Holy Innocents

Exodus1:8-2:10.

Exodus makes it clear that Pharaoh finds threat in the sheer numbers of the Hebrews. In the midst of hard labor and difficult living conditions, God has allowed the Hebrew people to flourish and multiply with their numerous descendants. This Egyptian king is not pleased. With this possible threat to his security and authority he enacts his plan of ethnic “cleansing.”
This great evil is thwarted by two women who refuse. Pharaoh’s command is a state-issued eugenics movement. It’s not about one woman and one baby, one life or one choice. It’s about a whole lot of women and families and no choice. The midwives offer their action, their noncompliance with evil. They refuse to obey Pharaoh. Baby boys continue to be born and to live.
It should not escape our attention that the scripture gives these two midwives names. With so many generic wives and sisters, they could have simply been “the midwives,” but instead, they are also Shiphrah and Puah. Also striking is the fact that Pharaoh has no name. Our unnamed Pharaoh is afraid of the Hebrew men. He finds two women to take care of this matter for him and reduce the number future Hebrew men. In commanding Shiphrah and Puah, he is expecting total obedience. He underestimates these tenacious midwives, two Hebrew women, and his own daughter. Ironically, even though he fears the Hebrew males, it’s actually Hebrew and Egyptian females who are responsible for his undoing.
Shiphrah and Puah are not acting out of political convictions. It’s not clear whether they are Hebrew or Egyptian or something else. As “midwives to the Hebrews” we don’t know. It’s not clear that they disobey Pharaoh on the basic principle that they will always disobey Pharaoh. It has nothing to do with their view of his foreign policy or general treatment of the Hebrew immigrants. It’s not as if this is the last act against the Hebrew people and they are FED UP with his treatment of them. Or maybe it is.
What is clear is that they are midwives. Their job is the sacred task of bearing both mother and child safely, of caring for both. Their job is to deliver babies safely and to help them live. Pharaoh’s command is a direct affront to their life’s work. They’re going to help the babies because it’s their ethical concern that all babies be born safely. It doesn’t matter who these babies are, it’s just what they do. And so they defy Pharaoh. When he calls them back in to see why all these babies are still surviving, they are willing to lie to this king about the reality and nature of childbirth. Knowing no better, he falls for it.
Shiphrah and Puah not only have a commitment to life. They also have a fear of God. Pharaoh fails to grasp their allegiance to God and their secret knowledge of childbirth. The midwives live into the courage of their convictions. In their lies, they speak to a different truth. They side with life and love.
When Pharaoh’s plan with the midwives did not work out he turned to “all of his people” to carry out the genocide. And yet, there is a mother and father who have a small son. This mother hides her child for three months. When hiding him is no longer possible she does indeed cast her son into the Nile, but she does so carefully, in a water-proof basket. The child’s sister looks after him and eventually Pharaoh’s own daughter comes to rescue and raise the child.
Like the birth of Moses, the birth of Jesus brought out a similar massacre. Again, a human king, feeling threatened by the people of God, orders a mass killing of babies.
It’s almost exactly the same story. On one hand, it places Jesus squarely in the plot of a rich story of a people who escaped from Egypt. So too, Jesus’ birth is touched with a death threat at the very beginning. We come to see just how close God was to being foiled by an evil human being and yet still manages to prevail against all odds. It takes a dream for Jesus, an angel to appear to Joseph and a flight to Egypt. For Moses, it takes his mother and sister who refuse to abandon him and a princess who feels sympathy and adopts the foundling.
Moses ends up growing up in Pharaoh’s household, grows up with a sense of privilege and good education and the ability to see how his people are treated and more importantly see how this shouldn’t be continuing.
This is a story of human power feeling threatened or disgusted. From Pharaoh, to Herod, to Hitler, it’s all basically the same sad story. For the Biblical stories, these tyrants are always outsmarted in the end. The midwives disobey, the wise men disobey. In small ways, tyrannical authority is thwarted.
The midwives found a way in their daily lives, a natural way, to act. They simply would not allow themselves to be used for corrupt political purposes. Their king could not sway them. They feared God and did what was right.
His mother, his sister, and Pharaoh’s own daughter. A whole team of women who say no, out of love for one baby.
Jesus taught a message of love. We are also a people, who stand and say “no, out of love for one baby.”
In our daily living, may we be as brave. May we act out of love, may we be instruments of good, may we be noncompliant with evil , may we reject apathy, may we examine our choices, may we serve as midwives to the birth of love in the world, may we witness the in breaking of the Holy Spirit, may we live with the courage of our convictions, and may God deal well with us.

This sermon has a footnote:

I have to admit I’m wrestling here. In researching this sermon I discovered that Pharaoh may have been asking these midwives to kill the male babies before they were born, a form of abortion. I’m not sure if this text has been used as a rallying cry for protestors at clinics, but I think it could be. I don’t want to talk politics here, to get into pro-life or pro-choice, but I am taking a bit of pastoral license here.
I feel confident in calling acts of eugenics or genocide evil. The state mandated killing in Exodus is very wrong and Shiphrah and Puah were brave and right in their actions. God blessed them.
I approach this carefully because we never know who is among us. I cannot, as a pastor, leave this sermon with the idea that all abortions are acts of evil. I don’t wish to be that judge.
Once upon a time I was talking to a young woman who I’ll call Rebecca about religious topics. She wanted to know how I felt about big issues like abortion. I told her what I thought in the most honest terms.
Rebecca later confided in me that she had had an abortion a few weeks earlier. She explained all of the factors that went into her decision.
She described an excruciating decision. She was not asking for my judgment, but for me to listen. To hold her story and her secret, to let her speak it out loud. She said that it was absolutely the right decision for her but if she had to do it over again, she wouldn’t have. The aftermath was worse than she had anticipated.
The only thing to do now is to grieve and move on. She doesn’t need anyone to condemn her. She needs comfort and acceptance that she is still a child of God.
Sadly, the church is not always a good place to come with our full selves. I want to offer a safe space. For anyone here who has been touched more personally by the reality of abortion, someone who has faced that dilemma, or has a sister or friend or aunt or cousin or daughter who has. Rebecca didn’t have enough people in her life to talk to and she didn’t have a faith community or a pastor, but her grief was very real and she needed someone who could help and not cause more hurt.