Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday December 10, 2023 (Third Sunday of Advent)
Scripture Reading: Isaiah 46:3-11
(This year, our Advent theme is focused on midwifery and birth. Each week, we
will hear the story from the bible of someone who was a midwife, or who
encountered a midwife. The waiting, the longing, the pain of the “not yet” –
all of our Advent themes – are captured in the metaphor of a midwife, in the
metaphor of birth.)
I wrote those words that you just heard. Are you surprised? I suspect that you expected me to be a man talking to you, but I am a woman. I am a woman from the tribe of Levi, a descendant of Israel, though I was born in the foreign land of Babylon.
I’ve taken a look through that book that you have named Isaiah, and it made me laugh. The first part was so clearly written by someone when our people were still living in Jerusalem, before we were taken into exile in Babylon. But then I recognized my own words, written in Babylon, in the middle part of the book. And the words at the end – they seem to have come from a time after I died, as I don’t recognize any of them. And yet your scholars have lumped us all together and named us Isaiah.
I am a prophet, and the daughter of a prophet. When my parents were only just married, the Babylonian army put their city of Jerusalem under siege, and eventually destroyed it. Because my father was a prophet, they weren’t allowed to remain there in the rubble, but instead they were carried off to Babylon along with all of the other people with power and prestige.
My father told me about those early years in exile – the years when I was too young to remember for myself. All of the people who had been carried away were in deep grief. They had seen their homes destroyed and their city destroyed. They had witnessed the deaths of their family members and friends and neighbours. They had even witnessed the destruction of the temple at the heart of the city – the temple that was the home of our God-whose-name-is-holy.
And now that they were living in exile, they didn’t even have a place to go to pray. And my father said that the deepest grief of all was that they were separated from God-whose-name-is-holy who lived in Jerusalem. My parents used to sing me the songs of those early years of exile:
By the rivers of Babylon –
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willow’s there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land, when the Lord our God is buried under the rubble in Jerusalem?
I am the youngest child of my parents, yet I am the only child who inherited the gift of prophesy from our father. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of the presence of God-whose-name-is-holy within me.
My father tells me that I, and the other prophets of my generation, were important to the elders in exile. At first, they weren’t able to sense God’s presence there in a foreign land. The voice of grief drowned out the voice of God-whose-name-is-holy. But then they were able to hear my voice, and the voices of the prophets who hadn’t known Jerusalem. They heard how God-whose-name-is-holy was still speaking to us. And all of the people began to realize that God-whose-name-is-holy wasn’t limited to the pile of rubble that had been the temple, but that God-whose-name-is-holy is with us wherever we are.
The message that I and the other prophets began to receive was that our people were going to eventually be able to return to Jerusalem. God-whose-name-is-holy was going to make the mountains bow low and the valleys rise up so that our pathway through the desert would be smooth. God-whose-name-is-holy was going to give us wings like eagles so that we would be able to soar over the miles that separated us from the place that we call home. We would run and not grow weary; we would walk and not feel faint. God-whose-name-is-holy was going to usher us into new life.
God-whose-name-is-holy was going to be like a midwife for our people, birthing us from a life in exile to a new life back in the Promised Land.
Which is why you shouldn’t be surprised that I am a woman. This image of God-whose-name-is-holy as a midwife, it is much more likely to be given to a woman who has known the pain of childbirth than to a man who has only witnessed it. And yet God-whose-name-is-holy is very much like a midwife, accompanying her people through a time of pain and danger, encouraging her people, and keeping us safe, until the danger has passed and new life is here.
And I don’t think that my voice is the only female voice in scriptures, even when our names have been concealed. If you look closely, you will be able to find us. Some of the psalms that our people sing – words that are attributed to our ancestor, King David, they speak of God delivering us from our mother’s womb.
So many of the other prophets speak of God-whose-name-is-holy delivering us to safety as a warrior does; it’s good to balance out this image of a Warrior-God with the image of God-whose-name-is-holy delivering us to safety as a midwife does.
And just as there is rejoicing when a midwife has safely delivered a baby, there will be rejoicing when God-whose-name-is-holy has safely delivered us back to Jerusalem. There will be rejoicing and celebration and joy and singing and dancing beyond imagination when that day comes. For the pain of labour is only temporary, and God-the-Midwife is delivering us from our pain and from our suffering.
And then, won’t you rejoice with me?
What “tools” would a Midwifing-God use
to deliver us from our pain and
suffering?
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