We come from a tradition that baptizes infants as a celebration of God’s grace we don’t choose to be baptized, because it is a recognition of how God chooses us. The author and her family celebrating baptismĪs preacher’s kids, my sisters and I were forever baptizing our pets. This is another creation, the God who cries out like a woman giving birth, “who created the heavens and stretched them out,” (42:5) like a body stretching to make room for new life. What if this was our creation story? We already have at least two stories of the creation: the orderly division in Genesis 1 and the messier, muddier version that follows. One image that has captured my imagination is the description of God giving birth in Isaiah: “Now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant” (42:14). God is an angry mother bear in Hosea, and Jesus describes himself as a protective mother hen. When I was working on my book, The Women’s Lectionary, I became fascinated by the images of God as a mother in the Bible. And it is reflected in the stories of God as a mother.
This is just one of the stories about mothers giving birth in the Bible. Wilcox explores female characters in the Bible and feminine descriptions of God, enabling a year of preaching on both the human and divine feminine. In The Women’s Lectionary, author Ashley M. Was Mary’s delivery long or short? Who was there with her? Just Joseph? Or others? How did she feel, giving birth so far away from home? The text leaves it to us to fill in the details. In the birth story in Luke there isn’t much about the actual birth! We hear more about the decree to be registered and where Joseph is from than how it went for Mary when it was time for her to deliver the child. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.
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