A Meditation on Exodus 2 & 3: "...the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the boys live..."
Fearing God
Now you could say this is just a minor twist in a much more complicated plot. But the story of God’s people has no minor characters. Not then; not now. Who are the first Hebrews to defy oppression and disobey Pharaoh? Shiphrah and Puah. They fear God and refuse to do as the king commands them. Who are the first Hebrews to risk their own lives for the survival of others? Shiphrah and Puah. They fear God and let the baby boys live. Why did I hear not a word about these two in Sunday School growing up? No Shiphrah and Puah: no Moses and Jesus. These are defiant, strong, smart women; and their names should be etched in the hearts of faithful people everywhere. Shiphrah and Puah. These midwives, they fear God; and they just don’t do as the king of Egypt commands them.
Defying Empire
Now the fear in this text, the fear that motivates Shiphrah and Puah to resist the empire’s instructions: it’s not the heavy-handed fear, the grim punishing fear of so much Christian theology. To be honest, if one of you were to come to my office and tell me you were honest and truly afraid of God, I’d worry about you and I’d want to help you figure out where that fear comes from and how to set it aside. This kind of religious fear is repressive and manipulative, and it so often stifles creativity and sensitivity. We all know what I’m talking about. The heavy-hitting 20th century evangelist Billy Sunday used to say: “If there is no hell, a good many of us preachers are obtaining money under false pretenses.” Scare ‘em into believing. Hell for the bad guys and heaven for the good. The point is that a theology built around fear can be devastatingly cruel. As if the God who made us in the divine image, as if the Holy Breath of the Universe, as if Jesus is just waiting for a chance to snuff us out. And that leads us to do the right thing? Dark stuff.
But Shiphrah and Puah, these Hebrew midwives: they fear God in a completely different and very Jewish way. Now maybe it’s just a story – but I’m inclined to believe there’s no such thing as ‘just a story.' Look at what happens in this one. Two pretty ordinary Hebrews are dragged before a fairly extraordinary king and instructed to participate in his program of state-sponsored violence and terror. And he’s not vague about it: “When you do what you’re called to do, when you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, if you see that a boy has been born, if you bring a little boy into the world, kill him.” But these midwives fear God; that’s what the text says. The midwives fear God. And so they don’t do as the king of Egypt commands them. Fear feeds resistance! Moral courage in defying death. Fearing God – for Shiphrah, for Puah, for the Hebrews – means recognizing God’s sway in the world, worshiping God as the source of meaning and power, resisting any impulse to bow to Pharaoh’s blood lust.
You just can’t do what Shiphrah and Puah do, you just can’t risk what they risk, you just can’t love as they love if you’re frightened and intimidated and scared of God. These midwives fear God in the sense that they love God, in the sense that they respect God, in the sense that they know God is on the side of justice and kindness and human liberation. And because they love God so very much, they care not a whit for Pharaoh’s menacing edict. They resist.
The Sufis tell a story about the great mystic, Rabi’a al Adawiyya, an 8th century Sufi in what is now 21st century Iraq. It is said, the story goes, that Rabi’a al Adawiyya was once seen running purposefully through the streets of Basra. She was carrying a torch in one hand, a splashing bucket of water in the other. And when an old man stopped her and asked what in the world she was doing – a torch in one hand, a bucket of water in the other – the mystic said: “I intend, with my bucket, to put out the fires of hell, and, with my torch, to burn down the fine castles of Paradise. For these block the way to God,” she said, catching her breath. “I will not worship for fear of punishment or the promise of rewards,” she said, “but simply for the love of God.” Simply for the love of God!
What happens when heaven is razed to the ground and hell’s fire is fire no more? What kind of songs do we sing? What kind of lives do we lead? And what does all this mean? “Imagine there’s no heaven…it’s easy if you try…no hell below us…above us only sky.” So it is that Rabi’a al Adawiyya ran the streets of Basra – a torch in one hand, a bucket of water in the other. What happens when heaven is razed to the ground and hell’s fire is fire no more?
