Sunday Sermon - 23 August
There has been an unusual amount of attention in the news this week to a woman named Natalie Harp.
Some of you may have heard her name; others may have no idea who I am talking about. She is an executive assistant and special assistant to the U.S. President and she has become a particularly visible figure in the President's inner circle, even climbing into a caterer’s cart with him to find safe passage on a plane home. This woman attributes her survival of cancer to the US president and, with no political connections at all, successfully manoeuvred her way to being one of his most trusted advisors.
Whatever our politics — and I'm not interested in taking a political position about her or the President this morning — what is interesting is the amount of attention being paid to this woman, a woman who has found herself, by persistence and an ‘I don’t take no for answer’ approach, very close to the centre of political power in the United States.
It got me thinking about how dramatically our assumptions about women and power have changed over the past generation. It really wasn't that long ago in Canada that women were not even considered “persons” in the eyes of the law.
In 1928, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women were not “qualified persons” who could be appointed to the Senate. Five Alberta women (the ‘Famous Five’) ; Emily Murphy, Irene Parlby, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards, refused to accept that answer. They took the case all the way to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Britain, then Canada's highest court of appeal.
The ruling came down on October 18, 1929. Women were, in fact, “persons” under Canadian law and therefore eligible to be appointed to the Senate. The decision became known as The Persons Case.
Lord Sankey, who delivered the decision, said these powerful words:
“The exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours. And to those who would ask why the word 'person' should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?"
Well, exactly. Why shouldn't it?
Of course, we can look back nearly a hundred years later and wonder how anyone could possibly have thought otherwise. But perhaps we shouldn't be too quick to congratulate ourselves for how enlightened we are because human beings have a remarkable capacity to decide who matters and who doesn't.
Who gets a voice. Who gets authority. Who belongs. Who is capable. Who is worthy of being listened to. Perhaps most dangerously of all, who has the right to exercise power.
This brings us to our readings this morning.
You know, whenever I read these passages from Exodus I can’t help but recall and even see in my mind’s eye the images created by Cecil B. Demille’s 10 Commandments. However, as beautiful and amazing as that movie was, there was so much of the story left out or, in my opinion, misrepresented. For example, the presentation of the Pharaoh. If you watched the movie and perhaps have just heard this passage quickly this morning, you would probably assume that the most powerful person in it is Pharaoh.
In worldly terms, you would be right. Pharaoh is the king of Egypt. He has the army. He has the government. He has the authority to make laws and enforce them. He can order an entire population to be oppressed. Yet, he still becomes afraid.
The Israelites are becoming too numerous and Pharaoh begins to see them not as neighbours, not as fellow human beings but as a threat. Fear begins to shape policy. First, forced labour. Then oppression. Then an order to the Hebrew midwives to kill the male children at birth. Finally, Pharaoh commands that every Hebrew boy be thrown into the Nile.
Pharaoh has all the power. Or so it seems.
Then we meet two women, Shiphrah and Puah. Pharaoh tells these two midwives what to do and they simply refuse (sounds similar to the Famous Five’s defiance doesn’t it?) They do not overthrow Pharaoh. They do not organize an army. They do not make a speech in the public square. They simply refuse to participate in evil. They are life-givers and they choose life.
The story gets even more interesting as we hear about this one particular situation. Moses' mother refuses to give up her child. Moses' sister watches over him as he’s released into the reeds and then Pharaoh's own daughter finds him and she has compassion on him. The child Pharaoh ordered killed is rescued by a succession of women.
The irony is thick and intentional. Pharaoh has the power, but the women have the agency. Pharaoh issues the orders. The women determine what actually happens.
Scripture calls us to notice this. The midwives are named, they matter so much they are given identity: Shiphrah and Puah. It’s also worth noting that the King of Egypt remains unnamed and in this account is only identified as “Pharaoh”. The great ruler is almost anonymous, while the supposedly powerless women are remembered by name.
My friends there is something deeply theological happening here that we are called to notice. This isn't simply a story about strong women. It is a story about how God works. God has a long history of working through people whom the culture underestimates. eople who don't appear to have the right credentials, status, background, gender, nationality, or position.
God doesn't seem particularly impressed by the categories we use to decide who is important. That theme runs through all of our readings this morning.
Psalm 124 begins: “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side…” The Psalm reminds us that ultimately our security does not come from human power. Not from kings. Not from governments. Not from armies. Not from wealth. Not from status.
“Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” The Psalm is not saying that God's people never encounter danger. They do. They experience floods and traps and overwhelming forces, but they discover that these forces can all be overcome with the help of the Lord.
Paul takes us another step further in Romans as he says: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” What he’s saying is: Don't simply absorb the assumptions of the culture around you. Don't automatically accept its definition of success. Don't automatically accept its definition of importance. Don't automatically accept its hierarchy of who matters and who doesn't. Instead, Paul says, be transformed.
