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But we challenge Scripture with Scripture. declares husband and wife to be one flesh. It takes two people, a man and a woman, joined in one flesh, to make a baby. Asking which of us is "responsible" for the barrenness suggests that one of us could procure a baby by a method not involving the other—requiring first divorce or death. The implied rupture in the one flesh of our marriage renders the question meaningless. We cannot have a baby. No other marriage is under discussion here.

We learned of our barrenness, not from time and dying hope, but from doctors. Doctors do not think of marriages as one flesh. They do not look at our bodies as we look at each other's. We see beloved skin and muscles and eyes, we see tenderness and protection and desire. Doctors look at our bodies as problems to solve. They started trying to solve our problem before we even absorbed the horrible truth that there was a problem. Tests were planned, minor surgeries, hormone counts and chemical ratings, all to solve the problem. The problem was ultimately to be solved by a conception in which we would be nowhere near each other. We were to be harvested, fruitful cells gleaned from our unpromising fields. None of the doctors asked if we even wanted to be harvested. We had to read between the lines, decipher the code language, blurt out in plain speech what was shrouded in bland indifference.

Then we said no. We were regarded as weird. "Do you have a moral objection to conception taking place outside the human body?" one doctor asked.

Forget the moral objection for the moment. How about this: Does it matter if a baby comes from sex? We were looked upon as technological prudes for shunning the test tubes. I think they were the prudes for considering sex so unnecessary.

Here is the plain truth. I do want a child of my own flesh and blood. But I want the child to come from my love for my husband. Not love in the abstract; love in the flesh, for a child in the flesh. The fertile cannot grasp how profound is the cosmic insult in learning that your love cannot bear fruit. That is what love is for; babies are one of the many fruits that love bears; and yet ours just isn't enough.

We are a big mistake. We are an abomination in nature—we exist pointlessly because we cannot make more of our species. We are an abomination according to the charge of Genesis, because we cannot be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Our love does not bear fruit.

Twenty-three chapters later, John is dead, and Jesus is on his way to being dead. He has fed the five thousand, healed the sick, stilled the waters, and most miraculously of all, taught with authority. His words are God's words.

The Pharisees and scribes rage at these words. But the crowds throng Jesus and beg for more. He gives them more. In her enthusiasm at his words, a woman in the crowd cries out a blessing. "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!" Happy the woman who is your mother. Sad that there could be only one of her.

But Jesus turns the blessing aside. He redirects it. "Blessed rather," he says, "are those who hear the Word of God and keep it." His mother is not exempt from the blessing so long as she hears the Word of God. Her womb and breasts are no guarantee— not even for the mother of the Lord.

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December 2007, Vol. 51, No. 12