Sunday, July 30 - Vessels of Deliverance
Exodus 1:8-2:10
Deborah Laforet
Vessels of Deliverance
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
This week, I was reading up on the story that will be explored on the second day of our summer camp next week. It’s the story we just heard from Bert. I’ve read these stories before, but there was one paragraph about this story that stuck out for me this time.
The Hebrew word used to describe the basket made by Jochebed (Moses’ mother) is the same word used for the ark built by Noah in the Book of Genesis. In both instances, the word describes a vessel through which God provides deliverance. God delivers Moses from the
pharaoh’s decree, but in just a few years, God will use the boy who has been delivered to deliver all the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
This tiny basket that Jochebed created for her son Moses was meant to protect him. Pharaoh had ordered that all newborns males be killed. This was Jochebed’s desperate attempt to save her son. She would rather risk what might happen on the Nile river than the surety of death by the hands of Pharaoh’s soldiers. That basket did more than protect Moses. It delivered him to safety, into the arms of a sympathetic Egyptian, who decided she would adopt this child.
With the ark, which delivered Noah, his family, and the creatures of the earth to dry land and safety, you can see why the same word might be used for both stories, with the basket and the ark being called vessels of deliverance. This phrase got me thinking bigger though - vessels of deliverance - where else might we see these vessels of deliverance?
This story tells us about five women who were instrumental in Moses getting his start in life. Three out of five of them are named, which isn’t a bad ratio when it comes to women in the bible.
First we have Shiphrah and Puah, who represent several midwives commanded by Pharaoh to kill all newborn children who were male. Obviously, Pharaoh didn’t see women as threats, but we read that, “the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.” (v. 17) The midwives feared God and did not do as Pharaoh commanded them. It doesn’t say that they didn’t fear Pharaoh. After all, Pharaoh was the most powerful and fearsome person in the known world, and the Hebrew midwives were slaves. They knew that to disobey Pharaoh was to risk their lives. Their faith in their god, their loyalty and dedication to their god, helped them to follow their heart, to be brave and to act with courage, and to go against this command. And when later questioned, they told Pharaoh that the Hebrew women were so strong, so vigorous, that the babies were born before they were even summoned to help. Pharaoh, being a man, and one who lived in such power and luxury as to be ignorant of women in labour, and especially Hebrew women, must have believed them. The midwives, including Shiphrah and Puah, continued to help babies be born and the Hebrew population continued to grow.
And so also did Pharaoh’s fear of a possible uprising. He then directl ordered his soldiers to root out all the male Hebrew babies and throw them into the Nile river.
Enter Moses’ mother, who is unnamed in our text but in Jewish tradition is called Jochabed. Jochabed had a son and hid him for three months, but babies become more difficult to hide as they grow. Jochabed began to fear that the soldiers would discover her son and take him away from her. So she decides to put the life of her child into God’s hands. She puts him in a waterproof basket and places “it among the reeds on the bank of the river.”
Now, Moses’ sister, who we found out later is named Miriam, wasn’t just going to let it go at that. She watched the basket to see, we are told, to see where it might go, but I also think she was protecting her little brother in the only way she knew how.
And then we have Pharaoh’s daughter, the only one in this story, of which I’m aware, was never given a name. This is another woman though, who I suspect, like the midwives, felt uncomfortable with Pharaoh’s commandment to kill all these newborns. She finds this baby in the reeds of the river, and instead of calling out to a soldier, instead of turning a blind eye and walking away, she looks at this Hebrew child with pity. Miriam sees this and immediately she comes out of hiding and comes up with a solution for this royal person. She recommends to Pharaoh’s daughter that she knows someone who might be able to nurse this child until he is old enough to be cared for by Pharaoh’s daughter. We don’t know the age of Pharaoh’s daughter, we don’t know if she is married, we don’t know if she’s able to bear her own children, but for some reason, she decides that she raise this child as her own, knowing he was Hebrew, knowing her father wanted him dead.
Miriam brings back a nurse for the child, the child’s own mother, of course. Did Pharaoh’s daughter guess that’s who it was? We don’t know. Was Jochebed grateful to this woman who was saving her child from being thrown in the river? Did she feel resentment for being paid to nurse her own child and jealousy when she had to eventually give him up? These are great stories to delve into and unpack, stories that have so little detail that they just scream to be re-imagined and explored.
What I see in these stories today is the subtle roles that these women played in the life of this larger-than-life hero in our bible. It emphasizes how the small actions of ordinary people can make a big difference. This week, we are going to share with the children that everyone can be a hero. There are so many stories right now, popular in comic books and theatres, that lift up these exceptional people as extra-ordinary superheroes, and in some ways, they seem unattainable to us, but in other ways, the stories help us to relate to these people who have these exceptional powers but are ordinary people who make mistakes, who fall in love, who get angry, and who just want to make a difference in the world. We want the children to know that they don’t have to have superpowers to be exceptional and to make a difference in the world.
That goes for all of us. Whether you are in a profession that supports and encourages people, whether you are a parent or guardian that raises a child with love and encouragement, whether you recycle, compost, and care about what’s happening to the earth, whether you speak up when someone says words that are racist or homophobic - these actions may feel small or insignificant, but we just never know in what way we are changing the world.
Even as a church, as one faith community amongst thousands and even millions of other faith communities, we can be exceptional, we can make the difference in one person’s life or in one community. The decisions we make today, the actions we take, how we live out our faith in the world, makes an impact, hopefully for good.
In what way are you a vessel of deliverance? In what way might we, as a church, be a vessel of deliverance?
Like the midwives, may our loyalty and dedication to our faith, make us brave in the face of corrupt power. Like Moses’ mother, may our tenacious love give us the courage to let go and let God. Like Miriam, Moses’ sister, may we be protectors and subtle instigators. Like Pharaoh’s daughter, to whom we might be most similar as a privileged people, may we be aware of injustice, may we be willing to risk backlash when we go against what’s expected of us, and may we open our hearts and our lives to ways we might make a difference in the world. May it be so. Amen.