Morning Devotion for the Season of Lent

March 15, 2024

Invitatory

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: O come let us adore him.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Exodus 2:1-10

Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. ‘This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,’ she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?’ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Yes.’ 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 will give you your wages.’ So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, ‘because’, she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’

Meditation-Rebecca Northington

I will never forget the moment one of my favorite professors asked us to reconsider the role of women in scripture. There was a collective hush in our chatty class. As Villanova graduate students we came from a varied background: Vietnamese nuns, a Catholic from a rural Montana community, Protestant kids in their mid 20’s, hipsters from the West Coast, life-long Catholics from the Mid Atlantic or Northeast, a retired soldier and ex-pentecostal getting his Phds in theology, and me. We represented varying gender identifications, ages and sexuality. We were in fact quite an eclectic group, even if we were all Christian.

I believe the pause in dialogue communicated respect and uncertainty. We did not want to offend one another, but quickly came to realize that our experience of women in the Bible  was pretty universal: they were blamed, absent (unnamed) or secondary. One way or another all of us had come to believe that the Bible  was patriarchal, that trendy word of the woke and the liberal. Wrong-she said in a game show kind of way. Look again. She walked us through many passages in both the Old and New Testament and asked us to pay close attention to the women. It was revelatory and so exciting!! Women were critical to many of the most crucial scenes in the Bible -they were both literally, and metaphorically, life giving. They ignored direction from men and through their own will and critical decision making, helped deliver salvation to their people.

So it is no surprise that this passage was one of the ones we discussed in class that day. If you read it over again quickly you will note that it is primarily about women, women saving Moses. Women who chose to ignore the law of Pharaoh and to trust entirely in God. In Exodus 1 we learn that it is the midwives who cleverly lie to Pharaoh when he asks them to kill male babies as they are delivered. They claim that Hebrew women give birth too quickly, and that they, the midwives, get there too late. It is only then that Pharoah demands that the male babies be thrown into the river, in order to kill them. This does not stop the women from saving their collective offspring. Moses' mother does put Moses into the river, but safely, three months after he is born, and in a basket where he is found by yet more women, non-Hebrews, who also choose to thwart the male directive, and save the baby, the deliverer of Israel. And in chapter 4 it is Moses’ wife, Zipporah who saves Moses yet again and teaches him of circumcision and faith, and the covenant with God.

As I have said before in my meditations, reading the Bible is transformative; again and again it changes us, and reveals depths and connections between different characters and generations, previously unforeseen. Scripture allows us a glimpse into who God is, but also who we are before God and before one another. I encourage us to reconsider many of the stories we know so well, with an attention to the role of the women. Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Israel may have been patriarchal, but I believe the story of God’s people, and God’s relationship to us is steeped in a love for all of us, women and men-equally.

Rahab, the prostitute, saves the Israelites in Joshua out of a profound understanding of who God is, though not an Israelite herself. Ruth and Naomi represent a human love for one another and a faith in God that one could argue is precedent setting and outside of ethnic or cultural expectations. Queen Esther saves the Jewish people from genocide through faith and patience, just as the Virgin Mary shows extraordinary faith and patience in her Magnificat: Luke 1:46-55.

Perhaps most importantly, the women at the tomb are the first to understand what has happened and where Jesus has gone. They are given the gift of total forgiveness for all people, just as they/Eve bore the burden of total blame for our collective sin. It is another piece of the of God’s love for us and the answer that Christ provides in his life, death and resurrection. Adam’s fall is redeemed in Christ’s rising, and the women are our witnesses.

Prayer for the Human Family

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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