Birthing the Kingdom: Women, (Dis)Obedience and Submission

Birthing the Kingdom: Women, (Dis)obedience and Submission Megan T. Wilson-Reitz A homily delivered at FutureChurch’s 16th Annual Celebration of the Feast of St. Mary of Magdala “Unheard Homilies II: End the Silencing of Catholic Women” Thursday, July 19th, 2012

A reading from the Book of Exodus. [Exodus 1:8-22; NAB]

Now Joseph and all his brothers and that whole generation died. But the Israelites were fruitful and prolific. They multiplied and became so very numerous that the land was filled with them.

Then a new king, who knew nothing of Joseph, rose to power in Egypt.

He said to his people, “See! The Israelite people have multiplied and become more numerous than we are! Come, let us deal shrewdly with them to stop their increase; otherwise, in time of war they too may join our enemies to fight against us, and so leave the land.”

Accordingly, they set supervisors over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. Thus they had to build for Pharaoh* the garrison cities of Pithom and Raamses. Yet the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians began to loathe the Israelites.

So the Egyptians reduced the Israelites to cruel slavery, making life bitter for them with hard labor, at mortar* and brick and all kinds of field work—cruelly oppressed in all their labor.

The king of Egypt told the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was called Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you act as midwives for the Hebrew women, look on the birthstool: if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she may live.”

The midwives, however, feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt had ordered them, but let the boys live.

So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this, allowing the boys to live?” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women. They are robust and give birth before the midwife arrives.”

Therefore God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and grew very numerous. And because the midwives feared God, God built up families for them.

Pharaoh then commanded all his people, “Throw into the Nile every boy that is born, but you may let all the girls live.”

Now a man of the house of Levi [Amram] married a Levite woman [Jochebed], and the woman conceived and bore a son. Seeing what a fine child he was, she hid him for three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she took a papyrus basket,* daubed it with bitumen and pitch, and putting the child in it, placed it among the reeds on the bank of the Nile.

The word of the Lord.

of 8 ALL: Thanks be to God.

of 8 Shiphrah and Puah. We don’t hear about them very often.1 If you have never heard of them, you’re not alone. Many haven’t. Their work was quiet and humble, The dark, blood-soaked women’s mysteries of childbearing. Not the sort of work that receives priestly solemnities or great hymns of praise or battlefield epics. But they are remembered, and they are named. Biblical scholars think that their names were preserved by the Israelite women, Women who told this story to one another In the quiet moments in the night between labor pains, Remembering the midwives whose courageous refusal to cooperate with genocide Brought their entire people new life.

I love this story because Shiphrah and Puah’s integrity and faith in God is so great that they resist even the king of Egypt, the most powerful single human being either of them had ever known, (more than a human, in fact; the Egyptians believed Pharaoh to be divine, his power was so complete)

They resist, and they live to tell the story. And, not incidentally, they conspire with several other women to save the life of one particular tiny baby boy, a baby boy floating in a basket on the Nile, who, if you remember your Old Testament, would grow up to liberate all of the House of Israel from brutal oppression and slavery to Pharaoh.

I also love this story because it poses for me a very uncomfortable challenge. Because Shiphrah and Puah challenge me to OBEDIENCE and SUBMISSION. And as Christian virtues go, those typically don’t make it to the top of my list.

So what does the story of Shiphrah and Puah have to do with obedience and submission?? There are three points of connection that I see: 1) We see obedience and submission as natural elements of childbirth; 2) We see obedience and submission to God enacted through DISOBEDIENCE and RESISTANCE to those who use their ‘authority’ in ways that defy God’s will and commandments. 3) We see obedience and submission to God as being something that is fertile and liberative, bearing fruit over time, through the generations, from Shiphrah and Puah to us, their daughters and sons.

So first, let’s talk about obedience and submission in childbirth. And when’s the last time you heard about birth from the pulpit? It’s a little too messy and scary, I guess. But we’re going to take it on in spite of – no, because of that.

