Sermon Texts:

Genesis 2:18-23

Luke 1:46-55

Exodus 1:15-2:10

Our passage from Exodus centers our a series of three incidents in which a woman or women work in creative and surprising ways to thwart Pharaoh’s plan to kill the Israelites’ babies. We examine the similarities in these stories and then examine them in light of the story of the creation of the woman from Genesis 2. Undoing centuries of misogyny, we arrive at a better reading of the account of God’s formation of the woman and see God’s plan for creation involves the woman as a delivering ally known in Hebrew as an ezer. Far from an aberration simply designed to humiliate the Pharaoh, the stories from Exodus are part of a pattern that illustrate how God’s power is exercised in the world. We see that pattern reach its apex in Mary’s song and in the life and work of Jesus.