Heroines of the Bible

 

Heroines of the Bible

 

Exodus 1:8-2:10
1:8 Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.

1:9 He said to his people, "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we.

1:10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land."

1:11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh.

1:12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.

1:13 The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites,

1:14 and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

1:15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,

1:16 "When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live."

1:17 But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.

1:18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?"

1:19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them."

1:20 So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong.

1:21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.

1:22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live."

2:1 Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman.

2:2 The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months.

2:3 When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river.

2:4 His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

2:5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it.

2:6 When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. "This must be one of the Hebrews' children," she said.

2:7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?"

2:8 Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Yes." So the girl went and called the child's mother.

2:9 Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed it.

2:10 When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, "because," she said, "I drew him out of the water."

 

 

For the life of me, I just can’t understand why so many Christian sects—from Roman Catholics, to the various Orthodox churches, to many independent and fundamentalist churches so DEVALUE women and deny them leadership positions—clergy ones, for sure—in the church? Women are the heroes of the Bible, everywhere you turn! In this text from Exodus, we have the Hebrew midwives who heroically save the male children from the Pharoah’s edict to “kill the male children” as they are being born, because with Joseph gone, the “new” Pharoah didn’t like how the Hebrew people were growing larger, stronger, and more numerous, possibly threatening his power in Egypt. The midwives not only DON’T see that the male Hebrew children die, but assure that they will live, AND even in their fabrication to “explain” why they are living, they lavish praise on the strong, Hebrew women for giving birth to healthy boys against all odds, in Egypt. They could have all been condemned by the power-hungry Pharoah, but they were brave, and didn’t care. In every house of worship where the Jewish or Christian faith is celebrated, there should be a memorial to these incredible midwives, for without them, we may not be here today. Our text tells us these midwives “feared God,” meaning they took their faith and their loyalty to God and their people quite seriously, and they were prepared to put their lives on the line defending what they believed. The Bible has NO PROBLEM lifting up the bravery, creativity, and resourcefulness of women!

 

Later in the text, we read of Moses’ mother, who gives birth to him and “saw that he was a fine baby,” which may be code for the fact that she a. loved her son dearly; and b. somehow knew that God had a vision for her child. She “hid” him in the bullrushes, and when Pharoah’s daughter discovered the child, wound up nursing her own son, thanks to the cunning of his own sister, yet another Hebrew Bible hero. Even Pharoah’s daughter may be seen as a kind of inadvertent hero, as little did she know that in “adopting” Moses as her own, she was creating the pathway for the liberation of the Hebrew people! 

 

From Rahab to Ruth, Mary to Magdalene, Lydia to Phoebe, the Bible is rife with heroic stories of even more heroic women. Why, in the early days of the Christian church, women were EVERYWHERE in key leadership roles, and the “men we most remember” (Peter, Paul?), worked alongside these women and in the case of Paul, even took missional “marching orders” from them. Pauline scholar Robert Jewett points out that Phoebe had been a wealthy shipping heiress who not only became a deacon in the church, but who bankrolled and guided several of the Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys. You will read about many of these heroic women in the Book of Acts, which is not surprising, as “Dr. Luke,” its author, also wrote the Gospel of Luke, often known as the “Gospel of the women.” Luke understood the equality and importance of the women who followed Jesus.

 

It wasn’t too long into the early history of the Christian church that men began to assert their dominance and usurp the power of women. Soon, they were denied ordination and limited to subservient roles to officially anointed male leaders. Women were both subjugated and in many cases exploited by the growing cult of male authority. Even when the Western and Eastern (Orthodox) churches split over theological differences, one common practice—the oppression of women—was maintained between the two “new” factions. How sad it was that centuries later, after the Enlightenment and the Second Vatican Council, women were still so denied full participation in the church that a brilliant Catholic scholar like Mary Daly had to so strongly argue against the deeply-rooted patriarchy of the church that she eventually had to divorce herself from the Christian church, proclaiming that its male-centeredness was so entrenched that it—in her opinion—could never recover.

 

How did the male power-grabbers accomplish this “bait and switch” coup? They used the Bible. It was EVE who was “seduced” by “the devil” (actually, NO, it was a serpent; the Bible never says this was Satan), and then “led the man astray.” It was Sarah who had “birthed” the plan to jump the gun on God’s promise of a son, resulting in the conflict between her and Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac, and today, Israel and the Arab nations. And thanks to these major “failures” of women, it took a “man”—Jesus—to become the “propitiation for our sins” to “wipe away” this woman-initiated stain on humanity. “Oh, it wasn’t that women were ‘evil’,” they might say, “but that they were ‘weak’ and so easily deceived.” What a load of horseradish! First of all, even if you brand these accounts as anything but the stories they appear to be, giving them the full weight of “historical” happenings, you can’t miss the fact that, in each case, a man had to give the final approval on that which became the “blunder” that afflicts us. Each of these accounts that blame women of making the boo-boo would not have, in themselves, led to “the fall.” Adam and Abraham were complicit, and if you “buy” the historical and cultural “power” of the male, they were ultimately where the buck of responsibility stopped. Who TOLD these stories? Most likely male authors. In a way, it’s to the credit (and probably some inspiration of God’s Spirit) that the writers didn’t LEAVE the full responsibility with the women and claim the men were the “victims”! In fact, these accounts (and they just ARE accounts, not necessarily actual human history) demonstrate that both genders are equal opportunity blunderers.

