Bible Text: Exodus 1:22 – Exodus 2:10 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: Exodus | I remember first hearing this story at Vacation Bible School back when I was in 3rd or 4th grade.  We had one of those flannel boards, with the cut-out cardboard characters.  Do you remember those?  As a kid, the main character in this story was Moses, of course!  He was going to grow up to be the hero, the deliverer.  Everyone else—his mother, his sister, and Pharaoh’s daughter were bit characters compared to the leading man of Moses.  I remember after the flannel graph we all made our own “papyrus baskets” by weaving paper drinking straws into a raft and coating that with peanut butter. We got to float them in a gutter, which was cool.  I thought Moses’ mother was pretty clever, thinking up that basket.  But I never thought to give Moses’ mother any credit for being willing to put her baby in the river in the first place!  The Vacation Bible school teachers made this sound like an amazing adventure, one that everyone would be willing to try.  I had no appreciation for just how much angst Moses’ mother must have felt that day when she put her precious baby boy in the basket along the edge of the Nile River.

And really, it seems like the writers of Exodus don’t have any appreciation for that, either!  They don’t even tell us the name of Moses’ mother until chapter 6, when we find out her name was Jochebed because she is given the briefest mention in a long genealogical list.  Clearly the spotlight is to be on this “fine baby”, this exceptional child who got pulled out of the water by Pharaoh’s daughter—and who would go on to pull all the Israelites out of the water, out of slavery, into freedom!  Moses is a truly important man in our faith story, and he deserves a lot of attention.  But, I couldn’t skip over his mother.  Maybe it’s because I am a mother myself.  I think it’s more than that, though.  I was drawn to give attention to Moses’ mother because she has to make such a difficult, heart-breaking, gut-wrenching choice.  The choice to surrender.  The choice to let go.

As an adult, I now know that Moses’ adventure in the papyrus basket isn’t something everyone would want to try, not even close! But Moses’ mother having to give up something she loves, having to let go of a part of herself, being forced to surrender something she didn’t think she could live without—well, that’s an experience that every person who ever walks the earth will have to deal with.

I once took a preaching class that encouraged writing sermons in four parts.  First, talk about “trouble” in the biblical text, second talk about “trouble” in the world today; third talk about hope in the scripture passage, and then fourth, relate that hope to the world.  You don’t need me to enlighten you on the troubles in the world these days.  So let’s look at the trouble in the text.  Last week we rejoiced that the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, had the courage to stand up to Pharaoh.  They directly disobeyed his command to kill every baby boy at the moment of delivery.  But now Pharaoh has issued a new, universal decree:  every baby boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.  It was no longer Shiphrah and Puah’s job to kill the baby boys.  Now it was everyone’s job.

We can imagine the stress Moses’ parents were under throughout the pregnancy.  Not only did they have all the usual worries about having an easy delivery and a healthy baby—they were worried about what to do if it was a boy.  The death sentence for every Hebrew baby boy, to be carried out by each baby’s own parents???  How awful!  The king who thinks nothing of killing an innocent baby would certainly not have any qualms about killing two adults who were guilty of disobeying his command!  Moses’ parents know that if their baby is a boy, they may be forced to choose between one child or the other, because by refusing to throw their baby boy into the Nile, they were in real danger of leaving their older daughter an orphan!

When Moses is born, Jochebed cannot bring herself to do what she has been told, so she hides her baby boy for three months.  That had to be the three most bittersweet months of her life—blessed by a healthy, beautiful baby boy, and all the while, knowing this can’t last.  What if he cried at the wrong time?  The Egyptians had a sickening technique for finding Hebrew baby boys.  They would walk past the Hebrews’ houses with one of their own babies, and do something to make it cry in the hopes that would make all the other babies around upset.  It was just a matter of time until Moses would be discovered.

With every feeding, it became more and more clear to Moses’ mother:  this was a situation she simply could not fix.  She could not overthrow the unjust rulers of her land.  She could not free herself and her people from slavery.  She could not rescind the decree that all Hebrew baby boys be throw into the Nile.  She could not change the system.  But nor could she continue to buck the system.  Doing so was putting herself and rest of her family at risk.  She could no longer continue to keep her baby boy in hiding.

