Musings

May

13

Our Mother, Who Art in Heaven

A sermon preached at St. Peter’s Church, Port Chester, NY on Sunday, May 14th, 2017 (The Fifth Sunday of Easter – and Mothers’ Day)

Readings: Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

One of my favorite moments of my time with you at St. Peter’s happened two years ago, when the Bishop came to do confirmations. We were sitting in a circle with all the confirmands, letting the candidates introduce themselves. At the end, the Bishop asked the group if anyone had questions and was met with stunned silence, as though everyone was afraid to open their mouths. Finally, just as he was about to give up and head upstairs to the church, a 12 year-old girl from my class piped up fearlessly, “Hey, Bishop, in our confirmation class, Mother Kristin told us something really cool: that God is a she! What do you think of that?”

Never in my life have I been so mortified and proud in the same moment. Of all the things she could have asked the Bishop, and of all the things she retained from a year of confirmation class, what stuck with her was the idea that God might not be a man. She was curious about the gender of God – and something tells me she’s not the only one.

I have no idea what exactly I said to my confirmation class, but I doubt it was literally, “God is a she.” Although I love the idea of divine feminine, I recognize that the situation is much more complex than that. But I did spend a lot of time talking to my young confirmands about the consequences that our words have, especially the words we use to describe God. If we spend our lives calling God “He” and “Father,” then it’s no wonder that we construct a mental image of God as male, with characteristics we traditionally associate with men: power, strength, etc. In Spanish, and other languages where nouns have gender, the maleness of God is even more entrenched because the word “Dios” is masculine. Grammatically speaking, God is, in fact, male.

But there are other ways of imagining God. And, since today is Mother’s Day, I’d like to explore the often neglected idea of God the Mother. And before I even get into that, let me say from the outset that changing our conceptions of God is hard. Until about 9 years ago, I fiercely resisted the idea of calling God “she.” I thought it was ridiculous and unnecessary, to say nothing of incredibly uncomfortable. But the church I was attending at the time had the proud custom of calling the Holy Spirit “she” in the Nicene Creed –  “with the Father and the Son, she is worshipped and glorified; she has spoken through the prophets.” The first time I heard it, I hated it. I refused to say it. But, I loved the church otherwise, so I kept attending. And every week, as we said the Creed, my resistance crumbled a little bit more. Because the thing was, without my permission, hearing the Holy Spirit referred to as a she began to change not just the way I imagined God, but the way I related to her. And all from changing one pronoun in the Creed. Language is powerful.

To that end, I wonder if you’ll indulge me in a quick experiment. Let’s take the Lord’s Prayer, which most of us have known from memory for most of our lives. What happens if, instead of opening with “Our Father,” we switch it to “Our Mother?” Does the image of God that your brain conjures up as you pray change? What reaction did you have just to hearing those altered words? If you reacted strongly and negatively, that’s normal. But I invite you to explore your reaction. The words we use matter.

If, by now, you’re looking for the exit because there’s a rogue feminist heretic in the pulpit, know that the idea of the divine feminine is nothing I invented. It’s not even a modern development. The Bible is full of images of God as Mother, even though they’re not as prevalent as images of God as Father or King. In fact, our second reading from 1 Peter gives us one of the strongest Biblical images of God the Mother: “like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

I could not have asked for a more perfect Mother’s Day reading. Here, God isn’t a mighty King, or a strong father, disciplining his rebellious children. Here, she is a mother, breastfeeding her children, nursing us. What a tender, intimate, vulnerable image of God. This is a God who feeds us from her own body. Show me a man who can do that and tell me that we’re dealing with a male God. We need images like this one, uncomfortable though they may make us, to balance out the forceful masculine images of God we are bombarded with. It’s not enough that God is our Father: we need her to be our Mother, too

Today, we celebrate mothers of all kinds: living mothers and deceased mothers; single mothers and adoptive mothers; sick mothers and mothers in prison; mothers who are separated from their children and mothers who have lost children. Today, we remember those who may not be biological mothers, but who mother us anyway: grandmothers, aunts, sisters, friends, etc. Today, we honor the pain of broken relationships, recognizing that, for so many people, this day is an excruciating reminder of being abandoned or abused by their mothers. Today, we remember the many women who want to be mothers but can’t. And we pray that this church might be a sanctuary for all of us, whether we are mothers or not, whether we are celebrating or holding back tears. All are welcome here today.

Because today, we don’t just celebrate human mothers. Today, we celebrate the maternal love that God, our Mother, has for us – a love that no one can take away. And we celebrate the eternal presence of our Heavenly Mother here with us today.

Last summer, when the Bishop got over his astonishment at being asked about God’s gender and gathered his thoughts, he replied that one of the most difficult things in the spiritual life is imagining that God could be like us. So many of us, myself included, still harbor an image of God as an old white man sitting on a cloud…and that’s just not helpful. What is helpful is to imagine that God is not a distant dictator, but intimately involved in our particular human situations. For example, a sick person might need a God who knows what it’s like to have a fragile human body. Or an immigrant might need a God who knows what it’s like to be an outsider and a stranger. And maybe a woman needs a God who knows what it’s like to have a female body; maybe a mother needs a God who is intimately familiar with the joys and challenges of motherhood. As difficult as it may be for us to imagine that God could be all those things at the same time – she’s well up to the challenge.

To have a mature faith, we can never stop broadening our imagination about who God is, because God is always infinitely more than what we can imagine. We can’t just say “God is a she” or “God is our Mother,” and call it a day, because that’s only a tiny part of who God is. But it is a part of the divine identity that has been excluded from the official theology of the church. It has been labeled as heresy and rarely, if ever, gets air time in our liturgy. And because of that, it takes work to recover this vision of God as female, of God as mother. For most of us, it is quite an exercise of our imagination to unlearn the idea the idea that God is male and open our minds to other possibilities. And so, to that end, I invite you to do something totally crazy and pray with me the words of a very familiar prayer with an very unfamiliar opening image. Say it out loud with me if you dare, or just listen to it and see how it echoes in your soul:

Our Mother, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name…