In the first part of the 19th century, Egypt was a British colony and the age of egyptology was just starting to take off, with these massive archaeological efforts uncovering ancient tombs and artifacts arriving in British museums for a captivated public.
Among these artifacts was a head-and shoulder fragment—some 8ft high—from what had been an enormous statue of Rameses II found in the vast mortuary temple dedicated to the great pharaoh in the ancient city of Thebes. Rameses was a prolific builder, constructing cities in his own honor and statue upon statue. He was even known to have his own face chiseled overtop the face of previous pharaohs.
In anticipation of the arrival of this incredible relic, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, published a sonnet in one of the leading weekly newspapers with the title, “Ozymandias,” which is the Greek name for Rameses II. The text is printed in your bulletin.
Far from being impressed by this ancient statue, Shelley’s poem, which was widely read in Britain at the time, saw something different in this broken edifice. He describes learning of these two “trunkless legs of stone” found out in the desert, and beside them, the broken-off head “half sunk” in the sand, with the following inscription that Shelley includes in the last Give lines of the poem along with survey of the scene:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I.
Shelley looked at this broken statue and saw not grandeur but hubris. The arrogance of imperial power and the folly of human achievement. Here was the greatest of pharaohs, so sure of his standing, in time toppled, abandoned, forgotten in the sand.
But for our purposes this morning and in the weeks to come, this poem and its broken statue are also a helpful contrast as we trace one of the foundational stories of scripture of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt. For many scholars believe the Pharaoh who appears in our lesson today and whom, in time, Moses will stand before—and that scripture will remember as a metaphor for all human powers who stand opposed to the reign of God—is none other than Rameses II, Ozymandias himself.
And so if Shelley is right and this broken statue stands as a reminder of what, in the end, will inevitably fall, the story we will tell is a story about what truly endures.
In short, the Exodus is the creation story for God’s people. And as we’ll see in the weeks to come, and already noted earlier in our service today when we welcomed Blair Ely to the waters of baptism, the story of the Exodus will include echos of the creation story in the opening chapters of Genesis—most cinematically with God separating the waters of the Red Sea just as those primordial waters of creation, creating dry land for the people to cross over into new life.
But even before that, this story of the birth of a people begins with our passage today with the birth of a single baby who, too, must pass through his own waters. And in the same way that creation in Genesis is told in this rhythm of speaking and seeing—God saying “Let there be,” and then “seeing that it is good,” this story, too, is driven by what is said and what is seen.1
II.
The first to speak is Pharaoh, issuing his anxious edicts. “Look!” he says, “These Israelites are growing too great in number and one day may be more powerful than we.” Words make worlds, and in with these words, Pharaoh, from his bully pulpit, is trying to shape reality for his subjects. He wants his people to look at their neighbors, the Hebrews, who have lived among them for generations, working alongside them, raising children, coaching t-ball, bringing dishes to the neighborhood potluck, and suddenly see a threat. He speaks of them almost as animals, rapidly breeding and running out of control, like some kind of pest. He puts them to work in his many construction projects in the hopes that this will consume and diminish them—which does the exact opposite.
So he ups the ante, and calls for a policy of infanticide. This time he speaks directly to the Hebrew midwives, two of which are named, which is extraordinary when you think of it—the compilers of scripture decided that we could not tell the story of Moses, much less the story of God’s people, without including the names of Shiphrah and Puah, the first of a series of women who will play a vital role in the Exodus story. Pharaoh instructs them again where to look and what to see —When you see these Hebrew women on the birthstool and see that it is a boy, kill it, but let the girls live.
But, as is always the case, Pharaoh is not the only one who gets to speak in this story. The midwives, too, learn they have a voice, and a choice of where they will look and what they will see. Pharaoh wants them to “see difference”—boys over here and girls over here—and execute death.2 They look at these baby boys and can’t help but see life.
They disobey Pharaoh’s orders, let the boys live along with their girls, and when Pharaoh calls them before the court to explain how it is that these babies keep living, they feed him a tale that is so obviously a ruse but to this out of touch king who clearly know nothing about childbearing seems perfectly logical —something about trying to get down there to look and see if it’s a boy, but, golly-Pete, these Hebrew women are so vigorous that they have the babies before we can get there! What can you do?!
Which comes as perhaps the first place in scripture but far from the last in human history when a group of intrepid women expose the absurdity of male power with a kind an absurdity of their own.
