Dr. Gina Stewart preached a mighty word today as Hartford’s Women’s Day speaker. It was tremendously inspiring. I honestly felt the sermon had been tailor made for me. But, that is how the spirit moves and why preaching is such a powerful form of transformative healing through God’s word. It touches who it is supposed to. God’s omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence is made manifest through anointed human vessels such as Dr. Stewart, delivering his mighty word.
She shared the story of two women in the Bible Shiphrah and Puah who were obscure but who did a great thing, a great work by not being obedient to the evil king and refusing to carry out orders to murder all male babies. In fact, they were very clever about it. The King even approached them personally and asked why they did not do as he ordered. They responded that the Hebrew women give birth before the midwife can even arrive. But they feared God rather than the political rulers of the day and are eventually rewarded for their actions.
The male child in the midwives’ care was Moses and we all know how important he became. He shook up the world and laid a solid foundation for eons and generations to come, a great man of god,charged with leading his people out of the bondage of slavery and a self-imposed wilderness of 40 years. No Christian or Hebrew story is complete without the inclusion of Moses. Here we are now thousands of years into the future with a sermon, a conversation with Moses as crucial subject.
What I liked most about Dr. Stewart’s sermon was how she blended people, freedom fighters and social activists of today with the midwives story and status equating them as midwives as well. She built up the momentum of their importance in a crescendo of vocal recognition at the end of her sermon that by its very nature increased the value and expanded the importance of midwifery while leveling up the playing field so to speak, of obscured heroes in history and our everyday lives. She mentioned a stream of civil rights icons like Dr. King, Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, Suffragettes, everyday people who do their part and others one by one, building up the value of doing good and being good,helping and saving others like the midwives saved and protected Moses.
Everybody that helps others, that protects others in harm’s way or who speaks out or acts out for justice is a midwife.Those who are overlooked but who are important to God’s plan in contrast to those on the other hand who beat their chests out loud, who may be “talking loud, but saying nothing” (my interjection/not Dr. Stewart’s words)and doing only harm and seeking rewards and self-aggrandizement for their evil, like the King seeking mass execution of male children out of maniacal selfish motives. He was threatened that they might rise up against him one day.
I resonated with the subjects she chose, two women that have as far as I can remember never been mentioned in a sermon let alone been the subject of one. Her sermon demonstrated how the Bible is rich with stories and with hard work and impeccable research you can cast sacred Biblical stories and the characters contained in them in a new light and build upon their spiritual value as she did with Shiphrah and Puah.
Rev. Cynthia Wilson
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