Breathing Life

   Breathing Life

Isaiah 42:14-17

May 10, 2020 (Mother’s Day) • Mount Pleasant UMC

I was in the birthing suite for the arrival of both of our children. With Christopher, Cathy went into labor about midnight and he was born mid-afternoon. We got to the hospital in the middle of the night and we couldn’t wait to tell our families. However, wisdom kicked in before we dialed the phone so we waited until about 6:00 a.m. to call everyone. With Rachel, labor began about 7:00 a.m. on Maundy Thursday. I was supposed to preach that night, and so I suggested to Cathy that if she could give birth in the afternoon, I could make it back for the service. That did not go over well! The service began at 7:00; Rachel arrived at 7:15, and she’s been messing with my schedule ever since! But, unlike previous generations of fathers, I was privileged to be present when the kids were born. Childbirth is an amazing thing, as those of you who have been through it know, and on this Mother’s Day, I tip my hat to all of you who are mothers. After being with Cathy through childbirth and watching all she went through, all the things childbirth does to a human body, I couldn’t help but think that if men were the ones who had to give birth, the human race would have died out quickly and long ago. God gives a special strength to mothers and it’s appropriate that we have a day like today to honor and celebrate them. So, even though we’re not yet back together, my hat is off to all of you mothers and my prayers are with you.

I think it’s because of that strength that we find glimpses in the Bible where God is compared to a birthing mother. To be sure, it’s not a common or an often-read image, and that’s why I’ve included this image in our series of “forgotten images of God.” So far in this series, we’ve talked about God as friend, as clothing and as bread. But this image is really different from those, so I’m going to ask you to walk with me this morning as we look at this image of God as a mother.

One of the mistakes we often make, especially when reading those who are called “prophets” in the Old Testament, is to read the passages as if they are divorced from any sort of life setting when nothing could be further from the truth. These passages were not written for you and me; they just weren’t. They were written originally to people in particular settings and places and life situations. That doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to say to us; this is the eternal word of God, after all. But I am convinced that until we understand the original ancient setting, we can’t really grasp what any of these books are saying to us today in twenty-first century America. To just grab a passage like this out of context can lead us into all sorts of error. So these words we heard this morning is actually part of a larger passage (which you read yesterday if you are following along with the daily readings), and that in turn is part of a larger group of passages that are often called the “Servant Songs.” These songs describe Israel’s true vocation, their job description if you will—who they were supposed to be and what they were supposed to do (cf. Goldingay, Isaiah for Everyone, pg. 159). Because they failed to fulfill this calling, God sent Jesus, and these servant songs are now often applied to him. They do in fact describe Jesus in great detail; if we did not know of Jesus, we would have to imagine someone just like him to satisfy the details of everything Isaiah describes (cf. Oswalt, OneBook: The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40-55, pg. 42).

So this passage we read in Isaiah is set in the midst of the exile. Exile was a catastrophe; “Jerusalem had been politically and militarily trounced, and both leaders and ordinary folks had been forcibly removed from their homes and gardens and soil, separated from friends and family, and made to live somewhere else, in alien territory, with no realistic hope of imminent return” (Winner, Wearing God, pg. 135). And so they grabbed onto any scrap of hope, even at times false hope offered by false prophets, but Isaiah comes along to remind them that God has not forgotten them. In fact, God is with them, even in exile. That’s a new thought to them because, in the ancient mindset, the gods were thought to be tied to particular cultures and even to particular real estate. The thought that their God had come with them into exile was revolutionary. More than that, Isaiah wants the people to know that God is not defeated; God is still at work, and even though they feel like he has forgotten them, he has not. You have to pay attention in passages like this, because the text often goes back and forth between God speaking directly and Isaiah speaking for God. So, in this chapter, just before the verse I want to focus on, God is telling the people that old things are passing away. What God is bringing about in their near future will not be what they are used to; it will be new. God’s promises are always new; he is always doing a new thing (cf. Isaiah 43:19). I believe that, in the midst of what has felt like an exile of our own these last couple of months, we need to hear that word this morning. God is not done, and God has not forgotten you or me or us. But we also have to realize that it is likely when we come out of this, hopefully very soon, life will not be exactly like it was before. Hopefully you got a letter from me about that this week. For a lot of reasons, “normal” will probably not be “normal” for a long time, if ever again. But that doesn’t mean God is done. It just might mean that God is birthing something new, just as he was doing in Isaiah’s day.

