Rachel Ingram:

Exodus 3:7–8, 10–11; 5:1–3; 6:1, 2–5; 12:31; 13:17–22 (NIV)

The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that land. So now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. Afterward, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness. Pharaoh said, who is the Lord that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord. I will not let Israel go. Then the Lord said to Moses, now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh. Because of my mighty hand, he will let them go. Because of my mighty hand, he will drive them out of his country. God also said to Moses, I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty. But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself fully known to them. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. Therefore say to the Israelites, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. Then the Lord said to Moses, go tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to let the Israelites go out of his country. Yet Pharaoh’s heart became hard, and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said. During the night, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, up. Leave, my people. You and the Israelites. Go worship the Lord as you have requested. When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. So God led the people around by the desert road towards the Red Sea. By day, the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way, and by night, in a pillar of fire to give them light so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.

The day that I turned 21, my nephew, who was 7 at the time, declared that I had officially become old. In his mind, the measurement was there were simply too many candles on the cake for me to blow out on my own. So my nieces and nephews stepped in and together, we conquered all the candles, making one of my favorite birthday memories. We as people, mark special moments in all kinds of ways. Birthdays with candles, graduations with caps and gowns, weddings with vows, and holidays with traditions. These moments help us to remember who we are, what we’ve been through, and where we’re going. The church marks time in a similar way. Ash Wednesday is one of those moments, a day set aside for reflection and turning our hearts back towards God. It’s marked by ashes, a sign of our mortality and a call to return to God, reminding us of both our fragility and the patterns that pull us away from the life we were created for. Our struggles, the way that sin and brokenness hold us captive are a part of the story that Scripture speaks to. If you’ve been with us on Sunday, we’ve been working our way through the Bible from the beginning. And today we fast forward a few hundred years, moving from Genesis to Exodus, where Abraham’s descendants, as promised, have grown, yet now find themselves enslaved in Egypt. God hears their cries and partners with a man named Moses to free God’s people from Pharaoh’s power. When we look at this story, it becomes more than just words on a page. It becomes insight for our own lives. God’s people knew something about themselves. They were aware of their vulnerability and limits, recognizing that they couldn’t overcome this situation on their own. And they were completely dependent on a rescuer. And now we are invited into that space, too, to recognize our fragility, our limits, and our dependence on God to rescue. So today we’re going to spend a few minutes together reflecting on this idea. In our bondage, God hears our cries, confronts what confines us and guides us forward. As we enter into this story, we need to have a really clear idea about what this word bondage means. Bondage is this experience of being stuck, trapped in patterns or fears or circumstances that we can’t seem to change on our own. The story of Exodus begins not with freedom, but with bondage. The Israelites are enslaved under Pharaoh’s power. They’re overworked, oppressed, and powerless to free themselves. And we all know something about this feeling, what it feels like to be stuck or to have no control or to wonder if anything will ever change. Bondage might be anxiety that never settles, or a resentment we can’t release, or a fear that haunts us, a grief that grips us, or circumstances we can’t change. It doesn’t always look obvious. Sometimes bondage happens inside us. Our thoughts, comparisons, or patterns of sin. Other times it happens around us. Broken systems, fractured relationships, illness or injustice. And because we know that the world is a complicated place and that we are complicated people, more often than not, the things that bind us are a mix of internal and external experience. Recognizing and naming the things that bind us is an honest, difficult and vulnerable endeavor. Nevertheless, the awareness of what holds us captive is our first step towards freedom. What often crushes us most is not actually the weight of the sin that we carry, but rather the fear that we’re carrying it alone. We often believe that no one sees, no one understands, or no one truly cares about the things that bind us. But Exodus tells us that the Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out. And it reminds us something simple and powerful. God saw, God heard, and God cared. The question isn’t whether we’re going to experience bondage or not. We all do. The question is, what do we do when we recognize it? Do we deny it, hide from it, numb it, run from it? What would it be like to instead follow the lead of the Israelites and cry out to God in our bondage?

When the Israelites cried out under Pharaoh’s power, we’re told this plainly. God heard their cries. God saw their oppression. God remembered his promise. So God drew near to them. Their cries were not ignored, their suffering not invisible. What if this is true for us? What if we’re not crying out alone? What if the God who heard Israel hears you? What if God knows the weight that you carry and still holds you close? We don’t always speak to God in our suffering. Sometimes our struggles feel too small or too shameful or too heavy to bring. Fear, doubt and shame trap us so deeply that imagining a God who is listening or caring feels almost impossible. Other times, injustice, oppression and hardship feel so deeply rooted in our world and within us that God’s power feels quiet by comparison. It’s hard to imagine a God who is near and a God whose authority will ultimately shape the story. But Scripture assures us that this is exactly what God does. God hears every groan and cry, spoken and silent alike. God knows when we feel stuck, powerless or unseen. God is not distant. God is close, attentive and present in every struggle. God does more than listen from afar. God enters in to the very things that confine us.

