2026.06.28 | Shiphrah & Puah

 “Faces of Our Faith: Shiphrah & Puah”
Exodus 1:8–22 
Preached by 
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser
Eden United Church of Christ  
Cherryland, CA 
28 June 2026

This morning we continue our summer worship series, Faces of Our Faith: Bold and Untold Stories. Today we meet two women whose names perhaps many have never even heard: Shiphrah and Puah. May we say their names: Shiphrah and Puah. 

They were not queens or prophets. They never commanded a people. They were “simply” midwives. But history often turns on the courage of ordinary people.

Their story unfolds in 13th c. BCE ancient Egypt, generations after Joseph had welcomed his family there during a famine. The river-crossing Hebrews have multiplied and prospered, but a new Pharaoh no longer sees them as neighbors—only as a growing immigrant threat. Fear has a way of doing that. Fear stops seeing people as people. It stops seeing people as people and convinces those in power that preserving privilege matters more than preserving life.

So, Pharaoh devises a terrible plan. He commands the Hebrew midwives to kill every Hebrew baby boy at birth while allowing the girls to live.

It's one of the earliest stories in Scripture where a government weaponizes fear, targets an entire people, and asks ordinary workers to become agents of oppression. Sound familiar? 

Scripture tells us something remarkably simple: "But the midwives feared God." In Scripture, fearing God is not about terror. It is recognizing that God's justice and love outweigh every earthly power. When those loyalties collide, Shiphrah and Puah choose God. They simply refuse. No dramatic speeches. No violence. Just faithful resistance.

And because two women decided that babies mattered more than the king's commands, Moses would live, and Moses would go on to lead the first recorded labor revolt, nearly a century before the workers’ strike of the tomb builders at Deir el-Medina. 

Esta mañana continuamos nuestra serie Rostros de Nuestra Fe con la historia de dos mujeres casi olvidadas: Sifrá y Puá. No eran reinas ni profetas; eran parteras. Pero Dios suele cambiar la historia por medio de personas comunes con un valor extraordinario.

En Egipto, el faraón ordenó matar a todos los niños hebreos al nacer. Quería convertir a trabajadoras comunes en instrumentos de opresión. Pero la Biblia dice algo sencillo y profundo: "Las parteras temían a Dios." Es decir, reconocían que la justicia y el amor de Dios estaban por encima del poder del faraón.

Así que desobedecieron. Sin violencia, sin discursos, con una resistencia fiel salvaron vidas. Gracias a su valentía, Moisés sobrevivió, y con él comenzó el camino de liberación para todo un pueblo.

The story of Shiphrah and Puah reminds us that evil rarely arrives announcing itself as evil. More often it comes disguised as policy, efficiency, security, or "just doing my job." The question every generation must answer is the same one Shiphrah and Puah answered: When the demands of power conflict with the demands of love, whom will we obey?

That question feels especially timely for us at Eden.

For many years, churches—including ours—have faithfully served people in need. We fed the hungry. We welcomed newcomers. We clothed families. We offered pastoral care. We still do. Direct service matters because every person bears the image of God.

But over the years, God has continued stretching our imagination. We've learned that compassion is only the beginning.

It's one thing to hand someone food; it's another to ask why they are hungry.

It's one thing to welcome immigrants; it's another to organize so every immigrant can flourish with dignity.

It’s one thing to pull babies from the Nile; it’s another to go upstream to stop the babies from being thrown in.

That's why you've heard us say that we're moving from welcoming to belonging, from charity to solidarity, from simply responding downstream to crises toward working upstream to transform the conditions that create them in the first place. That isn't because we've abandoned mercy. It's because mercy keeps leading us toward justice.

La historia de Sifrá y Puá nos recuerda que el mal casi nunca se presenta como mal al principio. Muchas veces llega disfrazado de órdenes, políticas o simplemente de "cumplir con mi trabajo". Ellas escogieron obedecer a Dios antes que al faraón, y su compasión se convirtió en valentía y resistencia frente a la injusticia.

Al reunirnos hoy para nuestra Reunión Anual, también nosotros preguntamos qué clase de iglesia queremos ser. Sí, seguiremos alimentando, acompañando y dando la bienvenida. Pero Dios también nos llama a ir más allá: no solo rescatar a los bebés del río, sino ir río arriba para detener las fuerzas que los empujan al agua. Por eso hablamos de pasar de la caridad a la solidaridad, de la bienvenida al verdadero sentido de pertenencia, trabajando para transformar las causas de la injusticia y no solo sus consecuencias.

Shiphrah and Puah didn't simply comfort the victims of Pharaoh's violence. They interrupted the violence itself.

Their faith wasn't merely compassionate. It was courageous. Their obedience to God became resistance to injustice.

Following worship we'll gather for our Annual Meeting. More than a business meeting, it's an opportunity to ask what kind of church we are becoming. Will we simply maintain programs? Or will we continue becoming a people willing to stand where Shiphrah and Puah stood—using whatever influence we have, however ordinary it may seem, to protect life, cultivate belonging, and challenge the systems that deny God's beloved children the chance to flourish?

We’re not about coming together to pen resolutions that babies should not be thrown into the river. We come together to travel upstream, to affect systems change in beloved community. 

Because history has never depended solely on kings or presidents.

Sometimes history changes because two midwives quietly say, "No." For God's liberation begins with ordinary people who decide that love will have the final word. Faith is not only believing rightly; it is resisting courageously.