Note: This reflection is the first in a four part series of reflections I’m writing for my final in an exegesis and preaching course in seminary. As such, these reflections may have more of the cadence of a homily than my usual material does. The text we used for study was Exodus. This first reflection is based on Exodus 4:18-26.
In this passage, we see a courageous display of faithfulness. Tzipporah acts with boldness to preserve the life of her family. As she does this, she also shows us what it means for us as human beings to be the high priests of creation. Tzipporah is the daughter of the High Priest of Midian. Jethro and his people have kept the faith alive in the wilderness. Moses’ time in Midian has helped him remember what it means to be a servant of God. As they begin the journey back to Egypt, however, it is Tzipporah who will show Moses an act of faithfulness to God. Tzipporah, like her father, becomes a priest of the Most High God. She is Mother Tzipporah.
As they are spending the night on the road to Egypt, the text says that God tries to kill either Moses or his son. This is a challenging account, and it may be disturbing to many. I am going to offer an interpretation, but before I do so, I take this space as an opportunity to acknowledge that not everything in Scripture can be easily explained, and we are right in using our God-given conscience to wrestle, reject easy answers, and come to our own conclusions. Nothing I write here is meant to be an end-all be-all. Only my best effort to receive from this text whatever I can.
The text notes that God “tries” to kill Moses. What this says to me is that God is testing Moses and Tzipporah. God wants to know if they will act boldly and courageously on behalf of those in danger. Given Moses’ reluctance to answer God’s call, and the danger of the situation they are entering into, this makes some sense. Tzipporah circumcises her son, a ritual and liturgical action that reminds God of God’s covenant with Abraham. When the Israelite priests made a sacrifice to God, they knew that the sacrifice would not be consumed utterly, but returned to the community as life and sustenance. When Christ came to be both High Priest and sacrifice, he was not destroyed, but returned to life and brought eternal life to all of God’s children. When our priests offer bread and wine on the altar, these are not taken away by God but transfigured, sanctified and transformed into the Body and Blood of our Lord. They are then returned to the community as a source of life, “for faith unashamed, for love unfeigned,” and for all the other gifts God gives us through Christ in the Eucharist.
Here, we see Mother Tzipporah acting in the same role as God’s other priests across time. She trusts that in offering her son, God will not destroy any of them, but will return her faithful gesture to her in gifts of protection, life and liberation.
God’s desire is to bring that fullness of life to all people. For those who suffer under oppression, God’s restoration looks like support. Uplifting. Empowerment. For those who oppress, God’s restoration begins with humbling. Casting down. We are reminded of the Mother of God and her song, “He has put down the mighty from their thrones and has exalted the humble.” Before they set out to Egypt, God promises to restore justice between God’s firstborn son Israel, and God’s other son, Egypt. God warns Pharaoh that if Pharaoh does not respect the dignity and humanity of God’s firstborn, God will smite the firstborn of Egypt.
This may seem retributive, but it becomes more clear if we see it in the light of restorative justice and God’s desire to bring new life. God’s people are fragmented and under oppression in Egypt. Their suffering is an active situation, and they have not yet been fully united to pursue justice. Even so, there have been men and women doing courageous acts of faithfulness under oppression. Consider Mother Tzipporah, or the midwives Shiphrah and Puah. Yet it also seems clear that in order for God to enact God’s restorative justice on the Israelites and the Egyptians, something must be done to break the grip of Egyptian oppression and their fear of losing their power. This something must also bring the Israelites together as a unified people, who can act communally and in time reach out to other communities and be a blessing to the nations. God gives an opportunity through Moses’ warning for Egypt to partner with God in restorative justice, to let the Hebrews go. God will not use force unless it is clear that healing cannot begin within the status quo.
In the Gospel of St. John, we see Jesus commissioning St. Peter to be an agent of God’s justice and renewal, as an apostle and as a priest. On the seashore, after the Resurrection, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” And each time when Peter seeks to prove his love, Jesus tells him to act in deeds of faithful justice. Feed my sheep, tend my flock. Take care of my lambs. Here the method by which God lifts up the lowly and brings down the powerful is a different method. Christ responds to a different situation. God’s people are under oppression from the Romans. Yet at the same time they have formed a strong consciousness of unity as a people. They have survived the Exodus and the exile. God’s restorative justice now is once again to make the enemies of God’s people into God’s friends. Jesus models this in his own life and ministry, particularly here in this encounter with Peter. Here we encounter not a stubborn Pharaoh, but a repentant apostle, one who has abandoned God but wishes to turn and receive life again. In God’s restorative justice, Jesus tells Peter that the measure of Peter’s love will be shown in how he brings together God’s flock, a flock that is already expanding to include both Jew and Gentile. This is a slower revolution, one from the inside out of Roman society. Force has been tried against the Romans and has failed to produce the desired change. The needed change is more complex and entangled, and so Christ commissions his apostles to knit together disparate peoples, to make enemies into friends, and to bring life to spaces of social and spiritual death.
St Maximus the Confessor tells us that the saints are called to “unite paradise and the inhabited world to make one earth, gathered together.”* Only some may be called to serve in the altar, but we are all of us priests of God by virtue of our baptism. And so I wonder…what separate communities are we each called to bring back together? What deeds of transformative justice can we commit or take part in? How can we bring the needs of our community to God, and act with works of faithfulness for the flourishing of all those we are in relationship with? What social inequities need to shift so that we can bring oppressed and oppressor to a level playing field? And what, maybe is one thing that each of us can do to begin to chip away at the injustices that plague our communities?
We must realize that we can be whole together in ways we cannot be whole on our own. But it requires faithful action, it requires that we offer our labor and our prayer to God not just on our own behalf, but on behalf of our neighbor. It also requires, for those of us complicit in oppression that we offer our repentance in word and in deed. As we offer all these things, in the world and on the altar, we can be encouraged by the examples of Mother Tzipporah, of St. Peter, of the Theotokos, and of all other faithful saints throughout history who chose to stand firm in the midst of death, and offer their lives to God that their people might receive life.
*in “Ecological Readings of St. Maximus the Confessor,” https://journals.wheaton.edu/index.php/wheaton_writing/article/download/580/137/
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