The Resistance of Midwives (8.23.20)
The Resistance of Midwives
Exodus 1:8–2:10
August 23, 2020
Rev. Elizabeth Mangham Lott
St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church
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.” 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 became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.
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 boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews[a] you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.”
2 Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. 3 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. 4 His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.
5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. 10 When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
As you know, the COVID times have allowed us to hear and see folks from all over the U.S. and Canada in our worship. From attendees on the screen to liturgists and prayers of prayers to preachers, we’ve been able to enjoy the many perks of worship without travel. I was invited to speak to another congregation mid-week at some point along these weeks, and they wanted to know about how we created the St. Charles Center for Faith + Action as well as the work we do through Together New Orleans and Together Louisiana. I talked about the industrial tax exemption, knocking on doors in advance of the gubernatorial election, advocating for substantive change to the criminal legal system, anti-racism work, climate change, you name it. And among the many questions I fielded that night, one person asked, “But what happened to the separation of church and state? Are you just throwing all of that out now? It doesn’t matter anymore?”
I talked about the free exercise and establishment clauses of the first amendment. The good, important work of the BJC (on whose Board I proudly serve.) The definition of electioneering and the limits on both houses of worship and non-profits to endorse and campaign for candidates. I explained there are no legal restrictions in this country on people of faith and people of conscience getting involved in public processes that serve the common good; especially when that direct involvement is rooted in the sacred stories that guide those people of faith. And I was reminded again how long our white churches (especially moderate churches that prided themselves on being neither progressive nor conservative) lived so comfortably in our privilege that inaction on issues of justice was held up as a virtue—we are neutral on politics because we gather around something higher and greater than that lowly stuff.
Now don’t get me wrong. I think we do gather around something higher and greater, but those descriptors aren’t enough. I would also say this “thing” we gather to do and experience and seek together is simultaneously beneath us and around us as the foundation of a strong house or the banks of a strong river. And it is the house itself and the water itself. It is the air we breathe that fills our lungs and gives us life.
For far too long in this country, gathering for worship on a Sunday morning (and let’s be honest, I mean Christian worship…and more specifically I mean white Christian worship) was a sign of good citizenship. The good citizen of the United States went to church on a Sunday morning and dressed up to do so. We didn’t talk about any of that stuff out there, we just talked about ancient stories and prayed our prayers and ate our bread and drank our wine and then walked back out into the world again. And if we were slightly more fervent about it, then we understood we were to be kind to our neighbors and gentle with our children and generous with our money.
But the stories of the ancient texts we hold and read are not filled with the tales of individuals who become better citizens of the empire because of their encounters with the Divine. Their encounters with the Divine fueled their capacity to push back against unprecedented power and speak to it from the height and depth and breadth and length of the love of God.
Moses spoke to Pharaoh to let his people go, and he walked through a sea with newly freed people following behind. Jesus sent his disciples to heal the sick and bless the discarded and welcome women as equals and challenge the establishment of Rome, and it got him killed. We got something majorly wrong in this country when the Christian church became the path to good citizenship. And that something wrong has led us to this particular political moment in which we find ourselves. It may not be you and it may not be me who have voted to bring in specific rulers of the day, but we have participated in the systems and structures that got them there and sustained them. It’s time to take those systems and structures down. It’s time for kings and leaders to fall.
That’s exactly what is happening in this Exodus text today, one we’ve actually returned to in worship within the past year during my brief exploration with the Narrative Lectionary. This text invites us to ignore mandates from kings and to listen for the holy word to release those who are enslaved. These words remind us that our sacred text is decidedly and overtly political, whether we want it to be or not. I really do wish sometimes that it wasn’t that way. There are times I want to drop the requirements to DO SOMETHING with this faith and just focus on the part that makes me feel better about my life. I crave the texts about rest and beauty and mindfully noticing signs of God in the created world because THAT makes me feel like I’m moving toward my best and highest self. At times, I really do wish our quest for spirituality to start and end right there: noticing, rest, beauty. But BEING and DOING are intimately linked in sacred story.
Even if we are living quite simple lives but focused on the calls of holy breath and divine presence, it doesn’t take long before noticing signs of God in the created world causes us to feel something for the created world—something warm in our hearts that causes us to smile or sigh or say “wow” when we see that pink and orange sunset over the lake or a years-old-bouganvilla hanging over a fence. This particular way of BEING makes a way in us and through us that necessarily and actively makes a way in and through the world.
