Hidden Treasures by Emmanuel Philor Sr.

 Scripture: Exodus 2:1-4 NRSV

Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

Hidden Treasures

I get excited whenever I know someone is expecting a child! Waiting for a child to be born for nine months brings with it the joys and anxieties of parenting. There's an unspeakable amount of joy that comes with the moment of hearing that child's first cry. It's a moment that is unforgettable! The joy that overtakes you paralyzes you to the here and now. From that moment, you start to think of their future. You think about what they will grow up to become or what will they do for a living? What kind of neighborhood will they live in. Will they ever have any children of their own? Will they, or who will they, get married (to)? There is a sense that life will allow them to grow old. However, that is not always the case. For many of us, our child's future lies in the gamble of someone else's decisions and insecurities. I often hear black mothers say that every time their child leaves the house, there's a sense of anxiety that overtakes them. They can't sleep until they know they are back home safely. Every time the phone rings until the child comes back home, they are afraid that they will receive bad news. I can understand where they're coming from as I have witnessed many mothers lose their children to the realities that lie right outside their front door.

Stories like these remind me of the 2017 movie Everything, Everything; an 18-year-old Black Girl named Maddy grew up convinced that she had an immunocompromising disease that caused her to never leave her house. She was relegated to a hermetically sealed environment, which ensured that she wouldn't be sick. Throughout the course of the movie, Maddy falls in love with her next-door neighbor, Olly. The two would find creative ways to communicate with one another but finally got tired of not being with each other. When Maddy got fed up enough, she was willing to risk it all; or for the sake of the movie, everything. She would learn through her risk-taking action that she wasn't truly as sick after all. Her mother's fear developed of fictional disease that hid her daughter from all of the pleasures and experiences that children are used to. The love that Maddy had for her neighbor drew her out her front door. But, before we blame Dr. Whittier for her behavior, let’s remember why she hid Maddy in the first place. Dr. Whittier was afraid of losing something else. In a heated debate with Maddy, she confessed that she couldn’t afford to lose her (Maddy) too. Though the movie doesn’t disclose all that she lost, she was nestled in the idea that no matter what happened, at least Maddy would be safe. Because for Dr. Whittier, Maddy was her treasure, hidden in plain sight. 

In some spaces, women don't only face this type of fear when raising their children but also in their professional roles. The common realities of the wage gap between women and men, women being asked about their intentions for family planning on interviews, and discrimination towards their family lives when being considered for promotions make this reality much tougher to deal with. In some sense, it would make me question God. The gift is that many women don't even think like this because they have been conditioned to figure it out. Whether it means hiding their true selves from the public, hiding their capacity for the sake of someone else's ego, or even omitting their fullness from a resume, they figure it out. This is where Jochebed finds herself in our text today. Since many of us know how the story of Moses turns out, we read this story with some foreknowledge of how the story ends.

Unfortunately, Jochebed is living this story from the front end, without the privilege of foreknowledge about how it ends, and she is afraid. She remembers carrying her child for nine months and enduring the fears and anxiety of pregnancy, and wrestling through the unknown of whether this child will make it to term. She had to watch what she would eat, for she did not know what kind of reactions the child would endure. She bore that child in front of her, which provided her with the security that she'd see anything coming nigh her child's safety. For nine months, she had him hidden in plain sight. The wrestle is that once she gives birth and can meet her child face to face, her sigh of relief at knowing that the child is healthy becomes a sigh of lament that the child is a male. While having a male child was normally a moment to rejoice about, she knew that it would immediately make him a target for Pharaoh. She knew this because Pharaoh had made a declaration, which is found in Exodus 1, which suggests that all Hebrew boys should be slaughtered. Jochebed, knowing what she went through to have this child, decided it was better to hide her child than to have her child killed.

Some may see this text limiting Jochebed’s experience to suffering the same plight that many black mothers face. Black mothers wrestle on whether they should move to a safer community for their children while wondering if the safer community is safe for their child too. But if we limit it to this point, we miss the relevance of the text. Jochebed’s story is not limited to the Black Mother but exposes the plight of many black women. Jochebed exposes to us the pressure of hiding. First, she has to hide her child for months. After the anxiety is now at an all-time high, because she can no longer hide him, she hides him in a basket and puts it on top of the river. Which makes me wonder, Why is hiding such a prevalent part of this text? Why is hiding the gift that God has given her the best option?  

I struggled with the text because it only shows her hiding Moses, which adds a negative portrayal of the familial relationship. Jochebed is seen as a single-black mama who is told she is not enough to raise her black son on her own. Our text opens with Jochebed being the wife of a Levite (Amram). However, the text took all of the onus off of him. Outside of him marrying Jochebed, The text never mentions him again. She is forced to make the decisions of how best to hide her child alone. She is forced to consider that this is the time where I can no longer hide him alone. She is rearing that child, nursing that child, waking up for diaper changes, waking up to ensure that they are safe, and so much more all by herself. How did Jochebed begin as a married woman who has a child and suddenly be treated as a single mama? Why does Amram get off the hook? Why doesn't he have to figure something out? Is Moses not also his child? Well, where is he?

