In Christ Your are Born and Reborn for Jubilee - Sermon for Jubilate, the 4th Sunday of Easter, and Mother's Day, and For Life

Fourth Sunday of Easter – Jubilate                                          
May 8^th, A+D 2022
In Christ You Are Born and Reborn for Jubilee                     
St. John 16:16-22

Christ is Risen!  (He is risen indeed, Alleluia!)  Christ is risen, and very appropriately on this Jubilate, Shout for Joy Sunday we have before us the pain and the joy of childbirth.  For nothing so closely mimics the Cross and Resurrection.  On this Mother’s Day, our readings from Holy Scripture connect everything, motherhood, childbirth, family, sin, death, and new life as a beloved child of God. 

   Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed, said to His disciples:  When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.  So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

   Everything is connected. Everything. And especially the whole Word of God: it is super interrelated, a truly marvelous and comforting gift. Although it is the product of more than 30 human authors, writing over 15 centuries, the Bible is at the same time a single book.  All the details lead to a single climax, one central doctrine, a comforting message to the ears of faith, and the very salvation of the world. 

     Consider, for example, the curse announced to the first woman, after she and her man fell into sin.

To the woman [God] said: I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, with pain you will give birth to children.  The man, Adam, was condemned at the same moment to a life of stifling work, constant sweat on his forehead and thorns all around, daily punishment in the struggle to earn bread for himself and his family. The most striking curse for Eve, on the other hand, is more occasional, but sharper at the same time: I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, with pain you will give birth to children.

    It’s quite an interesting coincidence on this Mother’s Day to hear Jesus speak of the pains of childbirth, which are erased from memory once the baby is in mother’s arms.  The pain of childbirth is hard to understand.  Such an important and blessed event, filled with difficulty, danger and pain. I am not suggesting that the man and the woman did not deserve their distinct curses. Together, our first parents ruined God's very good creation, introducing death, pain, and separation from God, bringing these upon themselves, and all their descendants. Sin, Adam and Eve’s in the Garden, and also our sin, is rebellion against the loving Creator who only desires to give us good.  Sinful rebellion deserves punishment.  But, why this specific punishment for women?  Why pain in childbirth?

    It is important to remember that God in His Word doesn’t promise to explain everything to us, but rather He is telling us what we need to know and believe for salvation.  In this life we will not understand every detail of His plan.  But, He has encouraged us to delve deep into his Word, to listen, read, study, pray and meditate on the Holy Scripture.  Jesus has even promised that by this interaction with His Word, the Holy Spirit will guide us to all truth.

   So we are free to ask questions, and see what Scripture might teach us.  Today, perhaps the Lord Jesus has given us a clue as to the reason for the difficulty of childbirth.

    On the very night he was betrayed, Jesus introduces the subject of birth and the phenomenon of forgetful mothers. It’s not a random, offhand comparison.  What does Jesus want us to learn? 

    Today, pain medications and epidurals may minimize the phenomenon of which Jesus speaks.  But still, a miraculous change often occurs in the mother from during to after delivery.  One moment she feels like she is almost dying, truly suffering.  Perhaps she extracts solemn promises from the father, that we will never do this again: “PROMISE ME!  No matter what I say, don’t let me talk you into having another baby.”  As if the husband is in charge. 

     Then, sometimes just a few moments later, the same woman is crying with joy,
ecstatic and completely satisfied with life, as her baby snuggles in her arms.  She is jubilant, her memory of the pain fades away.  It is a true marvel.  Mothers after a safe and healthy birth abound in joy.  These new human beings, so small, with a strange, wrinkly appearance, create positive feelings in almost everyone. I am especially struck by how newborns even have this power with other babies not much older.  I remember when my granddaughter first met her cousin, only 10 or 11 months younger than her. When Heather, still less than one-year-old, first saw her little cousin, she was fascinated.  She was a jubilant toddler, because of her newborn cousin.  

Babies love babies.      

    This is a sign of our creation in the image of God. Although our sin has fractured this image in us, our love for newborns seems to point to the way we are wonderfully and fearfully made, in the image of God.  Certainly, the fascination and attraction little children have for newborn babies comes from God.

    I say this because having children was God's idea.  His first task for His human beings was: “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”  God has included us in His project to have more human beings for Him to love and bless.   The Almighty did all the work with Adam and Eve, forming the clay, breathing in life, taking the rib to form the perfect partner.  God worked alone at first, in the beginning.  But, later humans would come by the Lord working through the union of man and woman.  This is why the Church calls having babies “procreation,” not “reproduction.”   Because a man and a woman are not making a product.  They are creating together with God, procreating.  Having a child is to participate in a divine work. It is not like building a car or a house.  Having a baby is to create a new life with God.

      Most people are made happy by a newborn.  Not everyone, but most.  And let me be clear, not getting excited in the presence of a baby is not a sin.  Their tiny size, their needy dependence, not to mention their messy diapers, may not attract you.  That’s o.k. 

     However, there is another phenomenon that’s not o.k.: the selective neglect and destruction of children, before they are born. Our popular culture today says that having a child might be good, if you are well prepared and being a father or mother does not clash with your dreams or your freedom. According to the world, only if the parents, and especially only if the mother wants the baby, only then is it good. 

