21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.
~Exodus 1:8
 
Pharaoh’s daughter said to [the child’s mother], “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.”
~Exodus 2:9
 
The origin story of Moses drips with delicious, revolutionary irony. The children of Israel who settled in Egypt under Joseph’s forgiving invitation have prospered. Egypt has been blessed too. But the new king is afraid anyway. Pharaoh’s fear, as fear often does in the context of an unchecked and excessively powerful empire, sanctions violence in the name of domination: Forced labor, institutionalized discrimination, even genocide. And, per usual, those attempts produce tragically inevitable suffering and fail spectacularly in the stated goal. Note the concern as the new Egyptian king names it in Exodus 1:10:  
 
Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”
 
How did that go for them?
 
Uninterested in the lessons of Joseph or the logic of non-violence, the king creates a roadmap for the very thing he wanted to avoid. Ironic indeed. Yet God is God and God blesses. The Egyptian empire’s attempts to eliminate the threat create the conditions for the tutelage of Moses, it’s eventual conqueror—and his biological mother falls upon an unexpected social safety net to help her in raising him!
 
The current US administration is not the first empire, in other words, to start a fight that ends up in chaos and, at least in part, strengthens the perceived enemy.
 
Jesus brings his disciples to Caesarea Philippi, a regional capital of the Roman Empire to offer a similar lesson about the (il)logic of politics-as-usual that will play out over two Sundays. They are beginning to understand who Jesus really is, but it will take time for this good news to unfold for them as it does for those of us with ears to hear.
 
Enter into worship. Sunday, 10:00am, in-person or online.
 
Readings: Exodus 1:8-2:10 † Psalm 124 † Romans 12:1-8 † Matthew 16:13-20
 
About the Art: Who Do You Say That I Am. Composite Graphic, 2026. 

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