Do you know that feeling, that feeling of powerlessness you get when you admit that you are in a situation you cannot fix?  For almost two weeks now we have watched the news from the West Coast, as families have had to make the difficult decision to surrender their homes and belongings, and evacuate as wildfires approached their neighborhoods.  And those folks were the lucky ones.  Some didn’t get evacuated in time.  How devastating it must be for families to realize, they cannot CHANGE the course of the fires, nor could they continue to BUCK the fires by watering down their properties.  The only thing left to do is to make the painful decision to surrender–to sacrifice their homes and belongings in order to escape with their lives.

It is one of the hardest of human experiences, when we realize that we are in a situation in life about which we can do nothing.  And I don’t mean we can’t do anything because we’ve given in to despair.  I’m talking about things that are flat out not in our control.  Maybe our best friend is moving, or our employer is laying people off, or we’re tired of quarantine.  The situations vary, but the feeling is the same.  We can’t fix it, but we find we can no longer endure it, either.

We’ve named the trouble in the scripture passage and the trouble today.  But you’re probably wondering, so where’s the hope?  Oddly enough, the hope in the scripture passage lies in letting go.  The hope begins when Moses’ mother, Jochobed, decides to surrender her precious baby boy to an unknown future.

Surrendering.  Letting go.  How can there be hope in that?  That seems like giving up, like it’s the opposite of hope.  But sometimes, it’s the most hopeful thing we can do.  I knew a girl who spent all four years of high school hopelessly in love with a boy who was not the least bit inclined to love her back.  Turns out he wasn’t inclined to love any girl back!  She spent all that time refusing to surrender to the reality that person wasn’t interested in her, that she missed out on the opportunity to date boys who were!  All her friends told her to forget about him. To surrender.  To move on.  But of course, this is easier said than done.

I know this might sound like a shallow example.  But it’s a story we can learn from.  The same principle applies whether it’s a boyfriend we can’t have or a son we can’t have.  As hard as it is, it is only by surrendering to the “what is” that we can open the door to “what can be”.  When we let go of what we can’t have, when we stop trying to force what is never going to happen, we open the door to God’s loving action in our lives.  We open the door to grace.

Moses’ mother realizes she cannot have her heart’s desire.  Her first choice in life is just not going to come true!  She cannot be Moses’ mother.  Continuing to hold on to that dream will only get her and Moses killed.  But she can be something else.  She surrenders her dream of being Moses’ mother and becomes his nanny.  And in doing that, she gets the chance to nurture Moses, not only physically, but also spiritually.  She gets the chance to tell him who he is, so that he might become who he is meant to be.  And in the end, she gets set free.

Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “Don’t give up!  Even Moses was a basket case!”  But the truth is, Moses was only in the basket because his mother, wisely, gave up!  The two Hebrew midwives we talked about last week, Shiphrah and Puah, knew they were not going to overthrow Pharaoh, or set right a situation that had been becoming increasingly oppressive for 400 years, but they did what they could to creatively and courageously endure.  They did what they could, in the ordinary course of living their lives, to make the world a better place, to hang in there until new life could really break free.  They didn’t give up, and we celebrate them for that!

But this week, the story of Moses’ mother reminds us that sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is to surrender.  To let go of those things that are keeping us stuck in the old and preventing us from moving in to the new.  I keep a magnet on my filing cabinet that says, “Let go, or be dragged.”  Being dragged hurts!  Sometimes it’s best to simply let go.

This week as I grocery shopped, I noticed that Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations are now in stock.  I almost started to cry, right there in the Acme, thinking about Thanksgiving this year.  Last year we had Phil’s whole family together, I think there were 25 of us, and we came from three states plus the District of Columbia.  I can’t imagine we will be doing anything like that this year.  Over the last few days, I have been feeling pretty sad about the holidays coming up.

But then I realized, this is a chance for me to surrender.  I cannot do anything to fix the virus, and I am certainly not going to try to buck the virus.  The best thing for me to do is to LET GO of my old expectations and traditions around Thanksgiving.  I don’t want to drag myself through the entire fall feeling sad about what I cannot have.  Instead, I can grieve this loss, but ask God to give us a new, creative, fulfilling way to spend the holiday this year.  I can only receive those new ideas, though, if I let go of the hold I have on the old hopes.   Mother Teresa said not even God can fill something that is already full!

There is always hope to be found in scripture.  But sometimes, like today, it comes in ways we don’t expect or like.  Surrendering, letting go, it can feel like it will be the death of us.  But the Bible is full of stories where new life came from giving up the old.  From the mother of Moses, to the mother of Jesus, to Jesus himself, the stories of our faith bear witness to this truth:  that on the other side of surrender is salvation.  Amen.