So in the verse right before this morning’s passage, Isaiah (the narrator) calls God a “champion” and a “warrior.” Isaiah says God is one who will “raise the battle cry and will triumph over his enemies” (42:13). Yeah, we like that! God the victorious warrior, God the champion. But then when God speaks for himself, he describes himself as “like a woman in childbirth” and suddenly we’re in uncomfortable and unfamiliar territory. We’re used to calling God “Father.” We do so in the prayer Jesus taught us, the prayer some Christians call the “Our Father” (cf. Matthew 6:9-13) We remember that Jesus called God, “Abba,” or Daddy (cf. Mark 14:36). Hearing God called “Father” is comfortable; comparing God to a mother is strange, new and sort of reminds us of those who try to turn God into something God is not. Let me take a brief detour and say just a couple of things about this. I get it. “Father” is what I grew up hearing God called and I cringe when I hear people address God as “Mother,” partly (or maybe mostly) because nowhere in the Scriptures is God addressed directly as “mother.” There are some good reasons for this. In the ancient world, mother goddesses were usually connected with fertility cults and temple prostitution. Fertility cults worked this way: in an agricultural society, if you wanted to have good crops the next year, you would go down to the local temple of the local goddess, pay the fee and sleep with the temple prostitute, and that would then “guarantee” your crops would be plentiful the next year. Because the God of the Hebrews was not a magical god, the image of Father was used most often to describe him so as to avoid any sort of implication or connection to fertility cults like that. But let me say this as clearly as I can: God is neither male nor female. Despite the paintings we have of God as a grandfather in the sky, God isn’t just a big human. God is absolutely other than we are. He “is immortal and…lives in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16), but in order for us to understand a little bit, he uses all these images to communicate with us—images, in fact, like male and female, both of which, Genesis says, are created in his image (cf. 1:27). In fact, I believe, it takes male and female together for us to truly begin to grasp a bit of what God is like. Both of us bear his image in different ways. That’s why he created us the way he did, and why we were made for each other.

So while God is consistently called “Father” in the Bible, he is described as being “like” a mother. That’s the difference, at least for me. Here, in Isaiah 42, God directly says, ““For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant” (42:14). I cry out, gasp and pant. Though it largely gets ignored today, this passage has been noticed by preachers and teachers throughout the centuries. John Calvin said it reminds us of the love and affection God has for us, “for he compares himself to a mother who singularly loves her child, though she brought him forth with extreme pain.” I remember Cathy being told—by many people—that when she held that newborn baby, she would instantly forget all the pain. And while she loved holding both kids after their births, she said the pain did not go away. That was a lie. Childbirth happens because of pain mixed with great love. You mothers only go through that pain because of the love you already have for that baby. Then, Matthew Henry said that the loud cries and noise described here is meant to “awaken a sleeping world” (cf. Winner 138). It’s true, as I said, that when Cathy was in labor we couldn’t wait to tell our families, even if it meant waking them up at 6 a.m.! But it’s interesting that God doesn’t focus on the birth itself; instead, the focus of the text is on the noise, the panting, gasping and crying out.

These are three different Hebrew words, all of which focus on the breathing that a woman in labor does, but none of them mean just “breathing.” The first one, which is translated as “cry out,” is used only here in the whole of Scripture. It means to “groan” or “bellow.” In common usage, it often described animal noises, groans that come from somewhere deep within. It’s the sort of way we respond to pain that just never seems to go away. We groan. We moan. We cry out. In childbirth, it would be that noise that a mother in labor makes that responds to the way the baby is trying to emerge—a deep, guttural moan. The second word here, translated “gasp,” indicates breathing that is not easy. It’s the sort of breath you take when you’re “short of breath.” Sometimes it happens when you’ve eaten too much! Sometimes it happens to people who have chronic breathing difficulties. For those who are afflicted with coronavirus, this is one of the primary symptoms—gasping, being short of breath. And then the third word—panting—is just what it sounds like. My dog pants when she’s hot or when she’s worried or nervous. We pant when we’ve exercised or exerted ourselves. All of these images together remind us what all mothers already know: that “bringing new life does not come without effort and cost” (cf. Winner 139).

But breathing to bring something to life is an image that is echoed elsewhere in the Bible. Isn’t it interesting to think how, at the very beginning, we’re told God “breathed” into Adam and that breath brought Adam life (Genesis 2:7). In the book of Acts, we’re told that the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost as a “mighty rushing wind” (Acts 2:2); the word for “Spirit” in the New Testament can be translated “wind” or “breath.” God breathes on what will become the church—violently—to give birth to a new movement. It’s part of why we sometimes refer to Pentecost as “the birthday of the church.” And in Romans, Paul describes that same Spirit as “groaning” when he prays for us (Romans 8:26; cf. Winner 140). All of these images (and more) circle around this image of breathing, hard breathing, new creation, birth that we find here in Isaiah. After a long pregnancy—what the people know as “exile”—God is like a mother in labor, giving birth to something new (cf. Grogan, “Isaiah,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 6, pg. 256). Their worst fears, that God has forgotten them or that God is helpless, are groundless (cf. Oswalt, NIV Application Commentary: Isaiah, pg. 479). God is coming to rescue them. He is birthing something new.

