By the Rev. Dr. David Fleer
Audio Version HERE.
Living Into the Story of the Midwives: Strength and Courage for these Days
Exodus 1: 7 - 22
I
A nine month old child sits on his Grandma’s lap with a book opened before them. As Grandma reads he is attentive to her voice, stares at the pictures, absorbs the colors, and leans forward to kiss the lambs and babies and hear the sounds uttered by the cows and horses. Grandma closes the book but he is hungry for more. This baby already loves books, which means he is discovering the worlds and treasures they contain.
One day he will hear Scripture’s most essential stories, the paradigmatic tales of the Hebrews and their beginnings, their enslavement and God’s studied concern for them.
One day he’ll come to know the story of Shiprah and Puah, the Midwives, who protected the Hebrew babies from infanticide. He’ll learn the heroic role of two women who “refused imperial fear” to protect the innocent and helpless. He will learn to say their names, honor their work and understand that they acted with the same moral goodness that motivates his mother and grandmother who will become his models, these women who devote their lives to children.
II
“There Arose a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph” is how our story begins, with an ominous and foreboding tone, which also recalls a time when Pharaoh knew Joseph. When Joseph was known ~ we had entrée’. We had a seat at the table and permission and privileges.
“So, you’re Joseph’s son? Not a finer man in this country than your father.”
“You’re part of Joseph’s family? We have a position at the firm that may be of interest to someone with your pedigree.”
“You say Joseph was your Grandfather? When I first came to work here I remember people speaking with great respect about your Grandfather. We have some photographs in the archives I think you’ll appreciate. Good man. Now what can I do for you?”
When Pharaoh knew Joseph, when our Joseph was known by Pharaoh, they invited us in:
“It’s on the house,” they said.
“We own an exclusive private school appropriate for your family.”
That’s how it went when Pharaoh knew Joseph. Opportunities would just appear: scholarships! Business deals! Board positions!
Things go your way when Pharaoh knows Joseph. “They were 70 in number and they were fruitful and multiplied and became exceedingly mighty and the land was full of them” ~ when Pharaoh knew Joseph.
III
“But there Arose a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.” With the passage of time the connections with power and privilege dried up.
“We’re not hiring,” they told us.
“We’re not selling,” they said.
“Nothing available.”
“You’ll have to wait.”
Clerks and colleagues came to ask, “Where’re you from? What’s that red cloth around your neck? What are those dangly things?”
“Just a scarf.”
“Doesn’t look like a normal scarf. Why are you wearing that? You talk funny.” Where’d you say you’re from?”
We were distanced from society, ostracized, alienated, outsiders. When the nation’s headlines read: “plummeting stocks,” we didn’t have stocks. When the city’s “unemployment lines grew,” we didn’t have jobs to lose. When folks cried about the “bubble bursting” and threats of “foreclosure,” we hadn’t invested in real estate, we didn’t own a house.
We began to write new music appropriate for the times. Tunes appeared with lines like these:
‘Tis the song, the sigh of the weary.
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered all around my cabin door.
Oh, hard times, come again no more.
Depression and oppression appear early in the Exodus narrative when “there Arose a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.”
IV
This hard part of our story will be difficult to tell our grandchildren. How we fell out of favor and lived on the margins of society. Because our grandchildren are being schooled and acculturated to gain a secure footing and rise in business and occupation, to marry and contribute to the prosperity of the nation. It will be hard for them to hear
. . . and just as hard for us to tell . . . stories that challenge the culture: stories of those who courageously resist oppressive powers and refuse authorities who ignore the hopeless and marginalized.
It will be hard for them to hear because in the culture where Pharaoh reigns a certain logic dominates, a “common sense” which controls society’s thinking and action. Pharaoh’s logic works like this:
Given: although the Hebrews have become numerous, they’ve done nothing to harm us.
However, the Hebrews could multiply more and in the event of war, they could team with our enemies or runaway and reduce our free labor market.
Therefore, we should make a pre-emptive strike against the innocent because there is a possibility they may become guilty.
That’s the logic of Pharaoh. That’s the rationale of oppression and the genius of fear.
That is why it will be difficult, but essential, to tell our grandchildren this hard part of our history and the challenge of our future.
V
Ours is a story even more difficult to tell because everyone thinks alike. No one challenges Pharaoh’s common sense.
Pharaoh commands the Egyptians to “deal shrewdly with the Hebrews,” to obtain the greatest possible benefit from this ethnic minority, while at the same time exhausting, reducing, and controlling . . . them.
So Pharaoh appoints task masters to carry out his orders. He appoints lieutenants who salute Pharaoh and inflict hard labor,
and stand guard, like at the work camp at Dachau,
and crack the whip, like a plantation overlord,
and demand unreasonable hours, like foremen in a sweatshop.
This is the climate of the system, where if something goes wrong the lieutenants excuse their behavior:
“I was only following orders”
“I was doing as commanded”
Like Abu Ghraib, taught in the schoolyard and enacted by playground bullies. “I did as I was told, or I would have been victimized.”
The strategy was effective on the one hand. The Hebrew work force built storage cities Pithom and Raamses which helped secure Egypt’s homeland security.
