"Born Again and Again"

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Are you born again?

Are you born again?

Are you born again?

Does this question make you a little uncomfortable?  Hold that thought…

I realized something the other day.  Summer is over.  Gone. 

Beginning now my fifth year here at UPC as campus minister, I’m starting to realize that there are some definite signs to look for when summer’s over and school’s started again.  The parking garage is a tiny bit more crowded.  You tend to see more burnt orange everywhere.  You can’t walk to the UT Union and back without passing at least half a dozen credit card application tables with sales-folk promising you that a T-shirt listing the “Top Ten Reasons I Didn’t Become an Aggie” is really worth the $50 annual fee.

One last and definite harbinger of the fall semester is this:  a small but very vocal group of Christians, strategically stationed throughout the campus.  They’ve taken it upon themselves to see to the spiritual health of our college students, passing out brochures with titles like “The Choice,” “Who, Me?” “Doom Town,” and “Creator or Liar?”

I was stopped once and asked, “Are you a Christian?”  Hoping to keep things brief, I simply said, “Yes.”  But then this man, standing there in the hot, scorching sun under his wide-brimmed hat with his Bible and a stack of leaflets said, “Are you born again?” 

And I had this sense of wonder about the two of us.  Here we were in this tiny, brief encounter.  But day to day, we were two men of the same faith, using many of the same words… and in many ways speaking a completely different language.  And how often, when we engage others in conversation about key issues of faith, do we find ourselves standing at the edges of deep, wide vocabulary gaps?  Words like “born-again Christian,” “mission,” “evangelism,”—the language we embrace can unsettle or even threaten another.  A simple question feels like more than an invitation to share freely of one’s faith experience.  “Are you born again?”  We sense a line being drawn in the sand, we hear, “Which side are you on?” and we feel that kind of threat.

The man was still looking at me, waiting for an answer.  “Are you born again?”   “Yup,” I said.  He seemed satisfied, I suppose, and I made my way along.  The thought has occurred to me, though:  “What if I had said more?”

The story that comes to us today from Exodus is a story about threat.  Listen again to Pharaoh’s first two lines:  "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."

Can you sense his fear?  Can you feel how Pharaoh has been threatened?  Can you imagine a history of events that has brought Pharaoh to this moment in time

After all, what are we to picture here?  Are we to think that Pharaoh, upon being appointed as king, took a stroll around his palace and while doing so happened to look out a large palace window when suddenly, to his great shock, he realized, "There are a lot of Israelites out there!"  Are we to believe that this scenario of a growing Israelite population is one that neither Pharaoh nor his political advisors could have possibly foreseen—that the whole thing just sort of took Egypt completely by surprise?

No.  Pharaoh is speaking here about something he's known about for a long, long time.  Most likely, he has been raised in a culture that has received the immigration of Israelites into Egyptian lands.  He and his people are more than aware of this rising tide of Israelites in their midst. 

In fact, maybe we can imagine some of the things that were being said on the streets and in the marketplaces…in homes and in chatrooms:  “The Israelites—there are too many of them!  They’re taking our jobs.  They're using all the water.  They're sucking our resources dry.  They're making our family lines impure.  They've brought their own God with them.  They're ruining Egyptian culture.  Something needs to be done.”

Pharaoh has grown up in a climate of tense fear.  Dogging him through his rise to power has been the threat of the growing Israelite population and what they might do.  Is Pharaoh now coming up with a revolutionary plan—a way to deal with the rising Israelite population once and for all—are his ideas really new?  Or are they as much a part of him and his culture as anything else?  And do they not flow from heart of his culture—from the core of a society struggling with what it does not understand—a culture diversified with the growing presence of out-of-towners—a culture that is threatened?

Pharaoh isn't just speaking from his own heart, but rather from the heart of a people living in fear for its cultural identity and sense of nationalism.  "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."

