Ex 2.1-10 – 4 Women who shaped Moses. 19th March 2023.
Welcome to Mothering Sunday. The great thing about Mothering Sunday is that if you’re a mother then you should feel some love today from your children. If your children are any good then hopefully its not just this one day of the year but hey, take the love and enjoy it today.
As far as I can see this is a clever invention from the days of Downton Abbey as a way of giving their workers a day off to go and see their families. Some people think it’s been around since the medieval period. Maybe. But certainly, it took off in the early 1900s.
So, Mothering Sunday is a great day for mothers everywhere to feel the love. Note the prayer on the prayer table from the Mother’s Union, and Note the great work that they do.
But. Today is not Mother’s Day. It is Mothering Sunday.
So today, yes, we give thanks to God for our Mothers,
but we also give thanks to God for those who have Mothered us.
So some of you will know my story and the relevant bit here is the bit where my Dad had to mother me after my mum died.
I remember reading a Charlie Brown cartoon in which a character, Peppermint Patty goes into a shop to by a Mother’s Day card for her dad and can’t find one. It made me cry.
So Today is Mothering Sunday and that means we give thanks to God for our Mothers,
and it means that we give thanks to God for those who have mothered us,
and it means we give thanks to God for Mother Church.
Yes, Mother Church – we as the family of God – its our job to look out for each other, nurture each other, encourage each other – so I remind you again to look around and take note of who is here and as the weeks go by take a note of who is not here. And call them up, see how they’re doing.
We understand if you miss a Sunday or two, but we would not want to discover that you’d had a fall, or gone into hospital or something and you, Mother Church, didn’t know about it.
So point one is thank God for your mothers, point 2 thank God for those who have mothered you, and point 3 thank God for mother church and think about who and how and where and when you can help with the care and nurturing of us all as a family.
Some of you are thinking that sermon is too short to be true. And I will admit you’re owed a short sermon. But not today.
I want us to go back over some of the points that I’ve just made by looking at some of the key women in the life of Moses.
Our OT reading was the birth of Moses and we’re spending quite a bit of time this year focusing on the OT and discovering that there’s some good stuff here.
There’s a man called Amram and he married a woman called Jochebed – or more likely Yocheved. They have two children already; I think that Miriam is older than Aaron.
And then there is this decree that baby boys are to be flung into the Nile.
There’s a legend that says that Amram was at the time the leader of the Sanhedrin – I’m not sure there would have been a Sanhedrin at this time – but let’s let the story flow – and Amram put a proposal saying – We should stop having any children, because to have a child at this time is to risk its death.
There are plenty of people today who are thinking the same thoughts. Living in a refugee camp, we cannot feed ourselves, how on earth can we dream of feeding another? So, this is not a new question.
We can understand where Amram is coming from.
But, says the story, Miriam, his daughter, stands up and says ‘Wait, don’t vote like that! You will make yourselves worse than Pharaoh, if you do this, for then you will be definitely killing all new Hebrews by not allowing them to be born, whereas Pharaoh is only killing the boys.’
And so she had the courage to stand up- against her dad, against the wise religious elders and say something – that’s a lot of courage.
Yocheved and Amram made the decision to try to have another child. She must have had a lot of faith, a lot of confidence in God, that God would some how find a way.
There were two Hebrew midwives – Shiphrah (Shifra) and Puah – and they know about this policy but they allow these Hebrew boys to survive and so they are called in to give an account.
Now this is tricky. There are times when you feel there’s something wrong with the policy, like Miriam, and that’s when you stand up and speak out in the hope that you can change the policy.
But there are other times when maybe a little fib will do the trick.
The problem for Shifra and Puah is that if they say ‘Oh Pharaoh, we do not agree with this policy’ then Pharaoh will say ‘Ok well, you’re dead, and I’ll find someone else who does.’
So they have the courage to tell a lie – a racially charged lie – ‘Well Pharaoh you know how it is, there’s something a little different about these Hebrew women as opposed to the normal ancient Egyptian women, which means that when they give birth, goodness me it happens so fast that often its all happened before we arrive.
There’s a lot of risk here. But the key thing to take away from Shifra and Puah is that they are the first people, women, who will not say “I was only following orders”.
Here we see a brave lie, a quiet act of civil disobedience.
Yes we are called to be good patriots, to be good citizens, to pray for those who rule over us, to bless the authorities, but we do not honour the authorities more than we honour God.
We seek a heavenly city, we are just pilgrims through this life, and we have another level of accountability.
So well done to Shifra and Puah – praise the Lord for their Conscience and for their courage.
Yocheved shows great faith, great confidence in God and in His plans but she herself does some planning too. So as Moses, Moshe, gets bigger, three months old, she follows the letter of the law and puts Moses in the river – but instead of just flinging him there for the crocodiles, she puts him in this little boat, a tiny Ark.
And with the plan goes Miriam, watch what happens to Moses. Is it divine coincidence? Is it a little bit of timing and planning by Yocheved that Moses is placed up-stream, able to float down towards where the river runs past the palace.
And then we see Pharaoh’s daughter draw this basket out of the water. In 1 Chronicles 4v18, in a list of who begat who and so on, there’s a sudden reference to Pharaoh’s Daughter Bithiah. The Hebrew Sages wondered if this is the name of the woman, who drew Moses out of the water – they call her Bitya.
Princess Bitya, its her dad who has this policy of killing Hebrew boys, and she says I’m going to save this one.
I read into this that not all ancient Egyptians were bad, that not all who grow up in a Palace with a silver spoon in their mouth, are blind to pain and wrong.
We do so often feel helpless – what can I do? But what she does is save this one. Did she save others? We don’t know. But this day she did some good and saved one.
These are the women without whom there would have been no Moses.
Yocheved The mother who has enough faith to trust that God has as plan and enough cunning to provide an opportunity for God to do His thing.
Shifra and Puah who have the courage to lie because they have a conscience that will not be quietened by the “I was only following orders” defense.
Miriam, the sister, who has the courage to stand up to her dad, the courage to approach Pharaoh’s Daughter with a solution.
Bitya, the princess, who doesn’t agree with her dad either, and has found a small way in which she can do some good. Her compassion – even though she follows the scary ancient Egyptian gods, she has enough compassion to do some good this day.
One more woman to come, but so far we’re seeing that the women who have been involved in bringing us Moses have shown astonishing Courage, compassion, confidence in God, and a conscience that leads them to do some good.
One more – Zipporah/Tziporah – Moses wife. Some of you will think that the only reason why I’m mentioning her is because in the King James Bible she gets to call Moses her ‘bloody husband’ Ex 4.25, 26.
Moses is on his way back to Egypt having had the call of God to go and ask Pharaoh to ‘Let my people go’.
On the way back its as if he has forgotten that he is part of the covenant of God, and he has forgotten to cut his son into that covenant, for him to be circumcised, and it looks as if God is going to kill Moses and that’s the catalyst for Zipporah to circumcise their son and then to touch Moses’ feet, as if to atone for Moses’ sin – her bloody husband who forgot to do the most basic of duties.
My point is actually about Commitment. Zipporah doesn’t come from the faith of Moses, but here in this moment she shows that she is all in. Her commitment, keeps Moses on the straight and narrow.
So many women have been key to our lives – have fought for us, kept us on the straight and narrow, shown us how to live a life of faith and confidence in God, shown us and taught us compassion and courage.
Today as we celebrate Mothering Sunday, yes Give thanks to God for those who have mothered you, been part of nurturing you,
But also pause to pray for those whom you have nurtured, those to whom you have shown, do show, – and yet might yet still show – what it means to live a life of faith, with a conscience, with compassion, with courage.
Amen.