Main news for 22 April 2020

"As a mother comforts someone, so I will comfort you, and you shall be comforted in Jerusalem..." Sergey Averintsev has an article about the word "blagoutrobny," which in modern Russian is translated as "merciful," "compassionate." In classical Greek this word had an exclusively medical aspect in the sense of a healthy belly. But when it enters biblical culture, it suddenly acquires a new meaning. "One question remains: do the authors of the Old and New Testaments really see in God's love for people, in Christ's love for people, and in Christians' love for one another the features of such a specific kind of love as 'womb-like' maternal pity? Does the image of YHWH, which so often appears to us as the absolute embodiment of a strictly fatherly principle, have something maternal in it? This important question should be answered in the affirmative."

And then Averintsev turns precisely to the text of Isaiah that we are discussing with you today. Often a person of our day, accustomed to various kinds of "gender studies," asks us and himself a crafty question: why is our, or your, God male, and things of that sort? Further on this quite often leads such people to call the Mother of God a goddess. But in reality today we see the very important fact that everything is much more complicated. And we should not, in an ecumenical impulse, search Christianity for yin and yang, for genuine ecumenism is not so simple either.

Further on Sergey Sergeyevich recalls another passage from Isaiah. "'Zion says: YHWH has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me. Can a woman forget her nursing child? Will she not have compassion on the son of her womb? Even if they forget, I will not forget you' (Isa 49:14-15)." "Thus, God is more mother than mother herself," says Averintsev. Let us never hurry in Holy Scripture; let us truly strive in our study of it for the spirit of "chastity, humility, patience, and love."

Our faith in God's goodness necessarily includes the idea of His faithfulness, first of all His faithfulness to His promises. We cannot know when these promises will be fulfilled, and as a rule the ways in which they are fulfilled are beyond our understanding, but their certainty lies at the foundation of our trust in God.

The prophecy of Isaiah that we read today contains two promises from God. First, God speaks of a new heaven and a new earth, of a new Creation, which means that His action in this world is not yet complete. The world in which we now live and which we know is not everything; it is not the ultimate reality. It "will pass away," and therefore we should not be guided too seriously by the ordinances of this world (unlike the ordinances that come from the eternal God).

Second, although the world will become different, there is something from this world that will not disappear but will pass into the new Creation, and this "something" is humanity, "your seed and your name." This saved humanity, together with the new heaven and the new earth, will be before the face of God forever. Do we believe this? Do we want to take part in it?

Our faith in the goodness of God necessarily includes the idea of His faithfulness, first of all His faithfulness to His promises. We cannot know when these promises will be fulfilled; as a rule, the ways in which they are fulfilled are beyond our understanding, but their certainty lies at the foundation of our trust in God.

In the prophecy of Isaiah that we read today, there are two promises of God. First, God speaks of a new heaven and a new earth, of a new Creation, which means that His action in this world is not yet complete. The world in which we now live and which we know is not yet everything, not yet the ultimate reality; it "will pass away," and therefore we should not be guided too seriously by the arrangements of this world, as distinct from the commandments that come from the eternal God.

Second, although the world will become different, there is something from this world that will not disappear but will pass into the new Creation, and this "something" is humanity, "your seed and your name." This saved humanity, together with the new heaven and the new earth, will be before the face of God always. Do we believe this? Do we want to take part in it?