SERMON Feminine Mystique
The Holy Trinity (C) (07) Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans
5:1-5; John 16:12-15
There
are Trinity Sundays, and there are Trinity Sundays. Usually the most exciting
thing that happens is the Athanasian Creed. This Trinity Sunday is special
because we are celebrating Latavia's graduation from Clemente -- the first WPLC
young person to graduate from high school since I arrived in 1999.
Even
more special was the Trinity Sunday that Latavia became the first person at
WPLC confirmed since 1977. It was a very a feminine Sunday, Their
was an ethereal canopy hanging above our nave designed by one of our
women artists. The canopy was modeled after our canopy that was made up of afghans -- afghans crocheted by mothers and grandmothers,
wives, daughters, and sisters. Not only was the pastor a woman but both the
assisting minister and our lector were women -- something that rarely happens.
As we did this morning, we heard a beautiful poem about Wisdom -- a "she"
who both is God and was with God when the heavens were created. And for the confirmation itself, we gathered
around our very feminine marble angel who holds and is our baptismal font.
There a daughter of
There
was a real feminine feel. But there was also real irony. It was, after all,
Trinity Sunday. Not Pentecost. Not the Spirit's Sunday. Trinity Sunday is not
supposed to be feminine.
I
learned this in law school.
In way of background.
I started law school in the fall of 1973 when our younger daughter started
nursery school. I had an undergraduate degree in philosophy and a
graduate degree in New Testament Studies. Between getting that graduate degree
and going to law school, I had discovered the what it
was like being defined solely as someone's wife and mother. Early on, I
received a letter from the headmaster of a local private school who said he
would very much like to hire me but "as a matter of policy," the
school never hired the wives of graduate students. I was that. Early on, the
women's liberation movement and I connected and meshed. I would say,
"Women of the world unite!" And my daughters, ages three and five,
would join me and add, "Right on! Sisterhood is power!"
I
went to law school motivated and empowered. I was a feminist.
So,
given my background, it was not surprising that, in 1974, one of my professors
said that she had just received a new book of feminist theology. She would like
my reaction. Would I read it? The name of the book was Beyond God the
Father. It was by a woman named Mary Daly, a former Roman Catholic and a
professor at
And immediately regretted doing so. The premise of the book is "If God is male [and Mary Daly
thinks God is], then male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long
as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination." I was appalled. All
I could think was: "This woman never went beyond a six-year-old level of
thinking about God. God, for her, is a white long-bearded old man living in
heaven. Her God is too small!" I recall writing a very critical review for
my professor. I also vowed that I would never, ever, read theology again. I
kept that vow for almost twenty years.
But
in the meantime, Mary Daly (or variants of Mary Daly) took hold. God became
male. Gender specific. The white
long-bearded old man in heaven. Male because Jesus
called God "Father." Male because the pronoun most frequently
used for God in English is "he." Male because Jesus was a man and
God's Son. And because white old men with long beards are sexist, God becomes
sexist (even if Jesus wasn't). Some fathers are abusive. God the Father might
be deemed, if not abusive, likely to evoke feelings of abuse. And the chief
culprit for all this happening is what we celebrate and affirm today: the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity.
Which is certainly at odds with a feminine (if not feminist)
feel of Trinity Sunday. At odds,
until one looks a little closer.
Take
the "Father" part of God the Father.
The
word Jesus uses for "father" in Aramaic is "Abba!" It is a
term used by small children. A term of intimacy. "Papa." "Daddy."
This is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The name of this God is never
spoken by Jews. Ever. In the words of one writer:
[N]o Jew would have dared to
address God with the startling intimacy which springs spontaneously from the
lips of Jesus himself: "Abba," Papa," "Daddy." The
Creator of the universe who dwells "in accessible light," whose name
no one can speak, Jesus dares to call "Father."
Not
only that, but
Scholars . . . have shown
that Jesus' experience of God as "Abba" was so central to his
personal meaning that it claimed and defined his entire identity. And in an
amazing act of love Jesus gives to his disciples [this most intimate and
personal name of God -- ] a gift so radical that its
use will distinguish them as his own, . . .
Jesus thus takes a word of
tender familiarity, a word little children used of their fathers, and, applying
it to the God who utterly surpasses the limitations of male gender, gives it a
radically transcendent meaning. The name
"Abba" for Jesus does not mean "man" nor any other created
reality. . . . (Fatula 1986, 362)
And
this means that God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit whom we celebrate
and confess today is neither flawed nor sexual. And it means more.
I
broke my vow never to read theology again fifteen years ago. My younger
daughter is something of a radical feminist (probably not surprising!) and had
expressed reservations about a "male" God. I couldn't see it. Nor
could I explain it. A friend gave a copy of The Triune God by the
Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson. I read it. Except for the godhead diagrams,
I actually liked it! Robert Jenson writes:
"[T]he Father is not primarily our Father, but the Father of . . . the
Son, that is, of Jesus. The "Holy Spirit," within the name is not
merely any "spirit" claiming to be holy, but the communal spirit of .
. . Jesus and his Father. By these relations inside the phrase, [the
phrase] "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" is historically specific and
can be what liturgy and devotion . . . must have, a proper name of God.
The proper name of a God whom we know as "Father,"
through the Son Jesus, in the reality of the Holy Spirit.
But
what about the feminine feel of that Trinity Sunday? Take a closer look.
The
afghans crocheted by the mothers and grandmothers, wives, daughters, and sisters and the
ethereal canopy that hung over the nave that Sunday represent the canopy filled
with all animals, clean and unclean, that opened Peter's eyes to the need to be
inclusive. The canopy that hung that Sunday ended up at a synod assembly where
the synod's anti-racism team was installed. The ministers and lector that
Sunday were women because this community of faith lives in the now of the Holy
Spirit where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female. Where all are one. In Judaism, Wisdom is not a goddess but
an attribute of an inclusive God (if you are wondering why we hear a poem about
Wisdom is today, it is because the Gospel writer of John borrowed heavily from
it in writing about Jesus as God's word). None of this is feminine. It is,
however, inclusive.
The
feel on that Trinity Sunday was not really feminine. Nor was it masculine. With
"God's love has been
poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."
And
because of that love and that Spirit, because a God whom we know and experience
as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit comes to us, the feel not only of that Sunday but of this
Sunday as well is one of celebration and rejoicing. For that we thank God.
Amen
June
3, 2007
Ruth
VanDemark, pastor