Matchless

Two names most people have never heard may be the reason the Exodus story even has a future. Shiprah and Puah are Hebrew midwives trapped inside Pharaoh’s economy and Pharaoh’s fear, yet they refuse to participate in the empire’s violence. Their “no” is quiet, costly, and courageous, and it becomes the kind of leadership that erodes tyranny from the ground up. 

In this episode, Melissa and Bishop Wright have a conversation about why this story still lands so hard right now, when so many of us feel worn down by loneliness, anxiety about the nation and economy, and the constant pull of the 24-hour news cycle. They talk about agency as a spiritual practice: controlling what we can control, resisting rage bait that produces no life, and choosing the most good we can do in the next 30 minutes. They also name a common trap, where planning and meetings can become a way to avoid the present, and we ask what it looks like to simply get up and do the right thing with the tools already in our hands. Listen in for the full conversation.

Read For Faith, the companion devotional.

Transcript

God In The Mundane

Bishop Wright 0:00

Into the mundane is also where God is alive and thriving. Down into that next, what you're gonna do with the next 30 minutes of your life, the next hour of your life, the next decision. That's also where God lives and thrives and invites us to leverage. That's what we can't control. We can watch the 24-hour news cycle, and that produces absolutely no life. Or we can find ourselves taking a look at what we have control over and doing the most good we can in that moment.

Girl Power And The Exodus Story

Melissa 0:40

Welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright. I'm your host, Melissa Rau, and this is a conversation inspired by For Faith, a weekly devotion sent out every Friday. You can find a link to this week's For Faith and a link to subscribe in the episode's description. Good morning, Bishop.

Bishop Wright 0:57

Morning, Melissa.

Melissa 0:58

Today is all about girl power.

Bishop Wright 1:01

Girl power. Way back.

Melissa 1:03

Yeah, come on. So your devotion this week is you called matchless, based on Exodus chapter 1, verses 8 through chapter 2, verse 10.

Bishop Wright 1:15

That's right, a good story.

Melissa 1:16

Come on, you want to share it with us?

Bishop Wright 1:18

You may never have heard of the two most heroic people in the Bible. Their names are Shipra and Puah, two African women, two Hebrew midwives, two enslaved freedom fighters, two incredible theologians, when tyranny seemed to be regularly triumphing, when despair threatened to swallow yet one more generation, when the power of the king of Egypt seemed complete, these two women controlled what they could control, escaped despair by taking up local action, and gave their ultimate allegiance to the matchless power of God. Without the grit and grace of these two women, we may have never ever heard the name Moses. Throughout the 66 books of the Bible, there are stories of regular people accomplishing extraordinary things by faith just because they honored God more than they feared earthly power.

Shiprah And Puah Defy Pharaoh

Melissa 2:26

All right, Bishop. So what inspires you most about this story? Shipra and Pua aside, really, it's through the being and the actions of these two faithful women.

Bishop Wright 2:36

Yeah. Well, well, I mean, a couple of things. Uh uh this is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. I've I've sort of worked on it over the last series of years uh at various occasions because I'm so struck at the fact that uh they did not give in to despair. Um, they control what they could control. Um, you know, they didn't just sing a song of, oh, woe is me, and oh woe of us, oh woe is us, and there's no future for us. Uh, even though Pharaoh had ultimate power, it seemed, and even though Pharaoh was spoken of as a god, uh, these two women, uh regular women who got up every morning and uh and did what they could do, they begin the eroding of uh Pharaoh's uh tyrannical power and they partner with God. So as Walter Brugerman, great theologian, has asked, you know, where did they get the resource to be able to do this sort of uh formal authority-defying power that releases God into the future?

Melissa 3:50

Yeah, you know the word that comes to me is agency. Yeah. And I feel like they practiced agency amidst time a time when many others just completely felt powerless.

Bishop Wright 4:02

Well, and you know why I want to pick them up too and talk about them is because as I walk around and as I go around the church and beyond, just the world, I hear a lot of people despairing. I hear a lot of people uh, you know, significantly worried. That's not even that's an understatement, about the future of the world, about the future of the economy, the future of the nation, the direction of the nation, all kinds of legitimate fears. They notice that loneliness is on the rise and suicide. All these arrows are going in the wrong direction. And it causes some people to lose faith, it causes some people to lose heart. Um, and they can get so focused uh on what's happening on Washington, let's say, and Wall Street, uh, that they neglect to take up the agency uh that they have control over day to day. And so Shipra and Pua uh are whispering down the hallways of time to us, saying, you can make a difference. Don't grow weary and well doing.

