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Moses - Exodus 1:8-2:10
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
This is a podcast of Kensington Commons Church. We believe that God is invested in the renewal of all things. Therefore, we wanna live the good news by being part of the rhythms of our city as good neighbors, neighbors, good friends, and good citizens in our common life. Join us on Sunday or visit us online at commonschurch.org.
Speaker 2:Before we jump into our new series tonight, let me just say one thing about our last series in Galatians. Because, Religion Remade was, at least for me, a really great service. And not the least of which is because I actually got to sit and listen both to Joel and to Jess teach during those four weeks. And one of the things that we've been really blessed with as a community is an incredibly strong collection of just really great teaching voices. And so while I absolutely enjoy that part of my job, and I do and will continue to do a lot of the teaching here, it makes us a much stronger community to celebrate and give voice to those among us who have significant gifts.
Speaker 2:Whether that's singing, whether that's teaching, that's leading in all kinds of different ways. And so we're gonna continue to work towards that as a church. Especially as we look to what it is that God is calling us to here in the city. The truth is, we have largely already maxed out this facility. We are running two services in the morning and the evening that are packed every week, and we are looking at the possibility of adding a third service down the road.
Speaker 2:But getting more people into the same place is not the only way to tell more people the story about Jesus. And so maybe we could begin to imagine together about what it would look like to launch a commons church down in Marta Loop or over in Mission. And obviously, we're very early in that process of listening to God. We just planted this church seven weeks ago, and we wanna be open to where God is gonna take us though and what he's doing. And that kind of imagination means that we're going to need to develop pastors and teachers and leaders who share our vision and who tell the story of Jesus well.
Speaker 2:And so for us to be a learning commons, where people get to come and explore their gifts, and people get to have opportunities to share and teach and lead amongst community. This is a really neat place for us to occupy as a faith community here in the city, and so we're excited about that. Now, all of that said, this week, we turn our attention from the New Testament where we've been the last seven weeks to the Old Testament, and this handsome fellow in our artwork behind me, mister Moses. I don't know if that's really what he looked like, but that's what I picture in my head when I think of Moses anyway. And so I wanna begin at the beginning.
Speaker 2:And in fact, I actually want to begin before the beginning of Moses. I wanna begin at the end of the story of Joseph. Because this is what we read in Exodus chapter one starting in verse eight. It says this, then a new king to whom Joseph meant nothing came to power in Egypt. And just a really quick reminder here.
Speaker 2:If you don't know the story of Joseph, he of the technicolor dreamcoat, then you can jump on our podcast. Just search iTunes for Kensington Commons Church. And if you go back, you'll find a series there where we walked through the story of Joseph. But over the course of Joseph's lifetime, the Hebrew Joseph, the son of Jacob, makes his way into Egypt. And first, he starts off as a slave, but he ends up being this trusted advisor to the king of pharaoh or king of Egypt, the pharaoh.
Speaker 2:And there's this great famine in in Egypt, but because of his position, the way he leads well, he's able to bring his brothers, his father, his family into Egypt with him in safety. And so they grow, and they flourish, and they multiply. Look, the king said to his people, the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous, and if war breaks out, we'll join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country. So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor.
Speaker 2:And they built Pitum and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread. So the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields. And in all their harsh labor, the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
Speaker 2:Exodus one verses eight to 14. So this is the context for where we are introduced to Moses. There's a few things here that I wanna talk about though before we even get to Moses, but first, let's pray. God, we come this weekend, aware that our story, both as a church and both as individuals, rest atop many other stories. We are not simply individuals.
Speaker 2:We are not merely islands. We are not only self contained tales, but our very existence depends on those who came before us. Those who have taught us, those who have shaped us, those who have injured us perhaps, certainly those who have bound us and healed us. And so as we turn our attention again to the stories of our history and our faith as the Christian church, we ask that you would help us here with fresh ears, to read with fresh eyes so that we could learn new lessons from stories we have perhaps tread before. And in doing that, we want to thank you for the personal stories that have molded who we are today.
