blogging Exodus 12-14
This will be a long post. I’d originally intended to break the content
up into a series, it’s more important for you to see and digest these ideas as
a unit.
Read carefully. Think hard.
I welcome your comments.
First some history.
Lincoln didn’t free the slaves, not fully. The Emancipation Proclamation was an
emergency wartime executive order that apply to slaves outside the Confederacy. Within the Confederacy, Southern states didn’t
recognize Lincoln’s authority. Lincoln
basically federalized asylum for runaway Southern slaves who made it to Union
lines. Also, most historians agree that
the order would not have withstood a post-war constitutional challenge. It was the 13th Amendment that ended
American slavery, and the country almost didn’t pass that several times.
After the slavery amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th),
White communities successfully conspired to re-disenfranchise and re-subjugate Black
Americans, especially across the defeated Confederate states. That wasn’t a novel process in American
history. It is a pattern in HUMAN
history.
The Bible teaches us that whenever one people profit from oppressing
another people, the oppressors do not give up their slaves quickly, willingly, or
smoothly. Even when liberation is forced
upon the slavers, even after they have issued the proclamations and passed the
Amendments, Massuh ALWAYS tries to get
his slaves back.
America re-enslaved African-Americans with Jim Crow.
Pharaoh tried to take back his slaves at the Red Sea.
5 Now
it was told the king of Egypt that the people had fled, and the heart of
Pharaoh and his servants was turned against the people; and they said, “Why
have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” 6 So
he made ready his chariot and took his people with him (Exodus 14).
Even Old Testament Israel was guilty of reneging on promised
emancipation.
8 This
is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, after King Zedekiah had made a
covenant with all the people who were at Jerusalem to proclaim liberty to them:
9 that every man should set free his male and female slave—a
Hebrew man or woman—that no one should keep a Jewish brother in bondage.
10 Now
when all the princes and all the people, who had entered into the covenant,
heard that everyone should set free his male and female slaves, that no one
should keep them in bondage anymore, they obeyed and let them go.
11 But
afterward they changed their minds and made the male and female slaves return,
whom they had set free, and brought them into subjection as male and female
slaves (Jeremiah 34).
God knows the pattern of re-enslavement, and he has provided a system for
how the oppressed can outmaneuver their former masters to secure their lasting
liberty and all the prosperity promised to them in the land.
Taking the Exodus story through chapter 14, as our Biblical case
study, we find 5 steps or phases to the lasting Emancipation of a people.
They are:
1. EXIT.
2. ORGANIZE.
3.
RE-EDUCATE.
4.
TRAIN.
5. OUT-THINK.
Phase 1: EXIT.
Getting out sounds simple, but one of the defining marks of slavery is
limited mobility.
 |
REDLINING
|
Over 400+ years, the opening chapters of Exodus explain, the Egyptians
created systems that exploited their Hebrew community and transformed the
fertile lands of Goshen into the world’s first ghetto.
But we’re not just talking about a physical exit from a neighborhood. We’re talking about getting out from under the
systems that turn a community into a ghetto, a neighborhood into “the hood.”
In Exodus era Egypt, in Jeremiah era Israel, in the American era, those
systems enabled the financial, cultural, and military dominance of the nation. Liberation means breaking those systems, but
if you break the systems, you harm the state that depends on them.
The plagues wiped out: the Egyptian fishing industry, their food stores,
their livestock holdings, their standing crops, their trees and orchards, and
the seedlings for the next year’s harvest . They were left with only liquid
assets (gold, silver, jewels), the modern equivalent of losing all the money in
the banks and stock markets and having only the cash in individual houses. The plagues broke the Egyptian economic
system, like the American Civil War bankrupted the South and large parts of the
North.
In the decades following the Civil War, Black communities throughout
the country built communities so independent of traditional, White-dominated
economic and political systems that they became known generically as Black Wall
Streets.
