My Delight Is In Her

Linda Bongiorno
Wednesday 19 January 2022

Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: Isaiah 62:1-5; John 2:1-11

Translation is tricky.  Just ask anyone who took translation exams in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Persian, Russian or Spanish last month.  If that was you, I hope you will discover you have done well enough.

Translating the Bible is also tricky.  Isaiah was written in Hebrew, like most of the Old Testament, but we heard it read earlier in an English translation called the New Revised Standard Version.  I want to focus on verse 4 as we heard it read:

You shall no more be termed Forsaken,

and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;

but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,

and your land Married.

Those four names – Forsaken, Desolate, My Delight Is in Her, and Married – are translations of four words in Hebrew – Azubah, Shemamah, Hephzibah and Be’ulah.  But some English translations just leave Hephzibah and Be’ulah as they are, untranslated, perhaps because the end of the verse explains what they mean.

In fact, two of these Hebrew names belong to real people in the Bible.  Azubah (which means forsaken) was the wife of King Jehoshaphat of the southern kingdom of Judah in the 9th Century BC.  And Hephzibah (meaning My Delight Is in Her) was wife of King Hezekiah and mother of King Manasseh also of the southern kingdom of Judah nearly 200 years later.

Now, you may be wondering why there is a picture of a cat on the order of service.  Well this is Hephzibah, one of our three cats.  As you can see, she’s a tortoiseshell, and now around 15 years old.  She’s playful and mischievous – her favourite game is pulling petals off flowers in vases.  She loves gardening, or at least finding mice there.  She is noisy, and announces her every entry into a room with a squawk.  She’s a fussy eater – she loves Felix Doubly Delicious, until, overnight she hates it and will only eat Felix As Good as it Looks salmon flavour.  She’s not a lap cat but loves snuggling up in bed, and will immediately replace me when I get up, as she has a penchant for a pre-warmed space.  As I hope you can sense, our delight is in her, our cat called just that – Hephzibah, or Heppy, or the Bah, or, on occasion, Incorrigible.

Let me give you some advance warning.  We have two other cats.  One is called Tobit who appears in the Apocrypha alongside the angel Raphael, and so may feature in a sermon on 29 September, the Feast of St Raphael.  As for our third cat, Poppy – perhaps she will appear in a sermon next Remembrance Day…

Anyway, back to Isaiah and translation matters.  The four names in Hebrew all end with the same sound.  Could we not try that in English too:

You shall no more be termed Jilted,

and your land shall no more be termed Deserted;

but you shall be called Beloved,

and your land Re-married.

The point is: there is a huge contrast between the former two and latter two names.  The first two are fairly bleak.  Chapter 62 comes towards the end of Isaiah.  A possible scenario for this chapter is the return of the prophet with a handful of former exiles to Israel, to Jerusalem.  All they could see was a shattered landscape, broken walls, ruined buildings, abandoned fields.  It felt as if God’s blessing was no longer with them.

But why the jilted theme?  Because throughout the Bible, the metaphor of marriage expresses God’s relationship with his people.  God is portrayed as married to Israel, loving his people faithfully and exclusively, in a covenant of commitment for ever.  But during the exile, when the people of Israel were taken as refugees to Babylon, and were there for 70 years, they felt abandoned by God, spurned, as if this husband had deserted them.  They were long years – decades – of longing to return, to regain trust, to be reconciled, to renew vows.  And now, in Isaiah’s prophecy, they are jilted no more, deserted no more.  Instead they are beloved and betrothed again, married, or even re-married to God.  God has renewed his promise of love for all time.  These are his people, and with this blessing, they will rebuild their home.

You may say this is an odd metaphor for divine love.  These days we might prefer not to see God as a bridegroom and his people as a bride.  Isn’t it a bit gender-stereotyped?  After all, gender is more complicated than it used to be.  Students come and talk to me about being trans, or non-binary or gender-fluid, and they sometimes discuss being asexual, and all explore how they feel.  And many people live fulfilled lives without marriage, without partnership.

And yet, most of us love a wedding.  And even if marriage is not for us, we can rejoice in the love which others have found, and which they express and enact in marriage.  Even in the 21st Century, for all its flaws and failures, marriage can still be a terrific example of promise, commitment and generosity.  It still works for me as an image of God’s relationship with the world.  Maybe that is why the first sign of who Jesus was in John’s Gospel was at a wedding, when he turned water into wine, and helped the celebrations continue long into the night.

There’s a lovely tribute to marriage by the late Terry Wogan, an Irishman who was a beloved broadcaster mainly on radio in Britain.  He said:

If the present Mrs Wogan has a fault – and I must tread carefully here – this gem in the diadem of womanhood is a hoarder.  She never throws anything out.  Which may explain the longevity of our marriage.

Maybe God too is a hoarder, and will not throw us out, or the creation which emerged from his loving hand.

Could I suggest that this image – of God’s marriage-like love – is worth holding on to in the tough times, for times like these.  As we return for a new semester, we’re still in the midst of a global pandemic.  5.5 million deaths worldwide, and we’ve just passed 150,000 deaths in the UK alone.  Education is still affected by restrictions – online lectures, face-coverings in every classroom and lab, restrictions on social life.  And let’s not forget – though we’d love to be able to forget – the refugee crisis around the world, dire air pollution, and climate change.  In 2021, ten countries had their highest ever recorded temperatures – Canada, the USA and Dominica; Morocco, Tunisia and Italy; Oman and the United Arab Emirates; Turkey and Taiwan.

Forsaken and desolate may feel like dreadfully apt names for planet Earth.  And far from the headlines, these words may also describe what we are going through in our personal life, loss and illness, bereavement and loneliness, worry and fear.  Should we call this the Forsaken Semester?  The Desolate Term?

I don’t think the Principal would accept the change.  And I too would hold out against it.  Because people of faith (whether confident or shaky) are people of hope.  Hope that God has not left his creation jilted at the altar, or deserted with hungry children.  Instead, this world is beloved and betrothed: God’s delight is in her.  Let me offer some words now from Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of Cape Town in South Africa, the tireless campaigner for justice and forgiveness, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who died in late December.  He said: Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.  And he said:

God’s dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness and for compassion. 

In other words, when people believe that God’s delight is in the world, it helps us see the world as beloved, and that changes how we treat it.  We care a little more for the land, the sea and the air, and we care a little more for all the creatures who share it with us.  As Tutu also said: Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

Desmond Tutu may have been tempted to find his world forsaken and desolate, but his trust in the love of God made him see it instead as beloved and worthy of his energy.

Which brings us back to Hephzibah.  Our mischievous, mercurial cat is a constant reminder that this is God’s world, that what seems forsaken and desolate will pass, that God’s love is faithful and constant, that God’s delight is in all that he has made and continues to uphold in being, cats of course, but also dogs, students, and other creatures.  I hope you enjoy this Candlemas Semester in the year of God’s grace Two thousand and twenty-two.

END

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