Scripture: Exodus 2:1-10; Exodus 1:8-22; Judges 4:1-16; Judges 5:3; 1 Samuel 2:1; Romans 16:1-7 Series: 2021
Part of the ‘Songs of the Bible’ series, this sermon recovers overlooked women of Scripture as a corrective to the ‘danger of a single story.’ Opening with Adichie’s TED talk, Pastor Wilson moves through a series of mini-portraits: Miriam, whose brave watch over the basket saved Moses and thus the people; Deborah, the judge whose song of praise predates David; Hannah, whose faithfulness and song foreshadow Mary’s Magnificat; and the New Testament women in Paul’s greetings, Phoebe the deacon and Junia the apostle, plus Lydia and Priscilla. The point: most of us are not Moses, Peter, or Paul, yet God calls each person to ordinary, brave faithfulness. Your story and your song matter, and the call is simply to respond to God rather than to win acclaim.
Illustrations: adichie-single-story-ted-talk, miriam-guarding-the-basket, balm-in-gilead-hymn, mother-teresa-do-it-anyway, junia-junius-mistranslation
June 27
Miriam, Miriam
Now a man from Levi’s household married a Levite woman. The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She saw that the baby was healthy and beautiful, so she hid him for three months. When she couldn’t hide him any longer, she took a reed basket and sealed it up with black tar. She put the child in the basket and set the basket among the reeds at the riverbank. The baby’s older sister stood watch nearby to see what would happen to him. Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe in the river, while her women servants walked along beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds, and she sent one of her servants to bring it to her. When she opened it, she saw the child. The boy was crying, and she felt sorry for him. She said, “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children.” Then the baby’s sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Would you like me to go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” Pharaoh’s daughter agreed, “Yes, do that.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I’ll pay you for your work.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. After the child had grown up, she brought him back to Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I pulled him out of the water.” - Exodus 2:1-10
The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has a Ted talk called the Danger of a single story. And it’s really lovely. She talks about growing up in Nigeria and the stories she would absorb in her world, but also how powerful her experience was when she went to the United States for the first time. And she says that before she came to the U.S., she never identified herself as African. She knew herself as Nigerian. She was from this certain place. She had a middle class background. But how, in the US, whenever Africa came up in a conversation, everyone would look to her for the answer, even though she had no idea what was going on in Namibia. As well, when she first started studying in the US, she says,
My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my “tribal music,” and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove. What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals… .
There is a similar danger when we read stories in the Bible, when we tell these stories to our kids. There’s a danger of a single story, of missing out on the complexity of what God is doing and how God conveys transformation in this world. There is a danger of making assumptions about what matters and what doesn’t, about who matters and who doesn’t. When we share a single story of the Bible, Miriam isn’t there, nor is Deborah, nor is Hannah or Junia. Even more so, no matter our gender, when we assume a single story, we often do not include ourselves. God uses other people. Who am I for God to use me? My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on songs of the Bible, My friends, we’re continuing the series on songs of the Bible that looks through the scriptures in a way guided and retold in music. There are a lot of explicit songs in the Bible, but it all can be turned into song. For God’s love for us is so great that we cannot help but sing. Today, it’s Miriam, Miriam. We’re going to start with the story of Miriam, Moses’s sister, but we’re not going to end there. Today’s sermon is going to be more like a few mini sermons, looking at some hidden stories within the scriptures that highlight the power of God to use people for good. We start with Miriam, Moses’s sister. We wouldn’t have the story of Moses without Miriam. Her name doesn’t come up often in songs to children. That’s why I wanted to write a song about Miriam. And so we have the beginning of the story of Moses in the basket. We need to start with the end of Genesis, where Joseph brings all the people of Israel to Egypt because the land is better there.
Things change, though, at the beginning of Exodus, the second book of the Bible. It says.
8 Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 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.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor… They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them. 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.”
And so we have this woman who gives birth to a child, Moses, and she wants him to live. She follows the command of Pharaoh and puts him in the river. So she puts him in a basket and it floats. Baskets don’t just float where you want them to go, though. When you put a boat in a body of water, it doesn’t care where you want it to go. Unless you have some propulsion. But his sister, Miriam, follows him. And we have this scene where the basket comes up into the space where Pharaoh’s daughter is bathing. The princess notices that he is a Hebrew baby, likely because he was circumcised. Then Miriam does an amazing thing. She does an incredibly brave thing. Miriam comes over and it goes up to Pharaoh’s daughter. Miriam could be killed for this and her whole family could be killed for this, but she acts on faith. Because of her brave action, not only is Moses raised by his actual mother, his birth mother, Moses is raised with his people. Moses was raised with a memory of his people. When he’ older, he will go back to Pharaoh’s court and events will happen that end with him killing an overseer who is hurting the Hebrew people. Moses flees. He goes to the desert. He gets married and becomes a shepherd. And then he comes to this mountain where there was a bush that is burning, but not consumed. And God speaks to Moses and says, “Take off your shoes. This is holy ground. I am the God of your forefathers. I’m the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I want you to go back to Pharaoh to say, let my people go.” Were it not for Miriam, Moses could not have got to that holy moment where God sent him to free his people. As well, we can also understand that Moses survived in the river because of Miriam. I can see her standing out in front of him, throwing rocks at the crocodiles, walking off boats that would have smashed him to pieces. Because of the love of the sister, a brother is saved. Because of the love of the sister, the people are saved. The story matters. Miriam matters.