The Black residents of these prosperous communities still resided in
America, but they had GOTTEN OUT of the systems of oppression.
Society has systems of slavery hidden in plain view.
Debt is slavery. Proverbs 22: 7 The rich rules
over the poor, And the borrower is
servant to the lender.
Dependence is a system of oppression.
Generational reliance on food
stamps, TANF, Medicare, Medicaid, Section-8, etc. enables segregation,
over-policing, and target dehumanization.
We gotta get out of those systems and into our own economic independence.
Financial illiteracy, labor-centered employment training, poor
schools, dysfunctional family structures, ineffective policing (the kind that
kills the unarmed and doesn’t stop the proliferation of crime) are all systems
of oppression. We have to break those
systems and get out of those cycles.
The systems weren’t just financial and geographical. They were also cultural. To break the systems enough for the oppressed
to get free, the masters have to experience such physical and PSYCHO-SOCIAL suffering that it momentarily breaks the will of the
masters. After the darkness and death of
the 9th and 10th plagues the Egyptians urged the people, that they might send them out of the
land in haste. For they said, “We shall all be dead” (Exodus 12:33). After that, the Hebrews were able to GET OUT.
Make no mistake, after all these decades there are deeply vested
economic and political interests who see a change to these systems not as
progress, but as plagues. A lot of
people have to lose a lot of money and a lot of power for God’s people to GET
OUT of these systems. It’s gonna be ugly. Freedom summer ugly. Sherman’s march through Atlanta ugly. Exodus 5-12
ugly.
Phase 2: Organize, starting with what they know.
So God led the people
around by way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. And the children of Israel went
up in orderly ranks out of the land of
Egypt. (Exodus 13:
18, NKJV)
The NIV says. . . The Israelites went up out of Egypt ready for battle.
The English Standard Version reads . . . equipped for battle.
The New American Standard Bible says . .
. the sons of Israel went up in martial
array from the land of Egypt.
If you ever saw a movie or documentary depicting an ancient Egyptian
battle, you remember lines of foot soldiers with no armor and no shield, just a
spear of simple sword. Those unprotected
foot soldiers were the first to die, pawns thrown at the front lines of the
opposing army while the citizen soldiers maneuvered. Along with being free labor, Hebrew men had
been used as disposable slave soldiers. Sometimes
the mercenary property was rented out to fight for other nations.
That’s nothing new. Even in the
antebellum South, it wasn’t unusual for massuh to arm a contingent of slave men
to guard the big house while the White men were away.
When the Israelites left Goshen, the enslaved veterans organized their
tribesmen into orderly ranks. The
Hebrews marched out of Egypt with a contingent of armed veteran ex-slaves.
Moses organized his people’s exodus according to a system they already
understood. He used the orderly ranks and lines they’d learned
as slave-soldiers to keep the people together and to make sure that no Hebrew
was left behind.
Strong, traditional extended family units undergird the success of
Asian, Indian, and prosperous Hispanic communities. The synagogue and kosher culture have
sustained Jewish communities through 3,000 years of exiles and failed
genocides. The most successful immigrant
and minority communities in America utilize internal organizational structures
carried over from their familiar home culture.
Black Wall Streets were built around and out of the Black Church which
is still the only Black-owned, Black-managed, Black-staffed institution with
property and offices in every Black neighborhood in America. That’s what we have.
Now, we need to utilize the institution we control, bring in the
skills we’ve learned in other institutions and organize it into orderly structures
that police, protect, and develop our own communities toward our promise and
potential.
Phase 1. EXIT the systems that oppress us.
Phase 2. ORGANIZE the resources and institutions we already have.
Phase 3: RE-EDUCATE the people.
The closing chapters of the book of Genesis describe how children of
Israel originally entered migrated to Egypt, not as slaves, but as the honored
guests of Pharoah. Joseph, son of Israel
was the hero of Egypt, the prophet and prime minister who had saved the nation
from famine.
