On the consoling and glorious breasts of Jerusalem and God . . .

      If we were one of those churches that post the sermons on roadside signs touting the sermon, and I was one of those creative clergy types that can come up with clever names for their sermons ahead of time, this week would have to involve consoling and glorious breasts.   I see now everyone is now paying attention, deciding whether I knew what I said and whether to be offended.  Sometimes, though, we do have to wonder at God’s providence.  Although our readings are chosen by a committee that chose the readings a couple decades ago, I do find it interesting when those human endeavors work out so well.  As we are reading Isaiah this morning and about Jerusalem’s and God’s consoling and glorious breasts, the world around us is really struggling with issues many of us thought decided some time ago.  Thanks to the recent decision of Dobbs, women have lost bodily autonomy.  As I have shared in private conversations and Bible study, there has been no “settled position” among God’s people regarding when life truly begins.  If you wonder about those conversations, consider this an advertisement and invitation to come to Bible studies or ask an Adventer who does.  The consequence of that decision, though, will likely reverberate among us all, if a right to privacy is not a right granted to each citizen under our Constitution and Declaration of Independence.  If privacy is a “modern creation,” all of us have likely lost some self-determinism.  So, men, pay attention to the women in your lives and what they are saying.  It is not hard to imagine a state government making us get tests or vaccines or whatever, whether we want it or not, now that states get to decide for citizens.

     These discussions, of course, are happening as we celebrate Independence Day in our country.  Ironically, as some rights are being curtailed, we are reminding ourselves of the sacrifices and dreams of our founders; of our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and of the work we have yet to do so that those yet unborn have access to the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities which we claim.  And, as we celebrate this Independence Day, our awareness of societal evils makes this a bit more problematic, or at least it should.  We are, of course, aware of the food insecurity that exists in our midst.  We have had brothers and sisters talk about systemic injustices which beset them, despite them being valued members of our community and citizens of this nation.  Like many Tennesseans, we have a difficult relationship with the Second Amendment.  And thanks to our professional social workers and the work of Insight, we know mental illnesses are, at best, poorly addressed by our society.  But, and this is an important but, we strive to be the beacon that our founders claimed we would be.  This country may be slow to act and sometimes make mistakes, but we tend to self-correct and most of us strive to attain that vision our founders held.

     Finally, even as the world around us is dealing with a tectonic shift, parts of the Church are engaged heatedly in such discussions and tensions.  Our brothers and sisters in the congregational wing of the Church are dealing with the fallout from a theology that seems to forget that women, especially minor women, were created in the image and likeness of God.  At the other end of the Church spectrum, our Roman brothers and sisters are still dealing with the fallouts of the acolyte scandals and with the resulting coverup that is still costing archbishops and cardinals their vocations.  And, lest we be perceived as those casting stones, a number of our issues are being passionately debated on social media as we speed toward General Convention next week.  Some of the passionate debate is understandable.  Calling for a shortened GC that works only on essential matters invites passionate discussion about what is truly essential to the life and ministry of our church.  Worse, those who want to see progress in an area are faced with the real possibility of a two-year pause on their efforts.  Can you imagine the impact were we forced to stop feeding for two years?

     Yes, in many ways, you and I should be able to relate to the people to whom Isaiah was prophesying some 28 centuries ago!

      Just to remind ourselves of Isaiah’s context, Israel has abandoned the Covenant with Yahweh.  Most of you know the warning signs: droughts, foreign armies, fewer children being born, and a general increase in anxiety.  Israel was supposed to notice these early signs and repent.  As I have taught you over and over, meteorological and political discussions in the mouths of the prophets were far more important theological reminders: look at the evidence, we have strayed from God!  In Isaiah’s period, a number of issues have come to light.  For all its advancement since the Garden of Eden, humans are still far more willing to trust in themselves and their abilities than trust in God.  In particular, Israel has turned to the gods and goddesses of the Canaanites to solve their issues of fertility, both in the field and in their families.  God has been so clear in these instructions that you and I know how far from God they have turned.  Of course, knowing how far we have turned from God, despite the complete revelation in Christ Jesus and His Resurrection, helps keep us from waving accusing fingers too hard at Israel.

