Exodus 1.8 - 2.10, Matthew 16.13-20
The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 27 August 2023, Clapham
The Telegraph, of all papers, admiringly called it ‘The most subversive drama on television’. Other publications have praised it in the same way. I am talking about Call the Midwife, the BBC’s drama about a group of nurse midwives working in an East End convent in the 1950s and 60s.
Why call it subversive when others criticise the programme for being sentimental, escapist in its ‘nostalgia for a poorer but more cohesive Britain’. But the Telegraph’s Gerard Gilbert saw that ‘beneath its cosy trappings, it depicts an important, transitional period of social history – of how we got from back-street abortions to freely available contraceptive pills. And it takes on hard-hitting medical issues: including TB, Thalidomide and female genital mutilation. All of this in a pre-watershed drama. There’s also nothing sugar-coated about the show's depiction of the muck and pain of childbirth, with real babies used as much as possible; the show's realistic scripts based on the memoirs of Poplar midwife Jennifer Worth, and the true-life tales of her contemporaries.’ [1]
Heidi Thomas, the series’ creator and writer, says that ‘Call the Midwife does take quite intimate subjects and enables people to discuss’… it is about ‘challenging people’s comfort zone.’ Her scripts have told a story not just about the lives of pregnant women in the East End, but about the struggles of those most hidden from view - the poor, the sick, the ill, and the vulnerable; working class women for whom ‘much has changed’ since the ‘50s and ‘60s, and yet ‘little has changed’. [2]
These midwives act in the moment for the sake of the most vulnerable ones in their care - even if that might mean sometimes breaking the rules. ‘Making life or death decisions without recourse to the opinions of men, and being generally supportive of each other,’ as Thomas puts it. [3]
Whether struggling to preserve the life of a mother and child in a difficult birth, offering a room in the convent to a nurse who confesses to be an unmarried mother, helping a family escape domestic violence, calling out a maternity home which is mistreating its patients, or protecting an immigrant mother from abuse on the ward, with these midwives, love and courage go together, sentiment is inseparable from steel. Ever mindful of the preciousness of life, they work together to preserve it.
Maybe it has always been so, with midwives. In Exodus the story of Shiphrah and Puah is a tale of love and courage, sentiment and steel. Women of an enslaved people in a hostile environment, these two Hebrew midwives disobeyed the direct orders of the ruthless Egyptian king who told them to kill the Hebrew baby boys, and let the girls live. And they did it with panache: spinning a tale that Pharaoh was compelled to believe, that unlike the Egyptian women, Hebrew mothers ‘are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them’.
This was a risky strategy. It could so easily have gone wrong for Shiphrah and Puah if Pharaoh had decided to punish their disobedience and replace them with Egyptian midwives who would have done his bidding. But these two Hebrew midwives gambled on their having the upper hand in the unique power relationship between themselves and the king, a man inexperienced and lacking knowledge in the general ways of childbirth and the particular ways of Hebrew women. When they concocted their clever lie to protect the Hebrew baby boys, Pharaoh could do nothing other than believe them.
Now their refusal to follow the Pharaoh's genocidal instructions was an act of love which ‘may be the first known incident of civil disobedience in history.’ Their courageous act has been called ‘the earliest, and in some ways the most powerful, example, of resistance to an evil regime’. [4]
Why would they take such a risk? Why would they decide to not conform to his will but to resist the ruthless king so firmly, and disobey him so completely? Perhaps because their first instinct as midwives was to focus intensely on the needs of the women who came to them in the distress of childbirth; to share the burden of their traumatic moment and help these women push through, to safety, relief and a safe birth. ‘Making life or death decisions without recourse to the opinions of men’. And always to put life before death - the preservation of life always their goal.
Shiphrah and Puah were women of an enslaved people, the Hebrews who had sought asylum in Egypt at a time of famine in their land, and whose growing numbers meant that the ruling classes regarded them with fear, and thus increasingly subjected them to policies of hostility, setting taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour. Life for the Hebrew midwives was one of constant dangers and threats; but they could do no other but put others’ needs first. The writer of Exodus tells us that Shiphrah and Puah acted this way because they ‘feared God’, which is the phrase used in the Hebrew scriptures to express religious devotion, or acting in love. [5]
It’s the same instinct which motivated Pharaoh’s daughter and the mother and sister of the child who would be called Moses, to act how they did at the riverside in the joyous coda to this opening section of Exodus: their self-giving love-instincts to cherish this baby carrying great risks but eclipsing any self-serving desire they may have had to follow the herd; Pharaoh’s daughter’s actions were all the more courageous for being a break with conformity not only to her own people, but also to her own father. Moses’ mother’s actions were all the more courageous for the great risk she took in giving her child away in hope this would help him survive and flourish.
All of this is like the love instinct we see reproduced in the real-life dramas of Jennifer Worth’s post-war Poplar, and those of today’s NHS midwives working demanding 12-hour shifts. For, to quote Call the Midwife, 'Love is never the only answer. But it is always the best, the simplest, the one most likely to withstand the test of time. Love is the beginning. It should be the final word.' [6]
We may be haunted today by the case of Lucy Letby, and we hold in our hearts and prayers all the families of the babies she murdered or maimed, her colleagues, family and friends in the trauma of these events; if we feel able to, we might also pray for her and the redemption of her spirit. [7]
We are horrified at her crimes because of the trust and admiration which we instinctively have for those in her profession, into whose hands we willingly put our lives and those of our loved ones, confident of their care. She may be the most extreme example, but Letby is sadly not the only nurse who has killed. But thankfully, these are very rare exceptions.
And today we can give thanks for those who practically live out the love-instinct in their life and work day by day. Those who, seeing a need before them, respond to it in the moment, putting others’ needs before their own; those who, finding people suffering hostility from others, stand with them in protest and prayer, regardless of any punishing consequences this might cause them.
In a society which pressures us to be self-seeking, to love others less than ourselves, we are thankful and inspired by those who show us how to live in the light of God's moral demands. [8]
Notes
[1] Gerard Gilbert, Don't call Call the Midwife cosy - it's the most subversive drama on TV. Telegraph, 13 March 2017.
[2] Zesha Saleem, Call the Midwife at 10: The period drama that challenged comfort zones and became the most radical show on TV. iNews, 14 April, 2021.
[3] Gerard Gilbert, Don't call Call the Midwife cosy - it's the most subversive drama on TV. Telegraph, 13 March 2017.
[4] Francine Klagsbrun, ed, Voices of wisdom: Jewish ideals & ethics for everyday living; Jonathan Magonet, Bible Lives, pp.7–8. Quoted in Wikipedia: Shiphrah and Puah.
[5] Wikipedia: Shiphrah and Puah.
[6] Narration by Jennifer, Series 8, Episode 4. In Heidi Thomas, The Wisdom of Call the Midwife.
[7] 'Cruel, calculated' Lucy Letby to spend rest of life in prison. BBC News, 22 August 2023.
[8] Harold Kushner, ed, d’rash commentary, ’Exodus’ in Etz Hayim: A Torah Commentary. Quoted in Wikipedia: Shiphrah and Puah.
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