Matthew 11:2-11 Birthing is Hard
Don’t Give into anger
On the other side is light
and
a weary world needs you
Lead the Way
# Advent
Can you guess what I am pretending to do?
Yes. You know what this gesture is. In the morning, when I’m in bed and I have not opened my eyes yet, I reach my arm under the bed and swing it around to find my glasses… and my iPhone – first to check the time, (and then to check Facebook). This may sound very familiar to some of you, eh? These days, I do less Facebook, (good!) but only so I can do more Twitter, too. (Aww.) It’s not necessarily bad, though, if we can make balance our use of social media with engaging in life and other people with true care and real interactions. What I like about using Twitter is that the sending or receiving and reading of people’s thoughts are all made into short statements, because you can use 140 letters - maximum. Think about that. If someone asked you to make an Advent benediction or a Christmas benediction, using 140 letters or less, what would you type in into the small tweet box?
This morning, I have 119 letters to send you.
I will choose “Birthing is hard.” as my first line.
Birthing means by definition the act or process of giving birth.
Birthing also can mean the beginning or origin of something.
There are times in our life when we do birthing, not only real giving birth, but being in an intense time that changes you, your role, your identity, your values.
You change your job. You move to a new city.
You create a new family. You start a new project in your work.
Today, we are going to celebrate Chad for his dedication, shown by his love and work for our choir for the past 25 years.
Birthing is not just about starting a brand new thing. All the work that is involved with change, transition, moving, reconstruction, have this component of birthing.
I have some words to share about birthing. I really do. I had my two sons via home birth. Peace, my older one, in Korea, with a Korean midwife, and my younger son, Jah-bi, in Ladysmith, BC. In both cases, I didn’t take advantage of any medical intervention at all No laughing gas, no epidural, just me, the midwife and nature. So I can confidently tell you a few amazing facts about the raw, intense, uninterrupted process of birthing. One thing I learned is that even though birthing comes from the female body, you certainly experience the masculine power that surges through and moves the body, especially when it comes to the end: the protection, focus, control. It’s not a process of just being dependent on another person’s help. It is the process all animals go through when they are birthing. You need to have a strong sense of control of your own body, the process and the space. 10 years ago, in Korea, on May 17, when I thought I felt contractions every 5 minute and asked my husband to call the midwife to come right away, my famous, busy midwife was just finishing with another woman on the opposite side of the city. I felt so urgent, I asked my husband, “Tell her to come right now.”
The words my husband heard on the other side of the phone were, “Are the eyeglasses still on Ha Na’s face?”
“Yes.”
“You still have time. Don’t worry. But I’m coming now.” After half an hour or so, my midwife finally arrived with her students, and that was when the real contractions started. And she was right - I took off and threw away my glasses. No need of them. No need of light. No need of seeing. The birthing process is naturally supposed to be very protected, like a ‘dark cave’, a whole, beautiful and powerful time which is only about the mother, her body, what she is going through, and the baby.
In our lives, there are times when we really have to meet a certain birthing experience. How about grief? The time after a very painful failure? Loss? Illness?
Anger is the emotion that we feel when we perceive certain things or situations are not right with us. Anger is the right emotion we feel when we see the situations that need to change.
Our work for justice and fairness for all people and peace in the world can be a very important birthing experience, because it expects and demands and creates the changes – the right changes - that have to be made.
In such an intense experience of birthing – which changes us, moves us, so dramatically, with emotions, with actions, we don’t need much light from the outside – because what we really need to do in those moments is to see inside, and to know and pay attention to what we are experiencing inside. We are invited to what the mystics call “the Dark Night of the Soul”. While we are clearly aware of what is happening around us, we incubate ourselves in a special period of time and personal space for protection, focus, and control. We need the shield of dark night within the soul to really connect to what we need and what we need to know, within our soul.
The advent benediction is more powerful when we know the meaning of what the Angel was announcing, “Hail Mary, full of grace.” The grace of light breaks into the shield of the most needed darkness.
“Hail Mary, God’s favoured one.”
And her resistance is the right response. We should make no judgement on that. “What sort of greeting is this?” “How can this happen to me, in my situation?”
Birthing is hard. Sometimes birthing is unwelcome. There’s a sense of risk and danger (Mary had no husband, risking society’s condemnation, and in the old days, not all mothers survived after childbirth.). But birthing is never bad news, because there’s a promise God declares, “Immanuel,” God being with you.
Advent means “waiting.” “Wait.” Even in the hardest moment of unbearable sorrow, of the terrible sense of being devastated, wait. There’s the sense of ‘not yet’ – You have not yet seen the promise of the “dry land seeing the crocus blossom.” (Isaiah 35:1)
The angel announces to Mary and to us, “Hail Mary, Hail you, full of grace” – not because her questions or our emotions – sadness, anger - are wrong, but because birthing is never bad news. Before judgement, before criticism, before blaming, before anger, before you let yourself be consumed by your thoughts and emotions, don’t be hard on yourself but wait. You are in the time of birthing. You are in the moment of God’s promising of what is yet to be seen by us: the miracle of the quiet, silent blossoming of the crocus after the rain in the desert. (Isaiah 35:1) In KJV “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.”
My second Tweet line after “Birthing is hard” is “Don’t give into anger.”
You are in the sacred, whole, protected moment of birthing, with the Immanuel God.
Birthing promises a just future. Birthing promises the rainbow of reconciliation. Birthing promises loving and being loved in return.
However hard your birthing process is, know that (now my third line) “On the other side is light.” The powerful light that is able to break into the most needed, protected shield of the dark soul so that the light dwells in it and with you.
The light becomes your identity. It helps you to know who you are. It helps you to rise up again.
Birthing is hard.
Don’t give into anger.
On the other side is light.
And my fourth line: “And…a weary world needs you.”
We have so much to do in the world. There is so much pain in the world, beside ours. However, it is not pain which weaves the world into becoming a new earth and a new heaven.
It is the love and the grace, the love and the grace save the world and our lives.
When we tell the story of the Angel’s greetings to Mary, what it really means is God favours us.
God doesn’t just love us. God favours us.
I believe Mary was chosen not because she was a woman, unwed, a virgin.
Mary was chosen not because of her capability of pregnancy or because her gender role was to be reproductive.
Mary was chosen because God favoured her.
Birthing, for her, has the component of danger. She may not be safe, physically and socially. Yet she trusts that she’s favoured, she’s loved, and she will be safe.
My last tweet line is “Lead the way.”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks, “What did you then go out to see” (Mat 11:8) in the wilderness?
Lead the way – God is with you.
God being with us, the Immanuel, is the divine incarnation in the world that is in front of our eyes. You may see the snow-covered city in the midst of winter. Yet here’s the point – imagine. It is for us the whole beautiful, amazing, and thrilling presence of the cosmic Christ!
– which parallels the time of Jesus travelling and teaching in the wilderness in Judea. As much as the weary world in Palestine needed and longed for the savior to come, the weary world needs you. You are the disciple of Jesus. Lead the way. You walk with the light. Love and grace is your light. Birthing is hard, but is never bad news, because of the promise that comes with it. The promise is the brilliant colourful festival of rainbows – crocuses and roses – all the dazzling possibilities.
Lead the way.
Birthing is Hard
Don’t Give into anger
On the other side is light
and
a weary world needs you
Lead the Way
# Advent (A tweet from Rev. Megan Rohrer)
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