Texts: Matthew 2: 1-12, Exodus 2: 8-21

They were powerless…or at least that’s what most people would say. After all, they served the needs of a slave population….midwives to an oppressed majority. As midwives, their relationship with the even their own people was one filled with equal doses of respect and fear—no other profession inspired more superstition in the ancient world. To be frank, we don’t know much about ancient midwives, other than that in the Old Testament they go by two names…women of birth, and wise women…and that these women generally had two qualities: first they had actually given birth themselves…and second, they usually did not have a family to take care of…it stands to reason then that most of them were older and widowed with children no longer under their care….the seniors of the day.

Imagine that you are Shiphrah and Puah…you operate in the closed environment of the Hebrew camps, well past your childbearing years, yet constantly on your knees assisting women on the birthing stool…and you run from birth to birth…usually exhausted but unable to stop….until the messenger draped in fine fabrics and gold, bearing the symbols of the Pharaoh, calls you to the palace…What must they have been thinking as they walked the long walk from the back 40 up to the palace….as their muddy feet and stained clothes contrast dramatically with the alabaster steps and walls of the center of power…So they stand before the most powerful man in the known world…a man who is revered as a god by his own people…And what does he say to them?

“You who are givers of life…I order you to take it instead…when little boys are born…do whatever is in your power to make sure they do not live…” Scripture does not tell us about the “or else” that was at least tacitly there…the man who holds their lives in his hand has issued an order…The head of state has issued his royal proclamation…even if done in secret…and they know that if they don’t do as they are told…surely death is in store…

But lets be clear about what is going on here…Pharaoh is afraid that he will someday have a disaster on his hands…the Hebrew people already outnumber his native people…and someday they will surely rise up unless something is done…So the answer is to break their spirits and limit their numbers….The increased oppression is designed to shatter their morale and this little scheme with the midwives will limit the numbers…and best of all…the Pharaoh doesn’t have to risk and uprising by killing the babies himself…He’ll have these women who must do his will do his dirty work for him. He will use them and their gifts to serve his political ends.

And what do they do…they ignore him…they go back to their jobs and they keep doing them…in direct defiance of the Pharaoh. In the words of the writer...the feared…or more correctly in our syntax…they revered God…And they preserved the lives of thousands of children…Shiphrah and Puah engage in the first recorded act of civil disobedience….and you can almost see them looking over their shoulders every day waiting for the men in the fancy clothes with the big spears to show up again….

Or maybe not…for when those men do show up…and they are again before Pharaoh, a hard expression on his face…and accusation on his lips…their response is the first joke of the book of Exodus…they mock his intelligence, his position, and even his country….

“Gee Pharaoh” they tell him…“honestly you know, we tried to do what you told us to…but doggone it…every time we showed up at about the time we would show up for your wimpy Egyptian women to give birth…those strapping strong Hebrew women were already done…all those boys were already born…already in their mother’s arms, and there was nothing we could do without getting caught...Such a shame your evil horrible plan for us to kill our own grandnephews didn’t work….A real shame, ain’t it?”

What happened? They revered God, sure...but what else? They discovered that they did have power…they had the power to resist the powers that sought death and oppression….They could refuse to be used by the ‘powers that be’ as instruments of death… And though death will come…Pharaoh will eventually slaughter many of the children they saved….but many more will live, and one in particular will live…Moses…the one who will deliver them all from their oppressors…who will lead them into freedom…

You may have wondered why I included the story of the wise men in today’s service…Our tradition likes to identify these men as paragons of civil disobedience… they refused to be used by Herod….they celebrated the life of one particular child….and they saved him by defying the powers that sought his death. Like before, death will come….Herod, drunk with the same kind of power and fear that captivated Pharaoh…will try to kill all the boys from Bethlehem….but many will survive…and one in particular will survive…and escape…to Egypt of all places…and this one that survives….will deliver all people from the oppression of sin and death…he will lead us all to freedom…

But did you notice? The wise men refused to be used as tools of death….but they did it by sneaking home….Shiprah and Puah did not run away…they used their wits and the strength that no one but God gave them and they stood toe to toe with Pharaoh…and exposed his oppressive power of military and political might as powerless over their spirits…

Civil disobedience has had a long history since these two gutsy women, in their unique way, defied what scripture calls “the principalities and powers…”

We recall in their gumption…their unmitigated gall…and we hear the echo of their mocking defiance in other greats of civil disobedience…Gandhi…Martin Luther King, Jr….Susan B. Anthony…These were not people who ran away…but who stood toe to toe with the powers and principalities.

And in all of them we can hear echoes of another master of the art of civil disobedience….The one who stood before a Governor and when asked a question…like these strong women…used his humor….“Are you the King of the Jews?”....His response…”You say that”…..You’ll pardon my French I hope…but standing there as he faced the possibility of death…Jesus was a bit of a smart ass…just like Shiprah and Puah….And in both cases, the pompous principalities and powers were shown to be…in the end…powerless...

So again, I can almost hear some of you thinking, ChicagoRev, your comparisons between these women and Jesus and the wise men and all these others are interesting, but what does it mean to me?

Friends the principalities and powers are still here…The powers and principalities—those policies and practices and priorities that foster death, death of body….death of spirit…death of hope…
We know that Christ’s resurrection announced their eventual doom but they are still there…you can see them in the culture…sadly we can sometimes see them in the actions of our own government…and perhaps saddest of all we can sometimes see them in Christ’s church…

These actions of Shiphrah and Puah remind us that these dark forces only have power when we give our power to them. Our power? What kind of power do we have…after all, look around the room…no millionaires here…no members of congress…no business tycoons…no movie stars…what can we do to affect the destructive forces in our world?

Every time we spend a dollar…every time we vote….we use our power…every time we remain silent when another is oppressed…we give our power away…

Let us not kid ourselves…those principalities and powers still seek to use us as tools…those who in our name would raise a sword in vengeance…those who would exploit cheap labor here and abroad…those who would execute others in our name…those who would exclude others…they use us by exploiting our fears….by appealing to our pocketbooks….and our greed…and by causing us to imagine we have no power…so what are we to do?

There is one man who knows the challenge we face…Nelson Mandela—he who went from Civil Disobedient political prisoner to President of South Africa…and in his inaugural address he shared these words that echo in Shiphrah and Puah’s bravery…

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves: Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Two women stood before their culture’s god and
refused to be used as a tool of death. They stood up to power…they were liberated from their fear by using their own power and so liberated others, and preserved a nation…Like our brother Christ 15 centuries later, they risked it all to oppose death and oppression… So what will we do as we go from this place and confront the gods of our culture….at the grocery store tomorrow….or the mall next week….or in the ballot box next November….I ask again, how will we use our power?