Women of the Bible, Part 2: Miriam

 

Service of Worship

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

June 13, 2021

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

Holy One:
you anoint us with living water,
so we may go to serve the world
in these troubled days.
You open our eyes
so we will see everyone
as our sisters and brothers.

Seed Planter:
you place faith
deep within us,
so we can bear witness
to your just and loving kingdom.
Your love regulates our hearts,
so we can welcome all
in your name.

Gentle Spirit:
when we cannot see the way,
you take us by the hand
so we can step forward,
in faith,
into the kingdom.
You fill us with hope,
so we can sing God's joy
all of our days.

God in Community, Holy in One,
hear us as we pray as Jesus has taught us,

Our Mother, Father, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.

 

Exodus 15: 19-21

¹⁹ When Pharaoh’s horses, chariots and horsemen^[a] went into the sea, the Lord brought the waters of the sea back over them, but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. ²⁰ Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing. ²¹ Miriam sang to them:

“Sing to the Lord,
    for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
    he has hurled into the sea.”

 

A Message

“Women of the Bible, Part 2: Miriam”

 

Friends, now we’re in the second week of Stump the Preacher 2021, a summer full of these sermons that y’all requested. Continuing with our friend Trish’s request for sermons about strong women from the Bible, today I’m lifting up another very important, but very mysterious biblical heroine: Miriam.

 

I lift up Miriam for a few reasons: we learn a ton from her, like we would from any biblical character. But she poses a unique challenge in lifting up her story, and that challenge is that despite being a very important character throughout the Moses saga in the first five books of the Bible, we see Miriam show up exactly 4 times. She’s like a shooting star among women of the Bible—brilliant and beautiful, but blink and you miss her. The challenge I took on in preaching about her is unpacking the deep fount of wisdom that God offers us in such brief glimpses. And so often, this is exactly how God reveals the Divine self to us, in brief but profound glimpses. So let’s deepen our appreciation of the Divine mystery with Miriam.

 

The author of Exodus establishes Miriam early as Moses’ older sister. Moses is born during an extraordinarily dangerous time in the biblical narrative. His people, God’s chosen people, the Hebrews, have relocated to, and now thrived, in Egypt because of what happened in Joseph’s story. Joseph wisely warned the Egyptians that there would be a devastating famine, counseled them to store up surplus crops in order to be prepared for the famine, and then extended mercy to his estranged brothers by allowing them to stay in Egypt and be nourished by the grain he stored up. The book of Genesis has a happy ending. Joseph forgives his brothers and brings his family back together, everyone gets all the food they can eat, and Joseph is the hero of Egypt.

 

Decades have passed now. Joseph’s brothers, the children of a man named Israel, have married and had lots of kids in Egypt. The Hebrews are now a huge population. The Pharaoh that Joseph served and loved is long gone, and the current Pharaoh doesn’t give a hoot about Joseph. This Pharaoh is a tyrant, and a racist tyrant at that. He wants to control the Hebrews from being able to take over and conquer Egypt. So he enslaves them. When slavery doesn’t do enough to hold them down, Pharaoh commands the midwives to kill the Hebrew baby boys.

 

Enter Moses and his very smart sister Miriam. Moses’ mom hides him as long as she thinks she can, but after a few months realizes she needs to come up with another plan. She puts Moses in a basket and floats him down the Nile, hoping that somehow he’ll find a better life without her. But Miriam, rather than letting Moses float away into the oblivion, keeps watch. She sees the Pharaoh’s daughter coming to bathe in the Nile, and realizes this is the perfect opportunity for Moses. Miriam sees Pharaoh’s daughter bond with Moses, and encourages her not only to adopt Moses and raise him in the palace, but to have Moses’ own mother be his wet nurse. Moses spends his early moments nurtured by his mom, and he gets a royal upbringing, all thanks to Miriam.

 

And then we don’t hear anything about Miriam for many years. Moses grows up in abundant wealth and privilege, but his eyes are not spared the horrors of slavery. He kills an Egyptian slavemaster, then flees. He lives in a foreign land long enough to get married, have kids, and work as a shepherd—still no sign of Miriam. God summons Moses via talking bush, calls him to free his people, and even tells him about a brother, Aaron, who we’ve never heard of until now, but still no Miriam. Moses and Aaron give speeches, cast plagues, and lead the big Exodus of Hebrews from Egypt across the Red Sea, and still no Miriam. BUT, she MUST have been there the whole time. And we know that because of what happens in this morning’s reading.

 

After years of narrative with nary a single mention, the Hebrew people cross the Red Sea and out pops Miriam with a tambourine to lead the people in a song and dance of victory. Then, like the Chuck Cunningham of the Bible, she grabs her basketball (or, in this case, tambourine), climbs up the stairs, and is never seen on an episode of Happy Days again.