Speaker 2:For all the history that has created all of the people who have gathered in this room. Help us, just as the ancient Hebrews, to own and to celebrate, to remember our stories. Help us to trust that you have been with us watching and guiding us all through our journey. And so as we study in these coming weeks, we ask that you would speak to us through these tales, and that you would be present to us in these stories, and that your humanity would help us to see the shared humanity here in these stories. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 2:Amen. Okay. So far, we have not even actually gotten to Moses, and he is of course the title character of this series. But there are a couple of things here that I'd like to talk about in what we've already read before we even get to Moses and his actual introduction. Because one of the things that's fascinating about Torah, the first five books of the Bible, is something that you can see on display right here in verse eight.
Speaker 2:It says this, then a new king to whom Joseph meant nothing came power in Egypt. And that could very easily be taken as throwaway. It's a simple transition from one story to the next. We learned about Joseph. Now, we're on to Moses.
Speaker 2:But for me, and I would suggest for the ancient Hebrews, this was actually very significant. You see the Jews wanted to root themselves in something. They wanted to be part of something. They wanted to know that their present, what they were going through was somehow linked to their past. And even more than that, I think they wanted to know, they wanted to feel that their future was part of a much bigger story.
Speaker 2:A history, their history was actually going somewhere. And so technically, the language in this verse here in Hebrew reads this way, there came a king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And that can be read a couple of different ways because the Hebrew verb to know, is incredibly broad. It means to know. That's true.
Speaker 2:But that can encompass everything from having intellectual technical knowledge that someone exists. I've heard of Joseph. I know him. All the way down to sexual relationships. Adam lay with his wife Eve and he knew her.
Speaker 2:Those are very different types of knowing. I think you understand that. Right? And we know this that in human relationships. When we say we know someone, we mean a very broad range of different things.
Speaker 2:It's very hard to nail down the level of intimacy we share with someone. This is why we have BFs, and then BFFs, and then FB BFFs. I don't know if that's really a thing, but that's what I call Facebook best friend forever. I'm sure there's so many settings on Facebook. I'm sure there's a setting there somewhere for that, if you just dig deep enough.
Speaker 2:Anyway, human relationships though are notoriously complex and dynamic. It's hard to know someone. And so verse eight could be read, there came a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. He didn't know about him. He'd never heard the story of Joseph.
Speaker 2:He didn't know where these Israelites came from. Joseph maybe had pre counseled a previous king, this king knows nothing of him. That's what a translation like the ESV, the English Standard Version goes with. It could also be read this way, a new king to whom Joseph didn't matter came to power in Egypt. That's what the NIV goes with.
Speaker 2:Now he knew Joseph. He knew the story. He just didn't care about Joseph. He just didn't care about the story. So, sure, Joseph was a king or a friend to a previous king, but not this one.
Speaker 2:That's not my story. I don't care. It's a relationship thing. That's what the NIV goes with. Either way, the point for me is that the writer of this story wants to say, I think two important things as we transition from Joseph to major character Moses.
Speaker 2:First, I think he wants to show continuity in the Jewish story. One story comes after another story. We build on where we have been. And this is actually deeply been part of the Jewish tradition since the very beginning. Just look at the genealogies of the New Testament.
Speaker 2:If you go to Matthew, the first chapter, he lays out the line from Abraham all the way through David, all the way up to Jesus. This is not just about credentials. It's not just about saying, look where Jesus came from. It's about saying that Jesus is part of an unfolding story. We are shaped.
Speaker 2:We're molded by our past. Now, don't confuse that with being where you come from. You are not your parents. You are not doomed to make their mistakes nor are you guaranteed to reap their success. The way is made by walking.
Speaker 2:But as the old adage goes, if we forget the past, then we are doomed to return to the nineteen eighties. Right? I think you've heard that before. It's a very common saying. Because let's be honest, the eighties were awful.
Speaker 2:I don't care when you were born. Nobody wants to go back there. Leg warmers and scrunchies and fanny packs. Come on. Stop bringing it back.