He then gives us this wonderful image, an image I truly find comforting, of the Church. When I say the Church, I don’t mean the institution, I mean all of us, you and me, as one singular body. One body. Many members. Different gifts. Different abilities. Different callings. No one person is the whole body. It reminds me of that old camp song I used to sing: “We are one in the spirit, we are one in the Lord.”
That is an important corrective to the way our world thinks about power. The world tends to ask: Who is the most important person in the room? Paul asks: What gift has God given you, and how will you use it for the sake of the whole?
That's a very different way of understanding human worth and it has profound implications for how we think about gender, and about every other boundary we construct around people. If God gives a gift, who are we to say that the person cannot use it?
If God calls someone to teach, who are we to say they shouldn't teach? If God gives someone the gift of leadership, who are we to say they cannot lead? If God gives someone compassion, wisdom, courage, generosity, or faith, who are we to decide that their gender, sexual orientation, or their social status makes the gift somehow less valuable?
The Church of Christ, the Church which was to be built upon Peter, is not supposed to be an institutional pyramid, a hierarchy, with a few leaders at the top and everyone else below. Paul says it is a body. Every member matters. We all matter equally, we are loved equally in God’s eyes.
Let’s now turn to the Gospel. Jesus asks his disciples: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” and they give him the answers they have heard - John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets.
Jesus digs deeper and makes the question personal: “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answers: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus tells Peter that upon this rock he will build his Church.
I think it is worth remembering what Matthew has been showing us in the preceding chapters. Just two chapters earlier, we encounter another person who doesn't fit the expected category. We talked about this last week. The Canaanite woman. She is a woman, a foreigner, an outsider. She is on the wrong side of the religious and cultural boundary yet she has the courage to challenge Jesus (like the Famous Five and like the midwives) and Jesus ultimately holds up her faith as an example.
Now, two chapters later, Peter makes the great confession of faith but the point is bigger than Peter, or the Canaanite woman, or even Shiphrah and Puah. Again and again, God surprises us with the people through whom God chooses to speak and act. God has a habit of turning our assumptions upside down, showing us that the people we might overlook, dismiss, or underestimate may be the very people through whom God is doing something extraordinary.
The Hebrew midwives, Moses' mother and sister, Pharaoh's daughter, the Canaanite woman, and, yes, Peter, the hot tempered one, matters here too.
People from different backgrounds, different circumstances, different places in the social order. Again and again, God says: Pay attention.
Pay attention. There is something going on here. There is a gift here. There is faith there. There is courage here. There is something for us to learn here from those we may have overlooked.
The real question that is worth asking ourselves this morning is: Whom are we still underestimating?
Where have we unconsciously decided that some people are more important than others? Where have we decided who gets to speak? Who gets to lead? Who gets to teach? Whose opinion counts? Whose gifts are valuable? Where might our own assumptions be preventing us from seeing what God is already doing?
If there is one thing these readings make clear, it is this: God is not constrained by the boundaries that we create.
Pharaoh says, “These people are a threat.” God says, “These are my people.”
The culture says, “Women are not persons.” God says, “Watch what these women can do.”
The world says, “Power belongs to the powerful.” God says, “Watch what two midwives can accomplish. Watch what the Famous Five can accomplish. Yes, even watch what Natalie Harp can accomplish.”
We say, “This person doesn't have much to offer.” God says, “I have given them a gift.”
Jesus says: “Who do you say that I am?” because that question is ultimately not just about Jesus' identity – It is about ours.
If Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, then as his followers, his church, we are called to become a people who see differently. A people who look beyond the categories by which the world measures worth. A people who recognize gifts wherever God has placed them. A people who refuse to let fear turn neighbours into enemies. A people who refuse to allow prejudice to determine someone's value. A people who understand that the Kingdom of God is always bigger than the boundaries we draw around it.
I believe that is the challenge for us this morning. Not simply to ask who has power but rather, what are we doing with the power, the gifts and the opportunities that God has given us?
The story of Exodus reminds us that sometimes the people who appear to have the least power are precisely the people through whom God changes the world. Shiphrah and Puah didn't have Pharaoh's army. They didn't have his palace or his authority. They simply had courage and they chose life. Through that choice, God's purposes continued.
So this morning I ask: Are we powerful enough to make a difference?
Are we willing to use the gifts God has placed in our hands, and trust what God might do with them? God has always done remarkable things through ordinary people who are willing to say yes: yes to courage, yes to compassion, yes to justice, yes to life. Yes to the gifts God has given us, and yes to using them for God's loving purposes. For that is how God changes the world—not always through the powerful, but through ordinary people, like the midwives and the Famous Five, like you and me, who are courageously willing to stand up and say yes.
Amen.