In a book on pastoral care I recently read, the author made this remark: “Churches do a poor job in preparing people in advance for bereavement. Aside from funerals themselves, I cannot recall ever hearing a sermon preached, in the ordinary course of the church year, on grieving. The church must take seriously her preventive function, equipping people in advance so that they will cope better when crises come.”1 He makes a very good point, which is why the broad theme for the sermons preached during this Lent is “life lessons.” In the coming weeks, Heather and I will speak about stages in life such as adolescence and adulthood, as well as things like marriage, loss, and death so that your faith may help you better cope when change and crises come. And since this is the first week in the series, I’m going to begin at the beginning with the topic of birth.
For many TV viewers, 9:00 pm Sunday nights is an important time, because it is when the hit PBS series Downton Abbey airs. But another PBS drama is also getting a lot of attention – Call the Midwife. This show follows the challenges faced by a group of young Anglican nuns who go into the slums and tenements of London to deliver babies. We can talk about birth in clinical, abstract ways or we can be talk about it in personal, awe-inspiring and faithful ways. For the latter approach, it helps to talk about something as wonderful as midwives.
The word “midwife” comes from Middle English roots meaning “a woman with.” In their lighter moments, a midwife may say, “I don’t deliver babies; I simply catch them.” But that downplays the critical role a midwife plays, standing with women at that mysterious threshold in which one life delivers new life into the world. Historically midwives were trusted for their knowledge, skill and compassion, often being mothers themselves so they could speak with firsthand knowledge of the birth miracle. However, in a male dominated world, midwives have also been distrusted by some for the very skills and knowledge they possessed; sometimes condemned as witches, often kept on the margins by male clergy and male physicians. Today approximately 10% of all births are attended to by midwives, who still use their skill and compassion to help welcome children into the world.
Now one of the common biblical metaphors for God is God as a midwife, although you might not have ever heard that before from the pulpit. The bible often talks about how our Creator God is constantly seeking to deliver God’s people into new life. The boldest metaphor of this is the Exodus story, in which God says, “I have heard my people’s cries; I know their sufferings and I have come to deliver them from the Egyptians” (Exod 3:7-8). This delivery comes through the broken waters of the Red Sea, and emerging on the other side is a new people, no longer slaves but free children of God heading for a Promised Land. Other places in the bible are even more explicit. Isaiah 66:9 – Shall I, the one who delivers, shut the womb? says your God. Or what we heard earlier from Psalm 22: It was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast. When Jesus spoke about the coming Day of the Lord in Mark 13, he used childbirth language, saying: Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes and famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
Everything associated with being a midwife is rich with spiritual overtones. The midwife delivers the baby and is there to witness the infant’s first breath of life as its lungs expand just like Adam’s did long, long ago. The midwife bathes the newborn child, caressing and cleaning it as if with baptism waters. The midwife clothes the child, swaddling the infant in cotton cloth, just as God lovingly clothes us in righteousness. The midwife connects the child with the mother, establishing a relationship of nurture and love, just as God’s Spirit brings us together with one another, to heal what is broken and to strengthen the ties that bind us. And in those tragic moments when a child is stillborn, the midwife has long known that the threshold to life may also be a threshold to death. For centuries, the midwife in those cases began the process of mourning – gently sharing the news about the dead child, still delivering, washing, and clothing it as an act of respect and love, even though the infant is not destined for a cradle. In that moment, the mystery of life, death and resurrection all converge – in the hands and heart of a midwife, a “woman with” another woman. And surely God is there as well.
The words in Psalm 139 are quite accurate: I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, O Lord. Our faith consists of a heartfelt affirmation that our lives derive from God, belong to God, and find their fulfillment and destination in God. As theologian Marcus Borg once put it: We are in God like fish are in water.2 Psalm 139 speaks about this all-encompassing, loving knowledge God has of us – a knowledge that transcends both space and time. There is nowhere we can go to flee from, or be beyond, God’s presence. When we were still being formed in our mother’s womb, God was aware of us, just as God is aware of when our lives draw to a close.