 

Many years pass, and the story focuses on just two siblings, Moses and Aaron. The people wander for four decades in the wilderness. The Ten Commandments get written. Golden Calves and Manna happen. Two entire books, Exodus and Leviticus, pass us by, with no sign of Miriam. But again, she MUST have been there. And we know that because of her third appearance.

 

In the book of Numbers Moses decides to take a wife from the land of Cush. This woman is of a different race and skin color than the Hebrew people, and suddenly out of obscurity comes Miriam with OPINIONS. She and Aaron are aghast at Moses’ interracial marriage. They petition God in their anger. In retaliation against Miriam’s racism and colorism, God decides that Miriam must learn the hard way what harm she propagates by judging another by their outward appearance—and God afflicts Miriam with leprosy. Now her skin is “the wrong color”, she is shunned by her beloved people, and when she recovers she comes back healthier and wiser. And back into the biblical woodwork she goes. We don’t hear another word about her until her death and burial.

 

Now, that’s the Christian perspective on Miriam. This week at Schenectady Clergy Against Hate I got to chat about Miriam with two of our local Rabbis, Matt Cutler and Rafi Spitzer, who urged me to go do some research in the Jewish midrash because the midrash doesn’t allow us to forget about Miriam for a second. Our Jewish friends lift up Miriam as a beloved foremother of our faith. So I did some digging and boy were Matt and Rafi right!

 

The midrash is ancient commentary on the Hebrew Bible provided by scriptural authorities. It’s meant to be read right alongside the verses we see in scripture, and it adds meaning and insight to the ancient world of our faith. The midrash elevates Miriam far above where we might imagine her in biblical importance. According to the midrash, Miriam is a wise prophet from a very young age. It was God’s counsel in her ear that helped her save baby Moses and enlist her own mom as Moses’ nurse. Miriam’s own name derives from the Hebrew word for “bitter” and is a constant commentary on the grief of the Hebrew enslavement. In the years that we think we’re not hearing anything about Miriam it’s actually because she was going by a different name, Puah, and working as a midwife to deliver the Hebrew babies. As a midwife going by an alias, Miriam again receives the word of the Lord and saves the baby boys that the Pharaoh had condemned to death. The midrash extols Miriam’s song after crossing the Red Sea, and praises her strength—after everything she’s been through, she decides to sing. The midrash further explains that, where it appears that Miriam has faded into the background, she is bravely leading the Hebrew people through the wilderness, encouraging them every time they’re about to give up. When she commits the sin of racism against Moses’ wife, everyone learns from her. And when she dies, the Hebrew people name a well after her. Just like how there are many feet of well below what you can see from a distance, so too with Miriam is there way more there than meets the eye. And like a well Miriam provided the water her people needed to survive. ^[1]

 

So, where does that leave us? I think we could all benefit from the heroism and bravery of Miriam, especially at a time like this. We live in a world deeply entrenched in bitterness, and we need someone with bitter right in her name to help us cope. Like Miriam herself, we plunge into the depths of racism out of hostility and ignorance. We even resort to racism knowing full well how much it’s already hurt us. We need to never lose sight of the evils of oppression, and we need to see the consequences of hatred as plainly as the skin on our faces. Miriam does that for us. In a time of harsh political divides, in a time where we as United Methodists wander through this desert land between General Conference sessions, anticipating a huge split and waiting to find our true identity as a people, and at a time where the pandemic still rages through the broken world, we need a reminder of just how strong we are. At a time when easy but wrong answers are available in abundance and complicated right answers come at a premium, we need Miriam’s prophesy. But more than anything, we need music. In a time when it’s not safe to sing in public, in a time where our hymnals are collecting dust, in a time when our community orchestras can’t rehearse because the chairs will be too close together, and at a time when we feel so beaten down that it feels like there’s nothing worth singing about, we need Miriam’s music. We need Miriam to bust in here with a tambourine—an instrument you can play without exposing anyone to respiratory droplets—and remind us that even when we’re living on stale crackers and fleeing from something that feels so much stronger than us, we can still sing our praises. Even when we’re sad, or angry, or exhausted, our music can help us to remember to lament to God. And when we finally celebrate, when we finally get that taste of joy, when we finally see some success, we need to sing our praises.

 

Amen.

 

I invite you to receive the benediction:

Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard your going out and your coming in, from this time on and forevermore. And as all of God’s people we say together: Amen.

 

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[1] Meir, Tamar. “Miriam: Midrash and Aggadah” Jewish Women’s Archive. http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/miriam-midrash-and-aggadah 12 June 2021.