Melissa 5:08

And so, like to me, that that was their way of making sure and ensuring that hope and truth break through by practicing their agency. And so, Bishop, I'm just curious what what are those things that you felt like undergirded that agency?

Bishop Wright 5:27

Well, you know, it may sound simplistic to some people, but they just got up in the morning and they did good. Right? Um, they they refused to participate in the infanticide of the empire, right? And so they just did good. They they just there was a line that they would not cross, uh, even though um, you know, under penalty of death, um, they did this good. And so that reminds me that uh we have to do good, all the good we can do, um, whenever we can do it, uh, however we can do it. And uh, and you know, I just it just strikes me uh that we'll never know. We know the Dr. Kings and the Desmond Tutus and the Dalai Lamas and you know, the the uh you know the never-ending list of men and women who have done incredible good and been difference makers. But there are thousands, maybe millions of names we'll never know of the people who just did the small good thing that seemingly made no difference but was the right thing to do. And they did it based on their own personal integrity uh that they said, you know, this cannot go forward. I must make a stand. They did it without a strategic plan, uh, they did it without a community meeting in many cases. They just got up and did the right thing. And the right thing, uh, you know, enlarge this uh sort of culture of defiance that ultimately ends up breaking the back of evil power.

Melissa 6:58

Yeah, wow. So you know it's almost like you took the words right out of my mouth because I was talking about plan, I was gonna ask you about planning. And maybe sometimes the word plan is almost a trap for us to avoid the present.

Agency Over Despair And Planning Traps

Melissa 7:06 Bishop Wright 7:13

Right. Right. Well, I and I think that you just unlocked, I think, the key to this text. It is, is that um uh sometimes, you know, meetings and uh strategic plans and uh those sorts of things are where good ideas go to die. Uh you know, um they had each other, uh, they they were each other's companions. Uh and so it it may be that uh being sent out two by two is all that we need in some instances. Certainly there's always opportunities for organizing, and organizing comes later in uh you know, in the Hebrew people's uh, you know, sort of uh rebuke of uh of this tyrannical power. But for this story, uh what it enlivens in us is that we can make a difference uh just exerting authority over what we have authority over. Um and so all they had control over, and the only tool they had was a resilient and robust sense of faith, who God was and who God is, uh, and who Pharaoh is not, uh, that is not ultimate, uh not in fact a God, uh, in fact an abuser uh and a murderer, and they had the birthing stool uh because they were midwives. And so just think about that. That is what they had. And no doubt they had influence over a circle of people. And I guess that maybe down in the slave city, uh where they uh they they housed generations of people who built the bricks, who made the pyramids and all the other monuments. I imagine, you know, if we use our spiritual imagination, I can imagine that people had a chat in the morning or a chat in the afternoon and a chat in the evening. And I can imagine in whispered tones, they said, This cannot do, this cannot go forward. We must do something. And just think, what we don't know and what the Bible doesn't tell us is how many people took heart uh and decided to take one more step of faith because of what Shipra and Pua did.

Faith As Partnership With God

Melissa 9:19

And so, Bishop, I'm curious if you have any insight towards how someone who is in that the bottom of the bottom, the deepest of despair, might restore or reclaim agency that they've been put under the illusion that they lack.

Bishop Wright 9:42

Yeah, well, I mean, that this is this is in some ways the you know, we think about faith as you know, putting our trust in God, and that is part of it, but it's also putting faith in my ability to partner with God, that God wants me as partner, that God's endowed me with with dignity and and gifts and wonder and all these sorts of things that I can then return and apply. In fact, the the best use of all the gifts that we've been given is to participate in God's purpose, right? So I guess what I would say is that you you've got to stop believing what other people say you can't do and start believing what God says you can do. And we can use shipra and pua as the blueprint. We know nothing else about them other than this, the these righteous acts by saving babies, saving children, one child at a time, and that they had one tool, the midwife stool. And so they have infinitely less uh by way of resources and gifts than we have right now, the average person that I encounter on a daily basis. So, you know, I take it as an invitation for me to go a little bit deeper in what do I actually have at my disposal that I can use to make some good in the world, whether the cameras are on, whether the, you know, I mean, that's the other thing too, is that they just did this thing because it was the right thing. There was no headline, right? In fact, it's amazing that we even know their names, right? In the grand scheme of the story. And I think that's the genius of the of the writer of Exodus, is this uh to locate God in the midst of this. God is not absent, uh, God is not uh deaf, uh, God is not immune to the pain and the suffering uh in this story, but is working through regular people. I find that amazingly ennobling for the average person.

