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 oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 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 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.
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, "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." But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?" 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." So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live."
Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. 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. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.
The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 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. 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?" Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Yes." So the girl went and called the child's mother. 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. 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."
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Because I've been away on vacation the last few weeks, I have a joke for you:
One Sunday the rector woke up and realized it was an exceptionally beautiful and sunny spring day and he just had to play golf. So he called the assistant rector and told him that he was feeling sick today and needed him to preach instead. As soon as he hung up the phone, the rector was on his way to a golf course forty miles outside of town. This way he knew he wouldn't accidently meet anyone he knew from church. Setting up on the first tee, he was all alone. After all, it was Sunday morning and everyone else was in church. At about that time, Saint Peter leaned over to God while looking down from the heavens and exclaimed, "You're not going to let him get away with this are you?" God sighed and said, "No, I guess not." Just then the rector hit the ball and it shot straight towards the pin, dropped just short of it, rolled up and fell inside the hole. IT WAS A 420 YARD HOLE IN ONE! Saint Peter was astonished. He looked at God and asked, "Why did you let him do that?" God smiled and said, "Who's he going to tell?"
This morning I want to think with you about our reading from the beginning of Exodus. As you'll remember we've traveled through the stories of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob and Rachel, and most recently of Joseph and his rise in a foreign country -- Egypt. He becomes Pharaoh's right hand man as it were. Then, Joseph dies and the Pharaoh that knew Joseph dies and that's where our passage picks up.
It's a rather difficult beginning. All the assumptions that the Hebrew people held are thrown out the door by this new king. They had been an alien people in Egypt to be sure, but they were a valued people. The Pharaoh who is unnamed becomes scared because of the number of Hebrews. He's worried what will happen when the Hebrews outnumber the Egyptians. Something he's not going to allow to happen under his rule so he makes the Hebrews slaves and gives them hard and difficult tasks to perform in the hopes that they will stop growing as a nation. This doesn't work.
Next he asks midwives to go against their vocation which is to bring life into the world and to begin killing. Thankfully the midwives don't follow the Pharaoh's directions and come up with a creative excuse -- that the Hebrew women give birth much quicker than Egyptian women and the baby is already born by the time they get there. Now if you buy that, I have some oceanfront property to sell you here in Frederick -- just see me after the service!
What's amazing about these women are a number of things: First of all they are named -- Shiphrah and Puah. Most women in the Bible aren't named since it arose from a patriarchal or male-dominated society. That should be our first clue that something important is going on here. Secondly is the way these women are willing to engage in acts of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance for the sake of justice. These women are willing to risk their very own lives so that God's plan and purpose can be brought forth. If it weren't for these women, there would never be an Exodus because there would have never been a Moses!
The other amazing thing is how God chooses what patriarchal and power-hungry Pharaohs of this world consider low and despised as an instrument to shame and overthrow the arrogant and strong. We see this over and over again in scripture. Just think of Jesus' birth -- being born to an unwed teenager!
While Pharaoh is trying to make the Nile River which is a source of life for thousands of people an instrument of death, three women who work together succeed in making it a place of rescue and life. It's like the words of the Magnificat are coming true hundreds of years before they were uttered -- "God is bringing down the powerful from their thrones and lifting up the lowly."
God's intervention into the crisis does not come through dramatic sweeping events, but in a small one -- the birth of a little baby named Moses. God, through five women and a baby, is able to lead a nation out of bondage to freedom. It definitely gives power to anthropologist Margaret Mead's famous quote "Never underestimate the power of small group of people to change the world." That's the hope that we are called to live into as Christians each and every day. But this isn't a hope that is without risks. Just as each person in this narrative had to take different risks in order for God's plan to come to pass, sometimes we too are called to take risks. To speak out boldly against injustice. To perhaps be like Shiprah and Puah and to engage in civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance.
So my question for you this morning is when have you taken a risk for God? Has God ever called you to do something uncomfortable or a little "risky" and you walked away? Where have we as a community of faith -- All Saints Episcopal Church -- taken risks? Where might God be calling us to risk everything for the sake of the Gospel?
Let me tell you a brief story which might shed some light on these difficult questions. Walter Brueggemann is a much beloved preacher and professor of Old Testament. After Hurricane Katrina, he did something very "non-theological." He traced the origins of jazz. What surprised him was that jazz music came out of the barrio, among "those who go for broke every time because there is so little to lose, so much to hear and say, so much to hope . . ." Brueggemann invites us to journey deeper into the history of jazz that goes deeper than New Orleans. That story is told in Exodus 1. Told in the midst of a Pharaoh whose name we cannot remember, because if you have seen one Pharaoh, you've seen them all. This nameless "Lord of Egypt" who tries to stop the music is stopped in his tracks by courageous women because of their singing in the Hebrew barrio where dances of freedom began long before the feet of the Children of Israel ever touched the waters of the Red Sea. There arose defiant dances, dances of freedom, and dances of gratitude and hope.(1)
So this morning I invite you to step up to the plate and take risks. To not be afraid to speak out against injustice in whatever shape or form it takes. And to listen to the music playing on the underside -- the music of what is to come -- a season when justice will rain down like the waters in the sea. Amen.
(1) Taken from Brueggemann's sermon "Variations from the Barrio" in his book Inscribing the Text
The Rev'd Thomas S. Rogers, III
Assistant Rector
All Saints Episcopal Church
Frederick, Maryland
August 24, 2008 // Year A: Proper 16
Link to audio: http://www.box.net/shared/2j70c126d8
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