Deborah
Moving later in the Old Testament to the book of Judges, we meet Deborah. Deborah was one of the first judges. After the time of Joshua, after the conquest of Canaan, after, you know, the people are freed and they spend 40 years in the wilderness and they take back the promised land. And then there was a time called the period of the judges when there were no king in Israel. The tribes ruled themselves independently, but there were certain judges who were lifted up by God to speak for God. Deborah is one of the first, At this time, there’s a king in Canaan who is aimed at destroying the Hebrew people. He sees them as these upstarts who have come to this land. Deborah sends for Barak and tells him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you, to take your army against the enemy. And Barak says, “if you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” Deborah went with him and the enemy was defeated. And then Deborah sings. Before David and Solomon, Deborah sings to the Lord a song of praise about the power of God.
Hear, kings! Listen, rulers! I, to the Lord, I will sing. I will make music to the Lord, Israel’s God.
God used Deborah to save the people: Barak could not do it alone.
Hannah
We can next jump to Hannah in 1 Samuel, Hannah was married, but she was barren. And she knew that God had a purpose for her. She prayed for a child. She eventually came and offered to God this vow that if God blessed her with a child, she would give the child back to God to serve in the temple and God answered prayer gave her a son Samuel, and she remained faithful to God. And when he was old enough, she brought him back to the temple to be a prophet. And then, she sang a song to the Lord. In the song of Hannah, we hear what will powerfully become apparent in the Magnificat of Mary, we hear of the power of God. She sings, “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God.” Without Hannah and the faithfulness of Hannah, there would be no Samuel, there would be no king Saul, there would be no king David. These figures in the old Testament are lifted up pretty dramatically, but in the New Testament, there are also a number of figures who are central to the birth of the church who have often been pushed aside in favor of a single story.
New Testament
We find them and we meet them in the book of acts and at the end of Paul’s letters. When you read the letters of Paul, Like Romans and 1 & 2 Corinthians, one surprising thing is how much like letters they are. Seems obvious, but they are not often read that way. Usually they are presented as law or philosophy or doctrine, treatises of technical language, but the central aspect of Paul’s letters is that they are letters. Letters aren’t just about instruction. They aren’t just about explanation. Letters also greet people, and the letters of Paul have shout-outs all throughout them. For instance, here is Romans chapter 16:
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.
Wait, who is Phoebe? She is a deacon? He goes on with the shoutouts.
3 Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus, 4 and who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. 5 Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert in Asia for Christ. 6 Greet Mary, who has worked very hard among you. 7 Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.
Paul calls Phoebe a deacon and he calls Junia an apostle. Over the years, there have been versions of the Bible that mistranslated Junia into Junius in order to maintain the presumption of a male only priesthood. But Junia in Greek is a female name. Paul lifts up Lydia and Priscilla, as well. These stories point to what happens behind the scenes. What happens in the background, what is not on full presentation. These women were central to the spread of the Gospel, though they didn’t write the gospels and their names aren’t on our churches.
And I think it’s so important to share with children the names of Miriam, the names of Deborah and Hannah, the names of, of Lydia and Junia and Priscilla. Most of us are not going to be apostles like Paul or Peter. Most of us are not going to be Moses or Aaron. Most of us are not going to be Samson. And God doesn’t ask us to be only those kinds of people. Instead, God calls and asks us to be faithful, like Miriam, to be brave in surprising ways. God calls us to be faithful, like Deborah, to accept God’s wisdom and to use it. God calls us to be faithful, like Hannah, to seek out the Lord’s will. God calls us to be faithful, like Junia, to be an apostle for the Lord. Who’s not trying to make a great name for herself, but just trying to be faithful, God calls us to be like Lydia and Priscilla, again, not to be on the front of the church guidebook, but to humbly build the church.
As the old hymn has it,
If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, you can tell the love of Jesus, who died to save us all.
You don’t have to be a Peter or a Paul to be a Christian. You don’t have to be James or John to be faithful. You don’t have to be a Moses or a Joseph or an Abraham to follow God. We don’t need to act a certain way. We don’t need to be a certain way. God is offering to you a life of purpose, a life of love and transformation. This day, your story matters. This day, your song matters. What are you going to sing about? We don’t know if Deborah and Hannah had good voices. The point was not the quality of their tone, but their response to God. What are you going to sing about? Who are you going to sing about? Who are you going to share your song with? Is there someone in your life who needs to hear God’s song of love for them?
Are you going to sing about yourself? Are you going to sing about what’s popular? Are you going to sing about what everybody else knows? Are you going to go with the tide of the culture? Are you going to sing a different song? Are you going to sing a bold song? Like Miriam. Are you going to step out and speak truth to the power of Pharaoh’s daughter? Are you going to step out and speak truth to the power of the king of Canaan? Are you going to speak out? Are you going to live out a life of faithfulness like Priscilla and Junia. Are you going to be willing to be misunderstood in order to be faithful to God? As Mother Teresa said,
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.