The S'hero story

 

Exodus 1: 8 – 2: 10
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
August 23, 2026

Photo of a young child with light brown skin and brown curly hair, wearing a red eye mask, a red cape, and off-white shirt with their arms outrstretched and their mouth open as if yelling or roaring. Background is out of focus, a field with yellow flowers, green trees in the distance, and structures beyond them. Sky is mostly white with some light hazy blue areas.

I’ve been on a hero story binge lately. It started with the summer blockbuster The Odyssey and went from there—books and movies. A hero story is broadly defined as a narrative that follows a hero on an adventure who faces challenges, gains insights, and arrives home transformed. But that’s not entirely how the story goes. In The Odyssey, Odysseus makes some ego-driven choices that lead to those challenges that result in the loss of his men. It is when he is ready to face his grief and remorse that he gains those insights and arrives home aware of his hubris. But not enough to keep him from slaying every last one of the suitors who were freeloading in his palace, held at bay for 3 years by his wife Penelope.



Penelope has her own hero story in The Odyssey. Like many stories about women, Penelope’s story is about how she survives choices made for her by using her wits and yet also strives to remain true to herself and to the hope of rescue and return to dignity. Her name which is often translated from Greek as “weaver” refers to her ploy to placate the 108 suitors for her hand by weaving a burial shroud for her elderly father-in-law, saying that she will marry when she finishes it, while every night she unravels part of her work and begins again. And it is Penelope who devises the final test that eliminates the suitors’ eligibility and reveals the return of Odysseus.



What I’m about to say isn’t based on any scholarly work, just my own observations. I began to think about how a woman’s hero story or s’hero story has been different from a man’s, but I didn’t want to be sexist or reductive or binary about it, reducing humanity to two genders and the same feminine and masculine roles that have bound us for millennia. If we take gender out of it, what we have is the egocentric hero story and the hero story of the oppressed: the hero who can freely make choices, seek out adventure, and the hero who must survive the choices made for them, whose circumstances are beyond their control.



Which is what we have in the stories of Shiphrah and Puah and the story of Miriam saving her brother Moses. Shiphrah and Puah are Hebrew midwives, their people enslaved by the Egyptian pharaoh, who fears that one day the Israelites will be so numerous that they will rise up with their enemies against the pharaoh and he will lose his slave labor population. So the pharaoh orders Puah and Shiphrah to kill the male newborns but allow the female newborns to live. One rabbinic scholar proposes that Puah and Shiphrah would’ve been supervisors of whole battalions of midwives which sounds much more feasible, because the Israelites are so numerous.



Heroes in the stories of the oppressed have limited choices but one choice that is often made is that they answer to a power higher than the one that is imposed on them. Enslaved people in this country called God and Christ and the Holy Spirit “Lord” and “Master” as a means of tacitly thumbing their noses at those who enslaved them. And so Shiphrah and Puah fear God more than they fear the pharaoh, saying that the Hebrew women are more hardy, giving birth before the midwife arrives. Thus, the pharaoh charges his own people with the destruction of Hebrew boy children.



Little does he know that it will be one of his own children who will advance his future destruction. A young girl, her mother, the pharaoh’s daughter, and feminine imagery all inhabit the hero role in this story traditionally known as “Moses in the Bulrushes”. A Levite woman gives birth to a son and hides him for three months. To protect him further, she too uses her wits and makes a basket, places her infant son in it, and puts it in amongst the reeds of the banks of the Nile—the basket like a womb and the river, its waters.



His older sister, Miriam, watches her brother from a distance as the pharaoh’s daughter comes down to the river to bathe with her attendants. Hearing the baby cry, she is drawn to the basket and sees that the child is one of the Hebrews. At that moment, Miriam steps forward and asks if she should go and find a Hebrew woman who can nurse the baby for her. Miriam then goes and finds her mother, who is given the child to be nursed as well as wages. When the baby comes of age to be weaned, he is then brought to the pharaoh’s daughter to become her son. She names him Moses which means “From the water I drew him out”, just as a midwife draws a baby out from a mother’s waters.



In an egocentric hero story, the hero can often wind up alone and still succeed, like Odysseus. In an oppressed hero story, the hero has community and identity that comes from community and they succeed because they are supported by community. Shiphrah and Puah had each other, other midwives, and God. Miriam had her mother and Moses had the both of them. In an egocentric hero story, the hero often has to make sacrifices due to choices they have made. In an oppressed hero story, sacrifices are imposed on the hero, as they are constantly threatened to be separated from their community because of who they are. In an egocentric hero story, the transformation is one of victory and a reward of some kind. In an oppressed hero story, the transformation is liberation, restoration, and justice, not just for themselves but for their community, their people.



When those who have enjoyed the benefits of self-interest turn and join in solidarity with the oppressed, a new hero story is born. When men smash the patriarchy. When White people learn how to be anti-racists. When the rich go away empty and the poor are filled with good things. It is like when a Pharisaic Palestinian rabbi eats with tax collectors and sex workers and is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. When he heals on the sabbath. When he has no place to lay his head. When he is charged with sedition and crucified between bandits and thieves. When he harrows his way through hell and is raised again. When a movement is raised in his name that protects the vulnerable and feeds the poor and calls that salvation.



When a church decides it is going to build affordable housing—this is the next chapter in the hero journey of this church. When our identity comes from not just the communities we live in but from joining with those who do not have community or homes or belonging or a place to lay their heads. When we incur grief and impose sacrifices on ourselves, because it’s not about us. When we midwife something new and this church becomes the womb from which compassion and justice are birthed. We’re all on a hero story binge. The old, old story becomes a new story through our telling of it, in our living of it. We’re going to be transformed, beloveds. We aren’t going home—we’re making a home for the future. What a time to be alive. Amen.

Benediction – Rev. William Sloane Coffin


May God give us the grace to never sell ourselves short;
Grace to risk something big for something good;
And grace to remember the world is now
Too dangerous for anything but the truth
And too small for anything but love.
Amen.