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Welcome to Perspectives, a podcast where the clergywomen of the First United Methodist Church of San Diego share their perspectives on scripture. Today is episode 2 as we continue with the story of Moses. This time we're talking about Skeletons in the Closet.

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Well, this story comes from the Book of Exodus, Trudy, as you know. And last week we talked about a mother's love and Moses' mom putting him in the basket and sending him up the Nile. And we also know that as he was sent up the Nile, he was taken in by the Pharaoh's daughter. And so in chapter 2, we meet Moses, who has grown up in the Pharaoh's house. He has great privilege and great status, and he's grown up as an Egyptian boy, but he knows that he is actually a Hebrew man. One day while he's out walking, having a good time, using his privilege, moving about in the world. He sees an Egyptian man abusing an enslaved Hebrew man, and that really fires Moses up. So he gets really upset, and then he winds up killing this man, and then he buries the man and runs away from it, essentially. The next day, he sees two folks having a quarrel, and he steps in like Moses, and he's like, Why are you guys fighting? You shouldn't be fighting each other. And these Hebrew men are like, "Didn't you just kill somebody? Didn't you just bury somebody?"

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"So who are you to tell me what I should be doing, Moses?" And so then Moses is like, "People know me. They know what I've done." And so he runs and he flees Pharaoh because he knows ...

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Because he killed an Egyptian.

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Because he killed an Egyptian. Yeah. Exactly. Because at the end of the day, he's still a Hebrew man.

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Yeah. Okay. All right.

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Pin there. So he runs. He makes his way to Midian, and then he begins to have this new life for himself. And he assumes that now, since he has run away, that he has left his past behind.

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There you go. That's a tricky one. God doesn't necessarily care about our past, it seems. I mean, I think of so many people in the scriptures that have those skeletons in the closet, right? I mean, Abraham, from the very beginning. He starts off God's favorite little patriarch.

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Abraham.

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And I didn't mean to call him little. Sorry about that! God's favorite patriarch. And he starts off just lying, right? And he's encouraging Sarah to lie. And I mean, that's not perfect. That's not really all about whether or not he has a faith in... He's not perfect, Abraham. And then there's Jacob, right? Jacob, he fought with his twin in utero. He masqueraded as his brother to steal. He's a liar.

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He literally took hair from an animal and glued it on himself. That's deception.

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That's a lot of deception. That's right. That's right. King David. Oh, my gosh. The other favorite patriarch, right?

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King David. 

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He committed adultery. He lusted after Bathsheba and even killed her husband in order that he might have her. And then there's Peter, moving to the New Testament, challenged Jesus in his plans, denied Jesus. There's Paul, who was Saul, who persecuted the Christians. All of these these skeletons, right? These are people in our scriptures. Each and every one of them. Thiefs, liars, murderists. But God used every one of them. God used every one of them. And here's Moses. He's a murderer, too. And he tries to run from his past.

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He tries to run from his past. And I think that so often we try to run from our past because we believe that we can't forgive ourselves, so God won't forgive us. And so we wind up holding all this shame and all this guilt for the things that we've done, not realizing, like John Wesley would say, that grace has already met us there, that God's grace meets us where we are, and that there's nothing that we can do to be outside of the bounds of God's grace, but we have to be willing to accept it and to receive it and to know as such. And so can we run from our past? I don't think so. But I think that God uses our past to help inform our future if we allow it, right? There's a guy. There's a guy. You know me, Trudy. I love a little history lesson. Tell me about a guy. There's a guy named John Newton who wrote the famous hymn, Amazing Grace. And we often hear the story, right, that he was an enslaver. He was the captain of the slave ships, right? And he gets into this really bad storm, and he has this moment of clarity in his life where he realizes that he doesn't want to be this man anymore.

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And so he turns away and becomes a cleric in the Anglican Church, Church of England. I'm having such a nerdy good time right now! But anyway, he becomes a cleric, and then he spends this time in doing this work. And that's where he wrote poetry, and he wrote hymns and that's where Amazing Grace came from. So this man, not only did he turn his life and become a minister, but he also became an abolitionist for slavery. And I think that that is one way that we see how our past can inform our future if we are open to the new thing that God might be doing. Absolutely.