This is the common issue in our Black community, which puts the woman in place to be a target alone while the man gets away without any harm. The latest mandate suggests that Your Son, Your Beautiful Black Son, should die before he is ever given a chance to live. Jochebed was likely still feeling Phantom kicks from when Moses was just in her womb, but there is not a word from Amram. My Black Brothers, We ought not to let our wives, sisters, and other female relatives are left alone in the space where they have to decide to hide the gift that God has given them. While this gift may be a treasure to them, we ought to ensure that the society and the community around them are safe enough for that child or that gift to be out in the forefront. That treasure should have been lauded and applauded, but because she was alone, she was forced to decide to hide her child by herself. How many of our sisters have to hide behind our egos and insecurities because we struggle with creating a safe space for all to be at the table rather than just for ourselves.

The question is raised of “What do we do to fix this situation”? The quick and easy answer is I don't know. But, what I can suggest is the way we're living has not been good enough. Our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our aunties, and all the other women in our lives have been forced into a box that says they can't be who they are called to be. If she speaks too loud, she has an attitude problem. If she's opinionated, she's a B-word. If she has a rebuttal to a foolish comment, she's combative. If she takes charge of a mishandled situation, she's seen as too assertive and not fit for the company's values. What then is a black woman to do? Is she supposed to curl up into a ball and cry until God brings her deliverance? Is she supposed to be subservient to the needs of a man and let her own needs be forgotten? It's not fair to our women. It's not fair to be the woman who's smarter than your husband and can do more for your family and be told that you can't simply because of your gender. 

Some may disagree, but I don’t blame her for hiding Moses. I believe Jochebed did the right thing, as it is in the maternal instinct to protect your babies. If I am honest, I struggle with the idea that we can live in a society where Presidents, Civic Leaders, Prime Ministers, and the like can make a decision that they do not want a generation of young boys to live. We are living under the leadership of people who have issues with the population of an entire race of people, so when issues that directly affect that population come to the forefront, they do not get addressed. The community gets an apology and nothing else. Y’all, I am tired! I'm tired of being in a space where young black boys are being murdered in the street before they have the opportunity to live. I'm tired of gun laws not being in place to create safe communities for all people. I'm tired of being in the space with mothers who have to cry and hide their hidden treasure because they're afraid for police to come and take their child away, all for crimes that they did not commit. Y’all, I am tired of my wife, my mother, my sisters, my cousins, and friends trying to hide me because they're afraid that my demise might be outside my front door.

What she did not know when she was hiding Moses was that Moses would be the elect of God. She was finding ways to preserve his life, not knowing that no matter what happened, God had a call on his life. His life would be the one that changes the plight of the Israelite nation. It was through her disobedience in saving Moses’s life that God would deliver the Israelites out of the hands of Pharaoh. It was through the works of this Moses, and her sacrifice, that God would make a difference in the nation that they were a part of. He was a hidden treasure. He was born right a month after all of the other Hebrew boys and reared among his siblings. When he was found in the papyrus basket, God called his mama to make sure that she nursed him. Some might say that is a mere coincidence, but the reality is that there are no coincidences in God. This would provide Jochebed the opportunity to best ensure that Moses was taken care of in the ways that she would have done it herself.

This speaks to the faithfulness of God. God provided Jochebed with the opportunity to witness the treasure that she had hidden because if she had not hidden him in the earlier season, he would not grow to be the mighty deliverer of the Israelites. But, the gift of Moses is not the only hidden treasure. There are some people, some places, and some things that have been hidden from the communities is that we are apart. Some of our gifts have been hidden for fear of their safety, but today, we bind together as a community to declare a safe space for all the hidden treasures to be revealed. There is a generation of people who don't encounter the true and living God if we keep our treasures hidden. Because if we never reveal the hidden treasure,

• Obstacles like the Red Sea are never Parted 
• The People are never fed Manna from Heaven
• When they get tired of Manna, they would never get Quail to eat
• The would have been led by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night
• Israel would have never gained the victory over Midian
• Them Thirsty Israelites would never have gotten water from the rock
• The Israelites wouldn’t have ever made it to the Promised Land.

So we are grateful for the treasures God has given us! Grateful for the wisdom to know that there is a season for hiding those treasures, but there is also a season comes when the treasures can no longer be hidden.  Grateful for the opportunity to expose those treasures to the world. So, I join in with the Songwriter and say:

How can I say thanks
For the things You have done for me?
Things so undeserved
Yet You gave to prove Your love for me
The voices of a million angels
Could not express my gratitude
All that I am and ever hope to be
I owe it all to Thee
To God be the glory
To God be the glory
To God be the glory
For the things He has done