You can change the world.
You may believe you're insignificant, but the future belongs to the insignificant.
You may believe you're a failure, but the future belongs to the failures.
You can change the world.
Exodus 1 gives us the story of a confrontation: on the right, Pharoah. "Pharoah" is just what an Egyptian king was called, a bit like Russian kings being called Tsars. Despite scholars' best efforts, we really don't know which Pharoah it is; his name has been lost in history. And on the left we have two insignificant midwives. Their names have been preserved for us through history. Because they were the ones who made a difference. Pharoah only had power; the midwives transformed history.
Shiprah and Puah did three significant things: they feared God (v17); they stood up against their master and employer by refusing to kill babies; and they preserved the people of God.
First of all, they feared God, in circumstances where most of us would have been fearing Pharoah. Pharoah certainly isn't fearing God, and while the Israelites are being fruitful and multiplying in verse 7 - I think we're meant to hear an echo of the garden of Eden - Pharoah and his people have forgotten the Joseph story and started fearing that their power be taken away. It doesn't make sense, does it? Suppose you lived in a country with an increasing number of immigrants, who had a higher birthrate than the native tribes. You wouldn't react with fear, would you? You'd just make sure that the immigrant people were so well and justly and generously treated that they would love to cooperate to your society and economy and contribute to your wellbeing. Ah, but that's because you fear God more than you fear people. Pharoah starts by enslaving, and ends in genocide. He was terrifying. Hitler, Saddam, Kilroy Silk, Stalin, all rolled into one. But the midwives feared God.
And because they feared God, Shiprah and Puah defied their employer and broke the law (because the basic law in Egypt was 'if Pharoah says do, do it'). They lied in verse 19, of course, but they did lie to avoid genocide so I think we can cut them some slack. It's like if gunmen burst into church now and said 'where's the chair of the parish council, we want to kill him', we wouldn't say 'it's John Turkentine, he's over there', we'd say 'actually we think he's on holiday in Portugal at the moment, why don't you try again in March'. The point is that they defied orders and laws they knew to be unjust. And don't think it could never happen here. What about Jenny Mack, who's training to be a midwife? What if, one day, she was ordered by the Department of Health not to resuscitate babies with Downs Syndrome if they stopped breathing?
And of course all of us might be faced with less dramatic situations and needs for defiance. I sometimes wonder if too much of the time we teach children that they should be obedient and do what they're told, and don't sufficiently teach them that in this fallen world what governments or corporations do is sometimes unjust and bad, and might need to be stood against. I think of the children that walked with their parents on the Make Poverty History March to Trafalgar Square, calling on the UK government to use its global influence for debt relief, development aid and fair trade. If you learn at any early age that insignificant, defiant people can change society, you'll live the rest of your life aware of your potential. I think of an advertising executive, whom Alison and I got to know. An advertiser who dared to say to his client that the advert they wanted would misrepresent what their product actually did! And he lost his job for it. And his family lost their primary breadwinner. And he had a prematurely-born daughter; caring for her was already pulling his family apart, they didn't need an extra burden. But he feared God more than people, so he defied the client, and his company, and found himself jobless. The same thing has happened to at least one person here, I won't embarrass you by naming you, and you probably all have your stories of defiance. We need to learn to ask questions: for whose benefit am I being asked to do this? Is this legitimate?
You can change the world.
You may believe you're insignificant, but the future belongs to the insignificant.
You may believe you're a failure, but the future belongs to the failures.
You can change the world.
Suppose you work as a part-time junior employee in the hospitality department of a large corporation. There's not much you could do to change things, is there? How about getting fairly traded products into circulation? I have a friend who's done exactly that. And so on. If we believe we can change things, things may get changed. Suppose whenever your neighbours thought of the word 'Christian', the first word that came into their heads was 'defiant' or 'subversive'. It wouldn't make life any more comfortable for the church, but it would certainly stir things up. Suppose whenever anyone was discriminated against at work for skin colour or sex, their first instinct was to go and tell the Christians about it, knowing that they wouldn't let anyone get away with that. Just suppose. And know, I haven't left Exodus 1 behind, the point of Exodus 1 is that Shiprah and Puah feared God and therefore they defied injustice.
And finally, Shiprah and Puah preserved the people of God. Without them, the chain from Abraham to Jesus to us would have been broken - God's plan for the world involves a people that will be there in every generation. And in human terms, there is no guarantee that in any one area of the world the chain will be unbroken into the future, either. Statistics show that anglican churchgoing was up last year for the first time in three decades, but only by 1%, and there's been enormous decline over half a century. (Overall, because in Free Churches and among Roman Catholics numbers are still decreasing, there are probably only the same number of worshipping Christians now as there were at the beginning of the millennium; and don't rely on the Americans helping us out, their numbers are down!). It seems like we've largely lost the generation now aged 30-45, and if there are slightly more of the 15-30s in church, that has to be in part thanks to grandparents. And thanks to people who aren't parents themselves but give time and efforts and prayer to bringing a new generation to God. They're a whole lot like the midwives, it seems to me - Shiprah and Puah had no children of their own until the end of the chapter, but they brought many others into the world. I look round this room and I see people who've been youth leaders, Pathfinder leaders, CYFA leaders, Galleywood Children prayer supporters, Racerunners team members, mentors over the years. Thank you. The chain of the People of God through the generations has been maintained thanks to you.
And now, what about the under 15s? Who will be their midwives? Who will bring them to faith? Yes, this is a plea for more JAM Club leaders. But it's more than that. It's a declaration that like Shiprah and Puah, you can change the world. Now, we're going to miss an evening reading from Exodus because we've got a service for bereaved people next week, but we'll pick the story up at the end of chapter 2 in two weeks' time. So the bit of the story we'll miss at the start of chapter 2 is how God preserved on particular baby, Moses, who would lead his people. Thanks to Shiprah and Puah, there was a people to lead.
Midwives don't give birth, they're just there to assist; and God's management of history is such that he isn't asking you to do anything single-handed either. He's asking you to be part of his dream, his story, that's all. He wants you available to be there to assist in his work of transforming a world that groans with birthpangs and of bringing new generations to spiritual birth. I wonder if you could be a midwife, too?
Andy Griffiths