Exodus 1:8-2:10

During the Nazi era in Germany, churches and Christians were forced to make choices: they could support the Nazi regime and its racism, harassment, deportation, and ultimately killing of millions of Jews and others. Some churches and Christians did just that. Another choice was to stay quiet and go along to get along. Many churches and Christians did that. They did so because they were scared, or didn’t want to ruin what they thought was their reputation, or they didn’t want to lose their job or business. The other choice and the one that required the most courage was the choice to resist the Nazis and their supporters and seek to subvert their evil efforts where they could on Christian grounds. Only a few Christians and churches did that.  

When I was in high school, my UCC church had a partnership with a church in Germany. I was able to visit Germany a few times through that partnership. And while it was a lot of fun and really good to see how teenagers in Germany lived at the time, one of the things that still haunts me is our visit to the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich. There, we saw the concrete buildings where Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, LGBTQ people, and other resisters to the Nazis were housed, forced to work, and where many ultimately died. We also saw the gas chambers, medical experimentation areas, and furnaces the where the thousands who were killed by the Nazis were cremated. 

One of the things I remember from that trip was the German pastor in the partnership, Alma, share how the German Protestant Church still felt a huge amount of historical shame for how little they did (Germany was a supposedly Christian country) to resist Hitler and the Nazis. She talked about how the Nazis didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Hitler and his racism and anti-semitism were a force in German politics for about a decade before World War Two even started. Hitler became Chancellor (the leader) of Germany in 1933, about six years before Germany invaded Poland and World War Two started. The Nazis didn’t start with mass killing. For years, the Nazis demonized Jews and others they didn’t consider to be ‘real Germans’. The demonization led to assaults by Nazis gangs and thugs. Then came the arrests and deportations. The mass killing of Jews and others that the Nazis are known for didn’t being overnight. Instead, it took years of racism, anti-semitism, and police violence for the German people to largely support what Hitler was doing or become numb to it, before what they called the ‘final solution’ would begin. Alma, the German pastor, shared how shameful the German church looks at this period in its history that most of its pastors and lay people either just went along with the Nazis and stayed quiet because they were afraid or didn’t want to lose their job or business. Or worse yet, actively supported what the Nazis were doing and justified it on Christian grounds.

There were some Churches and Christians who resisted Hitler and the Nazis and tried to subvert their evil actions. One such person was named Corrie ten Boom, who was a Dutch woman who, along with her family, are credited with saving hundreds of Jews from capture by the Nazis.

Corrie ten Boom and her family were members of the Dutch Reformed Church. They took their faith seriously. They were watchmakers (she was one of the only women licensed in the Netherlands as a watchmaker at the time). Corrie ten Boom and her family became part of the resistance movement in the Netherlands when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940. Tene Boom and her family used their watch shop as a meeting place for the local resistance movement and helped organize getting ration books for Jews in hiding (which would have been illegal), and ultimately, her family began hiding Jews in their home. 

In early 1944, the Nazis police raided the ten Boom home. The family was hiding six members of the resistance and Jews, but the Nazis didn’t find them because of the secret hiding place they were in. Corrie ten Boom and members of her family were arrested. Some of the family were released, but Corrie, her 84 year old father, and her sister remained in prison. Her father died because of illness within 10 days of being arrested, while Corrie and her sister were transferred to prisons in Germany, where her sister died. While in prison, the Nazis forced their prisoners to do slave labor. At the concentration camp she was at, this included making textiles, repairing equipment, and agriculture. There is an account of how her supervisor, who was also a prisoner, told Corrie to do poor work so as to sabotage the German war effort. It was a small act of resistance in what were horrible conditions. Corrie survived the war and was liberated as Germany fell and eventually returned home to the Netherlands.