Speaker 2:I don't I don't anyway, whatever. Eye of the Tiger was cool. I will give you that. The rest of the eighties, a decade wasted. Point is this, the Hebrew culture was deeply invested in not making the mistakes of the past.
Speaker 2:No more scrunchies for them. And they wanted to know that they came from somewhere. Deuteronomy four nine says this, be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart. Teach them to your children and to your children after them. It's important to remember.
Speaker 2:And so perhaps we could ask ourselves even tonight, what have we forgotten? There's those moments when God was so close to us. Incredibly powerful ways where we felt we could reach out and touch him, but that was months, it was years ago, and somehow we've forgotten about it. I said in the last series that as human beings, are built for moments, not for stories. Or sorry, we are not built for moments, we are built for stories.
Speaker 2:And the best way to understand a story and where it's going is to remember where it's been. How it develops, how it moves, how it grows, how it breathes. And so when you feel alone, when you feel like God is in present, it's important to remember the times when he was. Now, Exodus here is about to lead us into a very difficult story in the history of the Jews. At the story of the slavery in Egypt, a very dark and difficult time in Jewish history.
Speaker 2:And I would suggest that part of the author's intent here is to make sure that his readers know going into a story about slavery that they remember another story about slavery as well. That Joseph went into slavery and God was with him. Now we're about to go into slavery. Can we trust that God is with us? You see, we have this tendency as human beings to universalize the particular.
Speaker 2:What I mean by that is this, we say this is a really hard time. Therefore, everything has been and everything always will be hard in my life. Woe is me. Life is terrible. Or we do this.
Speaker 2:This is a time of celebration. Things are good. Therefore, I can eat, drink, and be merry, and forget about tomorrow because life will always be simple. But remembering our story helps us to grieve where needed and to celebrate where appropriate, all the while remembering the only thing that stories don't do is stay the same. And so if life is easy for you right now, then I say enjoy that.
Speaker 2:Celebrate it. Thank God for whatever it is that is good in your life right now, but don't imagine that you will never ever face another challenge again. That's not how life works. And if life is hard right now for you, I don't wanna take that from you. I don't wanna minimize or belittle whatever it is that you are struggling with in this moment, but my guess is that there are moments in your past that were filled with light.
Speaker 2:A moment where someone brought love into your life that you didn't expect, or a moment where someone extended care and grace to you in ways you never imagined. The presence of the divine that you knew was real and true in that moment, and my advice is that you remember that. And because even as we go through these difficult times, our past, our memory helps us to face it well. Because the other half of what the author is trying to say here in this very first verse is he wants to show us the folly in the Egyptian forgetting of their story. We're told this, that a new king to whom Joseph meant nothing came to power in Egypt.
Speaker 2:Joseph was a trusted ally. He was a friend and a wise advisor to the king, the pharaoh of Egypt. And Joseph helped Egypt get through an almost decade long famine that ravaged the land. He helped Egypt make it through that well, and now a long time has gone by and this king doesn't care about that story. I think the author wants us to know that this is foolish.
Speaker 2:Now it takes a long time. It's a lifetime in fact. But what we will see here in this story of Moses is that the pharaoh's inability to remember Joseph eventually ends with the Egyptian army at the bottom of the Red Sea and the Israelites on the far side with Moses. And so when we forget where we have been, we make mistakes we shouldn't have made. This is far more than a simple transitional sentence here.
Speaker 2:This is a signal to the Hebrews reading the story going into slavery to remember God's graciousness to Joseph when he was in slavery. And it is a foreshadow of Egyptians fall from power for not remembering the lessons of their past. Story continues. He says this, look, the new king said to his people, the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous.
Speaker 2:And if war breaks out, we'll join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country. So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built Pitum and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread. So the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly.
Speaker 2:Now one thing here, this word dread in the NIV is actually the Hebrew word kutz or yakutzu in the passage here. And the NIV has gone with dread in order to tie the people's feelings here back to the king's concern about a revolt a couple verses ago. They dreaded the Israelites. They feared the Israelites. They were too numerous.
