Month: August 2023

Exodus 3.1-15, Matthew 16.21-28

The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, 3 September 2023, Eldroth (Harvest), Clapham

God said to Moses, ’Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’

Now, Moses was a shepherd, and it’s likely that until that moment he’d only ever thought of Mount Horeb – the place where he was standing – as a hot and dusty hillside where he drove the flock of his father-in-law Jethro. Just hot and dusty ground, not holy ground. 

Moses was also a Hebrew, a people who had come to Egypt as refugees from famine, and who were being treated increasingly poorly by their hosts. In Egypt, the Hebrews were driven by callous taskmasters into relentlessly brutal work. Moses was actually on the run, having killed an Egyptian slave-master who was beating a Hebrew. Ground down in a hostile environment: for the Hebrews Egypt was not a holy ground.   

But God said to Moses, ‘Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’

And Moses, his face burning in the heat of the bush on fire before him, had his eyes opened to why that moment, in that place, was indeed holy:

For on that dry and dusty earth, God revealed himself to Moses the shepherd as the God of his father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

For in that place of Egyptian oppression, God disclosed to Moses the fugitive how he had seen the misery of the enslaved Hebrews, heard their cry on account of their taskmasters, and knew their sufferings. 

And in that place of Hebrew captivity, God made a solemn promise to Moses: that He would deliver the Hebrews from the Egyptians, and bring them up out of the land of their oppression to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 

Dusty old Mount Horeb became holy to Moses because it was where, in that moment, he encountered God; and learned that God had chosen not the powerful, privileged Egyptians but the poor, enslaved Hebrews, to walk alongside in their journey through this world. Through their promised coming journey together God would reveal His ways to all of humankind. 

In that moment of encounter Mount Horeb transformed, for Moses, into a place where he and his people would return time after time to praise God and renew their path through life with Him.

Now we might stop a moment here and ask ourselves, do we have a place – or places – which we would call ‘holy’? Or if not ‘holy’ then maybe ‘special’, ‘important’ places where we love to be, because in those places we always seem to meet the divine; those places where we are lifted, where we are strengthened, where we find solace or perspective on our troubles, where we find hope and promise for our onward journey?

Sometimes these are the most mundane places: a tatty old kitchen chair, an unkempt garden, a muddy field. Perhaps more often our special, holy places are beautiful, whether out in the open or buildings like this where, to quote T.S. Eliot, ‘prayer has been valid’ for many years, and we can feel it in ourselves, in this place. [1]

If you look at the picture of Mount Horeb it looks like quite an ugly place, rather desolate and forbidding. Which underlines a truth we might already cherish: that God is to be found, even in such places. Maybe especially in such places.

Which I hope is good news for today’s refugee people abandoned to live under canvas in vast camps in border territories – where, we pray, they may know that God sees their misery;

I hope it is good news for those who are caught up in modern slavery forced by today’s taskmasters into harsh labour in forbidding and dangerous workplaces – where, we pray, they may understand that God hears their cries;

I hope it’s good news for those being trafficked by the most dangerous means, in airless metal containers or patched-up dinghies – where, we pray, they may be certain that God knows their sufferings.

The Exodus from Egypt shows God coming close to a particular people to lead them on a journey from trouble to serenity. It plays an important part in the unfolding story of scripture through which the particular becomes universal, as first through Israel and then through Christ we learn that God loves and values all peoples and indeed all things, meaning that, in an important sense, everybody is holy and everything is holy: because God meets with all created beings in relationships rooted in divine order, gift, grace and love. This insight is the foundation of everything we celebrate and affirm at Harvest.

For if we accept that everybody is holy and everything is holy, then we can be confident that God is invested in us all, human and non-human alike; and we might pray that God will reveal to us how we can immerse ourselves more richly in this reciprocal world of care he has created. With the refugees, the enslaved and trafficked ones. With our neighbours, and with the creatures, and with the very soil beneath our feet.

