I was not born in the 60s. That’s when my mom grew up. I only know of it through family photos and the history books. When I was in my social studies class, I was taught about JFK. As a Catholic, that was our president. Yet he was assassinated. So was his brother, RFK. So was MLK Jr and Malcom X. I read about the racial unrest and the protests. The tragedy of the Vietnam War, a war that never seemed to end and whose veterans were disrespected and forgotten. I read about Nixon and his shady administration which engaged in illegal activity. There was a Cold War with Russia, and Iran was starting to deal with extremists which would over throw the government at the end of the 70s. I read about how Americans struggled with healthcare until Medicare was passed in 1965. I read about all of this and thought, “Man. It must have been just awful to live back in the 60s.”

Then I woke up in 2019.

History echoes. We don’t seem to hear it. There’s that saying, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeated it.” Someone added to that phrase, “And those who do know history are doomed to watch everyone repeat it.”

Lord spare us from the assassinations but almost everything else holds true. Our recent veterans are subjected to two unending wars and their PTSD forgotten once they return. We’re not as bad as Vietnam, but it’s still not ideal. We can do better as a country. We are dealing with racial unrest. To put it mildly, it’s an interesting time in Washington D.C. with investigations. Russia and Iran feature large in the news. We’re still debating healthcare and whether we should expand Medicare.

It’s amazing how history echoes. It’s amazing how we don’t seem to learn. We think someone will come along and save us. It’s like this cartoon on the internet of a dog sitting in a burning room with a pleasant look on its face saying, “This is fine.” That’s sort of the image of humanity for me.

Yet this is nothing new. This is an ancient story we have been repeating. Take our two scriptures today. They seem unrelated, but they echo one another and support my claim that we don’t learn from our past mistakes. We often forget.

In our Exodus reading, the Israelites are still in Egypt. They arrived there on good terms. Their ancestor Joseph saved the whole country and reconciled with his family. Joseph, a former slave and prisoner, became second in command. Then a pharaoh came to power who didn’t know Joseph. He saw these foreigners with the best land in Goshen and became afraid. These foreigners might over run us, they’ll change the fabric of our country. We must make life harder for them. Maybe if we’re really cruel, they’ll leave.

The Israelite first born males are all killed as population control. But Moses is spared. The pharaoh’s daughter raises Moses at court. He is both Egyptian and Israelite. He makes a choice when he saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite. He kills the Egyptian and runs. He’s hiding out, being a shepherd for his father-in-law when he stumbles upon the burning bush.

God speaks through the fire. “Moses, you will lead my people.”

And Moses, like a good prophet and leader says, “Hey, yeah… thanks… But I don’t wanna.”

God convinces Moses to lead, countering his every excuse. Then Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh and ask him to let the people go. To which Pharaoh responds, “Who is the Lord, that I should heed him and let Israel go? I don’t know the Lord, and wont’ let them go.”

Life gets harder for Israel. They have to make bricks for the building projects, which they then have to construct. Many of the building projects still stand—The Great Pyramids. The Valley of the Kings. The Temple of Luxor. Multiple homes and palaces and courtyards from ancient Egypt. Thus proving that we humans can achieve anything if we throw enough human suffering and misery at it.

And the Israelites are in misery. They not only have to make bricks but have to make bricks with no straw. Which is impossible. The bricks wouldn’t hold together. These are not stone bricks, but rather adobe, mud bricks. In fact, this phrase is still used today. “Bricks without straw” refers to a task which must be undertaken without appropriate resources.

The Israelites fall behind in their quotas, even though they are working harder than ever. They are beaten and driven even harder.

We do know how the Exodus story ends. The Israelites leave, the Red Sea parts, they eventually get to the Holy Land. The former slaves are now free and settled in the land that God promised to their ancestor Abraham.