These practices are sneaky and subversive because, when rightly observed, God makes a people out of us through all that breath and all that joy and all that gratitude and all that noticing. My life is connected to yours, and yours to mine. And ours to the world. That’s the thing that keeps happening in scripture again and again—God makes a way for connection and holds it as the way for knowing the expansive love of God.
By the time we get to Shiphrah and Puah in Exodus 1, we see consequences of what all of that diligent practice means. They live in a nation, in an empire, in a land with a ruler who does not value and honor their tradition. More than just their tradition, he does not value and honor their people. He does not value and honor what they believe to be true about God. He does not view them as equally valid and equally human to the Egyptians.
Generations have passed. There is a new king who does not remember Joseph. And babies are being born to the Israelites; lots of them. If a king does not remember Joseph, and babies are being born, that is the storyteller’s way of telling us that quite a lot of time has passed. The first wave of forced migration due to famine has now led to generations of Israelites who have only known Egypt as home and have settled in that land. And the king wants them gone, so he enslaves them and gives an executive order to midwives to kill the baby boys.
But Shiphrah and Puah are women who practice all that stuff about holy rest and co-creating beauty and mindfully noticing signs of God in the created world. They are trained and tasked with standing at the threshold between life and death and coaxing life into the world while keeping death at bay. They don’t hesitate and ask, “Are we being political in this moment? Is it wrong to disobey the king and challenge this order? Isn’t my prayer life separate from my work? Surely the king has a point in making this executive order.” No, they are so shaped by what they believe and practice that they know in their bones that way is truer than the king, truer than the nation in which they live, truer than an executive order based in fear and hate of people who look and sound different than the folks holding the most power. And so they bring those babies into the world and then lie about it. Period. It is deliberate, intentional, and in direct defiance of a head of state. What they do is illegal.
“Why are the baby boys being born,” the king wants to know. And Shiphrah and Puah lie, without hesitation, to the king’s face saying, “Israelite women just give birth SO FAST that we can’t get there in time.” Because the king truly does believe there is a human difference between Egyptians and Israelites, he buys it. He believes it is possible for the labor and delivery of an entire ethnicity to be radically different from his own people because somehow these “less than” people keep wildly reproducing and erupting babies into the world.
So the king solves the problem with a new executive order: throw the boy babies in the river. Let nature do what the midwives can’t. And we get to a family who has a boy baby, and they don’t do what the Pharaoh says to do. Instead, they hide the baby for three whole months. And then they sort of, technically, kind of honor the order to throw the baby in the river. But first they make a waterproof basket boat. And they gently place him in the river. And they do so in a spot with lots of reeds, so he won’t drift away. And the sister hides close enough to where he is floating so she can keep an eye on him. Oh, and it’s also the place where the Pharaoh’s daughter and attendants happen to visit. They have no intention of giving this baby up. They are only working around the Pharaoh’s order.
They hatch a plan for survival that not only defies the king but takes this illegal, hidden baby straight into the king’s home and makes him Egyptian in all kinds of privileged ways. Friends, This is not a mind your own business and keep your head down faith. This Way God is creating connects people—really flawed, prone to anger, given to running away kind of people—and requires them to show love by advocating, freeing, showing up, challenging, even in practicing total and absolute civil disobedience. This faith does something in us and through us and requires us to embody the very way God is making. The Love of God is active and moving, not limited to borders of any empire, and more powerful than the orders of any king.
You can’t walk this winding, emerging path and not be changed by it. And try as we might to walk it alone, that doesn’t work out, either. The God Who Makes a Way is also the God who makes a people. The Way and the People can’t be separated, in fact. Even when we’re quarantined at home and running school in the dining room while we work in the living room, just minding our own business, thank you very much, the holy voice of God shows up in the middle of our ordinary and whispers to us to DO SOMETHING with this love that fills our lungs and guides our steps. Are you afraid? I’m with you, says the holy voice. Go face this absolutely, ridiculously, impossible situation together, and I will be with you. I will make a way for all of you to get there, a way for all of you to speak to this power, a way for all of you to radically live into this story together.
Friends, there is so much in the week ahead. So much more in the months that follow. It is daunting. But take a deep, mindful breath. Feel the presence of God settle within you and steady your heartbeat. Hear the call to be part of the people of God, not a lone warrior off on your own. Whatever we are facing—the storms in the Gulf, injustice in the legal system, corruption in the highest levels of government, we face them together with God’s help. We stand together as midwives of peace and love and kindness and patience and gentleness and self-control and joy and goodness. We will not fear.
Amen.