When you pray, I imagine that like me, you might usually sit or kneel, close your eyes, and bow your head. Here’s a challenge directly from Mount Horeb. In the coming days, just once, rather than praying in the usual way, instead, take yourself to a place where you feel you can encounter God, whether inside or outside, whether in rain or sunshine; and stand; and remove your shoes. For the place on which you’ll be standing is holy ground. 

Notes

[1]    You are not here to verify, 

        Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity 

        Or carry report. 

        You are here to kneel 

        Where prayer has been valid.

– T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding.

Exodus 1.8 – 2.10, Matthew 16.13-20

The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 27 August 2023, Clapham 

The Telegraph, of all papers, admiringly called it ‘The most subversive drama on television’. Other publications have praised it in the same way. I am talking about Call the Midwife, the BBC’s drama about a group of nurse midwives working in an East End convent in the 1950s and 60s.

Why call it subversive when others criticise the programme for being sentimental, escapist in its ‘nostalgia for a poorer but more cohesive Britain’. But the Telegraph’s Gerard Gilbert saw that ‘beneath its cosy trappings, it depicts an important, transitional period of social history – of how we got from back-street abortions to freely available contraceptive pills. And it takes on hard-hitting medical issues: including TB, Thalidomide and female genital mutilation. All of this in a pre-watershed drama. There’s also nothing sugar-coated about the show’s depiction of the muck and pain of childbirth, with real babies used as much as possible; the show’s realistic scripts based on the memoirs of Poplar midwife Jennifer Worth, and the true-life tales of her  contemporaries.’ [1]

Heidi Thomas, the series’ creator and writer, says that ‘Call the Midwife does take quite intimate subjects and enables people to discuss’… it is about ‘challenging people’s comfort zone.’ Her scripts have told a story not just about the lives of pregnant women in the East End, but about the struggles of those most hidden from view – the poor, the sick, the ill, and the vulnerable; working class women for whom ‘much has changed’ since the ‘50s and ‘60s, and yet ‘little has changed’. [2]

These midwives act in the moment for the sake of the most vulnerable ones in their care – even if that might mean sometimes breaking the rules. ‘Making life or death decisions without recourse to the opinions of men, and being generally supportive of each other,’ as Thomas puts it. [3]

Whether struggling to preserve the life of a mother and child in a difficult birth, offering a room in the convent to a nurse who confesses to be an unmarried mother, helping a family escape domestic violence, calling out a maternity home which is mistreating its patients, or protecting an immigrant mother from abuse on the ward, with these midwives, love and courage go together, sentiment is inseparable from steel. Ever mindful of the preciousness of life, they work together to preserve it.

Maybe it has always been so, with midwives. In Exodus the story of Shiphrah and Puah is a tale of love and courage, sentiment and steel. Women of an enslaved people in a hostile environment, these two Hebrew midwives disobeyed the direct orders of the ruthless Egyptian king who told them to kill the Hebrew baby boys, and let the girls live. And they did it with panache: spinning a tale that Pharaoh was compelled to believe, that unlike the Egyptian women, Hebrew mothers  ‘are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them’. 

This was a risky strategy. It could so easily have gone wrong for Shiphrah and Puah if Pharaoh had decided to punish their disobedience and replace them with Egyptian midwives who would have done his bidding. But these two Hebrew midwives gambled on their having the upper hand in the unique power relationship between themselves and the king, a man inexperienced and lacking knowledge in the general ways of childbirth and the particular ways of Hebrew women. When they concocted their clever lie to protect the Hebrew baby boys, Pharaoh could do nothing other than believe them.

