Normal

 

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

August 23, 2020

16 Proper A 

          “When will life go back to normal?”  As we move further and further away from February and more and more into pandemic life, I both hear and ask this question more and more.  Anyone on the Christ Church staff will tell you that I am not immune to longing for life to get back to normal. I think most of us wish for the time when we could come and go as we please-without a second thought about whether we have a mask on hand, a time when we could worship in our comfortable and familiar ways, when decisions about how to educate our children did not involve a life threatening virus, and we could see family and friends, plan vacations, and do so many other things that have been interrupted by this virus.  “Normal” is defined as the way life was back in February and we ask “When will life get back to normal?”

          I imagine that the Israelite people were wondering the same thing as they toiled away in the hot Egyptian sun.  The Israelite people had a good relationship with the Egyptians when Joseph was alive as Joseph was the one who kept the Egyptian people from starving during the famine.  But now there is a king who never knew Joseph, nor the story of Joseph’s people.  Because the Israelites were so numerous and strong, the Egyptian king was afraid.  Fear caused the Egyptian king to force the Israelites into hard labor.  But the more the Israelites were oppressed, the more they multiplied, which created greater fear among the Egyptians who demanded harder service from the Israelites.  The Israelite people must have wondered when life would get back to normal.

          When Joseph’s people have been pushed to work harder than humanly possible and were still multiplying, the king of Egypt ordered all of the Hebrew baby boys to be killed at birth.  Rather than getting back to normal, life is getting unimaginably wretched. 

          Enter Shiphrah and Puah, two Hebrew midwives who refuse to obey the King’s command.   These two women were unlikely candidates to stand up to power.  They were not politicians, royalty, or military leaders.  The two midwives are two ordinary women going about the work they have been called to do, delivering babies.  In the course of that very normal work, they are given the opportunity to make a difference, and they do.  And their work moves the story of God’s people forward as the baby Moses is not killed, ends up being raised in Pharaoh’s house thanks to the shrewdness of Moses’ sister, and eventually-to jump way ahead in the story-leads the Hebrew people out of Egypt.

          Shiphrah and Puah do not move the story of God’s people backward to the “normal” the people knew when Joseph was ruler of Egypt.  The two women push the story forward as they find creative, even subversive ways to thwart Pharaoh’s plan.   In answer to the question “When will life go back to normal,” God’s response is to call the people forward into new ways of being God’s people.  I believe the same is true for us.  Getting back to normal is to look only backwards rather than live into the new story God is creating.

          In the reading from Romans, Paul says “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God-what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  In good times and even more so in challenging times, God calls us to allow ourselves to be transformed, to be changed, so that we can discern the will of God.  Shiphrah and Puah refused to be conformed to the world and discerned that the will of God was not in killing the baby boys of the Hebrew mothers.  The daughter of the Pharaoh, the very man who ordered the killing of the babies, was not conformed to the world as she took a Hebrew baby boy as her own son, having discerned what was good and acceptable and perfect. The world calls us to look back and set our sights on what has gone before.  God calls us to be transformed and look forward to being the people God is calling us to be.

          This morning, Jesus asks the disciples “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  The disciples reply “Some say John the Baptist, but others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  The disciples report that the people are looking back to figure out who Jesus is.  Jesus then asks “But who do you say that I am?”  And Simon’s response is “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  Simon is transformed in that moment, as he looks not backwards, but forward to see what God is doing.  As a symbol of that transformation, Jesus gives Simon a new name and the disciple is known by the name Peter from that point forward.  As we will hear next week, Peter is not immune to looking backwards as he misunderstands what it means to be the Son of God, but Peter does know that Jesus is not someone from the past.

          Jesus asks us “Who do you say that I am?”  If we answer with Peter, and claim that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, that answer means that we are willing and ready to move forward with Jesus into new life.  If we answer with Peter, we, like Shiphrah and Puah, are offering our gifts for use in creative, and perhaps subversive ways, to move the story of God and God’s people forward.  If we answer with Peter, we are allowing ourselves to be transformed, not held to the values of the world, but willing to discern the will of God-what is good and acceptable and perfect-and look with excitement to the future.   

                                                                                      Amen.