Midwives of Hope (Sermon)

 “Midwives of Hope”

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/11/23

 

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.”

¹¹Therefore 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.

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.” 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 son that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter 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 he became her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.” (Exodus 1:8-2:10 – NRSV)

 

         There’s a new Pharaoh in town, and he has amnesia. Or maybe he’s been poorly schooled in history. Or maybe he was cast upon the throne at an age too young for the responsibility. Or maybe he’s just willfully ignorant. Whatever the case, the new Pharaoh neither remembers nor appreciates Joseph, the former Hebrew prisoner turned resourceful bureaucrat whose spiritual insight and practical wisdom delivered Egypt during a catastrophic famine. To forgetful leaders like Pharaoh, the future is a realm to be conquered and dominated by any means, because to them, ultimately, it’s all about themselves.

         There is within me a worshiper of golden calves who understands that fear. There is also within me something more human and holy which understands why that always breeds devastation. When consumed by selfish fear, individuals and groups project that fear onto other individuals and groups that represent the weaknesses or the failures we most despise in ourselves. So rich and poor, black and white, male and female, this religion and that religion, old and young all battle and blame each other. We create the enmity and resentment that some future and more mature generation will have to learn to forgive and heal. What a devastating legacy to leave!

         Pharaoh chooses the growing immigrant population of the Hebrews as the source of everything personally abhorrent and politically threatening. Having focused his fear on the Hebrews, he tries to solve his problem by targeting them, by forcing them into submission.

         There are two very different kinds of fear that shape the thoughts and actions of the characters in today’s story. And those fears continue to affect our present and to shape our future. The first fear is Pharaoh’s fear. He’s afraid that the future really isn’t about him. Terrified at the prospect of losing a status quo beneficial to himself, the king tries to end something that God started. When the Hebrews only grow stronger under the duress of slavery, Pharaoh increases their workload and the brutality with which he drives them. Given permission to dehumanize the Hebrews, the Egyptian overseers beat them like beasts, and kill them with labor and the whip.

It’s important to note that when one group gives another a story like that to remember, a story of oppression and deliverance from which to draw identity, purpose, and faith, the oppressed group will have an eternal well from which to draw strength. And they will, in time, overcome and thrive. The memory of being owned, enslaved, exploited, and liberated lays the theological and existential groundwork for Hebrew poetry, prophecy, and hope. The memory of that shared experience gives durable authority to the psalms, the lamentations, and the prophetic words of people like David, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.

When facing the failure of his efforts to own that which belongs to God—namely the Hebrews and the future—Pharaoh does what madmen and despots do: He tries to create even more fear and a more violent disconnect between himself and his people and everyone else. To control the Hebrew population, Pharaoh calls for the systematic murder of their newborn boys. And adding insult to injury, he calls on Hebrew midwives to serve as his angels of death.

         “But,” says the storyteller, “the midwives feared God.”

         Here is the second fear. Maybe we can call it liberated or liberating fear. Every day, Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives, witness and participate in the gracious and inscrutable power that continues to create and to bring forth new life. Trusting that power, they defy Pharaoh and his powers of domination and destruction. In their civil-yet-holy disobedience, they declare their faith in God’s will to outmaneuver and outlast Pharaoh’s will.

         The midwives’ fear is not anxiety or dread. Precisely the opposite, their fear proclaims their complete trust in the presence and purposes of God. Remembering the past, rich with promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, these intrepid women, at great risk to themselves, freely embody Israel’s hope. And they cannot hide their defiance. Because of their subversive faith, Hebrew boys survive. And Pharaoh’s own daughter, who becomes an accidental midwife, will name one of them Moses.

         The world is rife with Pharaohs and Egypts. From east to west and north to south, anxiety and dread define much of humanity’s daily experience. And that’s especially true for those whose day-to-day experience includes the threats of poverty, injustice, and violence.

The Pharaoh’s fear within us enslaves us to anxiety and dread so that we become his unwitting and yet all-too willing servants. Imagining that we’re being consistent with history, loyal to nation, and faithful to God, human beings often build Pharaoh’s “supply cities.” And we yield to and participate in all the brutal political, economic, and social systems required to sustain them.

         Albert Einstein famously said that “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.” To me, that echoes Paul’s admonition to the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.” (Romans 12:2)

         It’s all-too-easy to make faith about conspicuous morality or subscribing to some orthodoxy. However, as people of biblical faith, of storied faith, we are called to the new-minded, liberating fear of the midwives. To follow their example is just another way to follow Jesus in lives of death-defying trust that God is real, and that God is the very source of all life, love, and transforming justice.

In our lifetimes, we may not witness the final revealing of God’s fullness, but every time we feed the hungry, show compassion to the suffering, empower the victim of injustice, care for the Creation, and rejoice in the love and goodness of God, we serve as midwives of grace, even as Pharaoh demands that we kill it. 

While our individual interpretations of today’s circumstances may differ, our text is calling us always to ask if our responses to those circumstances convey the self-serving fear that leads to suspicion, division, and, ultimately, to violence against others. Or do our lives proclaim the great nevertheless of faith, what the ancient prophets and poets called the “fear of God”?

Do our words and actions declare trust and gratitude that all human beings are children of God and that all of us belong to God?

Do we actively love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength?

Do we truly seek to love all of our neighbors as we love ourselves?

         None of us can answer those questions affirmatively all the time, but when we can, we participate in the birth and re-birth of hope into this world. And we declare our allegiance to God, who is faithful, and to whom the past, present, and future of all Creation always belongs.