You can’t exploit and enslave a minority ethnic group AND acknowledge that
they were the foundation of your nation’s success.
That’s why after Joseph and his
generation died, there arose a new king
over Egypt, who did not know Joseph (Exodus 1:8). The new national leadership ignored
and suppressed the truth of their national history history.
When your nation builds its prosperity on the work of a minority
ethnic group, but wants to enslave that same ethnic group and
disproportionately use them as cannon fodder in wars you fight for other
countries ---- you have to hide the history of where they really came
from. You have to bury Joseph and forget
who he was. You have to bury Joseph and
make THEM forget who he was.
For the people of a historically enslaved and oppressed minority to
build themselves into the rulers of their promised land, they have to dig up their
history and teach themselves what they had forgotten.
Exodus 13: 19 And
Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had placed the children of
Israel under solemn oath, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall
carry up my bones from here with you.”
We will have to dig up histories like that counter the dominant
narrative that Black people were passive slaves who waited on White saviors for
their freedom. We have to dig up the
history of ancestors like Robert Smalls.
If an escaped slave can start a Southern state’s public school system,
surely the descendants of slaves can fix a Southern state’s public school
system. We have the spirit and resources
to transform the culture of education in our communities and through that
transformed culture to raise up subsequent generations who know what, why, and
how to advance their people on the path to the Promise.
Phase 1.
EXIT the systems that oppress
us.
Phase 2.
ORGANIZE the resources and
institutions we already have.
Phase 3: RE-EDUCATE the people.
Phase 4: TRAIN them to
follow God.
Exodus 13: 20 So
they took their journey from Succoth and camped in Etham at the edge of the
wilderness. 21 And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar
of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light,
so as to go by day and night.
22 He
did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night
from before the people.
To our modern minds with trillions of pages of analysis and
interpretation between us and the original events, Exodus 13:20-22 seems a pretty straight-forward passage. But the actual process of over a million men,
women, and children with their wagons and baggage and livestock all
simultaneously charting their direction by the placement of a column of fire
and/or smoke at an undisclosed height and distance ----- that was new to the
children of Israel. It took time and
practice to get everybody on course and acclimated to this unique method of
navigation.
It’s gonna take some serious effort to get our community and our
churches all properly oriented and acclimated to following God. The typical reader of my blog identifies as a
born-again Christian. You LOVE God. But loving and following are not exactly the
same.
Children love their parents, but they don’t always follow their
parents’ directions. You don’t have to
teach a baby to love the parents who feed and shelter and talk sweetly to
it. But you do have train up that child
in the way, in the direction he/she should go.
Loving the God who emancipated them was easy.
Following His guidance once they were free took training.
One of the weaknesses of the Christian community in America is that we
talk ONLY about LOVING Jesus. Don’t
misunderstand me. We must, should, and
will talk constantly about loving the Lord and about the love of the Lord; but
we are missing an important truth when we talk about loving Jesus but not about
FOLLOWING Jesus.
At the Last Supper, when Jesus declared Himself to be the Passover
Lamb of the NEW covenant, and in at least 4 different ways Jesus said you can’t
love the Lord and not also FOLLOW the Lord (John 14: 15, 21, 23, 24).
Day and night, we have to practice getting behind what God says,
getting in line with what God wants, getting on task with what God
assigns. We have to get back to the
fundamentals of spiritual training. Back
to the spiritual disciplines of prayer, and fasting, studying the Word, sharing
the Word, witnessing, testifying, and serving.
If we’re going to go grow outwardly, we have to do the hard work to
grow inwardly. And for a while that
means we’ll be doing some things the long way.
The first time you ---- yes, YOU --- lead the congregation in prayer,
you might stumble and fumble. But over
time you’ll learn to follow the Lord in
prayer.
When you – yes, YOU ---- teach
Sunday school the first time you’ll be nervous.
But after a while of winding through, you’ll learn to follow the Lord in
teaching.
