August 24, 2014
11th Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Exodus 1.8-2.10
Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 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.’ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to abuse them with forced labor. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with crushing labor in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them …
Introduction
As we look out at it this week, our world seems overrun by one crisis or another.
There is the Ebola crisis in West Africa. More than 1000 people are dead in Liberia, which seems to be tottering on the brink of civil unrest as her people wrestle with the reality of this horrible disease.
There is continued violence in the Middle East. Palestinians and Israelis seem locked in an intractable political conflict which continues to visit suffering on families and children in Gaza.
We all witnessed with shock and grief and anger the craven murder this week of the journalist James Foley by the Islamic fundamentalist group ISIS.
And on the streets of our own country, there was the unfolding spectacle of violence in Ferguson, Missouri, where once again the unresolved racial divide in our country manifests violence, suspicion and anger.
Add to that a continuing climate crisis, unresolved concerns about the health of our economy, worries about the well-being of family members and friends and a host of other things, and we can be forgiven for thinking that the world is coming unglued.
Or if we are given to apocalyptic sensibilities, that the world is coming to an end. Four horsemen just don’t seem to be enough to carry everything that is swirling around us these days.
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So how does this ancient story from the Exodus help us to make sense of all this?
In the simplest sense, by reminding us that in every age, to every people, come a host of challenges, tragedies, and equally opportunities and the promise of a future.
There are always disasters public and private that plague the life of God’s creation.
Writing in the aftermath of the Christmas tsunami of 2004, the theologian David Bentley Hart (The Doors of the Sea, Eerdmann’s, 2005) suggested that one way of approaching catastrophe and crisis was to understand that a world created by God as a free act of love must bear some portion of that creating freedom. We contend with the cost of that freedom by the ways in which we choose to respond to the world as it is.
The story from the Exodus is a story of catastrophe and crisis, but more essentially, it is story of how people choose to respond.
And is must be said that the writer of this story chooses characters who do not possess any inherent political, economic or cultural power of their own; but respond faithfully and courageously all the same.
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The whole story of Moses’ birth is rooted in fear and the moral and compassionate response of a few faithful people to public policy borne out of fear.
Pharaoh is the most powerful man in the world, if not in actual fact, then certainly from the perspective of the biblical writer. He is worshipped by his people as a god-king, and has the power of life and death in virtually every aspect of Egyptian life.
And still, he is consumed by this fear that the Israelites living among him and his people present this existential threat to their future. And like much of the fear that seems to drive our actions and our lives, Pharaoh’s fear is baseless. There is nothing in the story to suggest that the Israelites posed any threat to the well-being of Egypt. There are just a lot of them, and that is enough for Pharaoh to turn murderous.
So what do people do in the face of murderous, even genocidal policy, when they themselves have little obvious power to challenge it?
Consider the ways in which the women in our story this morning serve as models of faithful resistance to the power of Pharaoh.
The Midwives
First, the midwives. It is unclear whether they are Hebrews or Egyptians.
Some ancient manuscripts translate the original Hebrew text as ‘midwives to the Hebrews;’ that is, Egyptian women working in the Hebrew community.
Others align more closely with our New Revised Standard Version and portray the midwives as members of the Hebrew community.
Some rabbinical scholars like the idea that they were Egyptian. It affirms the tradition of the righteous Gentile, the morally just foreigner who intervenes on behalf of the children of Israel. In any event, their action is morally commendable and remarkably courageous, given the power of the man whose order they have defied.
The Jewish scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky (Reading the Women of the Bible, Schocken, 2002) calls them subversives, an underground resistance movement rooted in a deep sense of moral justice and fairness. Whether Hebrew or Egyptian, they are motivated in their actions by a faith in God that compels them to act against the orders of the state and to openly defy the command of Pharaoh.
They do so with invention and wonderful cleverness.
Our text has them telling Pharaoh that the Hebrew women are so ‘vigorous’ that they give birth before we can get to them. Tikva Frymer-Kensky offers an alternative translation. Her reading of the ancient Hebrew has the midwives telling an outraged Pharoah that the Hebrew women are ‘animals’, giving birth on their own before the arrival of the midwives.
This simple turn of phrase distracts Pharaoh, who can only respond in a sort of confused and befuddled way.
The policy collapses; and the threat temporarily subsides.
The Mother of Moses
Moses’ mother does not get a lot of attention in this story, but she subverts the actions of Pharaoh in perhaps the most poignant way imaginable … by giving up her child, not once but twice, as a way of insuring his future.
When she can no longer hide him, she puts her three month old child in a basket and floats him down the river. Imagine for a moment the courage and faith and hope it takes to float your newborn down the river, without any assurance that someone will find him and save him.
Moses’ mother subverts Pharaoh’s power through the sheer love she has for her son.
The Sister of Moses
Moses’ mother does send her daughter after the basket to see that what happens to it.
She is named later in the story of Exodus as Miriam. Here she serves as a guardian, of sorts; to insure that her brother remains safe. As see watches events unfold, she intervenes to reunite her mother with Moses. Miriam’s is a small act. She does little more than recognize an opportunity and acts quickly to ensure well-being and security for her family.
Pharaoh’s Daughter
In the very household of the king comes an act of resistance to his rule.
Unlike the midwives, who are moved by justice and fairness, or the mother and sister of Moses, who act out of love and hope, Pharaoh’s daughter acts out of a deep sense of compassion.
She must be aware of the policy regarding Hebrew children. He immediately recognizes Moses as one of them.
Still, moved by pity, she gathers the child up.
Small Acts of Resistance
God does not appear to be an active participant in this story. But the virtues we so often associate with people and communities faithful to God certainly do.
Justice. Love. Compassion.
Three simple virtues, all leading to small acts of defiance, resistance and subversion of an oppressive regime that for people of biblical faith embodies all the destruction and chaos and violence of our sometimes fragile world.
The story of the Exodus continues to speak to us as a reminder that our faith is rooted in a trust that if we act morally and compassionately, even in those moments when love seems dangerous, and we are willing to believe that our lives can subvert the powers that seek to rule our world, then God is present and the power of God is active.
The women in this story are not remarkable or extraordinary.
They merely meet the crisis in their lives with faith and with courage, with some imagination and quick thinking, and with trust that small acts of love and mercy can overwhelm evil.
They are not martyrs; but women ordinary in most respects, acting in out of a courageous and defiant faith. They are made memorable for acting on behalf of other people’s well-being and not their own. In point of fact, their own well-being and their own futures are deeply compromised.
But still they act, and in their small, modest way they overturn the plans of Pharaoh.
In a their small ways, they move the action of God along … the plans collapse, the empire retreats … not forever, but long enough for God’s promise of liberation and deliverance to be born, floated down the river and allowed to grow until the people of God are led out of bondage and into a land of hope and new life.
Thanks be to God.
Out of the Wilderness 