Sometimes I think about the children born in this country after September 11, 2001. I wonder how they view the world. They only know a country at war. In addition to fire drills, now in many schools they practice “intruder drills,” how to sit in the dark with their heads on their desks in case a violent intruder enters the building. Are these children any more fearful than those of us who learned how to duck and cover under our desks in case of nuclear attack? Is fear part of the air they breathe? we all breathe? Do we all just get used to it?

I think about children in other countries, the little girl on the front page of the Post this week, standing in the rubble of her neighborhood, in the rubble of her family home in Gaza. Or the children who live with war and the after effects of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Congo, Colombia… I think of the children who for many years, in many African countries have been losing their parents to AIDS. Or the children in Liberia right now, navigating life with the Ebola virus. Or the children who are fleeing their family and homes in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras because they are being forced into gangs, forced to kill, forced to rape or be raped. What kind of fear do they live with, breathe in every day?

Moses, revered leader of the Jewish people, leader of Israel, was born into a world where this kind of fear was palpable. Is it any wonder he stuttered?

The birth story of Moses is familiar because many of us learned it as children and because it is just so true. We are introduced to the pharaoh, powerful ruler of Egypt. He has no name. He is an archetype of rulers who lead by fear and cruelty, who lead out of their own fear. Call him Herod, call him Idi Amin, Hitler, Assad.

The previous pharaoh had connections with Joseph, the Israelite. But that pharaoh died and now this pharaoh has no “in” with that community. The new pharaoh is worried sick about a revolt, a political power grab, from what is becoming a larger and larger group, the descendants of Jacob. He decides the Israelites must be enslaved so that they do not turn against what is soon to be, the Egyptian minority.

The pharaoh creates slave masters who work the Israelites hard, and  harder. He figures if the people are tired enough they will no longer reproduce; there will be no more children. The Israelites will die out.

But that is not how it works. The more oppressed the people become, the more they find solace in each other. More and more children are born. Over the years the work gets harder and more severe, the Israelites are shown no mercy at all, the people are crushed by intense labor. And yet they continue to multiply. Perhaps it is the only way they have to resist.

But the harsh conditions are not enough for the pharaoh. Now a slave uprising terrifies him. He goes directly to the source of the problem, the midwives of these prolific Hebrew women.

“Examine the babies as soon as they are born. Kill the boys, you can let the girls live.” This pharaoh knows no way to lead except by fear.  And he means to put fear into the hearts of the midwives, Shiprah and Puah.

Shiprah and Puah are afraid, but not of this pharaoh. We are told that the midwives “fear God.” And their fear of God is greater than any fear they may have of this ruler, as threatening as he may be. They allow all the babies to live, girls and boys.

The pharaoh wonders why these baby boys continue to exist. He has been unequivocal with his instruction and still boy babies are born and live. He summons the midwives to explain this to him. And here they have the upper hand for what do men know about this realm of women? Perhaps Shiprah and Puah, knowing the human body so well, sense the fear that emanates from the body of the pharaoh. And so they explain that Hebrew women are more vigorous than the Egyptian women that the midwives also attend. The midwives from the guild just can’t get to the Hebrew women in time to even assist with the births.

We are told again that the midwives “fear God.” They obey God’s ways, and by implication, they do not fear the pharaoh. Shiprah (meaning Beautiful) and Puah (Splendid) stand up to the pharaoh because as midwives they know the true source of life; they know the most primal power. They know that pharaoh’s power is nothing compared to the power of birth, of life, of God.

The pharaoh has no fear of God, just of losing power, of losing position, wealth and control. If he cannot control reproduction and birth, if cannot get the midwives to do his dirty work, he will have to consolidate power. His will have his own men throw all the Hebrew boy babies into the Nile River. (The girls, they can live, how dangerous can they be?)

How dangerous can girls and women be? They can turn the world upside down. We don’t get any names but a woman, descended from Joseph’s brother Levi, gives birth to a boy. And just as when God created the world and saw that it was good, this woman sees that her new creation, her baby boy, is good. She hides him until she can hide him no longer.

Then she puts him into the NiIe, just as the pharaoh has commanded. Except that she does not put him directly into the river. She places him in a waterproof basket. The mother enlists her daughter to help with her little brother, to watch over him while he is in the water.

Another nameless woman comes along, though this woman, the daughter of the pharaoh, has status and a retinue of attendants. Seeing the strange basket floating in the reeds, she commands one of her attendants to fetch it. She hears the hungry squalls of a baby. This woman of power has grown up knowing that Hebrew boys are an unwanted threat, they are to be killed. She knows immediately that this baby boy must be a child of the Hebrews. And yet she saves him by pulling him out of the water.

Then out of the reeds along the river, a girl mysteriously appears and offers to find a wet nurse for the child. The baby’s sister returns him to his own birth mother. Finally when the boy is weaned, when he is taken from his mother a second time, he receives a name, Moses, “one who pulls out.”

How amazing that all these nameless women work together to preserve the life of this baby boy. Perhaps the women are nameless like the pharaoh because they too are archetypes. There are always women who will find creative ways to resist abusive power. There are always people who will stand up to power mongers, God fearing people who will find ways to pull life out of the water when they expect to see death.

song –
The Lord is my light, and my salvation, whom shall I fear?

What are we to make of this story, so full of fear and violence? The story is laced through with Pharaoh’s fear. We are told that the midwives “fear God.” When the other women appear- mother, daughter, pharaoh’s daughter -they are wiling to risk the wrath of the pharaoh. Perhaps they are also God-fearers.

It is a strange term. We who say we have a loving God, are not fond of saying we ”fear God.” And yet, we might consider the phrase. If we do not fear God, who and what do we fear?

Certainly there are many people in this country that fear ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. They fear disruption of their lives. They fear deportation. They fear their families being torn apart. And there are people, who do not have their papers, who fear God more, who fear for their children and families, who are willing to risk arrest in an act of civil disobedience, in hope that this will speak to the fearful rulers.

Many of us fear being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. We fear the paperwork, the hours and hours it takes to respond to an audit, the possibility of fines. And other people of faith fear God more. So they deliberately do not pay that part of their taxes that goes to fund the military in this country – in hope that some day this will be noticed and speak to the hearts and minds of those who lead by fear and violence.

There are many in the Mennonite Church, in the Christian church, who fear that the institution is crumbling. They fear that what we know now as Christianity cannot survive new and multiple biblical interpretations, the pressures of culture, the lack of funding. The fear of the loss of a predictable church and faith overtakes our fear of God. And some people of faith continue on with joy and justice, hospitality and hope, hope that Jesus is larger than the church as we know it in this time and place, hope that God is more eternal than the institutions we build.

Fear: it is always part of our lives. It is in the air we breathe, in this time, and in every time. We can fear power and loss of power, we can fear control and loss of control. We can fear what is new and that there will never be nothing new. We can be like the pharaoh.

Shiprah and Puah live and act out of respect for life and fear of God, rather than fear of the pharaoh’s violence. The unnamed women – mother, daughter, the pharaoh’s daughter – act out of life and love, faith and hope, rather than the fear of death. Let us be like these.