When you start off planning and organizing the new ministry you’ll
have to stop and start over several times because you’ll drift into planning a
cute event instead of planning a long-term, life-transforming ministry. After some twists and turns, you’ll get used
to lining up with the Lord on outreach.
With time, focus, and persistence we can develop a culture that is not
crippled by petty jealousies because the members of the community have been
trained to measure themselves by what they do for the community not by what
display compared to their neighbors.
And along the way, we’ll confront modern versions of the same
obstacles and inquiries the people of God always encounter. Somebody’s going to say, “Look. I love Jesus
as much as anybody, but why do I have to do all this? What about THEM?”
After the Resurrection, Jesus had a conversation with Peter. The conversation in John 21 began with Jesus
asking 3 time, “Do you love Me?,” and
Peter insisting each time that “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” The conversation ended with Peter looking at
John and asking Jesus, “Well, what about him?”
Jesus told Peter the same thing He’s telling you and me right
now. John 21: 22. Don’t trip trying to keep your eyes on the next
dude’s movements. You FOLLOW Jesus.
Phase 1.
EXIT the systems that oppress
us.
Phase 2.
ORGANIZE the resources and
institutions we already have.
Phase 3: RE-EDUCATE the people.
Phase 4: TRAIN them to follow God.
And finally, Phase 5: OUT-THINK your enemy.
So they took their
journey from Succoth and camped in Etham at the edge of the wilderness.
Now the Lord spoke to
Moses, saying: “Speak to the children of Israel, that they turn and camp before
Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, opposite Baal Zephon; you shall camp
before it by the sea.
For
(BECAUSE) Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel,
‘They are bewildered by the land; the wilderness has closed them in.’
Then I will harden
Pharaoh’s heart, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honor over
Pharaoh and over all his army, that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord.”
And they did so
(Exodus 13: 20- 14: 4).
God took the Israelites on a long and winding path. It felt like they were lost, retracing their
steps, starting and starting over, not moving directly to their
destination. But God wasn’t lost. God was thinking like Pharaoh. Or, to be more precise: God was OUT-thinking Pharaoh.
Since God created us, He
understand us. I don’t just mean God empathizes
with us. I mean that God fully and
absolutely sees and comprehends how each and all human being work.
The Lord knew that Pharaoh would send scouts to follow the
Israelites. God knew that those scouts
would be prejudiced against the ignorant minorities who’d begged for a break
from work. He knew that the mentality
of the majority would interpret their winding path as proof that the Jews
couldn’t handle freedom. They were
lost. They were disorganized. Their leaders were incapable of running their
own institutions.
God knew Pharaoh and those with a pharaoh mentality would take the
first opportunity to step in, take over, and return the Israelites to a state
of subservience.
God knew that a pharaoh will always try to get his slaves back. Cough-cough, gentrification. Cough-cough, privatization and government
seizure. Cough-cough liberal White
paternalism.
In Scripture, God records some of the ways He out-thinks the enemies
of His people so we can use those texts as examples of how to out-think the
enemies of God’s people.
Learn the rules of the game.
Anticipate what the opponents will do.
Make their efforts work for your people.
As Yahweh put it, gain honor
over Pharaoh and over all his army.
EXIT.
ORGANIZE.
RE-EDUCATE.
TRAIN.
OUT-THINK.
When Israel applied the principles above, they found themselves on the
far side of the Red Sea watching the broken pieces of chariots wash up on the
shore. For all the time they travelled
from there to the Promised Land and for generations thereafter, Egypt did not
threaten the Israelites. Pharaoh gave up trying to take his slaves
back.
We can be truly and fully free from the lingering legacies of racism,
White supremacy, and all of their ancillary injustices. It’ll be a long and
winding road, but thank God that God has given us the tools to travel the path
all the way into His Promises.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME
Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word
to the Wise at
www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
Support by check or money order may be mailed to
Bailey Tabernacle CME Church
1117 23rd Avenue
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401