 

The same power-grabbing men would look to the New Testament and shout from the housetops how Paul would clearly forbid women from being teachers and leaders in the church. This MUST be “the Word of God,” so great chunks of Christianity used this edict to deny women their place in the church. It doesn’t take more than a first year seminary student to explain that this “prohibition” of women in the early days of the ecclesia were due to the fact that women were, for the first time in human history, GIVEN PERMISSION to take part at ALL in a religious assembly! If you read all of Acts and all of Paul, you will see that this early “denial” of women in leadership was merely temporary, until they could get their “sea legs,” and until they might not be such easy targets of the oppression and persecution being leveled at the church by religious and Roman leaders. It was NEVER meant to make women “second class citizens” in the church—EVER! If you KEEP READING, friends, you quickly see the power, sacrifice, and heroism of the women of the Christian church and faith! Using anything in the Bible as rationale for denying FULL PARTICIPATION to women in ALL roles in the church—especially in the clergy—is just plain wrong. There is no debate here, theologically and biblically, and yet, here we are. Women are still denied ordination in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and many, many “sects” of what has come to be known as “evangelical” Christianity. Even in the largest bodies of the evangelical movement—the Southern Baptist Church and the Assemblies of God—women are denied the full privileges of ordination as clergy. They have won back some, over the past few decades, but the men are still in charge. And while these bodies ALSO discriminate against persons in the LGBTQ community based on similar errant interpretations of “the Bible,” I often wonder if the “truer” fear evangelical leaders have of the “blurring” of gender boundaries experienced by LGBTQ persons isn’t the bigger threat, because it may also “blur” their “fully male” claim to authority. 

 

Again, the Bible is FULL of stories of heroic women. Here’s one for our evangelical friends to ponder: would ANY of us be here as believing Christians today if it weren’t for the brave women who went to the tomb of Jesus on that first Easter morning? Who was it who “showed up”? And who was it who went to tell the hiding disciples that “He has risen!”? Of course it was—the women who followed Jesus. Depending on which Gospel account you “like” for that Easter story, these brave women may have had to stare down an entire Roman cohort to get there. If so, they did it. Fast forward to today: look around most of our churches and study their history. Would most of them still be here, if it weren’t for the women who continued to “show up” when the men went off to war? Or, as we tend to see in our day, have just abandoned the church, staying home to watch football or going off to “visit the greens.” The women, like the ones on that first Easter, continue to SHOW UP, and the church has been saved by them. 

 

The United Methodist Church just went through a painful schism. A study released a couple of weeks ago by the Lewis Leadership Center revealed that the group that left was mostly “white and male.” Take a guess at where most of our heroic women clergy in the UMC stayed? Yep, in the United Methodist Church that first began to offer them full clergy rights 67 years ago. Oh, sure, some left, having been co-opted by the “male dominant,” anti-LGBTQ theology and “targeted” view of “biblical authority.” Maybe the “biblical authority” folk should re-examine the Bible for the stories of heroic women and the stumblebum stories of frequent male foolishness? (Sorry, I know that the scriptures teach the FULL equality and necessary equity of all on the gender spectrum, but I just can’t resist a little “male bashing,” as I am sick and tired of the way church leaders and even many folk “in the pews” have treated our women clergy! I’m OK with the fact that many of these oppressors have now exited, which I hope means that the United Methodist Church will soon live fully into our slogan: “Open Minds, Open Hearts, Open Doors—the People of The United Methodist Church.”)

 

I honestly don’t remember whether it was an “original” with her, or she was quoting some other teacher or author, but my favorite seminary professor—the late Dr. Susan Nelson—used to urge us, as future pastoral leaders, to “dance Sarah’s circle” rather than “climb Jacob’s ladder.” For her, this meant supporting our “sister” clergy, building supportive and synergistic relationships across all gender boundaries, and working collaboratively and cooperatively to carry out the Gospel mission of Christ. This would stand against the clawing, power-grabbing, and competitive “model” of the church that had been crafted and fueled by its mainly (if not exclusively) male leaders. The Bible tells the story of “Sarah’s circle”—the historic cadre of great women heroes of the Judeo-Christian faith. 

 

As we prepare to launch our “post-Summer” program season of the church, may we celebrate the great women heroes of the Bible, remember the women who have saved and nurtured the Christian church, and pray for the day when where someone is on the gender spectrum will have no impact on how they may serve God and the Gospel ministry of Jesus Christ. Until that day fully comes, may we tell and retell the stories of our women heroes, and support the myriad people BEYOND the male gender whom God is calling into servant ministry. Amen!