Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have made lots of headlines lately, but the Bible also has some intriguing and courageous women characters — and they are the subjects of this sermon from August 24.

 Courageous Women

Exodus 1:8 – 2:10  Romans 12:1-8 

If I remember correctly, when I was in high school we talked a lot about conformity. We all agreed that it was not a good thing. Conformity was what made you follow the lead of other people

instead of thinking for yourself and acting on your own decisions. I don’t think that our teachers and parents actually wanted us to be non-conformists (though some of us turned out that way) – they just wanted to warn us that shaping ourselves to the expectations of others was not always a wise or healthy thing to do.

In that one way, at least, they echoed the thought of St. Paul, in this section of the 12^th chapter of the book of Romans. “Do not be conformed to this world ..” he wrote [Romans 12:2] It is a timely warning – and perhaps it has been a timely warning in every time. It is timely for us because the world around us invites, cajoles, misleads, and sometimes coerces us into conformity.

Let’s agree at the outset that some kinds of conformity as necessary and helpful (at least in our culture): driving on the right side of the street, reading from top to bottom, waiting your turn in line, saying please and thank you. Let’s not let our acceptance of these benign social norms blind us to the powers around us that insist we conform in more weighty matters. Consider the recent invitations to become a “locovore” – the commitment to eat only foods that are produced close to home. If you have tried this experiment you will have learned that the corporate food distribution system in the United States makes this a real challenge. To opt out of this system—to refuse to conform to its expectations and requirements – requires diligence, time, and money. Or consider the pressures, particularly on young people, to make their bodies conform to conventional standards of beauty – and the resulting injuries to self-image and self-esteem when they aren’t able to do that. Consider the voices around us telling us that our happiness depends upon conforming to the purchase of a certain automobile or beer or shampoo.

The story of the courageous Hebrew and Egyptian women that begins the book of Exodus provides us with wonderful examples of people who were not conformed to the world. There were, to begin with, the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah. The king instructed them to kill all of the male babies that were born among the Hebrews, but they did not follow these murderous instructions. When questioned by the king, the two insisted that the Hebrew women labored so briefly that they delivered their children before the midwives arrived.

Then there is the mother of Moses, who knew the danger her newborn son faced. The king had commanded all of the Egyptians to throw all the male Hebrew babies into the Nile. She hid him for three months, then – in a manner of speaking – she actually followed Pharaoh’s instructions to throw him in the Nile. The twist, of course, was that she put him in a basket that had been sealed with pitch so that it would float among the reeds on the edge of the river.

That brings us to the sister of Moses, whose name we will learn later is Miriam. She surely knew the risk her mother had taken on behalf of the baby boy, and she followed him to the river and watched from a distance to see what would happen.

What happened was that the daughter of the Pharaoh was the one who found the basket with the baby, and rescued it. This is a heroine we were not expecting. Her father is remembered for his harsh treatment of the Hebrews and for those royal orders for infanticide, and yet she impulsively takes pity on the baby that is brought to her. Miriam seized the moment and offers a wet nurse for the infant – and we know that the wet nurse is truly the boy’s own mother. Together these women were subversive in the best sense of that word – subverting the rules and undermining the power of others in order to save a life.

It is a curious cast of characters, these women who preserved the life of the baby boy who will grow up to lead the Exodus, which is one of the central stories and themes of the Bible: Two midwives, a mother, a sister, and a princess. None of them conformed to the expectations of others: the midwives did not kill the babies (as they had been ordered), the mother saved and then relinquished her child, the sister spoke boldly to royalty, and the princess defied her own father.

Each of them did what she could do, in the place where she was and the role that she had. All of them used what Paul would call (much later) “sober judgment” in choosing how to react to the powers events that confronted them. They used the gifts that they had: clarity, courage, cleverness, and opportunity. In the midst of inhumanity, they discerned a calling to compassion

It is fashionable, when talking about these and other women in the Bible, to emphasize how little actual power women had in the ancient world. They were, after all, viewed as possessions of their fathers and then of their husbands. They had little autonomy in the sense that we know it in modern Western culture. What are striking in this story, however, are not the ways that they were constrained from acting, but by the ways that they nonetheless did act.

Taken together, their actions were part of what Paul calls one body. I am not suggesting that we retroactively baptize these Hebrew and Egyptian woman into Christianity. But we can recognize in them the characteristics of a faith community that Paul – and now we – put in Christian terms: “so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” [Romans 12:5]. In that one sentence are two extraordinary claims of the faith: first, that we are members of the body of Christ, and second, that we are members of one another.

At first blush, it seems audacious to proclaim that the church – this ragtag collection of sinning, foolish, compromised human beings – is truly the body of Christ. Still, we have an incarnational faith: we believe that God was somehow present in Jesus Christ in human history, and is now somehow present in the community of the faithful. As St. Teresa of Avila put it in her famous prayer, “Christ has no body now but yours; no hands, no feet on earth but yours.” What God wants to do in the word is done through the work of humans.

And humans, St. Paul tells us, are members of one another. Our obligation to our brothers and sisters is as basic and indivisible as our obligation to God. The gifts that we have been given are for the benefit of all, not just for ourselves. The work that we are called to do is for others, not just for ourselves.

This is a hard teaching for those of us who live in a place and age where we are encouraged to think always of ourselves, a place and an age in which we are assured that fulfilling our own desires will be of economic benefit to everyone, a place and an age in which we are taught that what feels good to us is good. It is a hard teaching to hear that we are bound together by our needs and our gifts, even more than we are bound together by blood, affection, or homeland.

And so our teachers and our parents were wise in warning us of the dangers of conformity. What they did not warn us about were the dangers of transformation. The lives of both Hebrews and Egyptians were changed forever by the women who did not conform to the customs and requirements of their day. The cost of setting aside conformity is the process of transformation – of changing from one way of thinking and doing and being to a new way of thinking and doing and being. Transformation is unsettling, confusing, disorienting. It was the way of faithfulness for Shiprhah and Puah, for Moses mother and sister, and for the princess of Egypt. It was the way of faithfulness for Jesus and the disciples and for Paul. And it is the way of faithfulness even for us. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” [Romans 12:2]

Prayer for August 24, 2008

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

God of the bountiful harvest, we pray this morning in thanksgiving and concern for the food that we eat.

During this season of plenty, we are grateful for the explosion of vegetables, grains, and fruits that come to our table. Keep us mindful, we pray, of the human cost of this food: the farmers and farm workers who sometimes risk their safety to plant, tend, and bring in the crops; the truckers and laborers who work long hours to transport them; and the wholesalers and grocers who present them to us. Let our thanks to you also be thanks to them.

Keep us mindful, we also pray, of our brothers and sisters who do not share in the feasts of late summer. Move us to action to ensure that all of your people are fed, and that all the food they are fed is safe and wholesome. Move us further to be willing to sacrifice some of the excess at our tables to fill the tables of those who are hungry.

You have made us in your own image, O God, and yet we do not always treat ourselves as holy reflections of you. Forgive us when we misuse our bodily need for food – when we indulge in too much and when we refrain from enough. Help us to regain the sense of being tied to the earth which feeds us, and to the plants and animals we depend upon.

God of all creation, help us, we pray, to see and smell and taste the beauty of the feasts which are set before us. Let our appreciation be another prayer of thanksgiving , and let our satisfaction be another prayer of praise.

All these things we ask in the name of the one who ate with his friends, with his adversaries, and with the outcasts of his time, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us …