Certainly, for the people in exile, far from home, this would have been a word of hope, as it was intended to be. Even when everything seems to have died, even when hope seemed lost, God was still doing a new thing. For them, it meant that God was going to bring them home. In fact, in the verses that follow, God through Isaiah basically says there isn’t anything he won’t do to make that return happen. He will dry up the rivers, lay waste the mountains, lead the blind and turn the darkness to light. He will “make the rough places smooth” (42:16; Oswalt NIV 479). It brings to my mind the image of what we call a “Mama Bear.” There isn’t anything a Mama Bear won’t to do protect and take care of and provide for her cubs. Like a mother, there isn’t anything God won’t do to care for his children. “I will not forsake them,” he says (42:16). Not, “I might not forsake them.” Or, “If I have extra time, I’ll keep an eye on them.” No—it’s “I will not forsake them.” No question about it. This is a good word, a word of hope, and appropriately so, because birth is always a symbol of hope, of new beginnings. One of my absolute favorite things to do is to visit in the hospital when a new baby is born. Visiting in the hospital is usually quite difficult—or at least that’s the way I remember it was. Usually people are going through difficult times when they are in the hospital, so it’s a wonderful change of pace when I get to visit a newborn baby. When you hold that tiny bundle of joy, there is nothing quite like that feeling. It’s a reminder that life is good, and that there is hope. Life goes on through the next generation. I think all of that and more is tied up in this image from Isaiah, a word of hope to the next generation of the Israelites.

But we also know that when a baby is born, life changes forever. I distinctly remember coming home with Christopher the day after he was born. Cathy got to spend only one night in the hospital, and she was actually released several hours before Christopher was. So it was late at night, midnight or close to it, when we got home. We were all excited, of course, and then this feeling settled over me, something along the lines of: “What do we do now?” There was suddenly this whole other life depending on us! And then the next day came and the next and we eventually settled into a routine. Life had changed forever. Life had changed for the better. Life had not changed for the easier; raising children is hard work. It forces you out of your innate selfishness and causes you to give up a lot for the sake of another. It’s hard; it’s painful. And no one can break your heart like your kids can. And I say that in my role as a father; I know from watching Cathy it’s even harder as a mother. Cathy would tell you—she didn’t initially want to be a mother. When we started dating, she had no interest in having children. I guess I wore her down! No, seriously, there came a moment in our lives, and I remember it clearly, when those mothering instincts kicked in and she would also tell you now she can’t imagine not being a mom. Life changed forever with the birth of our children. A new thing came into being—a new baby, for sure, but also a new way of life. And I think that’s part of what’s going on in this passage from Isaiah. Just as sure as God is telling the people then that he wants to do a new thing—in fact, he is going to do a new thing among them—I believe God wants to tell us that today, too. As we begin to come out of this quarantine, as we begin to un-shelter from this pandemic, I believe God wants to do a new thing—in your life and in the life of our church and our community.

So, let’s start with each individual. What “new thing” might God want to birth in your life? I can’t speak for everyone, mainly because I have no idea exactly who will be listening to this, so let me just share my own journey over these last few weeks. As I shared a little bit about last week, this quarantine has forced me to slow down a little bit. I like to be busy, I like to get things done. In the first weekend of the stay at home order, I moved everything around in my home office, and sorted through the files I had. I went from five cabinet drawers full to about a half a drawer! The recycle people were so glad to see my cart that week! I am my father’s child; when I was a kid, my dad would be up on Saturdays sweeping the carpet at 7:00 a.m. and that was after he had waited a while for us to get up! I get it honestly. Anyway, during this time of slowing down, God has been birthing a deep desire in me through study and prayer and thought, a desire that really functions on two levels: one for me and one for the church. Growing up in my home church, I don’t remember a lot of talk about the Holy Spirit. We did sing about him every week when we sang the “Gloria Patri:” “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost…” But if we heard much in those days about the Holy Spirit, it was more of something impersonal. Maybe sort of like The Force from Star Wars. I was in college and then in seminary before I really learned how the Holy Spirit is the presence of God that lives inside of us, the one who empowers us to live the way Jesus wants us to live. And I began to understand what Paul says in Romans, that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me. That’s not just a nice slogan for a bumper sticker; that’s truth. The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in me (Romans 6:10-11)—and that’s one powerful Spirit, one that can raise the dead. So why do I, why do we, live with such little power sometimes? Why do we settle for being “good” rather than experiencing life? Ravi Zacharias reminds us, “Jesus does not offer to make bad people good but to make dead people alive” (The Logic of God, pg. 101). During this time of quarantine, God has been breathing life into my desire to know more of him. The prayer that keeps running through my head is an old chorus: “More love, more power, more of you in my life.” I’ve written that in my journal several times over these days. “More love, more power, more of you in my life.” I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, to be honest, I just know that this prayer is part of a new thing God is birthing in my life. What’s yours? What new thing is God breathing into your life during this time? I think if we’ve just “gotten by” during this quarantine time, we’ve wasted what could have been a real gift from God to grow closer to him and to fall deeper in love with our heavenly father.

