Moses, Midwives, & the Master's House 10 1 20 2 30 3 40 Sermon prepared by the Rev. Douglas Clark for August 24, 2014 Ordinary 21 First United Church of Christ, Congregational, Milford, CT In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, diversity; in all things, charity [Introduction] Those of you with children of a certain age may remember, or be familiar with, the Dreamworks animated film The Prince of Egypt, which is about the biblical narrative of Moses and the Exodus. My family and I saw this film in the late 1990's with a group of parents and children from the church I was serving at the time. I remember enjoying the film at the time, so I decided to watch this film again, as part of my preparation for today's sermon. I'm sad to report that The Prince of Egypt takes rather large cinematic liberties with the biblical text. Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I much prefer the biblical version to the Dreamworks version. So...I invite us to listen to God's word for us in the biblical version of Moses and the Exodus. [Text: Exodus 1:8 2:10] 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. 1 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 you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live. 1
4 0 60 6 70 7 80 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. 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. [Sermon] As you can readily imagine, today's story of Moses in the bulrushes, or the baby in the basket-boat (The Message), has been a source of fascination and inspiration for people of faith through the centuries. Let us take some time this morning as people of faith to wander through this text, and listen for what God might be saying to us through this ancient ancestral narrative. Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. Joseph, you may remember from a few weeks ago, or from the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, was the favorite of Jacob's thirteen children (twelve sons and one daughter). Joseph was both a dreamer and an interpreter of dreams, in an ancient time when dreams were understood to be mysterious communications from God. Joseph's brothers hated him, not only because he was their father's favorite son, but also because he believed, on the basis of his dreams, that he was destined to rule over all of them. So the brothers hatched a plan to sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt, and to tell their father that a wild animal had killed his son, which grieved Jacob to his heart. Through a convoluted series of events, Joseph's skill as a dream interpreter caught the attention of Pharaoh, the Egyptian king, who was troubled by some dreams he had been having. Joseph told Pharaoh that these dreams were messages from God, warning the ruler of Egypt that seven years of agricultural plenty were going to be followed by seven years of famine. Joseph's interpretation made eminent sense to Pharaoh, who appointed Joseph to serve as his Secretary of Agriculture. With this authority, which made him second in command in Egypt, Joseph then instituted a mandatory nationwide program of grain reserves during the seven years of plenty, so that the Egyptians would be able to survive the seven years of famine. 2
8 90 9 100 10 110 11 120 The famine was severe, as Pharaoh's dreams had predicted, and it reached into the land of Canaan, where Joseph's family was still living. When his brothers heard about the grain reserves in Egypt, a number of them traveled to Egypt to buy grain for their family. They approached Joseph with their request, not knowing that he was their brother. After some trickery (which seems to run in this family), Joseph and his brothers were reconciled, and his family settled with him in Egypt. After the death of Joseph, and all his brothers, and that whole generation...the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. The story doesn't tell us how many years went by after Joseph's death it could have been decades, or even centuries, long enough to dim or even erase the collective memory of how Joseph had saved the Egyptians and the Israelites from starvation. In the mind of the new king who arose over Egypt, the Israelites were not honored descendants of a heroic figure from the past, but rather aliens who were a potential threat to the security and stability of the nation. This new Pharaoh turns out to be a run-of-the mill tyrant. We can recognize him today in the president of Syria, or the shadowy leaders of ISIS, or the now-elderly leaders of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia who were recently convicted of crimes against humanity. Pharaoh's first thought is to enslave and oppress the Israelites, to take away their power and their dignity by forced labor. He and his minions are ruthless taskmasters, making the lives of their slaves bitter with hard labor. But the more Pharaoh oppresses them, the more they grow strong and multipy. Slavery turns out not to be a successful strategy. So Pharaoh institutes Plan B: ruthless, remorseless, gender-based genocide. He orders the Hebrew midwives to kill all the boy babies that are born, but to let the girls live. (Shades of Herod and the massacre of the innocents in the story of Jesus, many centuries later.) It may take a couple of generations, but the goal is to create an all-female alien population no men to serve as warriors, no men to father subsequent generations, women to serve as wives or concubines for Egyptian men. What Pharaoh fails to take into consideration is the strength and the dignity and the cunning and the courage of the Hebrew women. Four of these Hebrew women in particular stand out: the two midwives, Shiprah and Puah; and the mother and sister of a baby boy who will grow up to be Moses. Only much later in the story do we learn the names of Moses' mother (Jochebed, Exodus 6:20) and sister (Miriam, Exodus 1:20). Each of these women engages in creative and courageous acts of civil disobedience, in the face of a ruler who exercises absolute power. Remarkably, Pharaoh does not punish the two courageous and shrewd midwives who flagrantly disobey him by letting all the boy babies live. Instead, he orders his Egyptian security forces to round up all the Hebrew baby boys and drown them in the Nile. 3