The people want a king. The Prophet Samuel says to the nation, “They will take your sons, run them before his chariots… and will use them to make war. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields, vineyards and olive orchards. He will take your slaves, the best of your cattle. You will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but God will not answer you on that day.”[1]

Israel gets a king. A few of them in fact. The rabbis look at their sacred scripture and see how a king was never in the plans. It starts with Moses going up Mount Sinai. God’s plan was for the whole nation of Israel to go up. The idea for Israel is to live differently than every other nation. The nation was chosen to be a nation of priests that exists to bless the whole world. But the people don’t go up the mountain. They send Moses instead. And then they ask for a king, like every other nation has. And they get them. First comes Saul, then comes David. Then the wise Solomon, David’s son from Bathsheba. Today, we hear Solomon is building the Temple to honor God.

There are 4 chapters of 1 Kings on what’s in the Temple, how it was designed, how it was furnished and decorated. We miss the arch of this whole story though. We miss the echoes of history here.

Solomon is building a temple to honor the God of his ancestors; of his father David, and of Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham. The same God that instructed Moses to lead the people out of slavery. This God is the God of the nobodies, the God of the oppressed, the God of the slaves tasked to make bricks with no straw.

And King Solomon’s temple… This temple… Is built using slave labor.

How quickly we forget. How hypocritical. How quickly we forget our story, our mission and values. How quickly we betray what we stand for, for a false sense of security. It would be too easy to dismiss this connection by saying these were ancient people who didn’t know better. We could just write them off as hypocrites and not heed the lesson.

But these stories are sadly relevant.

I often hear older folks bemoaning the millennials. How this generation is entitled and needy and they want everything for free. While that might be true, I would blame the parents and those who raised them. Which would be the Baby Boomers.

Let’s take the request for free college or at least a reduction in the price of college. In the 1960s, people could put themselves through college with a part-time job and graduate with little to no debt. A GOBankingRates analysis found that the annual cost of a four-year public university has soared more than 3,700% between 1964 when the youngest boomers were born, and 2015.[2] Millennials, which I am a part of, and the generations after me are being laden with more debt than ever before. This is a “bricks with no straw” situation and I’m not sure how this story will end.

Millennials and the younger generations are waiting for churches to speak out about the mountain of debt they have or will face. All my generation hears from the church is answers to questions that don’t apply to them, or are irrelevant. Or worse, they hear silence. Or the absolutely worst thing they hear, is condemnation. They don’t see us fighting for them or having those hard conversations. They wonder about our welcome. Do we really mean it? Or is our welcome conditional? They see us as hypocrites.

Hypocrites to claim to follow sacred stories which command us to welcome and love the immigrant, to care for the stranger within our gate, to do as Leviticus 19:33-34 and 24:22 “When the alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt:  I am the Lord your God.” Yet we are, a nation of immigrants who fears immigrants. We’re separating families and putting children in cages and letting desperate people drown in the Rio Grande with their children.

My generation is right in thinking the church is full of hypocrites. But they are misguided in not joining the church. I, and so many like me, have found such life and hope here in church. And yes… the church is full of hypocrites. And there’s always room for more!

For my generation is hypocritical too. If the power ever goes out and there’s no internet to be found, I wonder how many of my peers would still consider themselves activists. I have learned from the 1960s and the example of the church that activism means you show up to where it’s uncomfortable to be and have hard conversations.

Engagement is the way forward. That’s what we see with the leadership of Moses. He engaged the people and empowered them and led them out of Egypt. Listen, God didn’t break our chains in Egypt so we would replace them with nicer chains. We were meant to be free. Free from ideologies and economic systems that separate us. We are called to see the divine in every person.

We are called to care for our brother and sister, to listen to them, and help carry their cross. We need each other to remind one another of our shared values. To keep one another from drifting into hypocrisy. We are a nation of the free because of the brave. Yet we lead the world in incarceration[3] and I fear we’re not caring for our veterans sufficiently.

If history shows us anything, it shows that we don’t learn from history. At least, not all the time. May we be students of history so we can reduce our hypocrisy. Let us cling to the ties that bind us and the shared vision that unites us. And let us recognize that indeed our church isn’t full of hypocrites… there’s always room for more.

Works Cited

[1] 1 Sam 8:1-18

[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/boomers-vs-millennials-look-financial-201000886.html

[3] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2018.html