Vices and Villains: Pharaoh and Wrath

Sermon from Sunday, June 22, 2025

The Rev. Megan Collins

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Dave and I were grateful to be able to take a trip earlier this month. We love to travel.  

Unfortunately, traveling usually involves a trip to the airport. I don’t love the airport, and not just because I don’t love to fly (which I’ve shared with you before) but because at the airport I always feel like I’m in trouble. 

It seems like there is so much yelling there. When I go to the airport, I try to make sure I am following all the rules. I check in online for my flight right at the 24 hour mark. I get to the airport at least 4 hours early. (I know that’s ridiculous. Sometimes I get there before the people at the desk).  It really amps up when you go through security. Just before the scanner there is one person there who I think just yells all day. Their job is chief yeller. I didn’t want to get in trouble, so when I got to security, I was ready. I had my shoes off. Toiletries were in a quart sized zip lock bag. When I got to the place where you put everything in the bins, I quickly pulled out my ipad and electronics and toiletries and placed them in a separate bin from my backpack. I was like a well oiled security machine. There was no chance I would get yelled at this time. There’s not a grade for going through security, but if there was, I was pretty sure I got an A plus.

Then. . . they yelled at me. Apparently in some of the lines the rules have changed and you leave everything in your bag now. I quickly repacked my bag with my electronics and toiletries while the chief yeller hollered at me from across the room and then hurried into that little x-ray machine where you do this little weird pose with your arms in the air while you hope that your bag doesn’t get to the other side before you do. 

There is a lot of yelling at the airport, but honestly, I get it. I know they didn’t start out angry. They yell because everyone yells at them. They are just one link in what is known as the chain of screaming.  They deal with unhappy, hurried, angry passengers all day long. Those passengers are angry with them, and so inevitably they get angry with me, and then I, well, I order a gin and tonic on the plane. But the airport staff didn’t start angry. It’s the chain.  The chain of screaming is a term I saw years ago on a show called How I Met Your Mother. Let’s take a look:

That’s the chain. Anger has this energy and when we get all heated up we have to get that energy out. Instead of doing something productive like taking a walk around the block, more often we take it out on someone else, usually someone who can’t yell back at us because of the power dynamic between us. The boss yells at the employee, the employee yells at their kid, the kid yells at the dog. Today we’ll be talking about this chain of screaming, but specifically when it involves anger’s big brother wrath, the destruction it can bring to our lives and to the world, and, what we can do about it. 

The chain of screaming starts then with anger, but anger isn’t all bad. Anger in its healthiest form can help us see when something is wrong. It shows us what is wrong in our lives, like if someone is mistreating us, or someone we care about. It shows us what is wrong in the world too, stirring us up when we see injustice and making us uncomfortable enough that we respond. This kind of righteous anger toward the world motivates us to work for change, to do good things. It’s the part of our anger that comes from the image of God in us. God gets stirred up about the sin and injustice in the world too. If anyone knows the violence and brokenness of the world we are in, it’s the God who came and was crucified by it. 

But there’s the problem: we can distort anything in us that comes from being made in the image of God. Anger is no exception. We don’t just get angry at the violence and oppression of the world. We get angry at people around us for the smallest slights. We get mad in our cars when someone takes too long to go when the light turns green. We are angry when someone cuts in front of us in line at the store. We yell at a 46 year old woman at the airport who is clearly trying her hardest in the security line. A lot of the time this anger was passed on to us from someone else. 

Are there times when you are short with someone you care about just because you had a long day at work? Have you been unkind to a worker in a store or restaurant because someone cut you off in traffic on your way there? Are there bigger generational issues with anger in your family that seem to keep getting passed down from one generation to the next, and you are realizing it has continued with you? You don’t have to keep that chain going. You can be the one that says “this stops with me.” You can be the one who stops the chain of screaming in your homes and in your offices and even in traffic. 

The anger in our lives can obviously be hurtful to the people around us. But anger, when we let it go unchecked, can grow into something much more dangerous. Over time, it can feed on our pride and our fear and our hurt. It starts churning and begins to obsess over revenge and power over the people we are angry with. What started as a reaction, an emotion, can take on a life of its own. Anger can morph into wrath. Anger is a feeling, and can cause problems for sure, but wrath, wrath is a force.  It can consume us. It can blind us. It demands punishment, justifies harm. Anger says “something feels wrong and I have a feeling about that” but wrath says “I will make them pay.” 

Wrath, just like anger, can start a chain where it is passed from one person to the next. 

So what happens then when wrath gets a really big platform with a lot of people underneath it? What happens when the chain of wrath spreads not just within a family or a workplace, but within a people?  In our passage today from Exodus, we will see this exact problem. There is this Pharoah whose wrath is exploding from the highest level and pulling in everyone around him. The most powerful person in a nation is using his wrath to shape policies through fear. He dehumanizes an entire race of people. The people below him pick up on this wrath and make it their own. With this kind of power, with this kind of platform for the chain of wrath to spread, what can one or two people really do to stop it? That’s what we’ll learn today. Let’s read starting in Exodus 1:

Exodus 1:7 the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. 