Speaker 2:The root of the word though is actually not about fear. It actually has something more along the lines of loathing or abhorrence to it. So this is less about fearing the Israelites, and it's more about simple animosity. They don't like the Israelites. It's like when people talk about being homophobic.
Speaker 2:Nobody's afraid of gay people. They're fabulous. At least that's what I've learned from sitcoms anyway. And nobody's afraid of gay people. They just don't like gay people.
Speaker 2:And generally, that's what's happening here. The Israelites aren't afraid of the Jews. They're just racist. This is our country. And these immigrants are here breeding like rabbits.
Speaker 2:We don't like them. Let's get them out. Now, before we get too down on the Egyptians here, let's remember that this is a very human story. One that has played itself out over and over again in human history, one that continues to play itself out in Canada at times. We came face to face this week with some of our fears about outsiders in Canada.
Speaker 2:Some of them justified, some of them imagined. In fact, this mentality found its way into the history of Israel at different times as well. And so over and over again, God had to remind them, you should be treating outsiders and foreigners better than this. Don't you remember? Exodus twenty one twenty two.
Speaker 2:Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner. Why? For you were foreigners in Egypt. Deuteronomy six eighteen, do what is right and good in the Lord's sight. And in the future when your son asks you, what is the meaning of what the Lord has commanded?
Speaker 2:Tell him, we were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out with his mighty hand. Deuteronomy five thirteen, when you release servants, don't send them away empty handed. Supply them liberally from your flock, your threshing floor, and your wine press. Give to them as the Lord gave to you. Remember, you were slaves in Egypt once and God saved you.
Speaker 2:Deuteronomy twenty four seventeen, do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord redeemed you from there. This is why I command you to do this. We all have this unfortunate tendency to circle the wagons at times and care for our own. Forgetting the fact that we are all our own.
Speaker 2:So this issue in Exodus is not an Egyptian problem, it is a human problem. And we would do well to remember that as we read. But look how quickly things begin to escalate. Once you let yourself imagine that one group is more human than another group. Verse 14, they made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar with all kinds of work in the fields.
Speaker 2:In all their harsh labor, the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly. Worthlessly here ruthlessly here is the word Parekh in Hebrew. It means to crush, grind, to crumble, or to crunch. It's a very visual visceral image that's being used here. And the word parak actually comes from a neo Assyrian root, which simply means violence.
Speaker 2:They did violence to the Israelites. Which leads us to verse 15. The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, sorry, whose names were Shipprah and Puah. When you're helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him. But if it is a girl, let her live.
Speaker 2:Now, couple quick things here. Shipprah and Puah, these are Semitic names. They're not necessarily Hebrew names. And so some have wondered about the designation Hebrew midwives. Does that mean they were Hebrews themselves?
Speaker 2:Or does that simply mean they were the midwives to the Hebrews, the Hebrew midwives? Now the question being this, if they were Hebrews, then why would the pharaoh even think that they would go along with his request to kill Hebrew babies? I mean, why would he think they would do that? Is he really that powerful? And that's a good question.
Speaker 2:But more than doubt the ethnicity of these women, what I see here is the corruption of power. You see the king, the pharaoh in this story is so convinced that some human beings are better than other human beings. He is so full of his present and forgetting his past that what he has done is he has so bought into his own entrenched imagination of himself that he can't even fathom anyone would not do what he told them to do. Pharaoh says to the Hebrew midwives, kill the babies, and he doesn't even follow-up. He's like, of course, they're gonna do it.
Speaker 2:I told them to. Right? And at first glance, that's a pretty hard moment to relate to. Right? My guess is very few of us have ordered an ethnic genocide recently.
Speaker 2:I'm waiting to see anyone shifting uncomfortably in their seats so we can contact the authorities. Okay. Good. We'll move on. But there are all kinds of different ways that we buy into our own story.