But as shrewd as Pharaoh’s plan, his motive is foiled. Although Egyptian strategic sites are enhanced: the Hebrew population increases. Although task masters inflict hard labor and make Hebrew lives bitter from the strain of work, grinding out bricks, plodding in the fields, lifting and pulling, straining and pushing: the Hebrews multiply.
And Pharaoh’s logic multiplies to the masses. And now all the Egyptians are in dread of the potential threat of the Hebrews.
VI
When Plan ‘A’ does not work, Pharaoh’s fear explodes into violence and he concocts Plan ‘B,’ the Final Solution, and calls the Midwives before him.
The Midwives’ profession demands a toughness and gentleness to assist new mothers in the delivery of babies, time the contractions, prepare the water, cut the cloths, and initiate life into the world.
Pharaoh orders the women, “kill the Hebrew’s baby boys.”
The prison guards and police, the plantation overlords, the shop foremen, and the task masters all did as they were told. They obeyed the oppressor’s command.
Into this landscape step Shiprah and Puah ~ and stand before Pharaoh who instructs them, “Accelerate the oppression.”
But, unlike the task masters, the Midwives don’t do as they’ve been told.
They don’t fall back on Romans 13:1 “Be in subjection to the governing authorities.”
They don’t recall I Peter 2, “Submit yourselves to every human institution.”
They don’t recite Titus 3, “Be subject to authorities and to rulers. Obey.”
There is no submission to the state from these women. No obedience to Pharaoh and the governing authorities here. “The Midwives fear God and do not do as Pharaoh commanded. They let the boys live” (1:17)
They violate orders. They risk their lives to save the helpless.
Pharaoh orders, “Kill the babies.” Shiprah and Puah refuse.
VII
Which does not get past Pharaoh who confronts them and demands an account, “What have you done?”
The midwives look Pharaoh in the eye and tell him a big fat lie. A whopper! “The Hebrew women are so vigorous . . . we can’t get there in time. We can’t outrun them, these pregnant women are just too fast.”
To speak in the face of the oppressor with such calm resolve is like plucking a hair from Hitler’s mustache or bonking Bull Connor on the head with his billy club. They pull a fast one on Pharaoh.
The wit of the oppressed, preserved through the ages, begins with the Midwives, who when out muscled and with no resource but their integrity and wit, out fox the Pharaoh.
Like when Br’er Bear and Br’er Fox capture Br’er Rabbit. The two argue between themselves, “I say we skin ‘m and then eat ‘m.”
“I say we boil ‘m first.”
To which Br’er Rabbit interjects, “Boil me, skin me, I don’t care. But whatever you do, don’t throw me in the briar patch.”
Outwitted, the Fox and Bear attempt to torture the rabbit and throw him in the briar patch.
Once safe in the confines of the patch Br’er Rabbit raises his head and taunts his oppressors, “Born and raised in the briar patch, yes indeed. I told you not to throw me here.”
And God witnesses the exchange and God sees the Midwives’ faith and courage and God blessed the Midwives.
IIX
How do we tell this story to our grandchildren? The narrative by itself will entice, engage, and satisfy in so many literary ways:
Our grandchildren will be taken by the quick and ingenious transition from power to slavery, this essential and radical move beautifully told with an economy of words. They’ll enjoy the story’s rapid plot reversals and engaging ironies: Slavery benefits the state with buildings erected and land farmed: good for Egypt. Yet Pharaoh wants his workers eliminated? Midwives represent the source of life, yet they are being ordered to become the bearers of death?
This story nearly tells itself.
Even so, when you read the narrative to your grandchildren, you must work to capture the characters’ voices. Pharaoh is not the voice of Yule Brenner. Jack Nicholson can’t touch this villain. Pharaoh has a even more sinister voice that embodies evil and reveals the fear that envelops him, “Kill them! Kill them all.”
But most important, practice the voice of the Midwives. Their tone is intelligent: they calculate their civil disobedience. They resonate with moral depth: they are loyal to God and their own integrity. Their voice is full of courage: they stand before the powerful and deified Pharaoh, who can crush them or torture them to death.
And in this setting their words shield the innocent.
Practice that voice before you read this story to your grandchildren.
And then, show the story in its recent enactments. Take them to the Ford Museum and sit in Rosa Park’s Montgomery bus, where she defied a system of oppression. Make the Lorraine Motel an essential visit when passing through Memphis and Ebenezer Church a stop in Atlanta where civil disobedience gave voice to the marginalized.
Grandparents trace out the moral code of faith so that grandchildren will know how it means to live in this family. “It is the work of grandparents to transform the remembered past into the present tense” which means that when we tell this paradigmatic story, we live into it ourselves, identifying current systems of oppression remembering God always sides with the poor and abused. Always.
IX
And our grandchildren will watch us and listen to us, even as we pray, with this text as our script: “God of justice and compassion, we give you thanks for turning the world up-side down by uplifting the poor and powerless and turning out the powerful. Forgive us when we lust for power or acquiesce to schemes of the oppressor. Forgive us for participating in this world’s systems of domination. Give us strength and courage for the living of these days, for our children and grandchildren and for ourselves. Amen. “
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