This is my favorite spiritual:
I'm reminded of it this morning because I was reading the book of Exodus and came to the first confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh.
And I was surprised by something.
I was expecting, because we all know this story, to find Moses walking up to Pharaoh and saying "Let my people go!"
But that's not quite what you find in the first encounter between Moses and Pharaoh as recounted in Exodus 5. What you get is this (Exodus 5.1):
Yes, we get the demand "Let my people go". But it's not a demand to leave Egypt. It's a demand for liberation and freedom to worship.
The demand is this: "Let my people go worship".
Pharaoh, we know, refuses and makes the Israelites work harder. They have to continue making bricks and make the same quotas but they have to gather their own straw.
All overworked people know the refrain.
More bricks, less straw.
And what's interesting to note in Pharaoh's reaction is that he assumes that a request for worship is symptomatic of laziness (Exodus 5.8, 17-18):
I don't know about you, but that conflict seems both biblically repetitive and extraordinarily relevant to our time and place.
One of the important things to notice is the repeated refrain that God wants Pharaoh to release the Israelites so that they might "serve" him. In fact, in the text of Exodus the theme of service/slavery relates far more directly to the state that Israel enters into at Sinai than it does to the state that it leaves in departing from Egypt. The popular slavery/liberation opposition tends to disguise the fact that Exodus is a story of movement from one form of service and one master to another. This is something that's also particularly politically relevant.
The work/worship opposition is more natural to Exodus in a number of ways, especially when approached carefully. It's clearly present in the fourth commandment, for instance. However, I wonder whether the difference is better framed as labor without rest under Pharaoh and God's granting of rest to Israel in its labors. That is, work and worship aren't in opposition, but work without rest/worship is in opposition to work with such rest and worship.
The themes of the second half of Exodus bear this out, I think, especially in the way that they allude back to the pattern of creation. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, so Israel too must enjoy rest in its labors. The creation of the tabernacle follows a seven day creation pattern, culminating in the enjoyment of rest and the presence of God in Israel's midst -- Israel enters into God's pattern of creation and, through that, shares in his rest. The book of Exodus begins with Israel building palaces for Pharaoh without rest: the book of Exodus ends with Israel building a palace for YHWH, in which God rests and invites his servants into fellowship with him.
Like I said, this is biblically repetitive, too. What happens next? Fast forward to Solomon. Following the trajectory of the construction of the swanky tabernacle in Exodus 35ff., talk about a "a palace for YHWH"! Brueggemann has written:
Now fast forward to Herod's magnificent Second Temple (all 12 football pitches of it): Same old same old.
My point is that we must not only contrast the exploitation of labor (in the context of pharaonic economies, ancient and contemporary, whose raison d'être is to increase and protect the wealth and power of the affluent) with the dignity of work, we must also apply a hermeneutics of suspicion to worship itself which, ideologically, may be more in the service of Mammon (and his child Injustice) and Mars (and his child Patriotism) than YHWH. Thus, at least, the prophetic tradition, from Amos to Jesus.
This refrain also seems particularly relevant in our own cultural context.
Will not the worship of God interrupt, disrupt and interfere with the constant demands for more and more work?
Will not the worship of God interrupt, disrupt and interfere with the constant demands for greater and greater productivity?
Will not the worship of God interrupt, disrupt and interfere with the quotas demanded by the Pharaohs of capitalism?
And will not the worship of God in our time and place be ultimately perceived as laziness?
"Don't reduce the quota. They are lazy. That is why they are crying out, 'Let us go and sacrifice to our God.'"
I'm reminded of it this morning because I was reading the book of Exodus and came to the first confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh.
And I was surprised by something.
I was expecting, because we all know this story, to find Moses walking up to Pharaoh and saying "Let my people go!"
But that's not quite what you find in the first encounter between Moses and Pharaoh as recounted in Exodus 5. What you get is this (Exodus 5.1):
Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: 'Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness.'"
The demand is this: "Let my people go worship".
Pharaoh, we know, refuses and makes the Israelites work harder. They have to continue making bricks and make the same quotas but they have to gather their own straw.
All overworked people know the refrain.
More bricks, less straw.
