The Shaping of a Tradition – Moses

September 16, 1962
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage

2. The Shaping of a Tradition – Moses

He was born in peril, lived in danger, knew the loneliness of exile and his death deprived him of fulfilling his dream. But in any assessment of our Judeo-Christian heritage, a most absurd omission would be to overlook Moses; a most short-sighted error would be to dismiss his influence. The mind of Moses, the courage of Moses, the resourcefulness of Moses, the faith of Moses shaped our traditions and changed our ways, even in our generation. The prophet Isaiah said, (51/1)

“Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
And to the quarry from which you were digged.”

This we do, not just to rehearse ancient, epic tales, but because the force which flows through our cultural branches depends on only on current sunshine and rain, but also on the life-force rising from deep-lying roots.

The story of Moses appears in the Old Testament and there is little documentation from other sources. As precise history, the great stories are not consistent facts, recorded methodically as an efficient clerk writes the minutes of a meeting in accurate order. Several different strands of traditions are intermingled as later editors sought to fit contradictory parts of the saga into a unified whole. This effort was quite unsuccessful at times, for many of the accounts are chaotic and confused. As with all great heroes, when accurate biographical detail was lacking, the later poets and bards filled the gaps with the great legendary motifs of mankind. Furthermore, these differing strands of tradition and song were created and altered, not merely to expound historical instances, but more important, to interpret the meaning of history for the people of Israel. But the archaeologists and historians have amply demonstrated that the movement of the Hebrew tribes from Mesopotamia to Canaan to Egypt to the Wilderness and back to Canaan was quite in concord with the movements of the tribes and cultures across the Near East in those days of long-ago.

Except as will be noted, the ceremonies, rituals and general cultural flavor of the Hebrews were rooted in the civilizations of the near east – civilizations which had seasoned for at least two thousand years before the people of the Covenant began their folk-wanderings and astounding religious development.

Approximately three thousand three hundred years ago a child was born in Egypt. His parents were Hebrews numbered among the tribes which had wandered into Egypt from the East in search of food for their families and fodder for their herds. In Egypt, the Hebrews had become slaves, forcibly impounded, to toil as construction workers in the enormous building projects of the Pharaohs.

To Moses’ infancy there became attached one of the great legendary themes of the hero. He was miraculously rescued from peril. According to the legend, Pharaoh’s law decreed that all male Hebrew babies must die. But Moses’ mother made a floating cradle of reeds and set the child afloat in the water amid the bulrushes, with Moses’ elder sister watching afar off. The Princess came to the stream, saw the child, looked with love on him and adopted him. Then with a touch, that was both winsome and humorous, Moses’ mother was paid to take care of her own child. Students of legend will recognize similarities. Sargon, the great Sumerian emperor, who lived more than a thousand years before Moses, was known for a similar experience. Born in Armenia of unknown parentage, his mother, to save him, set him afloat in a reed cradle sealed with pitch. Similarly rescued, Sargon became the most powerful emperor of his time. Romulus and Remus, left exposed on the hillside to die, were miraculously nursed by a she-wolf, grew to become great heroes and founded Rome. The story of the child destined for greatness, who is subject to great peril and saved by amazing circumstances, is one of the great human themes that people have told wonderingly, again and again.

Moses grew up in the luxury and favor of a royal household. Then, we are told, in one of the passages of scripture significant for all time (211), “And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up, that he went out unto his brethren and looked on their burdens.” When a person favored by fortune looks upon the disinherited and becomes conscious of their slavery and oppression, this is a sign that the boy has become the man. This was maturity and it was remarkable in an ancient world in which human slavery was as commonplace as schools are today – a universal institution.

Moses killed an Egyptian overseer who was beating a Hebrew. When the news spread, Moses escaped to the land of Midian. At a well, Moses defended the daughters of a Midianite priest from rough shepherds. An attachment was formed, Moses went to work for the priest, tended his flocks, married Zipporah, a daughter of the priest; they knew the joy of a son and Moses seemed well content. But one day, as Moses was keeping the flocks, he encountered a vision which has become one of the great personal religious experiences – he knows Yahveh, the one God in the burning bush which is not consumed. And Yahveh said to Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people that are in Egypt and have heard their cries.... I know their sorrows and I am come to deliver them.... I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my people.” But Moses is overwhelmed - “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the people out of Egypt?” But Yahveh assures Moses, “Certainly I will be with thee.” The runaway slayer of Pharaoh’s overseer was no longer content in pastoral exile; he accepted the commission of the vision; returned to Egypt and the great struggle with Pharaoh began its astounding rhythms.