For the Love of God
I’ll tell you what I think happens. I think what happens is that all the distractions and needs and anxieties of our egos get peeled back. The veil, the grimy film lying across our lives and our days: it all gets pulled off. And what’s left? What’s left is simply the love of God. When you wake in the morning and the sun has wondrously risen on a new day. Simply the love of God. As you stumble to the coffee pot and then taste that first cup of the new day. Simply the love of God. As you stop to take the hand of the poor guy who’s asking for a dollar. Simply the love of God. As you read up on health care and join 100 others from FCC to send a loud message to Congress on the 22nd. Simply the love of God. As you take a teenager under your wing and teach him something about riding a bike or singing a song or just holding on for another day. Simply the love of God. When heaven is razed to the ground and hell’s fire is fire no more, we are free to see God here – in ordinary moments, in extraordinary encounters, in us. And that, my friends, is the most awesome realization there is. We live for this. We live for the love of God.
That’s what I see happening in the story we’re reading today. Shiphrah and Puah have torched the fine and fancy castles of Paradise; they’ve doused the fires of hell. They are so very much in love with life, so completely in love with God – that they have no need for perverted theologies of punishment and reward. They’re midwives, after all; and they see and touch and hear true holiness every day. They are so much in love with life, so completely in love with God – that they cooperate with God in every way they can. Helping women to give birth. Swaddling the vulnerable in fresh linen. Saying prayers of blessing over the newborn. Refusing the directives of a murderous tyrant.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that today’s Exodus story unfolds as still others begin to practice a similar reverence, a similar courage. You’ve got Miriam, the sister of the baby boy cast upon the river in a basket. And she shrewdly and wisely and patiently watches from a distance, then suggests to Pharaoh’s daughter (at just the right moment) that maybe a Hebrew mother should nurse the sweet little baby plucked from peril. And you’ve got Pharaoh’s daughter, too, who chooses, remarkably, to defy her own father’s edict and takes pity on the boy. Who can explain her courage, her compassion, her tenderness toward a people her father has promised to eviscerate? And where would this story be without them? Shiphrah, Puah, Miriam, Pharaoh’s daughter. Each of these women shines in the darkness of a totalitarian regime, in the grim madness of genocide, in the bitter days of empire – and shines so brightly that we are moved ourselves to praise and wonder and reverence. And that’s what fearing God means to Hebrews storytellers; that’s what it can mean to us.
Now I imagine a bunch of you are sitting out there this morning and thinking: All well and good, but my little life is so little, my place on the planet is so marginal. I’m just here to check things out. I’m just trying to cope with my life. Pay the bills, raise my kids, keep my job. Surely God’s not asking me to do anything special, anything defiant, anything remarkable?
But here’s the thing, and it’s a biblical thing, even an evangelical thing. If Shiphrah and Puah are moved to awe and wonder and fear, if Shiphrah and Puah are inspired to do their part in resisting cruelty and embracing life – you can be inspired, too. If these obscure Hebrew midwives from the other side of the Pharaoh’s tracks are called on to worship God in their everyday work – you’re called to that too. God beats in your heart with every bit as much energy and passion as God beat in theirs. God speaks in your experience with every bit as much urgency as God spoke in theirs. Want to change your life? Spend ten minutes in front of a mirror when you get home this afternoon: and hear the voice of the Creator saying, “I have made you in my own image. You are mine.” Just that. “I have made you in my own image. You are mine.” See what ten minutes of that, ten minutes, does for you. There are no minor characters in the story of God’s people. In some mystical, marvelous, life-loving way, all of us are midwives. All of us.
You know, Jesus used to go around saying to folks: “The time is now! And heaven, heaven is here! Turn your lives around and believe!” I imagine Jesus knew the story of Shiphrah and Puah. And I imagine it rocked his world. “The time is now!” Whatever you’re doing with your life, do it out of reverence and wonder and awe. “The time is now!” Don’t sleepwalk through a day: greet it, welcome it, embrace it, and give it back to God. “The time is now!” When children are at risk, when the hungry need food, when the powerful bully the powerless: give your life away, don’t hold on too tight, be the change you wish to see in the world! I imagine Jesus on the loose – even now – even among us. And his message still resonates: “The time is now! And heaven, heaven is here! Turn your lives around, see love in everything and everyone, and believe!”
