Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16, Year A).

The text is Exodus 1:8-2:10.

The phrase that comes to mind when I think about our first reading, from the book of Exodus, is the old adage, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” The five women in this story were certainly not well-behaved (according to the standards of their time) and they most certainly did make history.

To put their contribution into perspective, I’d like to compare them to a more modern example. If Moses is Martin Luther King, then the women in this story, together, are Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King was the face of the Civil Rights Movement, but there would be no movement without Rosa Parks. The same could be said about the women of this story and their relationship to the rest of the book of Exodus.

First, we have Shiphrah and Puah the Hebrew midwives. When the Pharaoh issued his genocidal proclamation, they just looked at each other and said, “Nah. Not today, Satan!” They knew it was dangerous to go directly against an edict of the Pharaoh, so they made up an excuse to get out of it. They were the first to stand up against this oppression because they were the first to be impacted by it. The risk they incurred was the greatest because no one had dared to go against the Pharaoh like this before.

Next, we have Jochebed and Miriam, Moses’ mother and sister. They too did their part to resist the government-mandated murder of children. Jochebed hid Moses from the authorities for as long as she could and, when the jig was up, technically complied by putting the baby into the river, but only after she had constructed a waterproof basket for him. Miriam, meanwhile, stood close by and kept watch so that her little brother wouldn’t become crocodile food. Who knows? Maybe the plan was for Moses to stay in the river while Miriam kept watch, then for Jochebed to come back and get him later? That way, she could tell the Pharaoh that she complied with the order to “throw the baby into the river,” but the river threw him back!

Finally, we have Thermouthis, the daughter of the Pharaoh. Her story is quite interesting, because she had all the advantages of a privileged upbringing that would normally shelter her from the harsh reality of Hebrew suffering. Not only that, she was in the middle of a very personal moment, having come down to the river to bathe. Just imagine what it would be like to be in her place: You’re in the shower one day when the doorbell rings. Nobody would blame you if you just stayed where you were and said, “It’s not a good time; please come back later.” But just imagine, if you didn’t do that, but threw on a towel and answered the door anyway, only to find that someone had left a baby on your doorstep! My goodness!

It says a lot about the kind of person Thermouthis was, that she answered the door and sprang into action. For all we know, she may have already been secretly opposed to her father’s policy of genocide and was just waiting for an opportunity to act on those feelings?

What the brave African women of this story have in common is the fact that they all lived in the middle of an unjust situation that they were powerless to change. Under those circumstances, any or all of them could have thrown up her hands in the name of despair or cynicism. Each one risked terrible consequences by going against the Pharaoh’s proclamation, but nevertheless, she persisted.

In this way, the women of Exodus remind me of the hobbit Frodo Baggins from Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings.

When the wizard Gandalf explains to Frodo the enormity of the task before him, Frodo says, “I wish it need not have happened in my time.”

Wise old Gandalf replies, “So do I… and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

That is the question that was set before these five women of Exodus. They were powerless to change their circumstances, but they were not powerless. They could not stop the genocide, but they did plant seeds that led to the end of genocide and enslavement against the Hebrews.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta is thought to have said, “Not all of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love.”

When these women lived, the time was not yet ripe for the liberation of the enslaved Hebrew people. It would be several decades before the baby they saved would stand before the Pharaoh and order him in God’s name, “Let my people go!”

Like Rosa Parks and Mother Teresa after them, the divine calling of these holy women was to do “small things with great love,” and thus set in motion the movement that would put an end to the genocide and bring about the liberation of God’s people.

Of those five women, only Miriam lived long enough to see the result of her efforts. I wonder if Miriam, as she watched the tribes of her people crossing over the Red Sea on dry ground, thought about that day by the river, when Princess Thermouthis picked her baby brother up out of the basket their mother had made. She could not have imagined what would come about as a result of that moment.

There is another story, which happened several thousand years later. It takes place in South Africa, during the reign of the racist Apartheid regime. During that time, there was a law on the books that said people of color had to step off the sidewalk and into the gutter, lifting their hat in respect whenever a white person walked by.

A certain Anglican priest, a white man by the name of Father Trevor Huddleston, hated this law and the rest of the Apartheid system that so brutally degraded God’s people because of the color of their skin. In addition to his many sermons and books against Apartheid, Father Huddleston made it his personal practice to do the exact opposite of what this law required. Whenever he was walking down the street and a person of color was coming the other way, Father Huddleston would step into the gutter and lift his hat in respect.

One day, a young mother and her son were walking down the sidewalk and noticed Father Huddleston coming toward them. Per his usual practice, he stepped aside and lifted his hat as they went by. The little boy, then about five years old, asked his mother, “Mummy, who was that man?”

She replied, “Son, that man is an Anglican priest and furthermore, he is a man of God.”

The little boy would later say, “That was the day I decided that I wanted to be an Anglican priest and furthermore, a man of God.”

That little boy grew up to become Archbishop Desmond Tutu who, along with President Nelson Mandela, would dismantle the Apartheid system and usher South Africa into a new era of equality.

Father Huddleston was not able to end Apartheid by himself, but he was able to do “small things with great love” that made South Africa’s soil ready for the seeds of liberation. In the same way, God used Shiphrah, Puah, Jochebed, Miriam, and Thermouthis to prepare North Africa for the freedom that God intended for the people of Israel.

When we look at our lives in this world today, we can see many things that do not line up with God’s will. We are concerned about gun violence, systemic racism, runaway climate change, erosion of family values, decline in church attendance, and any other number of social issues that are worthy of our attention. All of these are problems that are too big to solve by ourselves or in our lifetimes. As much as we would like to do so, we cannot snap our fingers and make these problems go away. Like the five women of Exodus, we are powerless to change our circumstances, but we are not powerless. We can do “small things with great love,” as Mother Teresa said. We can plant seeds of liberation that may bear fruit in future generations.

Who knows? Maybe the seed you plant today will become the tree that bears fruit for tomorrow. Do not give in to the temptations of despair or cynicism. Do what good you can today and trust God to keep it going in the future. That’s the most that any of us can hope for. In the words of gospel singer Keith Green, “Keep doing your best and pray that it’s blessed; let God take care of the rest.”

Amen.