The stories have more than a light touch of miracle and they have been impressed with the mark of ancient cultic practices. But the stories of the Plagues and the contests with Pharaoh’s magicians paint vivid colors around the drama of the Exodus. The ancient sacrificial ritual became established as Passover, to mark the exemption of Hebrew infants from the hand of death which fell on all Egyptian children. That tradition has been a deep print on our culture, for when Jesus celebrated his last meal, he too was observing the Passover. Our communion feasts and rites in all times and forms bear traces of this celebrated legend.

Moses led the Hebrews to safety and the journey was marked by triumph in the passing of the Red Sea where the host of Pharaoh was drowned. The rhythmic, exulting war song of Miriam is probably much more ancient than other accounts in Exodus. Poetic sagas are lasting (15-1 ff.):

“I will sing unto Yahveh for he hath triumphed gloriously:
The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea....”

The years of wilderness wandering were crucial. The people were not easy to lead; they were rebellious; they yearned after the flesh-pots of Egypt; they criticized Moses; they yielded easily to cultic practices which were abhorrent to the Yahveh as Moses knew him. Imperishable religious symbols began to take form, the Ark, the Tabernacle and the Law emerged in the wilderness. The Book of Deuteronomy, written centuries after these times tells us how a weary, aged man ascended Mount Nebo, there to gaze on the promised land he may not enter, knows that he “shall not go over thither.” So Moses the servant of Yahveh died in the land of Moab ... and they “buried him in the land of Moab” and no man knows of his grave in the later centuries.

The cultural seeds and developing ethics of the old books of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy have been strong guides in the shaping of our way of looking at the world and behaving in the world. A discussion of all the ideas and events which have marked us is the study of a lifetime. In holding forth the values of the Mosaic heritage, let me suggest only these ideas: l) That Moses was the first in the line of prophets, which were unknown then to other cultures and have consistently represented religion in its highest forms. 2) That Moses’ experiences indicate that greatness of purpose and comprehensive courage are usually found in an individual who has experienced inner conflict and known his own soul in decision-making loneliness. 3) That the monotheism that Moses proclaimed was of immeasurable importance in the molding of the future; and 4) that when Moses looked with compassion on his enslaved brethren and with indignation on their masters, he was etching on the page of history a recognition of the common man, that to this very hour is our guide, our discipline and our goal.

Moses was first in a line of prophets, unique to the historical world as we know it. Feeling that he spoke God's word for the betterment of man, he fearlessly attacked tyranny and courageously reproved his own people for their wrongs. Of this great prophetic tradition we shall say more, two weeks hence, but six hundred years before the Gautama left his royal home to establish the great religion known as Buddhism, Moses was confronting the Pharaoh, most powerful and magnificent king of that day. Six hundred years before Zoroaster was establishing the religion which bears his name, Moses was leading the long march from slavery to the difficult, but free, Wilderness. Six hundred or more years before Confucius was teaching ways of living that were wise, gentle and mutually helpful, Moses, under the pressure of great crises, was lawmaker whose judgments were humbly made because he was ever-conscious that he was the servant of Yahveh. The prophetic line continued through Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus, and the world of Islam would testify that this same prophetic line continues through to Mohammed, also. The strength of that tradition can be most clearly known when we realize that every one of those prophets spoke only in the name of Yahveh, the one eternal God, spoke for no other gods, spoke for no other ideologies.

Heroes characteristically acquire strength in solitude and the wilderness. Toynbee uses this theme as one of the rhythms always found in the cycle of history. After Moses killed the Egyptian overseer, he fled to the land of Midian. As he tended the sheep of his father-in-law, the religious experience he encountered by the burning bush tempered his soul for new endeavors. Many centuries later, the founder of Islam, Mohammed, observed, "He will never be a prophet who was not first a herdsman." The great strength of epic heroes is not spontaneously generated; it comes from a long period of brooding, intellectual clarification, and commitment from the depths of one's being.

Moses came down from the hills and went back to Egypt a stronger man than the Moses who had fled from the consequences of his retaliation against the overseer. Those who think on the task Moses assumed, to lead the Hebrew out of Egypt, can surmise that Moses had some awareness of what the consequences would be: the danger to be met in Egypt, and the strategy and courage needed to carry through the exodus; the criticism and recriminations of the liberated people, who would become weary of the Wilderness hardships and think wishfully even of the slave days of Egypt. Has it ever been different, whether in that for time and place, or right now in the trials that beset us individually? The discipline of solitude, the honest confronting of what we value most – to see the-burning bush in our hearts – out of such individual testings of self-honesty and forthright decision are wrought the strong souls who can match hard times. Moses did not know that his face shone when he came down from the mountain. His face shone because he had encountered something bigger than himself. There is no better illustration than this marvelous old legend to make clear a mysterious but wonderful paradox of human nature. The supreme worth of the individual is best realized when the individual loses himself in a great cause and is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of others.

