Episode 21: 1/28/09

Readings:

Psalm 53
Isaiah 49:1-12
Galatians 2:11-21
Mark 6:14-29

Sermon:

“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.”
The Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 1, Verses 5 through 7

Grace, mercy and peace, from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.

How do we value life?

It can rightly said that God, our Heavenly Father… He never chooses his words lightly, nor does He select them without a full understanding of the implications that they hold. Rather, what He offers is divine truth that transcends the ages, that transcend time and place, to find themselves just as applicable, just as right, as they were in that moment when He first spoke them.

A practice that had reached back to the Jewish Captivity in Egypt, and at the very least, the reign of Ahmose the First, He would have been familiar with the writings of the Ebers Papyrus and the practice described within. Almost a thousand years later, by the birth of the Prophet, the children of Israel now fallen into the chaos of the divided Kingdom and eventual Babylonian Captivity, there would be no historical evidence that the grim procedure first written of by the Egyptians had ceased. Even as Greek medicine and philosophy began to flourish in the West, there were signs that it had been, in fact, embraced by what was considered the most enlightened civilization to rise. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, would, a few short generations later would write of how he would consider it to be acceptable to be proceeded with in the proper circumstances.

Nothing stays hidden from God…

Here, in the first Chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, the Lord could have chosen different words, He could have expressed a different sentiment, after all, the acts of abortion would have been considered perfectly natural to the wisdom of this world. Still held in the womb, the fetus in question, it wasn’t entitled to anything, and, in fact, most of the prohibited procedures of those early abortions were there for the woman, not to protect the life growing in her.

Yet, here though, contrary to the wisdom and the enlightenment of this world, would embrace, that which was in the womb, not just as some growing organism but as life, conceived, and glorified, known by Him and sanctified, redeemed, in His divine love for him.

“Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou camst forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee.”

God would not distinguish between the life of the Prophet in the womb, formed and created by Him, His breath giving him life, and the life of the Prophet amidst this world, speaking with His voice unto the children of Israel. They weren’t two different lives or two different beings, one a creature, the other a man. They were and they remained, the same life, inseparable and indistinguishable, to be lived by the same person, given as a sacred gift from the Lord.

But then, it could be viewed rightly in the words of Job, “If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they contended with me; What then shall I do when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him? Did not he that made me in the womb make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb?” (Job 31:13-15)

Today… well today our practices and our procedures have advanced far beyond anything perhaps imagined by the authors of the Ebers Papyrus, the tools more sophisticated than any of the ones described by Hippocrates, but there is little difference now between our society and those societies that did not know the Lord or value the preciousness of that gift of life that He gave unto us. More often than not we embrace the practice of abortion, claiming it nothing more than a simple medical procedure or stating that it’s the right of every woman to have one. We make laws to protect that so called right, we send our money overseas to foreign clinics to pay for woman of other nations to have the same, we make it easier and easier for teenagers to have a them, with or without the consent or knowledge of their parents.

All in the name of compassion…

And yet, in the eyes of the Lord, what distinguishes life in the womb from life outside of the womb? What distinguishes the compassion he shows to a child held within the belly of their mother or cradled in the arms of their mother?

Nothing… There is nothing that separates the two when looked upon by the Lord God Almighty, who, through His power and divine plan, gives life unto the world.

The words of the Lord are clear… unquestionably clear… “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:13-16)

He wove us together, knitted us together, when we were conceived in the womb. That beautiful image He created humanity in, so to does He create the child in the womb in. He breathes life into their lungs and gives them the capacity to gain and to grow in consciousness. He loves them as He loves the little children, seeking that they would be brought to Him. The same power of redemption that comes from Christ Jesus at the cross to cover the multitude of our sins, blankets that young, fragile life, in the divine mercy and tender precepts of the Lord.

How then will we view life? How then will we value it? Will we embrace the wisdom of this world, a knowledge that weakens the integrity and the dignity of human life, by placing such a small value on it or will we make our stand with God, realizing the truth… the unchangeable, inalterable, inalienable divine truth of Christ that tells unto us “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40)

Ours must be to protect the sanctity of human life and to make a stand for the weakest, those who cannot protect or speak for themselves. Just as God gave a voice unto the Prophet even as he could not speak, even as he could not form the words with his lips or the thoughts with his mind, so too must we give a voice unto those who cannot speak for themselves, those who have not that power to cry out for mercy, forming the words for them, to speak the certainty of the Lord handed to us as our great heritage of truth.

This must be our Christian imperative, a testimony of the faithful, that the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit dwells within us, through the ages in the redeeming power of Christ’s great sacrifice for us.

Lord, grant this unto us all.

Now, may the peace of the Lord, that peace that transcends all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, even unto life everlasting, Amen.