1While this chapter of Exodus does appear in the lectionary (albeit on a rather obscure date, the 15th Monday in Ordinary Time, Year I), the lectionary reading intentionally excises the story of Shiphrah and Puah, skipping right from verse 14 to verse 22. The story of these two brave women, therefore, is never read from the pulpit in during Mass.

of 8 So Shiphrah and Puah are, first and foremost, midwives -- Which means two things: One, that they minister almost entirely to women And have a very clear idea of just how powerful women can be Especially when their children are threatened. And Two, that they are no strangers to obedience and submission. Midwives will tell you, Nothing truly new can come into this world without a moment of utter submission to God. Birthing my own children taught me this.

I am speaking literally about the birth of a child, of course, but also about more than that. Each of us “births” new life in some way. “All creation,” writes Paul to the Romans, “is groaning in labor pains even until now.” You could say that we have accepted the invitation, in baptism, to join together with all the Body of Christ to labor together to “birth” the Kingdom. We all need to understand something about birth.

Anyone who has ever attended a birth, or given birth, will attest to this: in every labor, there is a moment when the mother must submerge her own will into to the greater rhythm and power of her labor in order for the child to be born. For every woman this happens differently, but every woman who has birthed a child has had this experience of ultimate submission.

When my first child was born, I was in labor – accompanied by a tireless midwife (and my husband)– for a Very. Long. Time. I thought I was in control of this thing – I thought I knew what to expect – I thought I had it covered. I positively refused to surrender my will, my power, my plan, to the needs of labor and birth. But after THREE DAYS of labor, there came a moment when I had to give up on the plan, and scream, “I can’t DO this!” If you’re nodding, you know, you’ve been there. Midwives love it when a woman starts screaming “I can’t DO this!” It means that the wait is over; that baby is coming any minute. Because the last barrier to birth – the woman’s own self-sufficiency and pride – has finally dissolved.

Perhaps when women call out in labor “I can’t do this!” what they are really saying is, “Please, God, it’s your turn. Do with me as you will.”

It is hard to imagine a more complete experience of obedience and submission than birth. And obedience and submission is at the heart of our Christian story.

Jesus’ death on the cross … brings new life??

of 8 That makes a lot more sense to me now, after birthing a child! Because when you give over control of everything in order to give life to another person, When blood and water pours from your open body, That is when you are most fully in the grip of God’s ferocious mother-love.

And the women who attend births themselves, they know what it is to walk with someone through fear through anguish to submission to the celebration of New Life. Of course it was the women – Mary of Magdala -- who waited at the foot of the Cross. They were the midwives of the Resurrection.

And our own biblical midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, Knowing all this, Knowing what it is to submit fully to the will of God, Knowing that it is the only way to new life, Knowing, too, the risk of doing so, demonstrate their unflinching obedience to the law of God.

Their obedience is expressed in spectacular disobedience to Pharaoh.

And this is my second point: To OBEY and SUBMIT to God is necessary. But to OBEY and SUBMIT to the wrong authorities is often DISOBEDIENCE to God. Time and time again we see, in Scripture, story after story of disobedience that is really obedience.

So how do we discern what is proper obedience, and what is improper? I will not pretend to have an easy answer to this question, To pretend to know how discernment is supposed to work when so many claim to know God’s mind or have God’s stamp of approval or cite God’s word or speak with God’s voice or rule with God’s authority and yet fail to exhibit moral leadership, fail to demonstrate compassion, fail to live out the clear instructions given to us by Jesus in the Gospels fail abysmally at imitation of the Christ. I will not pretend to know for sure who has God’s approval And who does not.

But I will say that the test

of 8 should be transparency. Those who style themselves authorities Must always be held up against the light of the Gospel. Does the light shine through them? Or do they cast a shadow?

The Spanish phrase dar a luz, meaning “to give birth,” translates literally as “give to the light.” We are called, as the Body of Christ, to birth the Kingdom, To give ourselves and our community together to the light, And Shiphrah and Puah challenge us to resist anyone who would stand before that light And cast a shadow.

The critical question of Shiphrah and Puah is this: whose authority am I compelled to obey? And whose authority am I compelled, as a follower of God, to disobey?

I don’t think that Shiphrah and Puah for even a moment contemplated killing baby boys as they emerged from their mothers’ wombs. But there was also no doubt about it: to disobey Pharaoh was death. They knew that, and they did it anyway – cleverly enough to survive it. But let’s not pretend that everyone survives this kind of disobedience. Many do not. Many emerge from their confrontations with Pharaoh shattered; some never return. We know their names. We heard them this evening. We call them our martyrs.