     We can relate to both of these issues better than we think, as we live in a world that struggles with both issues of climate and human fertility.  As we watch the news and pay attention to social media, we learn that the Western part of our country is discovering the folly of living and growing cities unchecked in an arid land.  People who love the desert or SoCal will tell you it is a wonderful place to live, so long as there is water.  California is able to produce something like 60% of our country’s non-corn, non-soybean, non-pork, and beef, so long as there is water.  Take away the water, though, and life is threatened, rather than encouraged.  Like Israel, we trusted in our ability to use river basins and build reservoirs that are now failing their intended purposes as the climate changes.  And, with the drought comes other threats.  When rain comes, there’s mudslides; when rain does not come, there’s increased fire risks.  Now, people are floating the idea of building a pipeline from the Missouri or Mississippi River basins to the headwaters of the Colorado River basin to solve this issue, rather than face the issues that came from poor planning.

     Few of us are untouched by the issues of human fertility.  As I have had conversation after conversation with Adventers and people in orbit of our parish over the last week, it is clear that few families are untouched by issues of fertility.  We have too many medical personnel in our parish for me to spend too much time on it, but the effort of states to take the medical decisions out of the control of women and their physicians have, what I hope, are unintended consequences.  I say I hope because some of the most restrictive lives will endager the physical health of the mother, to say nothing of the mental or emotional health.  Women who have had miscarriages, have had to have what are called DNC’s, when the fetus is not cleared.  Leaving the woman with some of the tissue still in her womb usually leads to sepsis.  Even those among us who are not medical personnel realize how dangerous sepsis is to human life.  Similarly, those who have undergone treatment such as IVF, know that there is an agreed limit to the number of embryo’s that they will try to carry.  Again, too many embryos can have lots of health consequences.  All these conversations have been far more about the impact of the recent Supreme Court decision on their lives or the lives of a daughter or granddaughter, but they are not unrelated to those issues in Israel.

     Israel, for her part, played the part of a harlot or adulterer, as God so often declares through the prophets.  In Isaiah, she is presented as a prostitute or cheapened harlot, neither of which are particularly good images.  Instead of returning to God and trusting in His loving care, Israel has turned to the idols of their neighbors.  You and I live in a scientific world that should scoff at the idea of sleeping with a temple prostitute to increase the yields of our farms or the chances our wives would get pregnant, but have you heard politicians talk about female anatomy the last week or watched some the crazy stuff being spread on social media and certain reality television?  I gather from the snorts and murmurs, you have at least a passing familiarity.

     For his part, Isaiah has called Israel out on her adultery, and he has prophesied the coming desolation.  Foreign armies will conquer and plunder her.  Families will be removed from their inheritance.  The world will scoff at those who trusted in her for being foolish.  For all intents and purposes, it will seem as if God has abandoned her and her people.  But Isaiah ends with a word of hope.  Even though she merits this destruction, and even though the people have turned their backs on God, He will one day relent.  That’s where we pick up today with the amazing imagery.

     Isaiah prophesies that one day in the future, for all the desolation that is to come, Jerusalem will give birth.  Isaiah will later say that the birth is miraculous, free of labor and pain, but she will give birth.  And her people will be nursed from her consoling and glorious breasts!  Now you know where I got the theme and your attention at the beginning.  God describes Jerusalem as a nursing mother and her people as the nursing infants.  I see a couple of us have sat up to pay close attention.  Consider this a warning: Men, pay attention to the consoling and glorious breasts God describes rather than to your own sinful flesh or the world around us.

     Now, before I talk about the theological meaning, I want us all to know we have a couple great resources in the parish about this imagery.  Both Rosemary and Flora have dedicated a large part of their individual ministries to promotion of breastfeeding babies in our community.  If you have any questions about the medical side or consoling side of this natural function, talk to them.  And, after this sermon, if you think you truly understand the image better, pray for them.  Their work establishes yet another image by which God is trying to reach those in the world around us.  They are planting the seeds that others may harvest, to use our Gospel imagery for today!

