became the title of the ruler. Hebrew though, already had a verb with the exact same letters פרע (pei, resh, and ayin), so it’s hard to tell the words apart, save for the little dot in the pei, known as the dagesh, so they’re homonyms. You don’t have to know Hebrew to see the similarity between the two on the screen. It’s kind of funny, because this verb means “to let go.” So, throughout the Exodus narrative, Moses might as well have been telling Pharaoh or “Mr. Let Go” to let his people go, or atleast Hebrew speaking audiences would have gotten that irony. It was as if the Egyptian ruler was always going to let go, it was his destiny, so this story tells.
Our Scripture passage this morning has us entering the Exodus narrative when Pharoah has finally supposedly let go. And the Hebrews are readying themselves for liberation. Old Testament scholar Terence Fretheim, who happens to be from Iowa, observes that communities often create liturgy in response to liberation, but as the story is redacted here, with the Passover, liturgy precedes the liberative event. It is the expectation that God will see them through.
Exodus 12:14 states, “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance.” The Jewish re-telling of Passover, the Haggadah, is participatory, “God brought us out of Egypt. When commemorated today, the Passover, is more than a remembering, and not only a pedagogy of the oppressed, but an actual re-entering into the reality of deliverance, continually re-constituted as a people on the move, via the past, present, and future salvific event of Exodus, not unlike when we partake of communion: a moment of shared anamnesis.
Just as we remember things that while collectively are our stories, perhaps singularly we have never experienced, there are times that we speak things as they should be, even though we know them not to be true just yet. One of my mentors, senior pastor from Mills Grove Christian Church in Oakland, Rev. Charles Johnson, would always call me Rev. Dr. Wiser. I told him once, “you know I’m not so sure about that, I think we should reserve that for a time should it come to pass,” to which he replied, “we speak things into being, so that they shall come to pass.” As the story is handed down to us, this was the Israelites enacting liturgy before the liberative event. They participated, it wasn’t all God. Deliverance was performative and a partnership. God beckons us too in the active participation in our deliverance. And even before we’re there, we say it: “we’re saved.” By the grace of God and thanks be to God.
But not only were the Israelites saved in the event that the Passover commemorates. Perhaps my favorite part of this chapter is one conspicuous phrase in verse 38: עֵרֶב רַב, “a mixed multitude.” “A mixed multitude also went up with them, and flocks and herds—a very large number of cattle.” Lots of folks joined their movement, and a great number of beasts of burden got to enjoy their first sabbath rest as well.
So it was not only Israelites, but a multi-ethnic labor revolt. Our lament here is how much sooner could they have laid down the mud bricks had they banded together earlier? How many migrant children could have been saved from the Nile?
The Pharaohs of the world scoff at a group of protestors, or even at a large constituency fighting for a single issue. But they take note when multi-ethnic groups band together on a shared platform. That’s what bogs down the chariot wheels of empire, when different groups begin walking together in the same direction.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became most problematic for the dominant establishment—which is a euphemism for White Supremacy—once he started bringing all together for the Poor People’s Campaign. While desegregation and the right to vote were essential, King believed that African Americans and other minorities would never enter full citizenship until they had economic security. And economic security leads to rest, that which the Israelites and so many other migrant laborers sought in the Nile Delta so long ago. King was in the tradition of Jesus, bringing disparate groups together for collective liberation.
This coming Friday, September 15th, will mark 60 years since the KKK bombed 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, claiming the lives of four African-American girls. Had even more mixed multitudes risen up back then, perhaps there would have been less bricks hurled, bullets shot, and bombs ignited. What of the Jews in Nazi Germany? What about today? Let us not sit idly by when freedoms are being stripped, from voting rights to trans rights, and still so many others are regarded as second-class citizens. The task before us is only getting more difficult, for some of our most populous states like Texas and Florida, white students in public education cannot learn anything that might make them feel uncomfortable, and black students must now learn that slavery had its benefits. We must encounter difficult truths and remember our past in order to work toward more just futures. Futures that no longer fan the flames of the dominant establishment, of empire, of white supremacy.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said 60 years ago: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. King’s emblematic relationship with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel led many holy mixed multitudes marching in the same direction, toward justice and shared deliverance, demanding Pharaoh let go. Today, it is a mixed multitude delivering thousands from the rubble in Morocco. God performs miracles when we work together.
Church, hear this good news, right from the text today: God’s redemption is not for the chosen few, it is for the sake of all those bound, working for Pharaohs unnamed and named. But, we must work together, for the collective freedom of all. We cannot go it alone, the 19th Dynasty of Egypt to the 20th century has shown us repeatedly that other peoples’ liberation is tied up with our own—and our’s with theirs. May we always remember this. So, if we only find ourselves with folks of our own flock, who look like, act like, speak like, and worship like us, we might want to join a mixed multitude, for they’re making the way for the LORD. Let us then, like the past, make the way by walking together, building beloved community, and passing that on to our little ones, for more just futures. Amen.