Sometimes obedience to God Through disobedience to ‘authorities’ working against God’s will Can have grave and serious consequences.

Birth, too, is dangerous. But we take it on, face the risk with courage, Because each new little life is worth the risk.

This is Shiprah and Puah’s challenge to us. What risks are we being asked to assume in the birthing of the Kingdom? What radical submission, what obedience, what DISobedience, is asked of us As we labor to bring about the will of God in the world?

When ecclesiastical authorities demand that women religious set aside their urgent work for justice and mercy and human compassion as commanded by Jesus, and give their focus instead to orthodoxy of theological and dogmatic expression, We must ask, to WHOM to we owe our obedience?

When civil authorities demand that we deliver our tax money to quench our nation’s ever-increasing thirst for war and imperialist expansion, in direct opposition to the nonviolent love of Jesus and our own awareness that every dollar spent on war is one less dollar spent on the poor We must ask, to WHOM to we owe our obedience?

of 8 When nations command us to offer up the life’s blood of our infinitely precious children To be poured out in wars that destroy homes and families and tear apart the perfect bodies of other women’s infinitely precious children, We must ask, to WHOM to we owe our obedience?

When we live in a culture that rejects children, born and unborn, who are unwanted or unloved or the wrong color or the wrong religion or who speak the wrong language or have the wrong parents or live in the wrong place, When our laws do not protect them And there is no money allotted from all of our overflowing treasuries to supply even their most basic and desperate need, And we belong to a Church who tells us that our preferential option must be for the poor But whose bishops fail to advocate fully and loudly for their needs Because they are busy throwing press conferences for ‘religious freedom’ We must ask, to WHOM do we owe our obedience?

When we are scolded for being too open-handed to the poor, When we are told that loving the outcast is too dangerous or too messy or that it violates professional boundaries or enables addiction, We read the Gospel and we see clearly that we are commanded to personal attention to the needy, Personal relationship with the marginalized, We are told to give to anyone who asks of us, And we must ask, to WHOM to we owe our obedience?

The price of disobedience is often high, no matter whom we disobey. But Christian faith compels us to believe that the risk is worth it, If we take those risks for love of God and one another. If we take those risks in order to bring about the Kingdom of God.

My third point, now, is a brief one. It is simply a word of hope.

And that is this: obedience and submission to God can be risky When it entails disobedience to temporal authorities who wield great power of their own. However, the lesson of Scripture is that obedience to God also bears fruit beyond anything that we can imagine.

Shiphrah and Puah are important not simply because they protected the baby boys among their people From systematic, cold-blooded murder based on political expediency and fear, (A fear that, incidentally, dismissed little girls as not posing any threat to Pharaoh’s system of domination and oppression— Foolish man, underestimate women’s love and compassion and power and courage at your peril!)

No, this is not the only reason they are important. They are important, too, because they show us that OBEDIENCE and SUBMISSION to God Bear fruit beyond the immediate and urgent action.

of 8 God rewards the midwives for their obedience by giving them many children, But a generation later, the entire house of Israel is delivered from slavery Because of the courage of the women who delivered the children. To obey God’s will and commandments Is good not only for us, but for the future of our entire people.

The good news is, we still have plenty of opportunities to get it right. We have plenty of very clear directions to follow. Obedience and Submission to the will of God, as described by Jesus, is fairly simple: Live justly, Love our enemies, Pray for those who persecute us, Put away our swords lest we die by them, Care for the sick, Bury the dead, Visit the imprisoned, Feed the hungry, Give drink to the thirsty, Clothe the naked, Give all that you have to the poor, And follow.

If the world’s self-styled ‘authorities’ command any kind of obedience that leads us away from these commands of Jesus, as disciples, we must follow Shiphrah and Puah’s example: We listen politely, And then we ignore them. And then we resist them. We resist them with all that we are, Lie to them with brazen tongues, tell them, “we cannot do as you say, the women are too strong for us!” We pretend that we are each working alone, When, really, it is all of us together who are stronger than violence, Stronger than fear, Stronger than oppression.

And we emerge triumphant from Pharaoh’s crumbling palace, Watching his false power collapsing around him,

And we go back to work, The labor of birthing the Kingdom of God.