When God hears our cries, God doesn’t leave us where we are. When God hears the cries of the Israelites, he begins to confront what holds the people captive. God goes to Moses and sends him to ask Pharaoh to let Israel go. As Pharaoh declines and claims power over the Israelites, God begins to disrupt the structures that keep them in bondage. God sends plagues that disrupt Egypt’s order to expose Pharaoh’s false power, shaking what was seemingly secure. The Nile turns to blood. Frogs, gnats and flies swarm the land. Disease strikes people and livestock and darkness falls on Egypt. With 10 plagues in all, the nation descends into massive loss, chaos and disorder. Every routine is completely shaken. At first glance, the plagues seem harsh, destructive and cruel. And we need to pause here for a moment because if we’re not careful, we begin to see God in a light that’s not true to who God is. These plagues are not God lashing out. They are God confronting what Pharaoh has twisted into tools of oppression. In Genesis, God creates light and water and land and living creatures. In Exodus, Pharaoh claims rule over these very things. The plagues expose the illusion that Pharaoh holds power greater than God. What God created for good has been bent towards bondage and brutality. So God begins to shake what feels most secure, dismantling what’s distorted so that something truer can emerge. This is not an act of blatant brutality. It’s an act of commitment to justice and addressing the massive evil in humanity and in Pharaoh and in Egypt. It’s an act of commitment to God’s people, to freedom and restoring creation. This is a commitment that is true for Israel, but it’s also true for us. God doesn’t always dismantle what binds us in such extraordinary and large scale acts. However, the story does show us something that’s true about God’s character. God does confront the patterns, fears, circumstances and injustices that keep us in bondage. And that kind of confrontation is disruptive and unsettling when it’s happening in our own lives. When God begins confronting what confines us, it rarely feels comfortable. Patterns we depend on get exposed and the habits that we lean on give way. These moments feel chaotic and it often seems like we’re losing something important, something we rely on. And sometimes, in the midst of turmoil, we wonder where God is and what God could possibly be doing as life is unraveling and we feel like we’re falling apart. But the God who creates is also willing to dismantle what holds us captive, leading us towards something new. God, the Creator of all things, is still at work, even when that work begins with demolition before rebuilding.

Our scripture today shows us this story clearly. When Pharaoh lets the Israelites go, God doesn’t disappear. They’re no longer held captive, but they’re not yet fully free. God leads them forward into a new reality being built even as everything around them is seeming to fall apart. God guides them towards a future they cannot fully see. And this is often how God guides us forward. God’s guidance forward doesn’t always mean immediate relief. It’s not always complete clarity. It’s not always neat or fully resolved. Moving forward often feels unfinished and disorienting, suspended between what God has brought us out of and what God is leading us into. Yet forward also looks like taking a next step. A small act of trust, a quiet prayer, a surrender to God’s guidance, a willingness to follow even when the path isn’t fully clear. The God who unravels what binds us is the same God who leads us forward, reshaping us as we journey together. And that is what Lent is. It’s a season not of instant repair, but the beginning of a journey. We receive ashes, remembering our limits, dependence and fragility. We name our bondage, the things that hold us and confine us. And we trust that God hears us in the midst of it all. As we cry out, we follow God’s guidance forward, step by step, towards the cross, because the story of Exodus points us there. The God who heard the cries of his people is the same God who, in Jesus, enters our bondage himself. Jesus carries our bondage and our sin to the cross, where everything that holds us captive is confronted and completely overcome. So today, as we receive ashes, we’re not pretending that we’re already free, but we’re leaning into hope as we trust that in our bondage, God hears our cries, confronts what confines us, and faithfully guides us forward. And today, this is the path we begin to walk together.

Let’s pray. Faithful and merciful God, you are the one who sees and hears. You know the places in us that feel bound, the fears we carry, the grief we hold, the patterns that we cannot break on our own. Nothing is hidden from you. As we receive these ashes remind us of our limits and our dependence on you. Give us honesty to name what holds us captive, humility to cry out for help, and courage to trust you when your work feels unsettling or unfinished, when the way forward feels unclear. Guide our steps when we feel suspended between what has been and what will be. Hold us steady. Lead us step by step towards the cross, where our bondage is met not with shame, but with mercy, and where your love has the final word. Amen.