Does not understanding raise her voice?
At the highest point along the way,
where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
If you’ve been following along in
the Lenten brochure you’ll have noticed that I’ve changed the version of the passage
that we used today.
When Donna and I sat down to
choose the passages for Lent, I already knew I wanted to preach on Proverbs 8, and
the Feminine Divinity in the passage, but I didn’t pay much attention to the translation.
That was, until I started to write this sermon and that’s when I got stuck on
the phrase, "On the heights along the way, at the crossroads, she takes her stand," which is in the NRSV (New revised standard) and
the one we used in the booklet.
I knew I wanted to talk about my
Landscape of Faith and about my journey having two paths. And I knew I wanted to reflect on the time
when those two paths met.
But I couldn’t get past the image
of the crossroads as being the wrong image. For me, a crossroads is a place
where paths meet – but then go off along the separate ways.
I kept saying over and over that my
image is of two paths meeting and merging into one path – that’s my journey.
Then I opened up a different translation of this passage – the New
International Version – and there it was:
Where the
paths meet, and I could relax.
Where the paths meet is where she
takes her stand. This, here where the paths meet I stand and share my landscape
with you.
Today is International
Women’s Day and it an honour for me to stand up here and speak about how
important Feminine Divinity is to me. It is an honour to stand here and share
an aspect of my faith with others, giving voice to a face of God very rarely
seen or spoken of in church.
Before going too deep I
must remark on the fact that the concept of Feminine Divinity is huge, much too
vast for a morning sermon. It has been a challenge to reign in my passion for
this subject to something containable and relatable. This is a subject I’ve been researching and
writing on for a number of years. I could, but I won’t, talk all day about this
subject.
Wisdom calls out.
Understanding raises her voice.
These lines matter so
much. It is very important to me that we understand each other. One of my favorite
books on this subject is ‘The Divine Feminine: Biblical imagery of God as Female’,
by Virgina Ramey Mollenkott. She begins
with definitions – what she means when she says certain phrases and it’s important
that you understand the definitions I use, which I take directly from her book.
“The female and feminine
are two different things. Female is a person of specific gender, whereas the
feminine is an aspect of a person of either gender.” This applies to male and
masculine as well.
However this distinction
is not without issues. To discuss feminine aspects of a person, or in the case
of this sermon – God, we must conform to society norms of what feminine vs.
Masculine aspects are which of course leads to stereo-types. To me this feels
like a bit of backsliding to divide aspects of personality and human qualities
in this way, given all the work that’s been done to bring justice to gender
issues.
However, stereo types
exist for a reason, whether we like them or not. For this purpose, I use them because
I am talking about history and tradition – and times when roles of women and
men were clearly defined and strictly controlled. It’s tricky because the
feminine roles I will comment on, “childbearing, nursing, being a comforting and
soothing presence” are roles that both define a woman’s power and have been
used to repress it; and of course in today’s world many of these roles not
strictly “women’s work” anymore.
I come back now to
Proverbs and the line – where the paths
meet, she takes her stand.
Here I stand where my
two faith traditions meet. To understand where I’m coming from, you have to
know where I’ve been.
For a time I sought
God’s Wisdom in the form of a woman. I needed more than what church could offer
me. Along this path I met the Divine as Mother Earth, Grandmother Moon, Queen
and Lady.
Worship was outdoors,
among the trees and under the stars. We had an altar table; like this one, butwith
two candles; One to represent the Lord and the Lady. The earth was our mother,
the sun our father and there was balance.
When I prayed, I prayed
to the Mother and Father of us all, the wise old woman in the woods; the lady
maiden along the shore of a Lake.
Along this path all of
creation was and is sacred, imbued with the unity of the masculine and
feminine. Equal. Respected. Divine.
And for awhile that was
enough. It was perfect.
But then this other path
met in the woods; this path that had been my childhood growing up in the
church. A path where Jesus walked with love and compassion, and something
happened that I just couldn’t ignore.
The paths merged. And I was called to bring my two faith
journeys together. Create unity and balance between the two faiths that I love.
During Lent, 3 years
ago, almost to the day, I stood up here giving my first sermon on how my ‘Journey
was like the Wilderness and how I found a way’. I spoke these words:
‘For me, the wilderness has been a
place of solitude and comfort. A place to listen to the wind rustle in the
trees, hear water splash over rocks, meditate on bird song and raven talk. It
is a place to get away from the busy, busy that is everyday life.
