What caught your attention in today’s story?

Last week we heard about Jacob, who wrestled with God and was blessed with a new name- Israel. Israel had twelve sons who became twelve tribes. His eleventh son, Joseph, was the one he favored He gave Joseph a beautiful coat of many colors. Joseph’s brothers were jealous so they sold him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph worked his way up to become a key advisor to Pharaoh, the King of Egypt. Joseph interpreted dreams, foreseeing a famine. His insight and leadership saved countless lives. The end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus recounts how Joseph was reconciled with his family and they settled with him in Egypt.

Then the story jumps ahead to the next generation, taking an ominous turn: “Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 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. Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. ” (Exodus 1:8–11) It’s an ancient script that plays out on repeat in our world. Powerful, paranoid people rule through fear and violence. They press the masses to cooperate by dividing one from another and setting us against each other. The collateral damage is immense—the cost is human dignity. The cost is our collective “life and flourishing.”

In this story, God is in the background. God does not confront Pharaoh directly. Instead, God works through “a team of cunning, courageous women” who organize beneath the nose of a genocidal ruler, consolidating the grassroots power needed to engage in subversive resistance. What motivated the midwives, according to the biblical text is that they “feared God” (Exodus 1:17). The Book of Belonging puts it this way: “The work of welcoming life brings a person close to the Creator, and these women knew that every baby was sacred.”

This story emphasizes that God works through people, like these women. God’s way of acting in partnership with us resembles the role of a midwife. Such imagery is not uncommon in the Hebrew scriptures. The Psalmist writes: “Yet it was you who took me from the womb; / you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.” (Psalm 22:9) And in the book of Isaiah, God says: “Shall I open the womb and not deliver?” (Isaiah 66:9)

By happy accident, I stumbled across the writing of Halley Kim. Her theological perspective is rooted in her background in maternal health care—her years of experience as a nurse, doula, lactation consultant and midwife’s assistant. She writes: “Midwives empower and guide, safeguard and witness, but they do not save. Midwives facilitate the birth process, but they don’t—they can’t—take the pain away. They don’t deliver babies; that honor belongs to their clients.” She notes that many of us “were raised with the idea that God is essentially an obstetrician or an anesthesiologist— a deity who delivers us from our trials, or who takes away our pain.” Instead, she says “The Divine Midwife has no anesthesia, no operating table. But She wipes our brows, squeezes our hands, and holds our hair back when we vomit. She’s with us, whether the outcome is joyful or horrendous. She bears witness to our inner strength as we deliver ourselves.”

Lest any men or non-binary folks in the room are feeling left out… we can all be partners to our divine midwife. For the sake of “life and flourishing” we are called to shift from the values, practices and systems of toxic masculinity. We must free our human culture and our understandings of the divine from the glorification of coercive—power over—to the exercise of collaborative—power with. In the words of Halley Kim, we need to move from the “hoarding of power” to the “empowerment of others.” Our bible study group noticed how the story of “The Great Baby Rescue” resonates with the story of Jesus. King Herod hunted Jesus using Pharaoh’s playbook, the violent script of every authoritarian ruler. Herod set out to kill all the baby boys under two in the region, wanting to incite terror to help himself consolidate power. Jesus, in contrast, is said to be “God with us” in the vulnerability of an infant, one whose survival depends on the love and nurture of other humans. And Jesus’ ministry resisted tyranny by channeling the women in his family tree, embodying the same sort of grassroots power they employed against Pharaoh’s regime.

In our current moment, amid all the ways democracy is being tested, we each have a role to play to serve life and flourishing, to be midwives to each other, and to the community we want to nurture. Democracy is an intentionally secular pursuit. We each come to it with diverse experiences and motivations. However, it is a practice that resonates with the deepest commitments of our Christian faith. When we live close to the Creator, we know that every voice is sacred. We know that its sacred work—to make space for everyone to speak up and listen well; to cultivate multi-racial, multi-faith solidarity; and to come together as manipulators attempt to use fear and violence to divide us.

I want to take a moment now to name and celebrate some the ways we are already acting as midwives to democracy. And at the same time, I want to offer those still looking for your place some possibilities. If you see someone doing something that might be a fit for you, and you want to know more—go talk to them. I know there are folks who are talking to friends, family members and strangers about voting. Is that you? Would you stand up? There’s a team of people who are calling members of our church to ask if you will be part of a phone tree, in case we need to communicate quickly. Who is willing to be part of the phone tree? Stand up. Is anyone offering rides to the polls? Stand up. Are you planning to serve as an election judge? Can you stand up? I’ve been trained to serve as a poll chaplain, working with a team to provide a calm, supportive presence at least 100 feet away from polling places. You do not have to be clergy, or have any special credentials to be a poll chaplain, and it’s a multi-faith effort. Let me know if you are feeling called to be a poll chaplain. The day after the election, we’re going to have a community care space and potluck. Can you be a greeter, bring some food, do dishes or run a vacuum? Stand up. Amid possible disruptions to democracy (or a natural disaster, or other “crisis”), we may need to be prepared to feed the community. One way to prepare is simply to go out and purchase a large quantity of rice and beans that you can bring here or share with others in your own neighborhood when the need arises. Who can do that? Stand up. What did I forget? What else are you all doing? Shout it out! Okay, one last step. Please take the piece of paper in the bulletin and write down your name and the things you have committed to do to support the life and flourishing of our democracy. Then place it in the offering plate when the time comes.

Let us be midwives, friends. Let us be midwives.