Preached at St Michael and All Angels’, Urchfont (at the Devizes Deanery Choral Evensong)
Exodus 7. 8-24; Romans 5. 12-21
“…where sin abounded, grace did much more abound…”
When we hear the strange story of Moses and Aaron confronting the Pharaoh, with sticks that turn into snakes and rivers turning into blood, its remoteness to our own world can make us dismiss its enduring relevance and power. For not only is the story set more than three thousand years ago, but it is told with a powerful dose of magical realism.
Marc Chagall’s Moses and Aaron with Pharaoh, from his 1966 portfolio “The Story of Exodus”—a time when this story resonated powerfully with the secular public, especially thanks to the African-American civil rights movement.
Look beyond the unfamiliar setting, however, and it could be a story from 2024. A persecuted minority protests to the authorities, and when that fails, they turn first to a demonstration of people power, and then an escalating campaign of civil disobedience, leading to non-violent direct action and then intentional property damage.
Pharaoh is also like many a hard-hearted ruler in today’s world, unable to read the signs of the times and all too quick to renege on promises of reform. He overestimates his own strength and underestimates the damage his opponents can cause him. In tonight’s reading, the campaign of the Hebrew people against Pharaoh’s persecution is still in its earliest phases. Everything will get much worse—but it will end in liberation for the good guys.
It would be nice if we could say that they all lived happily ever after. But the problem with stories like this is that yesterday’s freedom fighters almost inevitably turn into tomorrow’s oppressors. When they arrived in the Promised Land, the descendants of Moses and Aaron weren’t too worried about the rights and freedoms of the people already there.
So the affairs of human states have always been, and so they shall always be. For the truth is that we all have dark sides to our character – every person, every people, every country and empire. Made in the image and likeness of God, we are at the same time fallen creatures, and so are the institutions we build, marred by our need to put our will ahead of God’s will, and the needs of our fellow humans and the rest of creation.
That is what the story of Adam and Eve and the Snake is all about. It is, of course, a myth, but it encapsulates deep truths about human nature, especially our inability to live as would truly be best for us.
Adam is a key theme in tonight’s New Testament lesson, from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. “Adam” just means man in Hebrew. So, Adam stands for all of us, men and women alike, and black and white, rich and poor—and even Irish and English. The truth is that all of us are just like Pharaoh, sometimes: made in the image and likeness of God, but fallen; capable of acting divinely at times, and at others, in monstrous ways.
That’s what explains another cryptic line in our New Testament lesson: “the law entered, that the offence might abound”. How can law make sin increase? Because law doesn’t change what is in our hearts, and we are always tempted to interpret laws in ways that suit ourselves, and harm others, hearing what we want to hear and disregarding the rest.
Had that not been the case, the Laws that God gave Moses would have been enough for humanity to live well on this God-given Earth. But people continued to sin as they always had done, and those most rigid in keeping every dotted ‘i’ and crossed ‘t’ of Moses’ Law usually found plenty of other ways to behave wickedly.
Christ came, not to bring us more laws, but as the personification of grace. Grace is one of those concepts that we instinctively understand, but if we try to define it too tightly we lose the point of it. Unlike the law, grace doesn’t tally wrongs—law brings sin to light, but grace atones for wrongs. Christ came, not to give us better rules, but to deal with the consequences of the reality that human beings would never live honestly by any set of rules.
This Sunday is Passion Sunday. In Passiontide, we begin our journey towards the Cross. The mood shifts in Church, moves from the austerity of Lent to something darker and more painful. It is at the Cross where, in the treatment of Jesus a perfect distillation of humanity’s sin meets the Grace of God made incarnate in Christ. The Cross was the moment in the history of the human race when the cycle of oppression was broken – but the full effect of that will not be felt until Jesus Christ returns, as God continues to work His purpose out as year succeeds to year.
Ultimate victory is assured for the reason that is the central point in tonight’s reading from Romans—“where sin abounded, grace did much more abound”. Grace is stronger than sin. As sin spreads, grace spreads more quickly and powerfully to make up for it. God’s free gift of grace in the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is more than powerful enough to pay for the sins of the world.
All this is encapsulated in a prayer written by the greatest Anglican churchman of my lifetime, Archbishop Desmond Tutu:
Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Life is stronger than death;
Victory is ours through Him who loves us. Amen.
That ultimate victory of good is written into the fabric of the universe. That this remains true even in the face of the sin, agony, and death we all confront—that is the message of Passiontide.
Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.
Banner image: Salvador Dalí’s Moses an the Pharaoh (1966). Now hangs in the
Syracuse University Art Collection. 1966 was evidently a bumper year for artistic depictions of Moses and the Pharaoh, presumably because of the story’s powerful resonance with the African-American civil rights movement.
