Breathing Together: A Conspiracy for Goodness

At the Cuttyhunk Union Church, I have the rare opportunity to deviate from the lectionary and preach on texts I otherwise wouldn't get to. This text DOES actually come up later this summer, on August 23, at least for those who use Track 1 for the Old Testament readings. It can be found here, Exodus 1:8-2:10. Below is a manuscript for the sermon I preached last night at the Evening ecumenical service. 

The Exodus story is one of the most powerful narratives in the whole Bible, both testaments! It’s the kind of script that can be easily adapted to film as well as to liturgy. How cool would it be to get someone like Charlton Heston to play Moses?

From the Exodus story comes the celebration of Passover, the central liturgical experience for our Jewish cousins. I hope many of you have had the chance to sit at the Seder table at some point with Jewish friends, where the story is remembered, and if not yet then perhaps find a way to do that sometime.

For Christians, Holy Week is set in the context of first-century Passover celebrations in Jerusalem. Jesus and his followers are pilgrims to the holy city, a story we remember every year in Holy Week, starting on Palm Sunday, and then continuing through the three holy days. On the night before he died for us, Jesus took the bread and shared the cup to breathe new life into this old tradition of the matzoh and God’s saving acts of liberation.

It’s a political story. It may not get taught that way in Sunday School curriculum but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a story about unjust power and how one resists power that corrupts. You can’t sit and break the matzoh and hear about Moses telling old Pharaoh to “let my people go” and miss that. In some parts of the Church we’ve been mixed up, though. I agree with those who say that partisan politics is not appropriate from the pulpit and I agree with those who say that God is not a Democrat or a Republican. I agree with the founders commitment to separate church and state. But that does not mean that religious faith is apolitical; it just means that religious speech is protected speech.

From the beginning to the very end of the Bible when the Lamb seated on the throne creates the new Jerusalem where there are no more tears and God’s will is done on earth as in heaven, there are political implications of choosing to follow God rather than human beings who overextend their claims on authority.

OK. Enough about Moses, who gets all the good PR. Tonight I want to back up a little bit to the reading we heard tonight, from the first two chapters of the Book of Exodus. There we meet six of seven courageous women, all of whom model wisdom, resilience, and faith as a direct challenge to Pharaoh’s tyranny. Moses deserves credit for leading the Hebrew people out of bondage and toward the Promised Land but let’s be clear: without these seven women there is no Moses.

They are, first, Shiprah and Puah, the two midwives who defy Pharaoh and save the lives of Jewish baby boys. They are Moses’ mother and his sister, who build a little ark to keep Moses safe and allow him to be rescued. Pharaoh’s own daughter and her maidservant directly resist Pharaoh’s edict and save Moses and then raise him as their own. When she happens to find Moses’ own mother and asks her to be the nursemaid, it’s pretty clear she knows exactly who this woman is and what she’s asking of her: to nurse her own child in the midst of Pharaoh’s own household. So that’s six, all of whom appear in tonight’s reading. Finally, there is Zipoorah, Moses’ wife, whom we have not yet met.

These seven women promote life and prepare the way for Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Without them there is no Moses to stand before a burning bush, no Moses to lead the Hebrew people across the Red Sea and toward the Promised Land. In their quiet work, these six women before us tonight resist and disrupt Pharaoh’s anti-creational, death-dealing abuses of power.

For tonight, I want to focus primarily on the first two of these seven women, these two midwives: Shiprah and Puah.

Notice again the subtext and pay close attention to the verbs. The law that Pharaoh has decreed is clear: kill the boys. All the Hebrew boys. The girls may live. Kill them before they have a chance to become little freedom fighters.

But the two midwives disobey the law. It turns out that even law-abiding citizens answer to a higher power, and if a law is unjust there is no requirement to obey it. This is why Jews and Christians have conspired together throughout history to challenge unjust laws. That doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences. That doesn’t mean the “powers that be” won’t go bonkers when one dares to challenge their authority. The women are summoned to report to the Pharaoh and they lie – presumably under oath. Those Hebrew women, they say, are just amazing! They give birth before we even get there!

The word conspiracy comes from two Latin words that literally mean “to breathe together.” The word has taken on a more negative meaning – we speak of conspiracy theories and of conspiring to commit a crime together.

But I want to call us back to that older, more literal meaning tonight. To breathe, together. We breathe in the Holy Spirit, the breath of God. Like the disciples in that upper room after Jesus is raised from the dead, he comes and breathes on them and they are changed. They are changed for good, to be more courageous, more wise, more faithful to what Easter is all about.