And the people said, "Yes!  That's what it is!"  They listened to Pharaoh and they followed him.  They became taskmasters of their Israelite neighbors; they oppressed them with forced labor. And I wonder about Pharaoh's "in the event of war" line.  "In the event of war," he tells the people, what to stop these Israelites form jumping ship and joining the other side?  Nothing!  Why, they're probably just waiting for the right time to take over!  Pharaoh looks at his people and says, “Is that what you want?  Is that the kind of fear you'll agree to live under?”  And I can just picture Pharaoh's people listening to every word.  In their hearts they've got their doubts about the Israelites, they carry the racism that's inherent in their culture.  Now they hear their leader – who chooses his words ever so carefully:  Those Israelites want to take us over!  That's what they want!  We can't let that happen!  This spells doom for the society we've worked so hard to create!

And so the Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites.  Ruthless—without compassion, without pity, without grief—ruthless.  Of course, it's easier to behave ruthlessly when you believe that the people you're mistreating aren't really people at all.

Enter the story two people—the two most unlikely of characters:  Shiphrah and Puah.  Two Hebrew midwives.  Pharaoh calls them in and instructs them, “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.”  If it is a boy—if it is one who might grow up and resist Egypt—if it could become a soldier one day—if it has the power to carry Israelite names and Israelite blood to future generations—if it is a threat, kill it.

It’s ironic, though, that Pharaoh lets the girls live, isn’t it?  “If it is a girl, let it live,” he says, completely unaware that the Hebrew women are strong and the Hebrew women who become midwives apparently know a thing or two about civil disobedience.  Once Pharaoh realizes that plenty of healthy Hebrew boys are being born, he again summons Shiphrah and Puah and says, “What’s going on?  Why are you letting these boys live?”  I can just see Shiphrah and Puah exchanging a quick glance.  They’re prepared for this:  “You see, Pharaoh,” they respond, “the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”

And who knows how long this has been going on?  Really, how long?  Days?  Weeks?  Months?  Who knows how many births these midwives have seen?  Birth after birth after birth—again and again and again… 

Born again to a Hebrew family—an infant—a boy who will grow longing for a better way of life.

Born again to a Hebrew mother and father—a girl who, throughout her childhood, will hear stories of Shiphrah and Puah—stories that will inspire resistance and     courage.

Born again to a Hebrew mother—a boy, whose name will be Moses, who will rise up in Pharaoh’s very own house and lead the Israelites away from Egypt, away from oppression, away from bondage—to freedom.

Born again and again and again.  Threat to Pharaoh.  Threat to Egypt.  Threat to a culture whose national identity has been offended by the presence of outsiders.  Born again:  a threat that change is about to take place.

Born again and again and again…  Are you born again?  Are we born again?  What do we do with threat?  What do we do when our lives, pregnant with possibilities for change, for growth in new directions, for understanding God in a new way—pose a threat to us? 

When working with integrity means changing jobs,

When a difficult conversation threatens to change a relationship,

When being healthy means admitting we need help,

When living an honest lifestyle threatens to isolate us from our friends and family,

When answering God’s call threatens to undo our sense of security,

When honest doubts threaten to change the way we understand our faith…

There is a bit of Pharaoh in us, I think.  There’s a bit of that spirit that yells, “STOP!” every time our lives reach the birthing stage—every time when that which could be born to us represents a threat—a theological, political, action-oriented, relational, truth-telling threat…  And in so many ways, we put that threat to death.

Yet there is a spirit of Christ in us too, isn’t there?  That Spirit present with us when, like Shiphrah and Puah, we act as midwives for each other, present at the birthstools of life’s challenges and difficult choices—that Spirit that breathes life into our living and speaks to us in a myriad of ways, saying, “Life is too precious to spend it all on that which is non-threatening!  Be born!  Again and again!  Be born!”

And so we are church.  And so we gather.  And so we are all pregnant, and so we are all one another’s midwives.  And so we create safe community and say to one another and to the world:

“Be born!”

“Live into change!”

“Come out!”

“Go forth!”

“Live.”

And of course, we cannot help but wonder...  If the Church is born again, what does it look like?  What do we as a Church begin to look like when, despite the threats, we live in rebirth day after day after day?  What happens when reborn people in a reborn Church long for a reborn world?  What happens if they do it again and again and again?

Are we born again?