Matt’s Musings

Dear St. Paul’s Friends and Family,

“Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” (Exodus 1:8)

I was excited to see this week’s scripture lesson come up in the suggested readings for Sunday.  We learn about 4 women who some of the biggest heroines in the Bible.  Their names are seldom on the tips of most tongues, but we would do well to remember Jochebed, Miriam, Shiphrah, and Puah.  

The first two women are better known as Moses’ mother and sister, and Shiphrah and Puah were two of the midwives who refused to carry out Pharaoh’s order to kill the newborn boys they delivered from Israelite women.  Jochebed and Miriam went to further extremes by hiding Moses for three months following his birth and eventually placed him in a basket and floated him up the Nile with hopes of saving him. A great irony of ironies occurred when Pharoah’s daughter plucked Moses from the river and raised him as her own, but not before the clever Miriam offered to fetch an Israelite woman to nurse the baby, thus reuniting her little brother with their mother.

The circumstances that put Jochebed, Miriam, Shiphrah, and Puah in this difficult position have been replayed throughout human history.  A powerful ruler, in their case the King of Egypt, paranoid that he will lose power, lashed out in fear and blamed an ethnic minority for all the problems in his kingdom.  He would seek to assuage his own failures and insecurities by shedding their blood.   Even Jesus Christ would fall victim to this repeating narrative, not as an ethnic group, but as an individual who cared for the ‘least of these’ of his day, thus threatening those in power.  Unlike Moses, Jesus—and countless other individuals and groups throughout history—would not be rescued by folks like Jochebed, Miriam, Shiphrah, and Puah.

The thing that inspires me about this story is that these women are not superheroes.  They are common, ordinary people that find themselves in extraordinary situations.  They have no supernatural powers.  The only things they possess are common things that are accessible to all of us:  faith, a strong sense of right and wrong, compassion, and a whole lot of courage.  By their actions, they actively contributed to God’s saving work.  We would not have Moses, nor an Exodus event if it were not for their bravery.  

We may not have to face such a stark life and death situation as these women, however, there is plenty of suffering in our world.  May we have their compassion to come to the aid of our neighbors who suffer because of injustice, death and disease. May we have the courage and creativity to aid those who are threatened by injustice and abused by those in positions of power.  And may we rest in the knowledge that God calls us just as we are to join in Christ’s saving work.   

Blessings on your journey,

Pastor Matt