When we come here on a Sunday night, and we sing these hymns and we say our prayers, we are forming a conspiracy together for goodness in this world – a conspiracy to be a light that shines in the darkness, to be the salt of the earth, to be leaven that makes the whole loaf rise.

This conspiracy is not partisan. It’s not a Democratic or Republican thing. But it most definitely has political implications. It is about getting clear about who we belong to, namely the living God. All others who wish to claim our allegiance are pretenders to the throne.

Most of us want to be good citizens, at least I do. And on many days we can do that and still be faithful to God. But there come certain moments in our lives, and sometimes even moments in human history, when we are called to breathe in together to join a conspiracy of goodness and to obey God’s Word over human authorities.

In the midst of World War II, France was partly occupied and partly “free.” The French government, headquartered at Vichy, collaborated with the Nazis, mistakenly believing that one could cooperate with evil in order to live another day. But there was a small farming village called Le Chambon-sur-Lignon that made history by harboring some 5,000 refugees, most of them Jews, many of them children.

A good deal of sacrifice was involved. The village basically doubled its size as Jewish families found a safe haven. Families took in children and their parents, making them feel as though they were fellow “Chambonnais” going to school, working on the farms, sharing meals, and so forth. There was great risk involved. The village became a center for the forgery of documents. Illegal documents, according to the Nazis and the Vichy government.

Almost all of the Chambonnais were Huguenot Christians. France had persecuted Protestants heavily, especially during the eighteenth century. Those who did not flee, and those who were not put to death for their faith, survived in particular pockets of the country. Le Chambon was one such place. They kept the memories alive by meeting in worship, hearing the Bible preached by their pastors, and singing the psalms as well as folk songs that recounted their story. They felt a special affinity for the Old Testament and for the Jews. It was part of their theology. There is no doubt that they learned about Shiprah and Puah and those other five women along the way.

So during the Second World War, Le Chambon became the safest place in Europe for refugees from the Nazi horrors. Take that in for just a moment. Breathe in that truth. Breathe in that a little church in a little town did great things.

And here is something interesting, at least to me: the Chambonnais did not feel they were heroes. One of those born in Le Chambon, Pierre Sauvage, moved with his family to America, where he became a filmmaker. Out of curiosity about his origins, he did a documentary on Le Chambon called Weapons of the Spirit. When he returned to his birthplace with a film crew, he interviewed the somewhat reluctant villagers. Over and over he found that they did not think of themselves as courageous champions who had defied the Nazis. Instead, they quietly did what very few others could do, saving thousands of people from their oppressors.

Why? How? “It’s simple,” they explained, “love God and love your neighbor; that’s what Christians do.” That is all that we did, they explained. No big deal!

They conspired for the good, because that is what Christians do. They simply took the two great commandments seriously. Like Shiprah and Puah and those other five women had done all of those many centuries earlier.

These are witnesses to us, my friends. They inspire us to conspire against evil in our own time. They remind us what it means to be faithful in dangerous times. It can be scary, but it can also bring us clarity about who we are called to be, with God’s help. I worry that sometimes what keeps us from acting is that we think only of the big things. We raise up Moses at the Burning Bush and send him up on the Mountain to get the Ten Commandments. But never underestimate what seven women can do to change the world. Never underestimate what a little Protestant Church in a small village can do. Never forget that without Mrs. Parks and many like her in Montgomery, boycotting the buses and walking to work every day for 381 days, Dr. King’s “dream” is just good rhetoric.

To be the Church, we do sometimes need to take sides. Being non-partisan does not mean staying neutral. The meaning of our Baptism is to stand for justice over and against injustice, for dignity of every person over degradation. For love over hate, and for truth in a world of lies. We have to remember who we are and whose we are and live like that matters. It’s not easy, and we won’t all do it the same way. We won’t all agree every day on what is required of us but if it looks like being kind, and showing mercy, and loving our neighbor we can be reasonably sure we are on the right path. We come to a congregation like this one to remember our core beliefs so that in small and large ways we can practice those beliefs one day at a time on this Island and when we return home.

William Stringfellow was an Episcopal layperson who got all this. He wrote powerfully in the 1970s. I commend his writings to you, and close with his words, dear friends and then a brief time for silent reflection before we sing "Breathe on me, Breath of God."

The biblical lifestyle is always a witness of resistance to the status quo in politics, economics, and all society. It is a witness of resurrection from death. Paradoxically, those who embark on the biblical witness constantly risk death - through execution, exile, imprisonment, persecution, defamation, or harassment - at the behest of the rulers of this age. Yet those who do not resist the rulers of the present darkness are consigned to a moral death, the death of their humanness. That, of all the ways of dying, is the most ignominious.