Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday November 26, 2023 (First Sunday of Advent)
Scripture Reading: Exodus 1:8-22
(This year,
our Advent theme is focused on midwifery and birth. Each week, we will hear the
story from the bible of someone who was a midwife, or who encountered a
midwife. The waiting, the longing, the pain of the “not yet” – all of our
Advent themes – are captured in the metaphor of a midwife, in the metaphor of
birth.)
My name is Shiphrah, daughter of Milcah, granddaughter of Hannah, of the tribe of Naphtali. Like my mother and my grandmother before me, I am a midwife. When the time comes for a mother to birth a child, I am sent for. I accompany a woman through the hours or through the days of labour. I encourage her. I tell her when to push and when to refrain from pushing. I remind her to continue to draw fresh air into her body. If needed, I give her the herbs I have learned how to use to speed up her labour or to stop her bleeding. When the baby comes, I catch the baby. I am the one to place the baby on the mother’s chest. I catch the afterbirth, I cut the cord, and I wash the baby. The day after the baby is born, I come to check on the baby and the mother to make sure that all is well.
Even though I live in the land of Egypt, I am an Israelite. I am a descendant of Jacob who was called Israel. In a time of famine, Israel’s son Joseph was able to bring our people to Egypt under the protection of the Pharoah so that we would have food in a time of hunger. But now, many generations later, there is a new Pharoah in Egypt… one who is scared of us… and he has made all of our people to be slaves.
This new Pharoah, because he is afraid of us, he treats us poorly. Our men and our women have to spend their days working in the fields and building the city. If we ever do anything that displeases an Egyptian, we are punished for it. And sometimes the punishment is doled out for no reason. It is a scary existence for us.
I work with my sister Puah. I call her my sister, even though we have no blood relationship, and yet we have the kinship of the work that we share. The two of us are busy, as it seems as though every day there are many women delivering their babies. We have trained apprentices who work with us, but Puah and I are the lead midwives.
We are respected by the Egyptians more than the other Israelites. I think that they recognize the universality of birth – that they are only alive today because a midwife attended their birth. We are generally free to move around the community unmolested, attending to our business day and night.
Last year though… last year Puah and I were summoned to appear before Pharoah. Normally we are confident as we move about the world, but I have to confess that my knees were trembling that day. We had no idea what he wanted from us.
I told you that he was afraid of us, and his fear usually came out as cruelty. That day, he told us that any time we, or any of the other midwives, delivered a boy child, we were to kill it at the moment of birth. We knew in that moment that we wouldn’t be able to carry out these orders. As midwives, we are bringers of life, not bringers of death.
We had to wait until we were safely away from the palace to discuss what we would do next, but later that night, Puah and I were able to talk in private. We knew that disobeying the Pharoah would likely bring us death, but we also knew that we couldn’t be the ones to bring death to an innocent baby.
The next night we called together all of our apprentice midwives. We told them what Pharoah had ordered. And then we told them to disobey this order. Any midwives who weren’t comfortable disobeying Pharoah were free to stop midwifing, but those of us who brought life were not permitted to bring death as well.
Our God is a god of life, and we serve our God by bringing life. And so we continued in our work.
Six months later, the Pharoah noticed that there continued to be baby boys around our community, and we were summoned to appear before him again. Again, my knees trembled as we went – surely he was going to know that we disobeyed him, and I didn’t expect to be able to leave the palace alive.
This brought us to our next risk: we lied to the Pharoah. We told a lie to the person who had the power to have us killed on the spot, and we told him that the Israelite women were stronger than the Egyptian women, and that they had stopped calling the midwife to attend their labour. We told Pharoah that we were willing to carry out his orders, but that we no longer had the opportunity to do so.
And he believed us. He must not have believed that our women were fully human; he must not have believed that our women felt pain and fear as they laboured and as they delivered; he must have thought that our women dropped their babies in the field, like a horse or a cow. He didn’t believe that our women needed the support of a midwife.
And so we were free to go, but instead, Pharoah ordered his soldiers to kill all of the male babies of our people. His reign of fear continues.
Three months ago though, I delivered a beautiful baby boy to Jochebed of the tribe of Levi. She already had two beautiful children – Miriam was 9 and Aaron was just 6. Now Jochebed is determined to keep her newest baby alive. She has hidden him away in her house, and she nurses him any time he threatens to make a fuss. He is growing well, but now it is getting harder for her to keep him hidden away.
She has made a basket for him, and has made it waterproof, and she tells me that she is going to float him in his basket down the river. He may be eaten by a crocodile, but the uncertainty of that end is better than the certain death her baby will face if he is discovered.
People say that I am courageous, to disobey Pharoah the way that I have; but me, I look to Jochebed when I need hope. She trusts that this baby of hers has a future, and because she trusts in his future, she is willing to take these risks. We may be slaves now, but Jochebed trusts that one day we won’t be; and she is going to do everything that she can to keep Miriam and Aaron, and now wee baby Moses alive so that they can witness the birth of this future; so that maybe they can be midwives of this future that will be theirs.
May God give us all the hope of Jochebed. And may we be midwives too, bringing life to this future that is ours. Amen.
“Shiphrah, Puah, Jocheved, Miriam,
Pharoah’s Daughter, and the Infant Moses”
Mural from the Dura-Europos Synagogue, ca. 245
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