Philippians 4:13 Without The Cliche

Melissa 11:49

You know, in the New Testament, I think I my go-to is the Philippians 4, verse 13, that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And yet some people will fall onto that passage and find it a bit cliche or maybe not applicable. What would you say to them?

Bishop Wright 12:07

Oh, well, I mean, it's uh I would say, you know, it's easy to sit in your comfortable chair uh, you know, with your supercomputer at your fingertips and and just sort of discount the lived reality of people for you know six millennia. It's easy to do that. Um, and and one has to wonder um gently uh if that isn't just giving cowardice more permission. Um I think that that the reason why we have the the good in the society that we live in, such that we have, is because the average man and the average woman said yes to the things that are good, good defined by God, and no to the things uh that were evil or that break uh and destroy community according to God. So I would say um, you know, uh the invitation here is crystal clear, which is you if you want to find uh God up close and personal, go deep in well-doing. Go deep in making good wherever you are. And that, first of all, we should say also that is its own reward. I mean, I think there's something that steals our spine a bit more, that helps us to have a better sense of our own integrity when we do the good that we know that we should do, right? Uh, without anybody noticing, without anybody sort of uh egging us on or celebrating us, giving us awards, et cetera. That strengthens integrity of the community. And you just never know who's watching them. You know, in this story, we can wonder as well who was watching Shipra and Pua, you know, take the little stand that they took. And so I mean, I don't think of this as an individual sort of situation. I think of this as communal because who inspired Shipra and Pua? We don't know their names. Who released into their spirits that you have to do all the good that you can no matter what? Who told them that God sees your work amidst this ocean of despair? I mean, they had been slaved, enslaved for 400 years. I mean, some people would stop praying, some people would stop caring, some people would just sink down into despair. Some people would accept the fact uh that they are whatever Pharaoh says they are. So who whispered to Shipra and Pua, perhaps even as little girls, uh, before they come to this hour to say, you know, God is in you and God wants to work with you, and God can do extraordinary things. Yeah, I know what you see out the window in terms of the Egyptians and their abuse, but I'm telling you that God is still real. I mean, so I love this story because uh it's an eruption, so to speak. Uh uh Brugerman would say it's an eruption of poetry, uh, the Shipra and Pua poetry in the midst of abusive prose.

Melissa 15:04

And yet it wasn't even recognized. Like Shira and Pua, I don't know, would have known or have seen Moses become the Moses of our right. And so, like, it was not a huge grand explosion at that moment. It was just one choice.

One Choice In One Hour

Bishop Wright 15:19

It was one choice in one hour. And and and this is what I want to call us down to is and maybe that down into the minutiae, also and into the mundane, is also where God is alive and thriving. Down into that next, what you're gonna do with the next 30 minutes of your life, the next hour of your life, the next decision, the next extra dollar that you have. I mean, you know, that's also where God lives and thrives and invites us uh to leverage. That's what we can't control. You know, we can watch the 24-hour news cycle, we can get all the chirps and the beeps we want on our iPhones, et cetera, about what's the next thing going wrong uh somewhere. We can click on all the rage bait, and that produces absolutely no life. Or we can find ourselves uh, you know, taking a look at what we have control over and doing the most we can, the most good we can in that moment.

Melissa 16:17

Indeed, we can. So we need to have trust and allegiance to the matchless power of the matchless.

Bishop Wright 16:23

I mean, who works through just the average person and does extraordinary things like God?

Melissa 16:28

Come on. Bishop, thank you, and thank you, listeners, for listening to For People. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Bishop Rob Wright or by visiting www.forpeople.digital. Please subscribe, leave a review, and we'll be back with you next week.