Liturgy: “Pretty Little Liars”

What is the King’s Liturgy? King’s Liturgy defines our experience together as a Christian community. It outlines the rhythms we celebrate with the Church at large: Scripture readings, Sabbath habits, and celebration of Holy Days and historical events.

This Week’s Lectionary Readings
Exodus 1:8-2:10
Psalm 124
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

This week’s liturgy is contributed by Dr. Joshua Blander, assistant professor of philosophy:

What are you willing to do in order to serve and obey God? In particular, are you willing to lie? Your knee-jerk response to the latter question might be: Absolutely not! But let me ask you: are you sure? When I read the Old Testament (or Hebrew Scriptures), I am continually amazed at how frequently the narratives challenge my ordinary thinking about moral questions whose answers we take for granted. This week’s passage from Exodus is a great example of this.

In Exodus 1 and 2, we meet some powerful characters who were willing to serve God even in the face of grave danger. Among the most amazing are a pair of Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, who (I think) appear nowhere else in Scripture. These two are quite unlike many of the characters in nearby narratives who are praised for their role in securing better lives for the Hebrews. Joseph had great gifts, and was granted significant power. Pharaoh’s daughter (who adopted Moses) was, well, Pharaoh’s daughter. The midwives, on the other hand, were just ordinary folk, like most of us, who held no special status or positions that would suggest such important roles in the history of Israel, or that would secure for them some level of security or safety with Pharaoh.

After the King of Egypt told Shiphrah and Puah to kill every male baby born of a Hebrew mother, they engaged in one of the first recorded acts of civil disobedience, and refused to kill any of the baby boys. Why did they do this? It wasn’t because they felt a duty to the “Hippocratic Oath”; it was because “the midwives feared God”. In the midst of the Egyptian enslavement of the Hebrews these two – like so many others – were unwilling to sacrifice their allegiance to God in favor of serving Pharaoh. When we read this story, we think, at least at this point, that these two acted in morally exceptional ways.

One of the most powerful lessons of this story is that quite ordinary folks play a (literally) vital role in the history of the Hebrews. We focus a lot on Joseph, Pharaoh’s daughter, and (of course) Moses in these narratives. But without these great women who feared God, the story would have gone very differently. The upshot for us should be obvious. It does not matter whether you are a leader of a strategic institution, a middle manager in a tedious and unimportant corporate setting, a longshoreman, a midwife, a gardener, or even (God forbid!) a professor. The goodness of your work is determined solely by whether you are willing to fear and serve God in every circumstance, even if there will be sorrow, shame, or agony that results. That isn’t easy; but if we intentionally participate in a community of like-minded, God-fearing people, we can develop the courage and willingness to serve God no matter what the circumstances or the consequences.

However, there is a twist in the story, which brings out the challenge we face in determining how to act as we seek to serve God. After the midwives acted disobediently, it didn’t take Pharaoh long to realize that there were little Hebrew baby boys running around. So he sent for the midwives and asked, “So, uh, what’s the deal with you failing to follow my edict to kill these little buggers?” Their response was not: “Well, Pharaoh, we fear God, so we refuse to carry out your orders.” Instead, they replied, “Pharaoh, you would not believe these Hebrew mothers. They pop those suckers out so fast that the babies are already growing facial hair by the time we arrive.” Not only did they lie, but they didn’t even tell an especially believable lie.

How did God react to this?  Because of their actions, Exodus reports, God “was good to the midwives…[b]ecause the midwives feared God, He established households for them.” He did not chastise them for their lies, or tell them that their actions were generally good but stop that lying. If lying is bad, why would God (and Scripture, in turn) be silent on this issue? Wouldn’t God want us to learn from this narrative that the midwives’ lying – to the ruler of the nation, no less! – was morally unacceptable?

For many people, Christians and non-Christians, it is a truism that lying is bad. Fun fact: the absolute prohibition on lying derives from Immanuel Kant (or at least his interpreters), not Scripture. This, of course, does not mean that we should put lying at the top of our agendas for becoming conformed to the image of Christ. However, stories like the one we find in Exodus should open us up to the complexities of moral reasoning that we face in the ordinary work of life, especially when we serve a God who desires justice and mercy while living in a culture that often hates justice and mercy (and even more frequently has no clue what justice and mercy even are). Even if we admit that there may be times when it is appropriate, or even good, to lie, these complexities demand that we avoid thinking that we are affirming that “the end always justifies the means”. If the midwives had lied for the sake of gaining some advantage for themselves, even if it were a worthy advantage, it seems unlikely that God would condone that. Here, though, we have a case in which people are asked to do something grossly unjust, and yet chose to serve God instead. Can serving God, or (as the midwives seem to be doing) preserving our ability to serve God and continue fighting injustice be an appropriate reason to lie? Exodus 1 provides a powerful argument to suggest that perhaps it is.

This may be unsatisfying to many. And I’m not going to pretend that I have this all figured out. But I do know this: God’s power and love can enable us to serve Him without fear. And if we pursue God wholeheartedly and fear Him always, surround ourselves with loving and thoughtful people who desire to do the same, we will make at least some progress in understanding these great mysteries of how we should live in the shadow of our Great God and King! Let us endeavor to be such a community of God-fearers and God-lovers.