Today's Sermon

 

“God Our Mother: Talking About God 6”

 

            Last week’s installment in our series exploring and expanding how we talk about God, we made the case for the term “Heavenly Father,” remembering fondly the intimacy, the personal side of this name, the connection to the tradition and Jesus himself. You might think, well that was a light lift, but I gather some in progressive Christian spaces might feel like they aren’t supposed to talk about God in the masculine, that they’ll somehow be scolded. We said there has needed to be some rebalancing, some course correction, but that’s different than wholesale replacing one set of names with others. I hope you took that as genuine.

         Today, we speak about God as Mother. What this should not turn into is a battle of the sexes. These names enrich each other as they paint a fuller picture of the one we can only see partially as The Apostle Paul says. Done wrong people get the impression “Heavenly Father” is biblical “God Our Mother” is politically correct or whatever other belittling moniker one might choose. To be sure, God as father is biblical. The Bible undeniably skews toward men. More of its main characters are men. Often the men in the stories are named while the women are not. The Bible is a product of a patriarchal culture. There is no denying that. The question is, do we have to treat its gendered bias as the gospel lesson.

         Importantly, the feminine for God is also biblical, not as prevalent, but still there, and throughout history there have been those in the faith who have spoken of God as mother, even Christ as mother interestingly enough. If you experience this as a threat, I’m going to invite you to see it as a chance instead to know God more fully. Isn’t that what we should want, to get the fullest picture possible?

            Let’s get into scripture and build from there. I have pulled some of the scriptures that point to maternal or feminine imagery for God. Hear them now:

Deuteronomy 32:18 - “You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you;
you forgot the God who gave you birth.” God as the one who gives birth.

Isaiah 42:14 - “Now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant.” Here the prophet Isaiah acting as a mouthpiece for God, which is what prophets are, speaks of crying out in labor, breathless at the work of giving birth. Interestingly, in light of holding this week together with last week’s God as father, Isaiah couples imagery of God as a male soldier protecting the people with the image of a mother giving birth to a new reality. They exist side by side in verses 13 and 14.

Isaiah 66:9–13 - “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” We say this later passage from Isaiah at every funeral at Westminster. What could be more comforting in a time of pain than a God who comforts “as a mother”?

Psalm 131:1-2 - “Like a weaned child with its mother, my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.” Here the Psalmist presents an image of a matured child who longs to be with its mother not because the child needs milk, immediate gratification, but because they need the mother in a deeper sense. It’s a child growing up, but not growing out of the need for relationship with God who is depicted here in a maternal light.

Ruth 2:12 - “You have come to take refuge under the wings of the LORD.” Gender is not mentioned explicitly, but the imagery is of a chick taking refuge under the wings of its mother. I suppose father penguins also fit the bill…so to speak.

Proverbs 1:20-23
20
Wisdom cries out in the street;
    in the squares she raises her voice.
21
At the busiest corner she cries out;
    at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
22
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
    and fools hate knowledge?
23 
Give heed to my reproof;
I will pour out my thoughts to you;
    I will make my words known to you. 

Wisdom is personified in the feminine, Sophia, in the Book of Proverbs. She cries out to be heard. Do we listen or just talk over her?

Luke 13:34-35
34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when[e] you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ” Like Ruth, one of the few women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus, Jesus returns to the aviary image of the mother hen gathering her brood.  

Luke 15:8-10
8 “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” I don’t have to tell you who God is in this allegory, like a woman with precious treasures, you and I.

         So that’s the biblical witness. The 14^th century Christian mystic Julian of Norwich said it plainly in her Revelations of Divine Love, “As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother.”[1] It’s not necessarily mother instead of father, but mother and father. I say both in my benediction for a reason. There’s no need to be afraid of expansion; indeed that is the point. Some names will resonate more with you than others. Take comfort in the ones that are an easy fit for you and allow yourself to be stretched by the ones that aren’t. That’s how we grow. If it makes you uncomfortable, that may be good; comfort is not the only or highest good.

         There is so much to be gained by allowing the maternal to enter the scene, doubling the metaphor from last week – birthing, nourishing, nurturing, and protecting in its own right. I don’t know about yours, but you would not want to get in the way of my mothers. Expanding your concept of God can reignite your faith. There was a fairly popular book some years back, bigger in evangelical circles, called The Shack by William P. Young. It’s far from perfect, but I appreciate how it reimagines the Trinity. God the Father, called “Papa” in the book, is portrayed as a warm-hearted African American woman. Jesus is a Middle Eastern carpenter, a laborer. The Holy Spirit is an Asian woman in the form of a wispy ghost. Even in a more progressive setting, this was eye opening for people and many appreciated getting “to know” God in this new way. The point was not to push this particular formulation as doctrine, but open minds to other faithful ways of imagining the ultimately unnamable.  

         Another helpful way of framing this conversation is recognizing as much as pushing our thinking forward, we’re also returning to a diversity that existed in the early church. Prior to the Council of Nicaea in the year 325, which largely concerned the nature of Christ, there lacked a standard, uniform Christianity. Institutionalizing brought with it standardization in worship and doctrine. Prior, there were various communities practicing discipleship of Jesus, reading various texts—not all the same—and engaging in various practices—some shared some not. As my World Christianity professor put it, there were Christianities (plural) rather Christianity (singular) and I think he might extend that reality into the present. We may be returning to a state of play where more and more diverse expressions of Christianity arise, in part because of its disentanglement with the state, and that may well yield a richer array of expressions. There will be similarities and differences, universals and particulars.

         What does Fox say, Matthew Fox our companion theologian for the series? Fox’s book Original Blessing is the current selection for the Spiritual Life book group. As he does with Father, Fox reminds us that maternal manifestations of the divine are widespread in religion, from Hinduism to Christianity, Judaism to Daoism; that doesn’t even mention indigenous traditions. He quotes the aforementioned Julian of Norwich who says God is “our true mother in whom we are endlessly carried and out of whom we will never come.”[2] We are always in God, which should remind you of what we earlier said in this series, God is the one in whom we live. You see, these names are different, but they have overlaps. They hold together. They bless one another, and they bless us.

         The goal is not to debate father or mother. Neither is the goal to rest with the “and” between them. The goal for this series and our ongoing faith is to say God is Father and Mother and ask, “and what else?” For that, we come back next week.

         Amen.

 

[1] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 59.

[2] Matthew Fox, Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God….Including the Unnameable God, 73.