     I know we live in a country that sexualizes breasts.  I just warned the men to pay attention to God.  I have had far too many conversation with people who are offended by women who nurse in public.  Some insist that moms cover their babies, as if we adults like eating under a blanket in the cold, dry air of July in Nashville.  Some insist that moms must get sexual pleasure from a nursing baby, as if mammals across the animal kingdom are not gloriously designed to feed their babies in this way.  I have even had some people buy the marketing myths and assume that formula is better for babies than human milk.  But believe it or not, women’s breasts are actually designed by God to feed babies.  I know.  I know.  It’s shocking.  We men thought they were for our pleasure to ogle.  Don’t squirm.  I won’t give up any names, but I overheard a conversation about glorious breasts and Raquel Welch between the services, which only testifies to the fact that we Adventers are in the same boat as ancient Israel.  Someone was focused on Raquel Welch when they should have been listening to God.  The more things change . . . If you do not know who Raquel Welch is, think an earlier Farrah Fawcett.  And if you don’t know who Farah Fawcett is, you probably belong in Children’s Chapel this morning.

     Think of the image that God is using to describe the future.  We have spoken of the intimate relationship to which God calls us over Trinity Sunday.  We have spoken over Pentecost how God, through the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, made it possible for Him to dwell in the temple of our hearts, empower us to accomplish His Will in our lives.  This is yet another image to describe His yearning for us.  We know, thanks to medical science, that breastfeeding is good for both babies and mothers.  Emotional connections are formed, in addition to the supply of nourishment.  Psychologically, babies respond to the knowledge that they are cared for.  Babies know the heartbeats of their moms; they know they have different pains and stimuli.  But when mom is nursing, much of that evaporates.  Scientists who study brainwaves can actually measure that calming effect in their scans.  Let’s apply it to what God desires for us.  

     God wants us depend on Him for nourishment, for emotional and psychological health, for protection, and for things we do not even know that we need.  Lest you think this predates Jesus, and has nothing to do with His work, how often does Jesus talk about rebirth and becoming like children and those born again, and even teach us to pray for our daily bread?  Infants have a trust in a good mother because she provides everything she needs.  When that trust is violated, we know there is a consequence for the child.  But this is God who is using the image.  He wants to nourish us; He wants to protect us; He wants us to trust Him.  He is our Loving Father in Heaven who formed us in the womb, who gave us our being and essence that makes each one of us gloriously us and an image of Him!

     Jerusalem is that place, at first, where His people are nourished, protected, taught, discipled, and so on.  That was His call on Abraham and his descendants.  They were to be discipled so they could serve as a nation of priests to the world.  But they rejected His call and their role, meriting the destruction of the Exile.  But, Isaiah is telling them that one day in the future Jerusalem will be restored.  In fact, she will be better than restored.  Her dross will have been burned off.  Her tattered clothes will have been replaced by a wonderful garment.  She will be a fit Bride for her Lord and Bridegroom.  This image is the fulfillment of that promise.

     None of it, of course, is made possible by her own work or efforts.  Isaiah is also the prophet from who the early Church drew the idea of the Suffering Servant.  You remember it, of course, as we only read at the end of Easter about Philip instructing the Ethiopian Eunuch on how Jesus fulfilled all that Isaiah prophesied.  In fact, it is Jesus who makes the birthing process for Israel free of labor and pain.  Ask any woman who has given birth about the pains of labor.  I am an outsider, but I have a lot of anecdotal experience.  I think every single LDR nurse my wife had approached me about whether she really wanted to give birth without drugs or other intervention, unless necessary.  For many, she was their first patient to do it “the old-fashioned way.”  We have the technology now to make birth somewhat more painless, if you do not count the aches and pains from the prior nine months as real childbirth pain and if you do not count the side effects of the anesthesia as pain.  Many women today choose that route.  But those who had children the natural way can tell you about how quickly the memory of the pain fades.  Yes, childbirth is agonizing.  Elsewhere in Scripture it is described as the painful straining of an athlete.  It hurts.  And the crescendo of pain happens when the mother is exhausted and has the incredible urge to push.  But what happens over time when that baby is placed upon her chest after birth.  Sometimes, mother and baby are so exhausted by the ordeal that they just lay together.  Nurses forget, I think, that moms and babies can be exhausted from the straining effort of birth.  Over time, though, babies begin to hunger; moms are encouraged to nurse to help the womb contract, and perhaps most amazingly, the memory of the pain begins to fade and her efforts are channeled to child-rearing.  

