The
world, it would appear, has gone quite mad. Some people have lost their head.
Others are numb or angry with grief. Yet others are fearful, and with reason.
No one seems to have a plan, and no one knows what lies twenty-four hours
ahead, let alone in the coming months and years; but it doesn’t look good,
whatever it may be. We are in a mess. How ought we to respond? Today we turn to
Scripture and to Sacrament, to the words and the actions that remind us who we
belong to and for why. And I’d like us to focus on the passage from Isaiah.
The
purpose of biblical prophecy is not fortune-telling but helping a community of
people to hold on to God’s faithfulness, and respond faithfully, in challenging
circumstances. The book of Isaiah is
a collection of prophetic writing that seeks to do this in three unfolding
moments in history. The first part is concerned with preparing Israel’s elite
for the devastating experience of being carried off into exile in Babylon. The
second part is concerned with preparing some of them and their children and
grandchildren for the challenging upheaval of returning home a lifetime later. Not
all would choose to return. And, of course, for those who had been born as
second- or third-generation immigrants, returning to their homeland was not
only a return but also – and perhaps more so – a totally new departure. As for
those who remembered Jerusalem from their childhood, it would be no less a
shock: rebuilding would take years. The third part of Isaiah, then – the part from which our reading this morning comes –
is concerned with preparing the discouraged community to take up the abandoned
task of rebuilding. They are discouraged because things had not turned out the
way that they had expected. The economy was really very badly broken. Political
leaders were divided, plotting treacherous plots and scheming devious schemes.
Things were pretty devastating, to be honest.
We
find ourselves living through not entirely dissimilar times, and will do for
some time. But in our Scriptures we have an incredible resource for just such a
challenge.
The
verses we have heard read, and those that come just before them, employ the
images of a woman in labour, and a mid-wife; a wet-nurse, and a mother. The
images are fluid as milk, relating to Jerusalem (as place and people) and to
God, so closely does God identify with the people it is hard to tell them
apart.
These
verses speak of rejoicing; but they don’t say, ‘Don’t worry, everything is
going to be fine, in fact better than fine.’ Look again. They speak of mourning,
of the deep need for consolation. In verse 13 alone, the need to be comforted
is underlined three times.
A
woman and a child in labour are both going through a crisis. A mother who is
unable to feed her baby, or who has reached the end of her tether in the face
of a baby who refuses to be consoled but cries and cries and cries, knows in her
very body what it means that, ‘This is not how I expected things would be…’
These
verses are written that God’s faithfulness might be discerned in difficulty;
that our dark days and nights might hold out to us an encounter with God that simply
isn’t available when all is right with the world. Rejoicing and mourning are
not opposed to one another, with rejoicing meant to triumph over mourning, so
that we might say that those who mourn lack faith. They are both means of God’s
grace in their time.
Here
is an image of people who are distressed, who are very sad, who are not at
peace; not only comforted but nurtured, strengthened in body, mind, and spirit
by the Lord and the Lord’s people. We might say that the comforted become those
who comfort; the consoled become those who console others. It is a beautiful image.
It
is an image that says, this will take years. Childbirth is just the beginning.
There will be a lot of rejoicing and a lot of mourning in the years ahead: and
God is faithful through it all.
This
is a wonderful passage to have read on a day when new deacons are ordained at
the cathedral, to help us all be a sent people who bring the needs of the world
before the Church and the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world.
Hear
the word of the Lord, then, all you who mourn this day: Jesus proclaims, ‘Blessed
are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’ (Matthew 5:4). As we come together, may this be a place, and may we
be a people, from which such milk flows.
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