Oppression

We are preaching a sermon series on the Exodus this summer. I preached this sermon on Sunday, June 23rd about the oppression of the Israelites in Egypt as told in Exodus 5:1-18. I apologize for the length of this one, but I had a tough time cutting stuff out!

Scripture continues to tell us the story of the plight of the Israelites. While Moses has been in the wilderness making a new life for himself, the Israelites have remained enslaved in Egypt. They have been forced to labor for the Egyptians, serving at their will and whim.

Many scholars believe that the Pharaoh of Egypt at the time of the Exodus would most likely have been Ramses II. One of the reasons this is important is because Ramses was obsessed with building and construction. He filled all of Egypt with new towns and, more importantly, statues of himself. It is very possible that many of the great works of Egyptians were built on the backs of the Israelites.

The Israelites find themselves bound in slavery in Egypt subject to the will of cruel taskmasters following the will of the Pharaoh. Upon their return to Egypt, Moses and Aaron go before Pharaoh to ask him to allow the people of Israel to go into the wilderness in order to make sacrifices to their God. Pharaoh responds cruelly. Not only does he deny them the opportunity to go, but he reacts by punishing all of the Israelites.

Why does Pharaoh react so cruelly? What is it about going into the wilderness to worship Yahweh that he is so angry about?

In order for the Israelites to make the bricks that were used as building materials for all of the Pharaoh’s construction projects, they had to mix straw with mud. Up until this point, the straw had been provided for the Israelites.

But it is now Pharaoh’s decree that the Israelites will no longer be provided straw; they will now have to harvest their own straw. This may not sound like much of a burden, but they are being required to produce bricks at the same rate as they were being required to before. They must add a significant amount of work to their load while remaining as efficient as they had before.

The punishment the Pharaoh orders of the Israelites makes their task impossible. It is impossible for them to produce the same number of bricks while being forced to do twice as much labor. It is a subversive punishment, it is an oppressive punishment, and it is intended to dishearten the Israelites. To break them. This is oppression in a very real and palpable sense.

It initially seems strange to me that he should choose to punish the Israelites through labor. But as I think about it, I’m really not that surprised. There have been many groups of people throughout history who have been oppressed through the use of labor. Have been forced into a subservient role in society through the means of manual labor.

This image looms before me in my mind’s eye. A multitude of people are unloaded from train cars and shoved and prodded into a line. They are forced to march through an opening in a fence into a camp in which most of them will die due to exhaustion, overexertion, and starvation. This is a Nazi concentration camp. As they march through the gates into this place of horrors, three words loom overhead, cast into the iron. Arbeit macht frei. Work makes (you) free.

These were the words written at the gates of many Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz – one of the most terrifying. The phrase is almost as sickening as the knowledge of what happened to the poor people who were forced into those camps. There was an illusion created that, by working hard, the Jews would know freedom. The implication is that if you worked hard enough, you would be released. But I can’t imagine that any Jew in those camps believed that. It’s disturbingly ironic that the Nazis essentially did to the Jews the same thing that Pharaoh had done to them over 3000 years earlier.

But these are not the only instances of oppression in the world throughout history. Up until the mid-1960s, race relations in this country were overtly oppressive. The concept of “separate, but equal” was largely a farce that hid the problem of oppression of blacks. Through backhanded preference and exclusion to outright oppressive actions, African Americans in this country faced the heavy yoke of oppression. Martin Luther King Jr. described this oppression the best – I could actually just write this entire sermon with MLK Jr. quotes. He said that America was, "sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression."

And oppression has not just happened “back there” in time, or “out there” in location. It’s something that happens here and now. It’s something that happens to our friends, our neighbors, our spouses, our children, our parents. There is evidence of oppression all around us.

The number of young people who killed themselves last year because of who they are, and what kind of person they fall in love with is simply staggering. This is evidence of oppression.

The number of young people who hurt themselves or starve themselves because they want to look like a picture in a magazine – a picture of someone who doesn’t even truly exist but was airbrushed onto the page, is just astounding. This is evidence of oppression.

These are forms of oppression; these are the ways that vulnerable people in our society are being oppressed.

And as often as we are the victims of this oppression, as often as we feel that pain and the hurt, so also we are the ones who inflict that oppression. As often as we see ourselves as the Israelites, we can turn around to discover that we are the Egyptians.

Two months ago, there was a tragedy in a far-away land that shook that nation and rocked the entire world. On April 23, workers in the commercial building Rana Plaza in the capital noticed that some cracks had formed on the inside of the gigantic structure. The workers were sent home. Banks, shops, and apartments were immediately closed, but clothing workers in the building were required to come in to work the next day.