     What gets Jerusalem and us through that painful process of new birth, of course, is Jesus.  It is Jesus who bears the physical pain of torture and death for us; it is Jesus who ears the emotional and psychological torment caused by our rejection of Him and His saving embrace; it is Jesus who experiences the separation from the Father so that we might be restored!  And at the other end of that process, you and I and all those who choose Him as Lord are re-birthed.  We are nourished by God, discipled, and matured, that we might bear great fruit in our lives that glorify Him.  But all the heavy lifting work, as we like to say, is done by Him!  He makes it possible for us to become the princes and princesses of God, heirs of both promise and responsibility!

     The passage that we read today moves intentionally from Jerusalem to God.  It is Jerusalem who has the consoling breasts and glorious breasts in the first few verses, but even in that description glorious, we are reminded that they are of God!  It is the adjective kabod which describes the breast of Jerusalem, the glory and honor of God.  Yes, literalist who can read Hebrew would really squirm at this passage. God has glorious breasts?  So we won’t miss the image, God causes the prophet to transfer the image from Jerusalem to Him, to drive the point home even further.  The image He wants us to see this day is that He longs to care for us, as mother cares for her nursing baby.  Is there any image more comforting, and image more satisfying, even for us in these “more advanced” days?  That is the relationship that God years for us or those in the world out there who reject Him.  Can you imagine, the Creator of all that is, seen and unseen, wants us to think of Him as a nursing mother!

     Sisters, I hope you find this passage to be a consoling breast this morning.  I know we live in a world that seems turned upside down and controlled by people who do not respect you.  I guess the modern language would be that the world has taken away some of your agency.  I hope you have been reminded by God Himself that each one of you was created in His image and are loved fiercely by Him.  I hope you have been reminded that one glorious day in the future, this pain, too, will truly pass, that He will make all things new when He comes to judge all things, and that those who seek to diminish you will answer to Him..  And while we Adventers may not struggle in church politics over issues that plague other denominations of the Church, you are all likely stilled called to speak His wisdom, His love into a world and Church that desperately needs to hear Him, even if they do not realize or accept it is Him.

     Brothers, if you have been one who laments that women do not know their place or drawn by the siren song of making the women in your lives submit, remember this image.  God Himself, in the words of the prophet, drew upon the image of a nursing mom to describe the relationship He desires with each child He created.  When we encounter sisters, daughters, granddaughters, and others in the world around us, we are called to remember that He created them in His image, that He longs to care for us as a loving mother cares for her infant, and that, like them, we are utterly dependent upon His Grace for those things we most value in life.  Because that image is so powerful, because that image is so indicative of the love that God has for all human beings, we need to encourage our sisters and speak into those evils, as God gives us opportunity and responsibility.

     And for all of us, as a sent community in His Name, my hope and prayer this day is that we are all a little bit better nourished, a little bit more comforted, a little bit more reminded of the vocations in our lives.  The image of a nursing mother is meant to encourage us, meant to make us winsome heralds of His love in the world around us.  We live in a world beset by war, by pandemic, by economic privation, by all kinds of anxiety.  In some ways, as we are not yet with our Nursing Mother, we are in an Exile.  Yet that same promise holds for each one of us.  In the very midst of the worst that the powers and principalities can throw at us, we are lovingly cherished by our Father.  Better still, He assures us that one glorious Day we will all be restored.  But, for now and until His return, fortified by His Word and His Sacrament, we are sent back out into the wilderness, sent back out into the darkness, to point those in the world around us to those glorious breasts of the One who wants nothing more than the very best for each one of us!

 

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†