Now their refusal to follow the Pharaoh’s genocidal instructions was an act of love which ‘may be the first known incident of civil disobedience in history.’ Their courageous act has been called ‘the earliest, and in some ways the most powerful, example, of resistance to an evil regime’. [4]

Why would they take such a risk? Why would they decide to not conform to his will but to resist the ruthless king so firmly, and disobey him so completely? Perhaps because their first instinct as midwives was to focus intensely on the needs of the women who came to them in the distress of childbirth; to share the burden of their traumatic moment and help these women push through, to safety, relief and a safe birth. ‘Making life or death decisions without recourse to the opinions of men’. And always to put life before death – the preservation of life always their goal.

Shiphrah and Puah were women of an enslaved people, the Hebrews who had sought asylum in Egypt at a time of famine in their land, and whose growing numbers meant that the ruling classes regarded them with fear, and thus increasingly subjected them to policies of hostility, setting taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour. Life for the Hebrew midwives was one of constant dangers and threats; but they could do no other but put others’ needs first. The writer of Exodus tells us that Shiphrah and Puah acted this way because they ‘feared God’, which is the phrase used in the Hebrew scriptures to express religious devotion, or acting in love. [5]

It’s the same instinct which motivated Pharaoh’s daughter and the mother and sister of the child who would be called Moses, to act how they did at the riverside in the joyous coda to this opening section of Exodus: their self-giving love-instincts to cherish this baby carrying great risks but eclipsing any self-serving desire they may have had to follow the herd; Pharaoh’s daughter’s actions were all the more courageous for being a break with conformity not only to her own people, but also to her own father. Moses’ mother’s actions were all the more courageous for the great risk she took in giving her child away in hope this would help him survive and flourish.

All of this is like the love instinct we see reproduced in the real-life dramas of Jennifer Worth’s post-war Poplar, and those of today’s NHS midwives working demanding 12-hour shifts. For, to quote Call the Midwife, ‘Love is never the only answer. But it is always the best, the simplest, the one most likely to withstand the test of time. Love is the beginning. It should be the final word.’ [6] 

We may be haunted today by the case of Lucy Letby, and we hold in our hearts and prayers all the families of the babies she murdered or maimed, her colleagues, family and friends in the trauma of these events; if we feel able to, we might also pray for her and the redemption of her spirit. [7] 

We are horrified at her crimes because of the trust and admiration which we instinctively have for those in her profession, into whose hands we willingly put our lives and those of our loved ones, confident of their care. She may be the most extreme example, but Letby is sadly not the only nurse who has killed. But thankfully, these are very rare exceptions. 

And today we can give thanks for those who practically live out the love-instinct in their life and work day by day. Those who, seeing a need before them, respond to it in the moment, putting others’ needs before their own; those who, finding people suffering hostility from others, stand with them in protest and prayer, regardless of any punishing consequences this might cause them.

In a society which pressures us to be self-seeking, to love others less than ourselves, we are thankful and inspired by those who show us how to live in the light of God’s moral demands. [8] 

Notes

[1] Gerard Gilbert, Don’t call Call the Midwife cosy – it’s the most subversive drama on TV. Telegraph, 13 March 2017.

[2] Zesha Saleem, Call the Midwife at 10: The period drama that challenged comfort zones and became the most radical show on TV. iNews, 14 April, 2021.

[3] Gerard Gilbert, Don’t call Call the Midwife cosy – it’s the most subversive drama on TV. Telegraph, 13 March 2017.

[4] Francine Klagsbrun, ed, Voices of wisdom: Jewish ideals & ethics for everyday living; Jonathan Magonet, Bible Lives, pp.7–8. Quoted in Wikipedia: Shiphrah and Puah.

[5] Wikipedia: Shiphrah and Puah.

[6] Narration by Jennifer, Series 8, Episode 4. In Heidi Thomas, The Wisdom of Call the Midwife.

[7] ‘Cruel, calculated’ Lucy Letby to spend rest of life in prison. BBC News, 22 August 2023.

[8] Harold Kushner, ed, d’rash commentary, ’Exodus’ in Etz Hayim: A Torah Commentary. Quoted in Wikipedia: Shiphrah and Puah.