Sermons

“Profiles in Courage

AKA: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History”

Exodus 1:8—2:10 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – August 27, 2017

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we have the humility to learn all you are teaching us. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

Yesterday when I got to Praying & Coloring, Katie told me she’d been commissioned by our new women’s group to ask me to recommend a study on women of the Bible. I immediately thought of a book written by a former staff member at my seminary, Barbara J. Essex, who is also an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. Her book is called “Bad Girls of the Bible.” You see, the truth is that if you’re going to explore the women who show up in the biblical narrative, you’re going to bump into a lot of “women of questionable virtue,” as the book’s subtitle calls them. Even the Bible itself seems to recognize this. If you examine the genealogy of Jesus that’s listed in Matthew, for example, you’ll notice that each one of the five women mentioned there has something sketchy in her past.

The women in our lesson today are no different. This trope is so consistent that I would argue it’s one of the meta-lessons that threads through the whole biblical narrative, offering us yet again a perspective on life that isn’t quite the same as how the world would have us see things. So let’s take a look at the “bad girls” we read about in these early chapters of Exodus.

First of all, we have Shiphrah and Puah, commonly referred to as the “Hebrew midwives.” Let’s be clear though: they’re called that because they are midwives to the Israelites, not because it’s necessarily clear that they themselves are Israelites. They probably are, but the text is a bit ambiguous. The scriptures are full of people from other tribes showing faithfulness to the God of Abraham and Jacob by protecting the Israelites. Shiphrah and Puah might be two of them. At any rate, they’re certainly rule-breakers.

What are their crimes? Well, first they defied a direct order from the king. He commands them to kill all the boy babies the Israelite women bear, as they’re delivering them. And they just don’t. And then they lie to his face about why. It’s not our fault, they tell him; they’re all just so strong the babies are born before we get there! Those are some pretty egregious crimes. And yet, is there anyone here who thinks Shiphrah and Puah didn’t do the right thing? Of course they did! You don’t kill newly-delivered babies. Nobody needs an ethics class to know that. Protecting babies is one of the fundamental rules of nature. Most of the time it doesn’t involve risking death, though. The point of this story is not Shiphrah and Puah’s criminal nature, but their courage.

The blatant defiance of imperial edicts continues on a smaller scale in the next chapter, when Moses is born to Jochebed. She has her baby, and like most mothers, she seems to think he is the most wonderful baby in the world. There’s no way this woman is letting anyone throw her baby in the river! Just like the Hebrew midwives, she chooses to enter into a life of crime instead. For three months, she somehow manages to hide the fact that there’s a new born baby in the house. This, incidentally, as any of you who have lived with newborns know, is another hint that Moses was something of a miracle baby. There wasn’t such a thing as sound-proof rooms back then, after all.

But once the baby is three months old, the original plan isn’t working as well. So Jochebed (her name is listed a few chapters later) takes a big risk. She puts the baby in a basket and sets him afloat in the river, stationing his older sister, Miriam, to watch and see what happens. And then the rule-breaking gets even more complicated! Pharaoh’s daughter shows up, and like many young people, is enamored of the idea of a baby. Miriam steps up, seemingly as an innocent passer-by, and offers to procure a nurse, so that Pharaoh’s daughter’s hobby baby can be adequately cared for. Lo and behold, who does she bring to Pharaoh’s daughter to apply for the job? Her own mother, who somehow manages not to reveal that the baby is actually hers.

So what we end up with, instead of a mother whose baby was stolen and throw in the river because of Pharaoh’s orders, is a mother of the local slave population being paid wages, no doubt from Pharaoh’s treasury, to nurse her own child. The rule-breaking here is very clear. Even Pharaoh’s daughter is complicit, since she knew Moses was a Hebrew baby and she knew that meant he was supposed to be drowned. But these crimes are also very satisfying, aren’t they? As the readers of the story, we’re relieved and glad that the trickery and defiance worked out so well.

So what does it mean that the Bible clearly takes the side of the rule-breakers? How is it that a guide to morality, as we often think of scripture, can uphold criminals as heroes? (Or she-roes, if you will!) Now, maybe by this point, you’re thinking that preaching ought to require more than making a really obvious point seem complicated. Clearly, Pharaoh was an evil man who gave an evil, murderous order, and the midwives and mothers and sisters and daughters who defied him were right to do everything they could to resist. If so, that means we agree that breaking rules that are immoral and unjust is the right thing to do. But what does that mean for us today? We don’t live under a Pharaoh, thank goodness, but does that mean our laws are never immoral or unjust?

Let’s look for a just another moment at the context of these stories, to see what else we can learn. First of all, let’s recognize that Pharaoh’s horrible edict to kill all the baby boys was rooted in fear. And let’s note that the scripture clarifies that this fear was a demographic fear. The Israelite birth rate was apparently much higher than the Egyptian birth rate. They were afraid of being out-numbered. The convenience stores were starting to have signs in Hebrew. Their much-admired Egyptian culture was being diluted with weird, primitive stories and characters from Canaan. This fear was pushing people toward violence. The “dread” mentioned in verse 12 is a form of the word “fear” that is related to war. This all feels wearily familiar, does it not?

Meanwhile, let’s also notice the delusional, counter-productive nature of patriarchy that is on display in this story. Pharaoh is obsessed with getting rid of all the Hebrew baby boys. He apparently doesn’t feel threatened by the baby girls, despite their potential pivotal role in accelerating the birth rate, and despite the fact that all the people working against him in these stories are women. This points us back to the way women in scripture are frequently underestimated, operating outside the rules, using trickery rather than open defiance to achieve their goals. Because of the oppression of women within these societies, there were no direct remedies to their problems. So they got creative. They found ways to do what needed to be done, and sometimes it involved a little deceit. And quite often, scripture makes clear that in breaking the official rules, these women were pursuing the will of God.

So what do these women, these profiles in courage, teach us about living out our own faith in 2017? Despite the fact that we supposedly live in a constitutional democracy, there can be no doubt that many of the policies that govern our land are rooted in fear of the other, the ones who seem to be taking over, the ones our leaders criminalize in rhetoric and policy, just as Pharaoh did. Despite the fact that we supposedly believe in “liberty and justice for all”, we know that there are those whose access to power is so limited they are pushed to operate outside the normal channels of influence, not unlike the Hebrew women we read about. The question is whether we’re going to focus on the rule-breaking by tut-tutting people who get arrested, or whether we will notice and appreciate their faithfulness to a higher law that sees no virtue in acquiescing to unjust, immoral systems. Have you ever wondered if you would have participated in the Underground Railroad? You may soon have a chance to find out. The stakes of our current context are rising every day, and the divides within our society are becoming starker. The old union song asks us, “Which side are you on?” Scripture makes clear where God is standing. God is standing with the vulnerable, the hungry, the oppressed, the voiceless. God is standing with those who don’t have access to the halls of power. God is standing with those who have no way to be heard other than disrupting polite society with their cries for justice. God is standing with the courageous, not the well-behaved. Scripture tells us this again and again. It is a radical thing, this faith of following Jesus. A risky thing, not particularly congruent with the status quo. Shiphrah and Puah, and Jochebed and Miriam, and even Pharaoh’s daughter, leveraging her privilege to give life to a baby condemned, show us what courage looks like. These women are Jesus’ foremothers. Their faithfulness and boldness shaped his path. Who are we not to dare to follow? Alleluia and Amen.