In their own right

 

Exodus 1:15-17

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “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.” But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.

Celebrating Shiphrah and Puah

Hebrew midwives who chose God over the king

Who chose love over fear

Who chose life over death

These powerful women deserve

not to simply be a prologue or a prequel 

to the life of Moses

or the story of the Exodus

these women demand

to be celebrated

for who they were

Today’s “nasty women”

Women who persisted

Women who refused 

to collude with power

or submit to oppression

and who used their gifts and skills 

to set in motion

a revolution

Shiphrah and Puah

Say their names

Celebrate their lives

Women of substance

in the mission of God.

The slaughter of the innocents

Matthew 2:16-18
The Massacre of the Infants
When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

Survivor's Guilt
Warned in a dream
to escape the wrath of a king
who saw his evil tyranny endangered
his fragile tenure of power threatened
Gods son was bundled up
and smuggled to safety.
But as he grew
surely he and his family
must have encountered
other families
whose homes held a space
that could never be filled
whose hearts nursed a wound
that could never be healed.
Mothers glancing enviously
perhaps even resentfully
at a family complete,
not torn asunder
as was theirs.
Was that another sorrow
for the mother of God to bear?
The knowledge that the child she carried
and delivered into a hostile world
was the cause of searing loss
for others.
And did he learn, as a child,
that his infant body
should have been dashed on a rock?
And when he, too,
child of his mother's womb
endured the agony of a cross
did those families feel avenged?
Or did they know
that justice can never reign
while humans seek power
and while love is bartered
and sold for a pittance?
That the incomprehensible
wrongs of this world
can only be healed
by a divine love
beyond our imagining
Snatched from a manger
and hung on a cross.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Seeing the light

We can't be sure there were three of them

We can't be sure they were men

And they don't seem to have been particularly wise

stirring up a political storm

causing havoc in their wake

and untold grief

at the slaughter of innocents.

Condemning the Holy family

to life as refugees

their gift about which we rarely speak

choosing to focus instead

on the gold, frankincense and myrrh.

And yet perhaps that gift of flight

was as significant as any other

in determining the affinity

that God laid down

with suffering, oppressed humanity

unlocking the way

that all might see

that God was - and is

one of us.

Liz Crumlish Epiphany 2012