God’s people are in Egypt and their population is really growing. Pretty soon there are Israelites in every town. 

8 Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 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.”

Wrath comes from anger, and anger often starts with fear. The king sees the population of the Israelites is growing, and he becomes afraid that they will outnumber his people, the Egyptians. This vulnerability and his discomfort with it turn quickly into anger. He decides to enslave the Isralietes and force them to work: 

 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13 The Egyptians subjected the Israelites to hard servitude 14 and made their lives bitter with hard servitude in mortar and bricks and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

The king’s wrath has trickled down the chain into the Egyptian people. As the Israelites continue to grow, even under the oppressive labor being forced on them, the Egyptians' anger grows too. What started with the king’s wrath has now emboldened the Egyptians to be just as cruel and ruthless. The mistreatment isn’t enough. The king wants more. 

15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.”

We’ve heard this story so many times we don’t really hear it. We want to get to the part where God does the big thing, where the Israelites escape from Egypt as God miraculously parts the seas. But stay here, in this verse. Be uncomfortable in the violence of his wrath. The King calls in two midwives and tells them, as they attend to the birth of the Israelite children, if it is a son, they are to kill him. The pharaoh seems unstoppable. Stronger than the fear of a king who was blinded by wrath, who would certainly have them killed if he was willing to kill innocent children, was something else: 

 17 But the midwives feared God; 

The midwives faith in God was stronger than any fear of an earthly king they may have had. They did not do as the Egyptian Pharaoh commanded them. They let the babies live. 

In Exodus we see this chain of anger and wrath that starts with one of the most powerful men in the world. Underneath him, one person after another became links in his chain. They become a part of it. The text says the Egyptians, not just the Pharaoh, forced the Israelites to suffer. When he orders the unthinkable, when he begins to harm not only the adults but innocent children, they silently stand by. But the midwives do not do as the king of Egypt commanded them. They fear God alone. The midwives refuse to participate. They refuse to do what they know is wrong. They won’t stand silently by and let the king’s rampage of violence become theirs. 

The midwives become chain breakers. 

The pharaoh's wrath forms a chain. Their faithful defiance breaks it.  The midwives’ faith, their courage, their compassion says “this chain stops with me.” Not long after they do this, the king calls in the midwives to question them. They are dismissive, saying something about the women giving birth too quickly for them to get there in time. We are told God rewards the midwives for their faith. 

I wish the story could end here, with the midwives’ great act of faith in the face of wrath. I wish I could tell you that one act of faith is all it took to bring a whole system down. But the pharoah’s wrath continues to grow. He tells all the Egyptians to start throwing the Israelite’s baby boys into the river, and they do. But then through the courage of yet another woman who resists, a baby is saved from death, a baby we know as Moses. As an adult, Moses will challenge pharoah to let the Israelites go, but Pharoah’s wrath only increases at this challenge to his authority. Eventually God intervenes and there is a series of escalating plagues. Pharaoh’s wrath and power are no match for divine justice. Ultimately, Pharaoh’s wrath leads not to his victory, but to ruin, both for himself and his entire nation.

The story of Pharaoh is a story of one man’s wrath that started with his own fear, and eventually consumes him. His wrath led him to dehumanize an entire race of people, to lead a nation in violence against them. Many of the Egyptians fell in line, becoming a part of this chain of violence and rage. Perhaps they were afraid. Perhaps some of them agreed with him. 

The midwives didn’t have power. They didn’t have status or armies, but they had courage, and compassion, and most importantly they trusted in God, and that was enough. They broke the chain. They didn’t bring Pharoah’s wrath to a stop all at once. But they did their part. They did what they could, in their little corner of the world, and it mattered. They became this significant part of God’s work. It was the beginning of when the story of Egypt turned toward the justice of God. 

Isn’t that what it can look like for us?

We know that one act of faith on our part might not be the thing that crumbles injustice once and for all. Maybe we aren’t even sure we can stop the anger that is in our family, let alone in the world.  But we can’t let that stop us. We can’t let our cynicism keep us from being faithful to God. Anger is loud and wrath is louder, but it doesn’t get the last word. The last word belongs to God. That word, that final word, is not anger or wrath. It’s not fear. It’s not screaming.

It's love.

The God who parted seas and yes dropped frogs from the sky is the same God who stepped into this world in the person of Jesus, not with screaming or violence, but with love. You are God’s beloved. You are made in God’s image. You are loved, right where you are, today.  And maybe today you are feeling that love stir within you, moving you to respond. 

God is still working. God is still breaking chains of anger and wrath and violence in your homes and in your families, and even in the world. We can have the courage to say “this stops with me.” Wwe won’t get raining frogs every time. Maybe the seas won’t part in front of us. But that doesn’t mean God isn’t working.

God is still breaking chains, through ordinary people who refuse to be just another link in the chain. We don’t always know the specific ways God might use us. But when our time comes,  we can have courage, like the midwives. We can say  “I will not let cruelty become normalized. I will not be another link in this chain, no matter who starts it.” Not because you’re super brave or powerful, but because God is faithful. You are made for courage, and compassion, and even for holy resistance.