A Defiant Faith

Exodus 1:8-2:10

People have always told me there’s a big difference between little boys and little girls. I’m now a believer in that, but I haven’t always been. Prior to having Eli, I tried to graciously accept this assertion but thought under my breath, “Yeah, well, they’re different because you treated them differently. By treating little boys and little girls differently, you only accentuated the differences!”

When we had Eli, we tried to treat Eli, as a little boy, in the same way as we treated Ainslee, as a little girl. We wanted their differences as individuals to grow out of their personalities and not because we treated Ainslee as a little girl and Eli as a little boy. As has been the case with a number of my parenting theories, that worked about a week!

At very early ages, our kids seem to have turned into a very stereotypical little girl and little boy. Ainslee has a number of “girly-girl” tendencies. And Eli, well, let’s just say my mother commented a number of times this past month when she was with us, “You’re getting what’s coming to you.” Each day I have a greater understanding of what she means.

Nowhere is this more evident than when we are around water. Ainslee is much more cautious and careful. She thinks before she gets in and sometimes needs to be coaxed. Eli, by contrast, can usually be heard uttering these words before jumping into water where he can’t swim, “Hey Papa, watch!” and then into the water he plunges. He often comes up sputtering and coughing but that doesn’t deter him from doing the same thing all over again.

I couldn’t help but think of my own parenting experiences with Eli around water when I read through this text as Moses’ mother, Jochebed, puts her 3-month old son in a basket and then sets him afloat in the Nile River. This text has to provide first-rate examples of some of the most courageous women of the Bible … or the stupidest women of the Bible. Let’s say Moses was a normal boy, a stereotypical boy. Could his mother really have expected him to stay in that basket?! Most little boys I know would have figured a way out of that thing in moments. Now, granted, Moses is 3-months old but still!

What about some other examples in this story of courage…or is it stupidity? Pharaoh declares that all Hebrew boys are to be killed at birth. Midwives, the women who delivered the babies, were supposed to carry out this edict. But Shiphrah and Puah, two midwives named in this story and coincidently they are the only two people besides Moses who are named, defy the Pharaoh and let the boys live. Stupidity or courage…you make the call.

Jump down to the last section of our passage today. Pharaoh’s daughter goes down to the river to take a bath. While she’s there, she hears little Moses making a white-water raft out of his little basket with his frolicking. Pharaoh’s daughter has the basket brought to her, opens it up, and claims the child as her own. What would her dad, the Pharaoh, say? Now one of the Hebrew boys, whom Pharaoh most feared, ends up living right in his own house as his grandson. Boy, if this daughter wanted to tick her dad off, this seems like a sure recipe for it. Was this courageous on her part or stupid?

When we’re talking about things of faith, courage and stupidity sometime get mixed up for one another. Think about Jesus’ words when he told the rich man to sell all he had to give money to the poor. Think about Elijah and the 450 prophets of Ba’al. He soaked his sacrifice before he called down fire from heaven. How many people that day do you think we standing on the sidelines and saying, “Look at that stupid Elijah!” Think about Luther nailing his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg. Think about the hundreds of missionaries and aid workers across the world today putting their lives on the line for the sake of the Gospel and humanity. Some might call it stupidity. Others call it a courageous faith.

Last week I used the story of the Canaanite woman who pestered Jesus to provide for us all a model for feisty faith. Her feistiness and persistence brought about God’s mercy. This week, you could look at the courageous women in this story and say they’re feisty. But maybe a more appropriate adjective would be “defiant.” The characters, again women, give us an example of a defiant faith.

So who are Shiphrah’s and Puah’s here today? Is there any defiance in your faith? Some could argue that our faith isn’t called upon to be defiant. Here, we don’t face religious persecution from political tyrants. I don’t know of anyone recently who’s been burned at the stake for religious beliefs.

No, the tyrants you and I face are not political. You can disagree all you want about our local, state, and national politicians…no matter whether they are Republican, Democrat, Independent, or some other stripe. They’re still not tyrannical in the classic sense. Our physical well-being and freedoms are not immediately being threatened. The tyrants we face are much more subtle and, I believe, much more threatening. While we may not face political tyrants, we do face cultural tyrants.

We face the tyrant of acquisition. Our culture tells us over and over that to be a person of value, we must have the latest thing. From consumer products, to cars, to clothing styles, to recreational pursuits, we are gripped around the throat by this oppression.

We face the tyrant of over-extension. It’s been said a thousand times already. Maybe the one thousand and first time will make a difference but we’re over-extended. We work too much because we have to support our acquisition greed. We say “yes” to too many things because we don’t want to disappoint others. We sleep too little and it’s no wonder we are exhausted and don’t feel there’s time for God.

We face the tyrant of competition that devalues other people. We try and make ourselves look better than our co-workers so that job promotions come our way. We try and make ourselves look better in the eyes of God so our sins seem less than our neighbor’s sins. We talk about others…though not in their presence…with hopes that making them seem less will make us feel like we’re more.

We face the tyrant of apathy. It’s hard to think of apathy as a tyrant but there’s no tyranny so great in the church, and so useful to the devil, as the tyranny of apathetic Christians who just doesn’t care. God, for too many of us, is the number four wide receiver when life is headed toward the end of the half. When options 1-3 don’t work – and those 1-3 options are usually the other tyrants of acquisition, over-extension, and competition – then we throw up a “hail mary” with hopes that God will save us at the last moment.

Are there any Shiphrah’s and Puah’s in our midst who will stand up to these tyrants? Throughout history, God has used seemingly insignificant people to accomplish amazing things and often, these seemingly insignificant people demonstrated a defiant faith.

Amen.