Speaker 2:Do you know what is the best part of planting a church that goes from zero to 400 people in a month is? It's this, everyone automatically thinks you know exactly what you're doing. It's awesome. Now listen, truth is a lot of churches are struggling right now. And we've got a lot to learn, but we've done some things well and we're happy to share that.
Speaker 2:We make templates of our journal available to other churches. We let other churches have access to our home church home church materials. I'm happy to answer any questions from anyone, anytime about what we do, but now all of a sudden, we've got all these people phoning and calling, wanting to ask us for our secret sauce. What do we do here? And you know what?
Speaker 2:As a pastor, that feels awesome. Like to be thought of as someone who's innovative or smart or tired of something special is great. But this week, I was doing an interview for an article that someone is writing about our church, and in the midst of it, I was answering these questions, and it was like for a moment I stepped back just to listen to myself, and I'm like, oh my goodness, Jeremy. What are you talking about? You are having so much fun right now answering these questions, talking nonsense.
Speaker 2:You are so full of yourself. In my heart, was just like, you have totally bought into yourself in this moment. And if you don't find a way to reign this in, it's going to absolutely consume you. And so for me, buying into myself looks like this, forgetting that whatever is good happening here in this room is about us, and it's about God, not about me and my ideas. For you, maybe it looks like this.
Speaker 2:You have an argument with your spouse or your kids or a friend, and you are so convinced that you're right, you absolutely lose your ability to hear what is being said on the other side of that conversation. They're speaking, and the only thing that's happening is it's a pause until you get to speak again. That's buying into your own story. And maybe it looks like this. You get a promotion at work, and you're in charge of a new project or a new team, and there's more people underneath you reporting to you, and somehow you absolutely lose the ability to be self critical at all.
Speaker 2:If it's your idea, and you're the one who brought it to the table, it must be a good idea. If they don't agree, they're the problem. Let's get rid of them. Let's get some new people in here. Let's make this go.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's this. Maybe God has spoken to you, really and truly spoken to you. Maybe God has used you to communicate something beautiful and good to someone in a very special way in their lives, and yet somehow that experience of being used by God in such a significant moment has let you confuse your voice and your perspective and your eyes with God's. And so maybe for a season rather than speak, what you need to do is go back and be quiet and learn to listen again. There are all kinds of ways we buy into our own story, and it blinds us to what we're doing and what's in front of us.
Speaker 2:And this new king has not remembered the lessons of the past. He has completely bought into his own story. And when those factors get combined with our human tendency to be tribal and xenophobic and look after ourselves and our own, what it leads to is very destructive, absolutely inhuman ends. And yet here, two women two women perhaps not even of Israelite descent say, no. Verse 17.
Speaker 2:The midwives, however, feared God. And notice here, it's the generic word for God, Elohim. It's not the personal name Yahweh. So maybe these aren't Hebrews. But they feared God and they did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do.
Speaker 2:They let the boys live. So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them their families of their own. Then Pharaoh gave this order to his people. Every Hebrew boy that is born, you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.
Speaker 2:So they made it through childbirth. Now let's just round up all the infant boys and we'll throw them in the river regardless. So he ups the pressure to exterminate the Jews. And then we have this, the start of chapter two. All of this is the background, the context of what's going, and finally we are introduced to Moses.
Speaker 2:Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. Her sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
Speaker 2:Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw a baby. He was crying and she felt sorry for him. The child's sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?
Speaker 2:Yes. Go, she answered. So the girl went and got the baby's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you. So the woman took the baby and nursed him.
Speaker 2:And when the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses saying, I drew him out of the water. Now, one final thought before we close, this introduction to Moses here. I said earlier that part of the reason the author ties Moses back to Joseph is that he wants to reassure the readers that God will be present to them in their slavery just as he was present to Joseph in his slavery. And that still stands.
Speaker 2:But I think perhaps the lesson is becoming even more pointed here as we are introduced to Moses. Because not only is God present to Moses in his times of trouble, but actually the time of trouble is how God is present to Moses in this story. I mean, it's hard not to notice the parallel that the writer has embedded in this chapter. At chapter one verse 22, then Pharaoh gave the order, every Hebrew boy that is born must throw into the Nile. Chapter two verse five, then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe.