Now, I need to be clear here: When God is described as a knitter, knitting us together in our mother’s womb, what is being used is poetic language, not biological language. You wouldn’t take Robert Frost’s poem, Two roads diverged in the woods and I took the one less traveled by, and program your GPS according to it. In the same way, you cannot reach biological conclusions based on the poetic writings in the psalms. Sadly, some people have tried to do just that – using the words in Psalms 22 and 139 as justification for strict positions against abortion or legislating for legal status for the pre-born. What can be said is this: Remember that in a wonderful, mysterious way, the entire continuum of life is within the loving sight of God; we are in God like fish are in water. There is no part of the life cycle beyond God’s capacity to transform and redeem it according to God’s perfect love. Just as we affirm that the dead are known and transformed by God, whether they are buried, embalmed, cremated, or lost at sea, the beginnings of life are just as fully known by God. God’s knowledge of us is too vast to grasp and too wide to limit. So whether gestation occurs in a womb or a petri dish, whether the embryo successfully implants into the uterine wall or falls to thrive, whether physical or medical reasons cause a miscarriage or an abortion, the entire continuum at the start of life is under God’s mercy and grace. We take the beginnings of life very seriously, but we recognize that what is left incomplete or unfinished at any stage of life can still find its completion, its healing, and ultimate purpose in God. That is our comfort, especially when life does not unfold as we wish. Our Presbyterian Brief Statement of Faith begins with these words: In life and in death we belong to God. We affirm that is true for every experience at both ends of this equation.
In the same article in which Marcus Borg made his comment about us being in God like fish are in water, he also talked a bit about salvation. He argued that too often Christians assume salvation is about life after death, when in reality it is about transforming ourselves and the world by the grace of God. Salvation involves a new way of being, a faithful commitment to peace, nonviolence, justice, and love. Then he went on to say, “local congregations play key roles in this salvation work by serving as midwives to such transformation.”3 There’s that word and metaphor again – midwives. We are called to be spiritual midwives. In this world, labor pains can take a lot of different forms. People groan from pains about things they lack – proper food, employment, or respect – as well as from burdens they carry – arthritis, cancer, broken hearts, beaten down spirits. To the extent we’ve known these same pains, we are called to be midwives – women and men with them – offering a supporting hand, a caring embrace, a quiet prayer, an act of advocating for change. We are people called to be in relationship, right there offering words about new life in Christ waiting to be born in and through them. Right there encouraging and catching this infant faith; washing it, clothing it, and most importantly handing it back so that it can connect and nurse and grow in strength through the wonder of God acting in their life.
As any nurse or midwife can tell you, sometimes you have to coax the baby out. Back in 1475, a special prayer was written to be prayed by midwives in the birthing room. It goes like this: “Christ calls thee. The world delights in thee. The covenant longs for thee…Oh infant, whether alive or dead, come forth. Christ calls thee to light.”4 You are a spiritual midwife for others. Such is your calling as a disciple of Christ, a co-creator with God of this fearfully and wonderfully made world.
Lastly, let us go one step farther. What is God hoping to give birth through you? Men, if you’ve been dozing off during this message, this part is for you too. What is God birthing through you? What is your deepest desire within you? How are you to be a life-bearer in this world? Is it through service, through teaching and mentoring? Is it through mission work, a call to ministry, a life of prayer? Is it through fighting for those oppressed, comforting those who live in fear, working for change – even if only one solitary person benefits from all your efforts? Midwives only deliver one baby at a time. That seems like a perfectly acceptable place to start for all of us. What is God, our heavenly midwife, birthing through you? The apostle Paul wrote these words: We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves…groan inwardly while we wait for the redemption of our bodies…We hope for what we do not [yet] see; we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:22-25) So I ask once more: What is God birthing through you?
AMEN
2 Cynthia B. Astle, “Marcus Borg’s Talk Surprises Many at Conference”, quoted in The Progressive Christian, www.tpcmagazine.org; Feb 13, 2011.
3 Ibid.
4 Thomas Rogers Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch, 1966; quoted in Robert Dykstra, Images of Pastoral Care, 2005, p. 208.