Easter on the Maternity Ward

Easter on the Maternity Ward--May 8, 2019

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead..." [1 Peter 1:3]

This is one of those times when the Bible itself reminds me that even our best words break down at some point, and that there are truths so beautiful and mysterious that they go beyond the limits of language and metaphor. (That by itself is an important truth, because after all, if your faith is completely comprehensible and explainable, it's a sign that it's just a human invention. Mystery, by definition, must be beyond our complete grasp.)

But think about this for a moment here. The writer of what we call First Peter says that Jesus' resurrection has done something for us--even though it is removed in time by two thousand years now. And beyond that, the "something" that Christ's resurrection accomplished is, well, a birth!  After calling God the "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," he uses the verb for giving birth to describe what God has done for us in Christ.  God is somehow like a father, First Peter says, but also does the thing that only a mother can do: God gives birth to us!  

And, just to stay with that for a moment, yes, the language in the original Greek is precisely that maternal.  In English we have the phrase "give birth," almost as though the birth is a tangible present that you can "get" from someone else--that can make the image seem less visceral, less human, less raw and real, and less decidedly maternal.  After all, technically both a father and a mother can say to their biological children, "I gave you life," but really only the mother can say, "I gave birth to you." Only the one who went through labor can say, "I bore you." And that's the language here in First Peter, the same root verb as when Jesus talks with Nicodemus about being "born from above" or "born anew," that makes dear old Nick sarcastically ask Jesus about climbing back into a mother's womb when you are already fully grown.  There is something inescapably maternal, something that speaks of pain and sweat and groaning, about this passage--which, not for nothing, is a reminder to us that the Scriptures themselves seem to admit that male and masculine language for God is insufficient by itself, and a reminder that the living God transcends our constructs and categories of gender.  We almost need remind ourselves every time we pray the words, "Our Father, who art in heaven," echoing the words of Jesus from the Gospels, that writers like First Peter here don't blush at all about also saying that this God gave birth to us in the resurrection.  It's not at all a modern invention to say this about God--it's right there in the New Testament, and it has been for two thousand years.  The real issue, all along, has been whether we dared to actually let the voices of Scripture speak on their own terms without our filtering out the things we didn't expect to find.

Now, all of that said, let's push a bit further to consider what First Peter is trying to say with all this birth and delivery business.  Because he's not just tossing out metaphors for the sheer fun of it.  No, the point here is to say that in Jesus' resurrection, we have been given that new birth.  Jesus' risen life is tethered to our lives as well, and as Jesus is brought forth from the tomb like a baby being delivered through the darkness of the womb, so our lives, too, are brought into a new kind of existence.  It's like, to use a frequently used religious phrase, being "born again."

But note here just who does the work here.  First Peter says that it is Jesus' resurrection, and the power of God who raised him, which gave birth to us.  In the maternity ward, you know who does the work?  The mamas.  Maybe some credit goes to the doctors, the nurses, and the other aides, and maybe even the cheerleading family members in the delivery room or waiting area--but not the baby.  The baby does zero work--the baby receives life as a gift.  Mama does the birthing, and the baby gets born.  The initiative, the pain, the suffering, and the labor are gifts the one-giving-birth gets to give. The baby doesn't have to choose it, approve it, request it, or earn it.  It is a gift, and a costly one at that, given all that birth puts a mama's body through (especially in First Peter's world and experience, which had no epidurals, spinal taps, or pain medications).

And something like that is the way that First Peter wants us to think of Jesus' resurrection... and us.  Jesus endured the pain of it.  Jesus went through the hell of the cross and the darkness of the tomb.  God did the laboring, the sweating, and the screaming.  And through the resurrection, God has given us a new life, a new existence, a new birth.  It is a gift.

So, sure when some religious-sounding voice asks you if you have been "born again," First Peter's advice would be to say, "Yeah--and it happened two thousand years ago when Jesus came out of the tomb and brought me with him."  You do as much of the initiating to get born "again" as you do to get born the first time.  You do as much of the work and sweating, too--these are gifts of grace.

The follow-up question, though, is this: once you've been given this new life as a gift, what will you do with it?

A baby doesn't stay in the bassinet forever--she grows up and lives and thrives and does the kind of beautiful, wonderful things that humans do.

And if we dare believe that we have been given a whole new birth in Christ's resurrection, and if we believe that it has begun already for us even now, then how can we grow and live and thrive in God's new kind of life for us, too?

That's today's project: living like this new birth really is real, knowing that God has gone through an awful lot of labor to give it to us.

Thanks be to the God who births us through the resurrection.

Lord Jesus, you have given us new life in your own resurrection--let us use it and flourish.