And what's interesting to note in Pharaoh's reaction is that he assumes that a request for worship is symptomatic of laziness (Exodus 5.8, 17-18):
[Pharaoh said to the Israelite overseers:] "Require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don't reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, 'Let us go and sacrifice to our God.'"What I find interesting in all this is how the worship of God is perceived to interrupt the work and quotas demanded by Pharaoh. The tension, at least here in the beginning of Exodus, isn't the clash between slavery and liberation but the clash between worship and work. (I'm sure there's a sabbath motif here, but I don't think that's all there is.)
Pharaoh said, "Lazy, that's what you are -- lazy! That is why you keep saying, 'Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord'. Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks."
I don't know about you, but that conflict seems both biblically repetitive and extraordinarily relevant to our time and place.
One of the important things to notice is the repeated refrain that God wants Pharaoh to release the Israelites so that they might "serve" him. In fact, in the text of Exodus the theme of service/slavery relates far more directly to the state that Israel enters into at Sinai than it does to the state that it leaves in departing from Egypt. The popular slavery/liberation opposition tends to disguise the fact that Exodus is a story of movement from one form of service and one master to another. This is something that's also particularly politically relevant.
The work/worship opposition is more natural to Exodus in a number of ways, especially when approached carefully. It's clearly present in the fourth commandment, for instance. However, I wonder whether the difference is better framed as labor without rest under Pharaoh and God's granting of rest to Israel in its labors. That is, work and worship aren't in opposition, but work without rest/worship is in opposition to work with such rest and worship.
The themes of the second half of Exodus bear this out, I think, especially in the way that they allude back to the pattern of creation. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, so Israel too must enjoy rest in its labors. The creation of the tabernacle follows a seven day creation pattern, culminating in the enjoyment of rest and the presence of God in Israel's midst -- Israel enters into God's pattern of creation and, through that, shares in his rest. The book of Exodus begins with Israel building palaces for Pharaoh without rest: the book of Exodus ends with Israel building a palace for YHWH, in which God rests and invites his servants into fellowship with him.
Like I said, this is biblically repetitive, too. What happens next? Fast forward to Solomon. Following the trajectory of the construction of the swanky tabernacle in Exodus 35ff., talk about a "a palace for YHWH"! Brueggemann has written:
As is well known, Solomon devoted great energy to the temple, a standard royal enterprise that is laden with dynastic ideology underscoring the ostensible piety of the king, and which provides public evidence of divine commitment to the royal dynasty. The temple, of course, is opulent in its appointment. Its three-chambered design, moreover, witnesses to a hierarchical ordering of social power ... The three-chambered arrangement, a standard in royally operated temples, created a system of graded holiness that, given the centrality of the cult, embodied gradations of social power and social wealth -- that is, an ideological stratification of social worth.The architecture of the city attests to what is to be valued and who is to be consigned to the margins of whatever wealth their guarantees may be offered.Moreover, Solomon's "state apparatus of building, trade, military, and tax policy all depended upon cheap labor -- or more properly, forced labor whereby men are conscripted to serve the aims of the regime even when that course violated their own vested interest". No wonder, then, that "Solomon is remembered as having policies that replicated and imitated those of Pharaoh in ancient days".
Now fast forward to Herod's magnificent Second Temple (all 12 football pitches of it): Same old same old.
My point is that we must not only contrast the exploitation of labor (in the context of pharaonic economies, ancient and contemporary, whose raison d'être is to increase and protect the wealth and power of the affluent) with the dignity of work, we must also apply a hermeneutics of suspicion to worship itself which, ideologically, may be more in the service of Mammon (and his child Injustice) and Mars (and his child Patriotism) than YHWH. Thus, at least, the prophetic tradition, from Amos to Jesus.
This refrain also seems particularly relevant in our own cultural context.
Will not the worship of God interrupt, disrupt and interfere with the constant demands for more and more work?
Will not the worship of God interrupt, disrupt and interfere with the constant demands for greater and greater productivity?
Will not the worship of God interrupt, disrupt and interfere with the quotas demanded by the Pharaohs of capitalism?
And will not the worship of God in our time and place be ultimately perceived as laziness?
"Don't reduce the quota. They are lazy. That is why they are crying out, 'Let us go and sacrifice to our God.'"