12 130 13 140 14 10 1 With Pharaoh's order looming over Moses' mother after she gives birth to him, she is able to hide her beloved baby for three months. Fearing that her deception will soon be discovered, she carefully constructs a little lifesaving raft for her infant, which she floats among the reeds on the bank of the Nile near where Pharaoh's daughter comes down to the river to bathe. The original Hebrew of this text contains several allusions and implications which don't translate well into English, but which can enhance our understanding of the narrative. For example, the Hebrew word that The Message translates as the basketboat in which Moses' mother places him is the same word that is translated as ark in the story of Noah. Thus, as one Old Testament scholar has noted, it's possible to draw a parallel between Noah and Moses as deliverers who are rescued from death by drowning; a further parallel may be drawn between Noah who builds the ark that saves humanity and Moses' mother who builds the ark that saves the future deliverer of Israel. 1 The verb that Pharaoh uses in his command to throw into the Nile every boy baby that is born to the Hebrews is better translated as expose on the Nile which, ironically, is what Moses' mother does except in a way that doesn't drown him. Just as the Hebrew midwives engaged in acts of civil disobedience, so too Moses' mother has performed an act of civil disobedience. What this leads to is an even more surprising act of civil disobedience on the part of yet another woman: Pharaoh's daughter. She says aloud, in the hearing of her maidservants, that this is a Hebrew baby, but because of her compassion for the crying infant, she saves him from death, unequivocally and directly countermanding her father's command. (Remember that her father has absolute power, and is probably also identified as a god by his subjects.) The next courageous and compassionate woman (or girl) who speaks up in this story is Moses' sister. She has been standing by the bank, watching her baby brother in his little ark floating among the reeds. When she becomes aware of the compassion Pharaoh's daughter has for her baby brother, she steps forward and says, Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you? 8 Pharaoh s daughter [says] to her, Yes. So [Moses' sister Miriam goes and calls their] mother. 9 Pharaoh s daughter [says] to her, Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages. Through the courageous action of her daughter, this Hebrew mother and her baby are reunited, until he is weaned, at which time she will give him up to Pharaoh's daughter for adoption. This it happens that the future liberator of the slaves will grow up in the master's house thanks to the courageous civil disobedience of two midwives, his mother, his sister, and the master's daughter. 1 J. Cheryl Exum, "'You Shall Let Every Daughter Live': A Study of Exodus 1:8-2:10," Semeia, no 28 1983, p 63-82. Accessed online on 08/14/2014. 4
160 16 170 17 180 18 190 Many commentators on this text have noted that the only explicit reference to God is in the section about the midwives Shiprah and Puah, who feared God and thus did not fear Pharaoh. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. But God does not appear directly to any of the figures in the narrative, as God had often done in the stories about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. If God is at work in shaping this narrative, then it is only indirectly, through faithful and courageous women including a non-israelite woman, the princess of Egypt. And yet how amazing is this work of God working through five courageous women, each of whom risks her own life in order to do the right thing. (I confess that I find myself surprised by many aspects of this story, not only by the courage of these five women, but also by Pharaoh's tacit acceptance of their actions. And so I wonder, even though the text is silent about Pharaoh's apparent acceptance of a Hebrew baby boy into the royal family, whether God might also have been working to soften this particular Pharaoh's heart toward his daughter's adopted child. Is this possibly an early example of the efficacy of nonviolent civil disobedience, even on the heart of a brutal ruler?) But whatever the case may be with the Egyptian king, the Hebrew baby boy who is saved by three courageous women grows up in the master's house but then leaves the master's house to become the liberator of his own people. Moses, a Hebrew man with an Egyptian name, a full-blooded descendant of the patriarchs of Israel, grows up to be God's chosen leader of the Exodus. If God had not chosen three amazing women to save his life when he was a baby, there might never have been an Exodus. There might never have been Judaism from which Jesus of Nazareth emerged. There might never have been this church here in Milford. Think of God's will in this story as an unbroken chain of human faithfulness and causality. Think of us, flawed yet beautiful creatures that we are, as chosen links in this ongoing chain of faithfulness and causality. Think of us choosing to do the right thing even though doing the right thing might put us at risk and in this way helping God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Take heart from the five courageous women in today's story two midwives, one mother, and two daughters quietly chosen by God. Honor these five women as role models for countless generations of believers, women and men alike, ever since that basket-boat with a precious baby floated among the reeds along the banks of the great Nile river.