Speaker 2:She saw a basket among the reeds. She opened it and saw the baby. So the Nile River that was supposed to be the agent of his death becomes the avenue for his salvation. And the royal family that ordered his end and now becomes the means of his blessing and his family's blessing. And what's fascinating as you read this is that God isn't even mentioned in this chapter at all.
Speaker 2:It's almost as if the writer wants you to instinctively look for God here without being told to notice his As if he wants you to infer what's happening, as if he wants you to assume, as if he wants you to learn what it would mean to look for God in places we don't expect him or places he's not pointed out to us. And so perhaps, the most significant point we can land on this weekend is that not only does God work in mysterious ways. The truth is sometimes God works in ways that are downright counterintuitive to our intelligence. And we can't be simplistic or naive about this. I mean, can't pretend that every difficult situation you go through will eventually land on some great blessing on the other side where you live in a palace for the rest of your days.
Speaker 2:It's probably not gonna happen. But perhaps, we could land here today to remember that not only is God aware of your struggle, although that is blessing in and of itself. To know that God sees you and he hears you and he watches you, but now we find that God is also somehow actively engaged with our story, working in the midst of our struggle, using things that were set to crush us or destroy us or oppress us and actively bring us through to something good. And it will not always be easy, and it will not always be simple. Sometimes it won't be obvious, and you won't notice God there until you look back at it.
Speaker 2:And yet part of what we trust is that there in the backdrop of our story when we pause to look back and remember where we've been, we will see God's hand guiding and shaping and ensuring that our story is not for naught. And so perhaps this weekend, without minimizing or belittling whatever it is that you are struggling with right now, I would invite you to go back and look again to see if God's hand isn't present in there. Richard Rohr said it this way, you realize that God is letting this happen to you now to teach you something, to show you something, or to love you in a new way. And basically, you switch from the fixing, fully understanding, and controlling mode to the trusting, listening, and allowing mode. And then you start allowing the divine flow instead of stopping it with a no and a question mark.
Speaker 2:And my prayer for you this weekend is that whatever it is you are wrestling with tonight, that you would begin to see a glimpse of God's presence in your story with you. Let's pray. God, help us as we tread familiar territory, And we read stories that we've read before, and we look back on histories that we have rehearsed before. To see in the midst of them, the ways that you have been working and shaping and teaching your people for centuries. But we ask even more that as we do that, you would give us eyes to look at our own story in new ways.
Speaker 2:To look at the times of celebration where we didn't fully recognize your spirit there with us. To look again at the times of struggle, to know and to trust, to be encouraged by the fact that you were there walking with us. And then we ask that you would help us to review our present, to look out and to face into the world with eyes that are fully attuned to where the divine presence is active and working in our situations, in our world, in our conversations, relationships, and in our circumstance. Help us to see you even where you are not named because we trust that you are always with us, working for the good, even in ways we don't fully understand. In the strong name of the risen Christ, pray.
Speaker 2:Amen. Now, tonight, it has been, a trying week here in Canada for a lot of us. And we have been touched with violence in ways that we are unaccustomed to. And so this weekend, in place of question and response, what I'd like to do is end with a prayer for peace. And so I'd like to ask you to stand, and I'm gonna read this prayer as a closing piece before we go.
Speaker 2:A hymn of praise for fists unclenched. Alleluias for ammunition abandoned. Guns dropped and forgotten, bombs diffused and harmless. Thanks for rusting tanks, for jet fighters permanently left on runways done away with. This hope hovers on our lips, the horizon of your kingdom in our hearts, a space where there are no soldiers, only your children, beloved and loving, laughing, helping, caring, creating.
Speaker 2:It will come the day we remember to pray and to act, to believe and to enact, to always counter evil with good and violence with peace, to embrace their lack as the partner to our abundance. Your kingdom and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.