I crave the wild places. I crave the
solitude and the connection to the Divine that I only feel in the wilderness. I
seek it out because like the wilderness in Christian tradition, it is a place
where one can grow, listen and change.
I was alone, but I wasn’t. There was
always a gentle presence waiting in the wilderness. This was what I was looking for.’
I spoke then as I do now about
the point where my paths merged, about having had a vision and being very
afraid of what all of that meant.
In my vision, I was in the woods,
there was wilderness all around me. At that time and in that place the gentle
presence was a wise old woman, a Crone as old as the Earth. She spoke to me
about dreams and hopes. In the woods there was an old church. I went inside and
saw Jesus standing on some steps. He spoke to me about healing and wisdom.
I wanted so much for these two to
meet. I wanted to bring the Earth Mother inside, but she couldn’t come in. I
wanted to bring this Christ Light outside, but he couldn’t step from the
church.
Since that vision I have been
working at figuring out how not just to merge my own spiritual paths into
something that makes sense, but also how to bring the feminine into church more.
For the longest time I had no
idea how to do this. Here in this place, thought out Christian history God has
been spoken about using male nouns he, him, father, son. Our stories focus on
men – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, Mark, John, Peter, Paul. In the Hebrew
Scriptures, especially – God is powerful, domineering, demanding and let’s be
honest – jealous and mean. He sends floods and plagues, he asks fathers to
sacrifice their sons, he tells his chosen people when they are invaded,
ravaged, pillaged and plundered they had it coming.
Finding a nurturing, loving,
tender God is not easy. I wonder if men find this imagery for God as difficult
to relate to as women do? These are
overpowering larger than life stereotypes in the extreme, perhaps as
un-relatable to men today as for women? Perhaps one day will have some men in
our congregation speak to this?
God becomes compassionate and
loving though the stories of Jesus in the Christian Scriptures – but he is
still He – father, Abba, Lord.
But he’s not.
And here’s where things get
exciting. Throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures God is referred to as He, yes– yet there are regular
references to God having qualities that are distinctly, traditionally and
stereo-typically associated with the feminine –
Examples – Deut. 32: 18 – you
deserted the rock, who fathered you; you forgot the god who gave you birth. – Gave you birth.
Isaiah 49: 15 – can a mother
forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has
borne? Though she may forget you, I will not forget you.
Mollentkott comments in her book
on this passage – “Clearly, the comparison of God’s love with the love of a
nursing mother indicateDod that in the authors eyes, such mother love in the
most constant, most reliable and most consistent of all forms of human caring”
Again in Isaiah 66: 13 – as a
mother comforts her child, So will I comfort you.
And not to leave Christian Scriptures out of this
list – one of my favorites: God a mother hen. Luke
13:34 (NIV) “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I have longed to
gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her
wings, and you were not willing.” What a wonderful image. We can picture
it so easily can’t we? A hen running about the barn yard, as a hawk swoops over
head, trying to get her chicks safe under her wings.
1 Peter 2:2-3 writes, “ Like
newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow
into salvation— 3 if indeed you have
tasted that the Lord is good.
Confusing grammar aside, Mollenkott
comments on this passage “remember that in biblical times all babies were
breast fed babies, this clearly is an image of Christ as suckling newborn
Christians.” Something only a mother or other woman could do. Yet it’s also a
symbol for what a relationship with Christ is like – as spiritually nourishing
as a mother’s milk.
Then there’s John 7 37- 38. In
the NRSV - ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living
water.’”
But
that’s not the only way it’s written, this line is translated many different
ways – ‘From His (meaning Jesus’) belly
shall flow living water, from out of his heart shall flow living water’ in
one of the oldest English translations – the Wycliffe bible – ‘rivers of living water shall flow out of his
womb’.
We use
water in our ceremonies that nurture and symbolize new life. We wash clean the
metaphor avoiding comments about how each of our lives began – within water of
our mother’s wombs and the flowing of water at our births. This image of how Life comes into being is
such a powerful one and important one that the writers of the scriptures could
come up with no better metaphor for what their relationship with God was like.
There are many, many more. I have
a list. For me finding these images of a nurturing, comforting God was very
healing for me. It was, please excuse the pun, a God send – here is a God in
scripture I canrelate too. Here the two
paths came together.
In Proverbs: Understanding raises
her voice, she takes her stand. Who is “She?” She is Lady Wisdom, Hokmah in
Hebrew, Sophia in English. God’s wisdom.
