Exodus 1:22, 2:1-20
August 23, 2020
Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS
My husband has sometimes joked that I became a pastor so I could have a good excuse to visit newborn babies and their families. Ahhhh...the feeling of holding a newborn child. They are often wrapped up tight like little gifts and when you have the honor of having a tiny baby placed in your arms….well….it’s a profoundly spiritual experience.
Newborns somehow feel connected to ancient rhythms and truths even though they’re so new….like they’ve just arrived here on earth and aren’t bogged down yet with distractions and mistakes and history. Instead, their lives just stretch out before them.
Okay, okay, I don’t want to totally romanticize this too much...especially for those of you who are currently caring for a baby around-the-clock. I know they also cry and eat constantly and need their diapers changed at all hours….and I know that even the most dedicated and head-over-heels-in-love caregiver will eventually get tired of holding a baby...because, you know, you also have to shower and eat and sleep and things like that.
But even with the exhaustion that comes from caregiving….a newborn baby is a gift from God. If you imagine God carefully wrapping a beautiful package for us…beautiful ribbons, shiny paper...and then handing it to us….I can hardly think of a better gift than a fresh, new human.
They are possibility and hope incarnate. Feeling the quiet, warm weight of a newborn in my arms has a way of grounding me, bringing me back to the essence of life, connecting me deeply to the Spirit of Life being born anew each day.
And babies have the ability to awaken fierce urges in us bigger humans. We know, instinctively, that our job is to protect and care. We find reserves of strength we never knew we had as we rise to the task of nurturing, feeding, teaching, protecting the new lives that are entrusted to us. We lay awake at night worrying that we don’t have what it takes to care for these little ones….and we sometimes find ourselves filled with terror at the immensity of shepherding these gifts through a dangerous world.
Possibility. Hope. Terror.
These themes are what we hear from the pages of the Book of Exodus today. Just like we feel them rush through us when we hold a newborn...they are all jumbled next to one another in this ancient story, too. An ancient story that is filled with gifts for us because it contains timeless truths that still feel so relevant for our lives.
The story begins with terror. “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.” We have to back up a few verses to figure out why this is happening. We are told, “Now a new kind arose over Egypt, one who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we.’”
The new king - the Pharaoh - “does not know Joseph” which means he has forgotten that his kingdom and his people were, once-upon-a-time, saved from a terrible famine by an Hebrew man named Joseph. He has forgotten that these two groups of people are intimately connected. He has forgotten that they need each other to survive. And so he goes the way of every paranoid, fearful leader before and after him….dehumanizing, othering, drumming up fear and telling everyone they need to be worried that the Hebrews are going to take over.
Fear leads to othering leads to dehumanizing leads to...eventually….genocide. The whole process can take a long time, but we know that once you start down the pathway of othering...dehumanizing...there is a very real risk it may end in violence. This is why it’s so terribly important that we take care to recognize and speak up against dehumanizing language in our own time. This is an ancient story, but the truths in it still feel all-too-relevant, don’t they?
And so, if you’ll imagine with me God carefully wrapping a beautiful package for us… beautiful ribbons, shiny paper….and then handing it to us. The gift is this story and there are at least three timeless truths in it.
And here we are at truth #1: tyrants will always cause terror.
Jesus said, “the poor you will always have with you” and it seems to me he could have also said, “tyrants you will always have with you.” In every time...in every culture...there are always going to be cruel, oppressive leaders who inflict violence and harm. They will try to divide and conquer those they rule over...making groups suspicious of one another. They will do anything, and you know I mean ANYTHING, to consolidate their power. They make their decisions out of fear, they cheat and lie and steal, they are not to be trusted. And all too often they shamelessly use violence to ensure their own survival.
Some of them are even cruel enough to kill babies.
It’s enough to make you weep, just thinking about it.
Let’s reach back in the box though. The beautiful gift wrapped by God….because there’s a second truth in this story, too. Tyrants will always be there with their terror...but resisters are always a part of the story, too.
This story is chock-full of some of my favorite resisters in all of the Bible. Three of them we already heard about when Cassidy read the scripture - Moses’s mother, sister, and Pharoah’s daughter who found him in the river and brought him to safety. The courage and strength of these three! As a parent myself, I can scarcely imagine how terrified and out-of-options you would need to be to do what Moses’s mother found the strength to do. She hid her newborn son from the authorities for as long as she could - several months - and then she let him go, trusting he would find other arms to protect him from violence.
Imagine her, carefully wrapping him like the precious gift that he was, and placing him into the basket to float down the river. The Hebrew word there is actually “ark,” just like Noah’s ark. Ancient ears would have heard the connection between these two stories - both of them stories of radical trust as desperate humans put their most precious cargo into an ark and hoped and prayed God would make a way out of no way.
The baby’s sister, Miriam, also played her part in the resistance. She followed her brother as he floated down the river, working to protect him in her own way. A child protecting another child. She resisted the evil around her by staying with her brother and carefully guarding her own life as she hid among the reeds and watched from afar.
And then there’s Pharoah’s nameless daughter. What compelled her to draw a Hebrew baby from the water and take him in as her own? We aren’t told of her motivations. But perhaps she saw her father’s evil cunning and perhaps she wanted to push back against his reign of terror. Or perhaps she was simply filled with compassion for this helpless baby. Either way, her actions marked her, too, as one who resisted terror and turned toward possibility.
There are two more resisters who play a major role in this story...we didn’t hear about them in today’s reading but you’ll find them in the first chapter of Exodus. Shiphrah and Puah. The two midwives who resisted. When Pharaoh tells them to kill all the male babies of the Hebrews, they refuse to do so. And when the king calls them in to inquire why the Hebrew baby boys are still living, they say, “Gosh, you wouldn’t believe it! The Hebrew women have babies so quickly that we can’t even get there before they give birth! So we aren’t able to help you, sorry!”
Resistance takes many forms, then as now. Sometimes it looks like doing the impossible….sending your baby into the world trusting someone else will care for and protect them. Resistance is seeing a child in need and reaching out in compassion to care for them, even when it’s not “your responsibility.” And this story helps us remember that children can resist, too! Without Moses’s sister, Miriam, Moses would not have been reunited with his mother to be nursed and cared for. What an incredible, miraculous twist in this story! And Shiphrah and Puah help us remember that sometimes resistance is a simple but bold lie. An absolute refusal to cooperate with tyranny, violence, and terror.
All of these acts of resistance work together for the greater good. Even though the people resisting had no way of knowing what other resisters were doing, their individual acts of faith were woven together by God to form a tapestry of hope. A tapestry of possibility spread over the infant Moses like a protective tent...shielding him from the terror of tyrants, keeping him safe and secure as he grew in wisdom and maturity….and eventually became the leader who would come to free the people of Israel from tyranny's grip.
But no one could have known that when he was just a baby.
Shiphrah, Puah, Moses’s mother, Miriam, Pharaoh's daughter….none of them could have known what their individual acts of resistance would lead to. And that brings us to the third timeless truth that is a gift for us in today’s passage: We never know how one small act of resistance can change the world.
This story reminds us that we all have a role to play in resisting evil. And no matter how small our contribution, we can act with the faith that we do not act alone. When we resist violence, evil, tyranny we join in an unending line of those who have been pushing back in big and small ways since the beginning of time.
And all of our acts of resistance are woven together by God into a tapestry of hope. A tapestry of possibility that spreads over all vulnerable people like a protective tent….protecting the world from terror...allowing the prophets and leaders of tomorrow to grow and flourish.
Terror we will always have with us, it seems. Thank God for these ancient stories of our faith….that remember us that possibility is always, always with us, too. Thank God for stories of hope.
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