I remember a story Marilyn Joiner told me some time ago—and I got her permission to share this—about early in her and Richard’s marriage when he was the minister of music at a small country church outside of Campbellsville, Kentucky, back in the 60s or 70s.
Young woman that she was, and in keeping with the fashions of the day, Marilyn wore what I’m sure was a very tasteful pantsuit to church one Sunday night. This was not good. Word quickly spread that to respond to this offense, the deacons would be calling a meeting in which they planned to ask for Richard’s resignation, for allowing such behavior from his wife.
That is, until the all the deacons’ wives caught wind of this planned meeting, and the next Sunday night all arrived at church in very tasteful pantsuits of their own. The planned meeting never came to pass.
The first voice of resistance to Pharaoh, which we might say is the first appearance of the voice of God in Exodus (who works behind the scenes for much of this story), comes on the lips of these midwives who, in the face of Pharaoh’s absurd and brutal question: Why have you let these babies live? respond, by saying these Hebrew women are too vigorous—in other words, there is simply too much life in them for us to contain.3
III.
And as so often happens, this one act of resistance, of choosing to see differently, of choosing to see life even in the face of death, cascades into more seeing and more life.
A Hebrew man marries a Hebrew woman. She conceives and bears and son. Like any mother, she sees that he is a fine boy. So she hides him for as long as she could, but as a brutal reminder of the violence lurking in the background, she finally decides she cannot keep him safely. She takes a great risk for his life. She weaves for him a basket and seals it with bitumen and pitch—the same materials used to construct the ark in Genesis, meant to tell us, I think, that the boy is not abandoned but is in fact sheltered in God’s care.
The boy’s sister, named later as Miriam, stands at a distance to see what will happen. Soon Pharaoh’s daughter comes down to bathe in the river. She sees the basket, then sees the child, who was crying. Her heart is softened in pity: this is a Hebrew boy.
The boy’s sister watches and springs to life. She offers to get a wet-nurse from among the boys people. Pharaoh’s daughter agrees. The girl goes and brings back the boy’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter employs her to raise the boy in her court— Did she know? Of course she knew. She would have seen it in the woman’s eyes.
Avivah Zornberg, in her beautiful commentary on this passage, notes how this story of resistance in the face of tyranny, and life in the face of death, turns on a conversation about mothering; about how best to care for an infant—even the technical elements of how he should be nursed. She says the conversation between these three women “focuses our attention on the necessities of life.” Their words, shared with each other, dreaming and scheming, imagine something a new possibility of life for this boy and presumably all children everywhere. Theirs is a “conspiracy of life” in the face of death.4 Like the voice of God hovering over the murky waters of creation, they speak this new, possible life into existence.
It’s a pattern that will continue in this Exodus story, and in the story of God’s people told throughout scripture, and told in so many ways in the lives of so many people of faith even today. The story of God’s people is a story of God’s great conspiracy of life. It is a conspiracy that comes to be in a million different choices in your life and mine and so many others around the world and through the generations.
So much of life, so much of faith, hinges upon what we are willing to see. What possibility we would see when doors seem to be closed around us. At times even more pressing: who we are willing to see. What neighbor we are willing to see where powerful voices would have us see threats and danger.
And proceeding from this: what words we can find to say and what we are willing to do. This choosing of life can take many forms, most of them far from grand. Even—we see here—in the care and raising of children, the most natural thing in the world. And yet no less miraculous. In seeing that vulnerable children have what they need to live. And maybe just as important, making sure that our own children see where our hearts are. That we would help them know where to look.
I heard of great preacher who was known to say that your children will only remember you telling them the things you actually say, and they’ll only remember doing the things you actually do.5 Words I’m haunted by. What do they see? What do they see us doing?
IV.
When everything else fades away or is reclaimed by the wilds or the desert sands we work so hard to keep at bay, this story we tell invites us to consider what will remain.
It will not be our works of chiseled stone.
It will be what words we have chosen to write upon our hearts.
It will be the story we have chosen to live by. Who we have lived it with, who we’ve lived it for.
And the God who, in so many ways, even now, stands just off the side, saying, “Here! Look here.”
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1 Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s beautiful commentary on Exodus, The Particulars of Rapture makes this point beautifully. Her work has shaped much of this part of the sermon.
2 Ibid., 22
3 Ibid., 23
4 Ibid., 24
5These words were remembered to me from a young Chuck Poole by a mutual friend from the church we both served as pastor for in Macon, Georgia.