     But, if the circumstances aren't perfect, or if the mother is just worried about all the effort and change, well then our culture says that the child is totally optional, disposable.  Like a half-finished project that suddenly we decide to throw out in the trash.  Indeed, our president, this week, said that the freedom to abort a child is a crucial right.  No euphemism, no deceitful talk of a clump of cells or of ending a pregnancy.  No, the president said killing a child is a woman’s right.  And many of our fellow citizens think the same.  Lord have mercy, on us, on the unborn, on our nation.   Lord have mercy on all who are deceived by the satanic lies of the abortion movement.  Lord, help us remember that having a child is not producing a product, it is creating together with You.    

     Being a mother, or a father, is a divine call to fill an intimate role in the creation of a
new human being, a unique and precious person to the Lord.  Today, more than ever, the Church of Christ has a task of love in the world, which is to speak for children, and parents, and families.  As we hope for the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, we even more need to speak for life, to speak the truth compassionately but clearly:   Every human life is precious, from conception to natural death, and so deserves everyone's protection.

   Even when the circumstances of a pregnancy are far from perfect, even when it is clear that the man and the woman involved are not your ideal couple, well set up to parent the child, even then, the baby is a divine work.  There often are serious problems, which may need our help to overcome, help from extended family, help from the church, maybe even help from you and me.  Still, the baby is precious to God.

     And remember, God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the God who brings good from what seems bad.  Blessing from curse.  Life from death.  Some pregnancies naturally cause us to shout for joy, others create heartache.  Many do both.  But, trusting our God, the God of rescue and reversal, the Lord of compassion who cares for the weakest, let us also dare to love life. 

     It's not that being a mother or father isn't difficult. I don't mean to say that there aren't family failures that result in sadness for children.  But we who have been called to be children of God simply must repeat what God says about the value of the newborn, and the unborn.  We must speak for the value of each person, that each one is a soul for whom Christ gave his life to save.  And we must do all that is within our power to help parents and families succeed, and find joy in the blessing of life, as we have received it from God. 

     That God is for life, and so we are too, this is a crucial message. But it is not our only message.  Indeed, for the truth about God’s love for life to be heard, we need to especially proclaim our greater, more jubilant message.  For we have the privilege of proclaiming that, since Christ has loved everyone on his Cross, there is forgiveness for everyone and healing for all hurts.  There is forgiveness and rebirth for all sinners, in Jesus.  There is forgiveness, even for people, outside or inside the Church, who in a given moment have not wanted or have not protected human life as we should. The blood of Jesus covers all sins.

     Jubilate!  What a joy to be gathered together as forgiven sinners, called to be children of God, babes in Christ’s Kingdom, no matter how many birthdays we have counted since our delivery.  And how good today to hear Jesus' compare what a mother experiences with what His disciples would experience: When a woman gives birth, she has pain, because her time has come; but after she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for the joy that a human being has been born into the world. You also now have sadness; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

     Jesus uses the pain in childbirth to help us understand the most important event in all of history: the sorrow and pain of the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus.  This sorrow, which is incalculable, is now forgotten, erased from the divine memory, along with our guilt and punishment.   Yes, we should always remember that the joy of the Resurrection was not just for the disciples, is not just for us.  God Himself rejoices in the Resurrection, and forgets the pain of the Cross.  

   Jesus endured the shame and pain of the Cross because He looked forward to the joy, the jubilant privilege of giving a new birth to all humanity, in His new, holy and indestructible life.  Because the One coming out of the grave, Jesus of Nazareth, was not just another man.  No, the man who joyfully rose to life on Easter morning is a new man, a better man.   He is unique, totally different.  Jesus by His Resurrection is revealed to truly be the God-Man, burst forth from the tomb, ready and able to share righteousness and jubilation with everyone.

     Jubilate!  Shout for joy in the forgiving love of God, which Jesus won for all, for men and women and children, the joy that is shared for all eternity by the whole family of God. Jesus on his Cross, for the joy set before him, endured everything, including all the anguish and pain of all mothers, and all the sweat and weariness of all men, all the struggles of children, and all the just wrath of God against our sin.  Jesus suffered it all, to make us a new creation, restored and prepared for an eternity of joy, what the Bible calls the final jubilee.

     Our joy with Christ in heaven will be even greater than the joy of embracing a newborn.  And you can start rejoicing, right now.  Jubilate, be jubilant, shout for joy, now!  No waiting required, the joy of heaven is already ours, in Christ himself, crucified and risen.   Certainly, today we only experience this joy in part, joy in the midst of a world still sunk in sin pain and anguish.  But our joy is real, because the King of Heaven sees us.  He is truly present with us, his believing People, present to embrace us, to once again take away our anguish, our pain, and our sins.  

    Fed by His Gospel in all its forms, nourished by His own body and blood, truly adopted as children of the heavenly Father, we can forget the past, the pain, the guilt, and begin to live again, joyfully, jubilantly, in Him who rejoices to forgive us and give us new birth, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, Amen.