Have you ever had a memory that, even when it happened
years before, it still feels as fresh as if it happened yesterday? You still picture the room where it
happened. You still see the faces that
were present there. Most importantly,
you feel what you felt in those moments.
A memory like that came to me this week. I had just gotten my first job as a
pastor. I had moved into town, but not yet
started. So, on the Sunday before I began,
my girlfriend, Karen and I went to the neighboring Presbyterian church.
But we had no idea what we were walking into. One of the pastors there had recently preached
on female images of God. And his sermon
had created a firestorm. The day Karen
and I visited, the other pastor, a woman, preached a sermon to help calm the
storm. But the day didn’t end
there. The pastors also were having a
forum after worship. And Karen and I decided to go check it
out. We didn’t do it out of any deep concern
on the issue. Honestly, we went for the
same reason folks slow down when they pass an accident. We had a morbid curiosity about the whole
mess.
But the emotions I felt from the folks in that room,
their anger, their fear, their dismay, shocked me. I had no idea seeing God in such a way would
be that disturbing to people. I wish I
could tell you that I had some profound revelation from that experience. I didn’t.
I only learned that if I wanted to keep my new job I definitely shouldn’t
preach a sermon on that. And in 25 years
of ministry, I don’t think I have.
But now I get it.
Until you see what the Bible tells you about God’s womanly ways, you are
missing something profoundly important about God. In
fact, until you see that, you can’t see fully how God shares in your suffering
or pain. You can’t see fully the wonder
of what God did for you on that cross. But
when you do see these beautiful if maybe a bit shocking images, in them, you
will find hope, consolation, comfort.
How can seeing God in that way do that?
In these words, God shows you the way.
Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.
How could seeing God’s womanly ways help you see God more
clearly? How can it help you see better what
God in Jesus did for you on the cross? In
these words, God tells you. When you see God in this way, you know how
deeply God shares in your pain and struggle.
More than that, you know too how through pain and struggle, God can and will
bring new life to you, to this entire world.
Do you see here where God becomes not just a woman,
but a mother? It happens right after God becomes a warrior,
vanquishing his enemies. All of a sudden God goes from a champion
raising the battle cry to a woman crying out as she gives birth. “But now,” God says, “like a woman in childbirth,
I cry out, I gasp and pant.”
In a single sentence, Isaiah uses three different
words for the same thing, breathing.
Why? Clearly, Isaiah knows. Isaiah know what it looks like when a woman
gives birth, how important breathing becomes.
Sadly, the translators don’t do just justice to that first word, used
only this once in the whole Bible. Isaiah
doesn’t say God cries out. No, Isaiah
says, God groans or bellows even. God
leads Isaiah to use that word because God knows how well it fits. It fits the cries, the moans that come when women
bring new life to the world. And the words that follow, gasping and
panting, then paint that picture more fully.
But why does God focus on that part of childbirth, on the
groaning and gasping. It’s because God
knows why women do those things. That
breathing helps them manage the pain. And
when you give birth, you can’t fight that pain.
You have to live in it. You have
to move through it to bring that baby into the world.
Do you get what God is telling you in these two very
different images, warrior and mother?
God is telling you. I’m not the
God who hangs out beyond you in some place where life doesn’t touch me. No, I’m the God who fights with you against
the enemies of your life, who helps you stand against them. And more than that, God says, I’m the God who
goes through the pain with you, who lives in it with you, so that with you I
can bring you new life.
But in that image, God is saying even more than
that. Do you know the first place where the Bible
talks about the pain of childbirth?
It happens in Genesis, after Adam and Eve have ignored
God’s words and betrayed God’s trust in the Garden of Eden. As a
result, Eden can no longer be their home.
But the results of their distrust of God go deeper than that. God tells them it will bring new pain into
their lives, especially when they bring new life into the world. For Adam, God says. It will not be easy for you to bring life
from the ground. You will wrestle with weeds
and thorns. And to Eve, God says. It will not be easy for you to bring new life
from your body either. You will
struggle with pain as you bring children into the world. In both
these examples, God is simply saying.
When your life goes out of communion with the One who created you, it
messes things up. Even when you strive
to do something good, like grow crops or give birth, it becomes harder. Sadly though, people have used this story to
shame women, which ironically God also predicted, saying this lack of communion
with God would lead to men oppressing women.
That’s right, right at the beginning,
God calls sexism a major sign of what’s wrong with the world.
But here in Isaiah God turns the shaming around. God becomes the woman laboring in pain to
bring the baby into the world. And in
doing that, God is telling you something crucial about who God is. Don’t you see, God says. I, God stand with you in all your pain, even
the pain of your loss of communion with me.
As the writer, Lauren Winner,
puts it. “God is converting the groansof childbirth from a sign of humanity’s fallenness to a sign of God’s intimateidentification with” you and me. God is
saying. I am with you. I am with you in all of it, the good, the
bad, the ugly.
But God is doing even more than that. God is pointing you to God’s ultimate act of
identification. God is pointing you to
Jesus. That’s actually how this whole
chapter begins. At the beginning, God is
telling you about the new servant who is coming to bring forth justice to the nations. And
just in case, you wondered, who God is talking about. One of Jesus’ disciples, Matthew, take those
very words and quotes them directly to describe the work of Jesus. Heck, Jesus uses words from Isaiah very
close to the ones written here to describe his own call from God.
Maybe that’s why Christians centuries ago made these
stunning observations about what Jesus was doing on that cross. These followers of Jesus proclaimed that in
some deep and mystical way, Jesus was giving birth. And what was Jesus giving birth to? Jesus was giving birth to a new you, a new
me, to a whole new world.
Do you see how powerful that is? Do you get what that tells you about what
God can do in your life? Look, who needs a God who just feels your pain? Wouldn’t
you rather have a God who takes your pain away. But if you’re honest, don’t you gotta
admit. That sort of God isn’t good
enough either.
This past week, I started getting back to some regular
work outs. And that has led to some pain. But it’s been pain I needed to have, signs
that my body was getting stretched and pushed in good ways. Pain can protect you from getting hurt. It warns you when you do. And pain of all sorts, including pain I brought
on myself, has taught me lots of things.
Pain hasn’t always been a bad thing.
And from the beginning, the Bible makes it clear that pain comes with the
territory. We live in a broken world,
and that world brings pain. And when you
try to avoid that, it just brings you more pain in the end.
No, you need a God who doesn’t just feel your pain,
but who redeems it. You need a God who
will take your pain, even the pain that is most useless, even evil, and find a
way to bring good out of it. And that’s
what Jesus does on that cross. On that
cross, Jesus enters into the pain of this broken world, but he does more than enter
into it. Jesus redeems it. In Jesus, God through it brings new life. God through it destroys everything that
separates you from God. God moves
through that pain to create a new world, a world where one day pain and
suffering will end.
Do you get what that means? That means, you have no pain you will face
that God cannot redeem, that God cannot birth new life out of. In fact, this week, wherever you are facing
pain, bring it to God. Say to God. “I need you to bring new life here.” And when you ask, God will. God will redeem the pain of a loss or a
relationship on the rocks. God will
redeem the pains of fear or disappointment or anxiety. God will redeem the pain of regret or
guilt. And out of that, God will bring new life. If God can birth new life through the pain
of the cross, God can do that anywhere. So, bring your pain to God. Let this God bring the new life that only
this holy and divine mother of us all can.
The labor might be long and hard, but through God’s love the new life
will come.
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