And that brings me to what new thing will God be birthing in our church, which for me, flows right out of what God is beginning in me. For the last several months I’ve been involved in what the Annual Conference has called a “multiplication cohort.” I shared a bit about this with our leadership and staff at our retreat back in January—which, honestly, seems like a lifetime ago! The goal of the group was to explore what God might want to do to not just grow our church and its impact on our community and our world but to multiply it. Most churches today are either declining or in maintenance mode—just holding on, barely. We’re slightly above that average; we’re showing slight growth and having new people come regularly. But multiplication is not just about adding people or increasing new ministries. It’s about one person reaching two people, and those two people reaching two more each and—sort of like the old commercial. “And they told two friends and so on and so on.” I’ve become convinced that God is calling us to do something like that, using our homes throughout the city and county to reach those who need Jesus. Groups multiplying and reaching people who might never even enter the doors of our church building but who are becoming disciples of Jesus Christ and transforming the world. I don’t yet know how God is going to do that; I don’t have a plan, but I believe that in some way, Friendship House was one starting point. A special needs focus. I believe there could be smaller house gatherings that grow out of Celebrate Recovery that focus on addictions and defeating places of darkness in people’s lives. Maybe some groups will continue to function online, like the Zoom Bible Studies that have started during this quarantine. I don’t know what it will look like; I just am convinced to the core of my being that God is not done here and that he has incredible opportunities ahead for us—if we will have the faith and the courage to grab onto them. Do you believe God can breathe life into a new thing here among the people of God called Mount Pleasant?

The community is a harder thing to get ahold of, at least for me, but I do see signs that God is wanting to do something new. For one, there is the vision the ministerial association has been working on toward an all-church gathering in July at the fairgrounds with Brian “Head” Welch from the rock group Korn coming to share his testimony. That was a very specific vision for 2020, and though there is still a lot up in the air at this point, we’re trusting that something good will come out of that. God is bringing at least a measure of unity among his people through that event. The unity pastors have been praying for for years is, perhaps, starting to show over the horizon. I also know that, in a city and a community that continues to struggle economically, where this virus time may bring more people permanent unemployment, where food insecurity is a prevalent thing, the actions many of you have taken to share food and help others during this time have been a shining light. Our community leaders think that the answer to our challenges is to throw open the door to whoever promises the most money. But, as followers of Jesus, we want this community to be the very best place it can be to live. In the time of the exile, when people were getting antsy and wanting God to do something right away, to bring them back home, God told the prophet Jeremiah to tell them to settle down, build houses and plant gardens. Pray for the prosperity of the place where God had put them, because, God said, if it prospered, then they would (cf. Jeremiah 29:4-7). I think God might be saying the same thing to us. Sometimes we want to complain about our city, our leaders, but maybe we should be praying for our leaders instead. Maybe we should also take more initiative to let them know we’re praying for them and for our city. Maybe the new thing God wants to birth in our community will come as we pray for, sacrifice for, hope for the very best for our community.

So it’s Mother’s Day, and I hope you have some time to honor your mother, even if it’s just over FaceTime. In our home, today is particularly difficult as Cathy lost her mom to a sudden death this last year, so this is her first one without her mom around; I know several of you are in a similar situation, so if your mother is still around, don’t take that for granted. Take some time today to give thanks. But also take some time today to remember that God wants to do something new, for God is also like a birthing mother. God wants to do a new thing in your life. It will not be easy. It might be painful. And I can’t promise you will forget the pain. But when it comes to be it will be good. It will be oh so good because God is working always for your good, for the good of our church and for the good of our city. So let’s pray and ask him to do that good new thing in and through us.