On April 24^th, the entire building collapsed due to structural damages. Witnesses said that the building looked as though it had suffered a violent earthquake. It was confirmed that 3,122 workers were in the building at the time of the collapse, and a rescue effort was immediately launched which lasted almost a month. During the course of that rescue effort, heros were born, and miracles were performed. More than 2,000 people were rescued from the rubble.

Yet, in the midst of the wonderful stories of rescues, the death toll began to climb: 200, 400, 700. After all was said and done, approximately 1,127 people were killed in the tragedy of the building collapse in Bangladesh.

There were many responses to this tragedy: sadness, disbelief, confusion. But perhaps the most appropriate was anger. How could this have happened? What is the cause behind such a terrible tragedy? There are experts who say that the cause behind this tragedy is exploitation and oppression gone rampant. It is unclear which clothing companies this factory supported, but ties have been made to many of the clothing retailers that we are familiar with on an everyday basis. 

Why clothing companies?

Scott Nova, executive director of Workers Rights Consortium, a labor rights organization says, “the real power lies with Western brands and retailers beginning with the biggest players: Walmart, H&M, Inditex, Gap and others…The price pressure these buyers put on factories undermines any prospect that factories will undertake the costly repairs and renovations that are necessary to make these buildings safe.”

And the oppression doesn't stop there. The life conditions of these workers is unfathomable for us. After reading about the tragedy, the new Pope decided to speak out. He read that these workers were being paid about $50 a month. He responded by saying, “This is called slave labor. Today in the world this slavery is being committed against something beautiful that God has given us – the capacity to create, to work, to have dignity…Not paying fairly, not giving a job because you are only looking at balance sheets, only looking at how to make a profit. That goes against God!”

These are the kinds of people that are facing some of the worst oppression and the world, and the thing we have to realize is that we have contributed. If we look at the clothing brands that we purchase for ourselves and our families, it’s highly likely that we have purchased clothes made in factories at least similar to this one.

To accomplish his process of oppression, Pharaoh used a system of supervisors that were both Egyptian and Hebrew. The Egyptian taskmasters were totally loyal to Pharaoh, but these Hebrew supervisors were in an interesting situation. They were in this strange middle ground. They had accomplished enough in the eyes of the Egyptians to warrant them a position of some authority. They had some upward influence.

Yet they interact downward as well. Because they are Hebrew by birth, they are punished as members of the Hebrew community. These supervisors have compassion upon their Hebrew brothers and sisters and they go before Pharaoh crying out against this injustice. When Pharaoh is unwilling to relent, the supervisors go to Moses and Aaron and cry out against them and beg for their help. These characters have the compassion, the motivation, and the power to do something about the oppression that they witness.

I think that many people can identify with the position in which the Hebrew supervisors found themselves. Just like the supervisors, we feel some of the effects of oppression, but most of us do not receive the very worst effects of it. We are not the worker in Bangladesh who lost a life. We are not the Hebrew people forced into slavery and much worse. Yet we feel compassion for those people. We sympathize with those people who are deeply oppressed because we have been raised to be empathetic. 

And just like the supervisors, we find ourselves in a position to effect change. We have the ear of power, of big corporations, of governments, of Pharaoh. And when that power - as often happens - turns away, we have the opportunity to call for change in other ways.

When Pharaoh ignored the supervisors they went to Moses and said, "What's the deal man - you brought this on us." Moses goes to God and says, "Why did you do this, the people are in pain!" And these appeals bring about all of the change that we will be reading about through the rest of the summer. It all starts with the action of the supervisors. With their unwillingness to stand by and do nothing.

It only seems inevitable that I should return to MLK Jr. In his letter from a Birmingham jail in 1963, he said that Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

This story and MLK Jr.'s words are a call to us. Injustice and oppression in the lives of our youth is a concern to which we should all pay attention. Injustice and oppression in Bangladesh is an issue about which we should be worried. These are things we can do something about. I can't necessarily say what that something always is - perhaps we need to be more careful where we shop, or what we teach our kids, or what we say to our parents. But the first step toward any of these actions is compassion.

Compassion is what stirs us from our apathy. Compassion is the emotion that leads us to love others as much as ourselves. Compassion is what makes us care when thousands of people die thousands of miles away making clothes that we can buy for $20 and wear for 2 months. Compassion is what makes us realize that people who face oppression are not faceless or nameless, but are our brothers and sisters; and they could just as easily be us. Compassion is the key to the destruction of oppression, compassion that makes us put our foot down and say, "All people are valuable."

These are the values that we find in the supervisors: the role of God-given compassion, a desire to see things made right.

Like Moses and like the Hebrew supervisors, God calls us to be compassionate people. God calls us to care for others – to care for others enough to make a difference. This is why we write letters to politicians to ask them to push for the end of hunger. This is why the church is so engaged in mission. We are a compassionate people.

What is the difference we will make? Where will we face oppression with compassion?