For Corrie ten Boom and her family, being a Christian wasn’t just about going to church on Sunday or believing in God. Faith was a call to action. You have to do something with your faith, not just go through the motions and pretend to be religious. When Jesus in the gospels says ‘love your neighbor as yourself’, in order to find your life you must first lose it and ‘take up your cross and follow me’, and turn the other cheek and forgive your enemies, they aren’t suggestions. They are commands for Christians to follow. 

We opened with Christians and resisting evil because our Old Testament reading from Exodus 1 this morning is about two women whose names are Shiprah and Puah who obey and serve God and in the process find themselves resisting evil and thwarting the purposes of a cruel and murderous king. Shiprah and Puah are midwives in Egypt. Their job is to help deliver babies for the Hebrew women, who have become slaves to the Egyptians.

In the story, Pharoah (the Egyptian king), who is not named, becomes paranoid because his Hebrew slaves have become a huge part of the population. He worries that if they get organized and resist Pharaoh and the Egyptians, they could overthrow them because at the end of the day, for the Egyptians, money and power were the most important thing. So, Pharaoh orders the Hebrew midwives, among who are Shiphrah and Puah, to kill any boy that is born to the Hebrew women. 

But Shiphrah and Puah obey God and not man. They have far too much respect for God, so they ignored the Pharaoh’s order, at great risk to themselves and their families. When the Pharaoh learns that Shiphrah and Puah are letting the Hebrew boys live, he summons them to his office. “Why have you done this and allowed the boys to live?” he demands to know. 

The two women again deceive Pharoah. They lie. “It’s because the Hebrew women are…vigerous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” Shiphrah and Puah have what a Jewish person would call – chutzpah. They are brave, have guts, and do what they think is right even if it costs them or is unpopular. They lie to Pharoah (the most powerful man in the world at the time), but their deception is a lie in service to God’s will and purposes for justice, freedom, and human dignity.

We’re told that God dealt well with Shiprhah and Puah and blessed them. The Bible helps us to remember their names and their faith and courage. But if you notice, the Scripture leaves Pharaoh unnamed. He is only remembered as a cruel, little man. In a similar way, we remember the names of people like Corrie ten Boom, but not the names of the dozens of guards and police officers who arrested her and cooperated with the Nazis’ evil.

One of the biggest challenges the church faces in our time is complacency. We’re scared and tired. Things are not going well. There is so much uncertainty out there – war, high prices, a huge amount of debt, AI, cruelty, and a general feeling that everyone is just alone and in the end left to fend for themselves. And this fear and fatigue leads us to be complacent and just accept things the way they are. We go along to get along. I’m a huge offender in this area.

But the word from the Lord to us this morning is wake up. Pay attention. And from Paul’s letter to the Romans, the twelfth chapter verse two, which women like Shiprah, Puah, and Corrie ten Boom have lived out, don’t go along with the spirit of the age, don’t be seduced by powerful people with money and bad intentions, but instead be changed and follow God’s ways. Resist evil. Obey God. Here is the full verse: “ Don’t live the way this world lives. Let your way of thinking be completely changed. Then you will be able to test what God wants for you. And you will agree that what he wants is right. His plan is good and pleasing and perfect.”

God’s ways are good, pleasing, and perfect. God’s ways are about life, dignity, cooperation as sisters and brothers, justice and fairness, equality before God, humility, peaceableness, joy, patience, kindness, generosity, and self-control. Christ died and rose again to save you and to give you a new life and a new way of being part of the world. Christ didn’t die to make us feel good about ourselves, he died to give us life. Look to people like Shiprah, Puah, and Corrie ten Boom for what that means in your life. Amen.

Works Cited

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2025, February 10). Corrie ten Boom. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/corrie-ten-boom

Wasser, M. (2026, June 6). Choosing Love in a World of Hate: Religion as Resistance in the Life of Corrie Ten Boom. Fresh Writing, 26. https://freshwriting.nd.edu/essays/choosing-love-in-world-of-hate-religion-as-resistance-in-the-life-of-corrie-ten-boom/