Moses established monotheism among the Hebrews. Never overlook the impact of this on our lives through what we call the Judeo-Christian tradition. There are complicated analyses of what were the roots of Moses’ belief in the one God, Yahveh. Some scholars maintain that he adopted the religion of his father-in-law, the Midianite priest, Jethro. Others see behind Yahveh the shadow of a mountain god of thunder, lightning and moving avalanche. A case can be made for the influence on Moses of the remarkable Pharaoh, Ikenaton, the child of the Sun, who proclaimed the Sun, Aton, as the supreme God of the universe. Still others testify simply that in the vision of the burning bush Moses had the personal experience of Yahveh, that there were no particular antecedents; and from that experience, with face shining, Moses established the enduring Hebrew belief that there is one, and only one, Eternal God, Yahveh.

Quite aside from these scholarly considerations, one things stands forth clearly in the thirty-two succeeding centuries: history has been shaped because the Hebrews believed that there was one God who maintained moral relations with man, passed judgment on man while loving man as his unique and personal creation. Without this profound conviction, history just could not emerge as it did. There could have been no Jesus who considered the Creator his loving father; there could have been no Mohammed who stood for the sovereignty of one God over all history and all men.

One need not accept this interpretation of the nature of God in order to acknowledge its profound influence. Quite aside from any considerations we might discuss of the nature of belief, and the ways ideas of God are acquired – whether God creates men or men make gods, the moral idea of God, proclaimed 600 years before Socrates, 1200 years before Jesus, was a creation of faith that exalted man and influenced not only Hebrew religion but all aspects of Western civilizations.

The startling nature of this difference can be noted if one compares the other ancient gods to Yahveh. The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer certainly were composed long after Moses. Those are great and stirring epic tales. Yet, consider the differences in the ways of the gods. Compare them and their self-indulgence, frivolity and willfulness with the majesty, sovereignty and morality of the God of Moses’ experience.

The Hebrews were not always faithful to this concept. They went after strange gods; they backslid; their religion became marked again and again with the stains of Canaanite and other religions they encountered in their wanderings. But always the prophets called them back to Yahveh, continuously reminding them that they were a people bound by a conscious covenant with a sovereign God who was over all, through all and in all.

Another indication of the power of this monotheism is the realization that the tensions between the Hebrews and the other tribes of that world begin when the Hebrews stood by their covenant to serve and acknowledge no gods but Yahveh. This gave them unity and continuity which no other people, so persecuted, or scattered again and again, could match.

Lastly, and most vital, in those days there was begun a tradition which impinges on us still wherever men and women are denied the rights of equality, freedom and the dignity which all souls may claim. When Moses struck down the overseer, fled, encountered his God and came back to lead the Children of Israel to freedom, he was staking humanity's claim for human rights. The weak shall be protected from the strong; the slave shall be freed; the oppressed shall be liberated; the equality of all men before Yahveh is undeniable.

It comes home to us right here in Rochester. It comes home in Albany, Georgia, in Hungary, in Spain – wherever men arc denied their rights, the ancient tradition of the Exodus returns as a support for those who struggle for freedom, as a reproof for those who would hold back human beings from their rights. Not only rights in the abstract, but the right to live where one's money and credit permit; the right to equal education; the right to work on the basis of ability, training, experience, not on the basis of religion, color or national origin; equal rights to the free man's ballot; equality in public facilities. This principle of freedom's holy light can still be our pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. It is not strange that some of the great Negro spirituals which have strengthened the emotional power to resist oppression and establish freedom, have as their theme, the struggle of Moses, the Exodus and the Wilderness wanderings: "Go down Moses," "The Old Ark's A-Moving," "Moses crossing the Red Sea."

The late James Weldon Johnson, the poet who so skillfully captured the spirit of the great sermonic art form of the itinerant Negro preacher, used the Exodus as the theme of "Let My People Go."

"When Pharaoh saw them crossing dry,
He dashed on in behind them--
Old Pharaoh got about half way across,
and the waves rushed back together,
And Pharaoh and all his army got lost,
And all his host drowned.
And Moses sang and Miriam danced,
And the people shouted for joy,
And God led the Hebrew children on
Till they reached the promised land.
Listen! Listen!
All you sons of Pharaoh.
Who do you think can hold God's people
When the Lord God Himself has said
Let my people go."

From these deep roots flow the values we cherish today. There is no question about our lip service to these moral demands; but just as Moses experienced God and then traveled the hard road from that moment on, so our traditions, great as they are, require of us that we shall apply them in our lives as well as acknowledge their truth in our minds.