Throughout all of Proverbs God is
referred to with a feminine pronoun – she raises her voice, she takes her
stand.
In Proverbs 3: Happy are those who find wisdom,
and those who get understanding,
14 for her income is better than silver,
and her revenue better than gold.
15 She is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire can compare with her.
17 Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
18 She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called happy.
and those who get understanding,
14 for her income is better than silver,
and her revenue better than gold.
15 She is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire can compare with her.
17 Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
18 She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called happy.
This is God they’re talking
about. Why the change in gender? Why the image of a woman bringing Wisdom to
God’s Chosen people. Because it’s what the people needed to hear.
Proverbs was written after the
Hebrews returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. This was a
spiritually traumatic time for the Hebrew people. They had been conquered,
deported, held captive and the temple destroyed.
They returned to their Promised
Land, destitute, homeless and they had no home for God either. While in exile
they had come into contact with other religions, other societies with different
customs, some Hebrew’s have married outside of the faith. They have brought
their “foreign wives” back with them and this, according the prophets writing
at this time is keeping the people from being reconciled with God.
Proverbs is divided into speeches
between Divine Wisdom – Sophia and a ‘foolish woman’ and ‘strange woman’ and in some translations “the adulterous
women” who is not to be trusted, she will lead good men astray. Do not get
trapped in the ways of this adulterous woman, says proverbs 7, [Her] lips
drip honey, and [her] speech is smoother than oil. In the end she is bitter as
gall, sharp as a double-edged sword.
Instead focus on a relationship
with God’s Wisdom – a woman of virtue and understanding; a metaphor for calling
the God’s people back into a right relationship. The Hebrew Scriptures often refer to God’s
relationship with his people in terms of a marriage. In the pre-exile writings
Hosea is called by God to marry the promiscuous Gomer “For like an adulterous
wife this land in guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord”.
This unfaithfulness to the Lord
was a problem before the exile and rather than fall back into these old
patterns the writers of Proverbs, recognized the need for the Hebrew people to
have a new relationship with God; the need for a God who was forgiving,
compassionate, loving and a little bit gentler than their previous
understanding. To this
day Jewish people welcome Shabbat with the words, “Come my friend, to meet the bride; let us welcome the presence of the
Sabbath”
Here is a God who embraces the
traditional feminine qualities of nurturing, loving, supporting community
builders, those that tend to gardens and bring life into the world.
With these writings God changes
subtlety and becomes able to fulfill the spiritual needs of a people who are
recovering from trauma of exile and need more gentleness in their lives. Sophia
as God’s wisdom is able to do that.
And it’s what I needed to hear
too. For my own journey I needed to hear God in scriptures speaking as a woman,
who understands the world as I see it. It has given me the opportunity to have
an image for God that deepens my relationship to the divine and makes it
possible for me to continue to hold respectfully to my other faith. With Sophia
my two paths merge together to one.
These passages in scripture are few and far between yes, but they are
there. She is there in the high places, where the paths meets she stands.
Asking to be heard, her wisdom calling out.
The image I chose for the power point today is one of the soul collage
cards I’ve made. I call it “Grandmothers laughing at me” and I choice it for
this reflection today because it calls to mind my relationship to Sophia – a
person who carries the wisdom of the ages, the understanding of an elder, a
witness to the world throughout a long and fruitful life.
And it speaks to the Landscape of my journey. Years ago I had a vision; A
vision of an Earth Mother in the woods and Jesus in a church and the
impossibility of the two ever meeting on common ground.
Yet here and now with the wisdom of Sophia and the recognition of the feminine divine in scripture the Earth
Mother dwells within the church the same as she dwells outside the walls. She
laughs with a welcoming delight at being seen and being heard in this
place. She has called out, she has
raised her voice and here where the path meets she stands. Proverbs 8 ends with
Sophia saying the following:
Proverbs 8:22-31New International Version (NIV)
22 “The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,[a][b]
22 “The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,[a][b]
before his deeds of
old;
23 I was formed long ages ago,
at the very beginning, when the world came to be.
24 When there were no watery depths, I was given birth,
30 Then I was constantly[c] at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
31 rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in human kind.
23 I was formed long ages ago,
at the very beginning, when the world came to be.
24 When there were no watery depths, I was given birth,
30 Then I was constantly[c] at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
31 rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in human kind.
~~~~~
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