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We do often think that we are just outside of God's grace. But when we do receive it, when we do welcome that forgiveness, it seems to me like that's just the start of the journey. And I know so many people, myself included in a certain sense, when we start on the journey of faith, when we recognize that God loves us and invites us on this path to be part of what God's doing, especially when we've been forgiven for something, we want to hold on to something that we know will keep us on that path, will keep us in relationship with God. And we try and walk the line, and it needs to be a very clear line And we tend to read scriptures then more like an instruction book rather than a testimony. Come on, somebody. And that means that we sometimes then create to-do lists rather than nurture a sense of wonder. And when we have a to-do list, then we discover that there are people who do and people who don't. And it creates an us versus them. And we see so many times where people with strong convictions cause harm. And in our history of Christianity, Jesus followers versus pagans, right?

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Believers versus the heretics, Catholic versus Protestants, insiders versus outsiders. You have the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holy Wars, right? Missionary efforts to convert people, Christian parents of gay children who disown their children. Those convictions just completely oppose the grace that we were given. What happened to the wonder of a God who forgives with grace the very people who are now administering such judgment. And creating systems of judgment based on beliefs, that's how we oppressed people. That's exactly how we oppressed people. The story of Moses is about oppression. And Moses sees what the Egyptians are doing and gets angry about it. And he's in this pickle now. The interesting thing about this story of him killing the Egyptian, he comes back the second day and he sees two Hebrews fighting with each other. And you think, wait a second, Hebrew man against Hebrew man, shouldn't they form a coalition against the Egyptians? But they're fighting within each other. And we see that happen a lot. It's almost as if we have it within us as human beings to create these systems that automatically have people being inside and outside, people who are worthy or who are not or powerful who are not.

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And the Egyptians are more powerful than the Hebrews. And within the Hebrew tradition, there are some who are fighting to prove that they are more powerful or strong or right or whatever than other Hebrews. And it's a ranking system even within oppressed people.

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That's how oppression Yeah. I mean, that's what happens, right? That's horrible. Someone has to be on top. And then there's infighting between, right? Because you want to get yourself. You want to assimilate. You want to have what you see the Egyptians having, right? And so you then internalize these subjective behaviors, these awful ways of being in the world. And I meant to say subjugation, not subjective. Anyway, but these oppressive ideologies become a part of your normative being now, right? And so you then become a part, right? Moses didn't have a conversation with the Egyptian man to say, what's going on here, right? He went straight for violence because that's what he was accustomed to. That's what he had grown up in, right? Even though he was this Hebrew man and he had these different privileges, he still grew up in a system of violence. And so that was how he responded, right? Yeah.

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So going back to God's grace and God's forgiveness – it's not just for an individual but it seems as though these stories are encouraging us to redeem the systems as well. It's as though God wants to eliminate that default system in favor of systems that really know we all have the potential to be such a mess, to know that that we often fear what we don't understand, and those fears, much of the fears that we conjure up, are phantom fears. Not necessarily based in reality but in this broken system. God wants to provide a system where really, we could help each other and we can do so without losing ourselves. We can perhaps live with enough and live in peace. 

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I agree. I mean, I think the grace of God is forever running after us. I think that as Moses was running away from his past, that God's grace was chasing Moses. And that's why Moses couldn't escape the call. Moses's life continued to go on in a direction that he never assumed he would have. Because he had left that life. He had left Egypt. But God's grace was running after him, and I think that God's grace runs after all of us. And I think that that's what John Wesley was trying to say in many ways. Shout out to John. But I do believe that God's grace is there for us and if we just are to turn back and see it, then we might be able to be begin to see ourselves the way that God sees us. And if we can do that, and we can see ourselves the way that God sees us, then it gives us enough grace to maybe see others the way that God sees them. 

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You know, that's what I like to do. That's what I like to do. 

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I like your perspective. 

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I love your perspective, Trudy, and I'm glad that we had an opportunity to share our perspectives with each other and with everyone else. And so now I invite you all to reflect on these questions in small group discussions on Tuesdays on Zoom at 6 p.m. or in person on Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. in Linder 4. So here are the questions. Ready? All right. Do we believe and do we act like God can save everybody? Second question: What would put someone outside of God's reach – is there anything that can put someone outside of God's reach? Lastly, can we be redeemed without repentance – so can we be forgiven if we don't acknowledge that we need forgiveness? These are some questions to ponder, and I hope that we can hear your perspective soon. 

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