Psalm 80:1-7
Isaiah 66:7-11
Luke 13:31-35
The cry goes out “Restore us O God, make your face shine upon us that we may be saved.”
How often we hear the complaint “If God is so good, why doesn’t he do something about the evil that exists in our world? Why doesn’t he save us?” To many it seems that God is either impotent or simply indifferent to our torn and bleeding world. Isaiah gives us a different picture of God, that of midwife. Using the image of childbirth, he states that God is able to bring about the birth even before the labor pains begin. “Do I bring to the point of birth and not deliver”? Any woman giving birth knows that at the end it is impossible not to push the baby out. It’s an impossible time to close the womb! The Midwife will deliver the baby. In Isaiah what God wants to do is give birth to salvation and restoration for the Jews after their period of exile. He states that Israel will nurse at the breast. It will be delivered. Nothing can stop it. God is not impotent to do what he has promised; instead he is able to deliver with skill and immediacy. For us, Paul states that “He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion.”
So what’s the problem? If God wants to save and is powerful enough to do so, then why doesn’t he? The answer is that he has and that he will. Throughout the prophets we have been reading of God’s promise of coming salvation. This advent season we have been “waiting.” Our passages have declared “He is coming to save.” The imagery is fulfilled in a baby born in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. Salvation has come. As Jesus journeys around the countryside he tells his listeners about the salvation that God has birthed. He tells Nicodemus that he must be birthed into this salvation. On his last trip to Jerusalem Jesus sits outside its gate and laments “How I wanted to gather you like a mother hen gathers her chicks but you would not.” Herein lies the problem. Not that God refuses to save but that the endangered have rejected his way of salvation. And we today are no different. We moan and groan about the mess and fear for our future but refuse to accept the gift offered. We are like the Jews who wanted this salvation to look different; certainly not like a baby born in humble surroundings, or a dusty itinerant preacher, and especially not a criminal on a cross. And we want a salvation that doesn’t require anything from us, certainly not righteous kingdom living! No matter how we feel about it, God has put his plan into action. The conception has occurred at Bethlehem and the pregnancy is advancing. The time of delivery will arrive. He longs for us to be the beneficiaries. He weeps when we refuse. He announces over and over that the culmination of his plan is near, Jesus will return to bring all things under his rule. He will defeat all enemies and take those who believe in him to the place he has prepared for them; a place free of evil, pain, and suffering; a place of beauty and creativity, a place filled with song. All will be well. The question arises: Have you received the salvation that the Lord has given, or do you resist hoping for another way?
