G*d is a She. VT: Skylight Paths, 2007), A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Stephanie May First Parish in Wayland May 8, 2016

Transcription

1 G*d is a She A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Stephanie May First Parish in Wayland May 8, 2016 You may have noticed that I spelled God with an asterisk instead of an o in the sermon title. No, Paige, our administrator did not make a mistake. She rarely does! Rather than a mistake, the asterisk is a reminder of our inability to definitively define who or what or if G*d is. The spelling is a convention proposed by feminist Biblical scholar, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza a scholar who also happens to have been my dissertation director. For Schüssler Fiorenza, the spelling of God with an asterisk, suggests that, as humans, our ideas of and names for God are ambiguous and inadequate. It also allows for a God without male or female characteristics. 1 In other words, the asterisk is a symbolic placeholder for the uncertainty and mystery that cannot be contained in a single, if potent word. Yet, so often uncertainty is precisely what many religious voices seek to remove when they talk about God. People speak as if they know just who or what God is... the Creator of All, the Ground of all Life, the Eternal Judge, Unconditional Love, Father, Mother, Myth, Delusion, and so many, many, many more terms and epithets. People define God as fill in the blank and then they declare that they either do or don t believe in this god. To be honest, I find the use of the asterisk provocative, but not absolutely necessary. A brilliant scholar with a razor- sharp analysis of rhetoric, Schüssler Fiorenza is known for having created many new words or spellings in her work. In fact, throughout grad school as I talked about her work to my partner Bill, he began to think that creating new words was simply what academics did. Despite my best efforts, however, I never did manage to suggest a word that caught on. Though new spellings or words may not always be necessary, I do think that new ways of thinking are sometimes needed. And sometimes, playing with language is one way that can get you into a new way of thinking. Like calling God She. For many, God is understood as male. Whether you grew up in a religion like Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, or simply in a culture like ours saturated in Judeo- Christian references, portrayals of God capital G, proper name God have been male. The pronouns in the scripture and liturgies have usually been male. The images have often been male indeed, what is the classic Western image of God painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican? A man with a long- flowing gray beard and hair. But God or symbols of the divine have not always been male... nor are they still. 1 Nancy Corcoran. A Multifaith Guide to Creating Personal Prayer in Your Life (Woodstock, VT: Skylight Paths, 2007),

2 In our reading from Merlin Stone, we hear, In the beginning... God was a woman. Do you remember? Author of the 1976 book When God Was a Woman, Stone was among a number of feminists who looked back to find a divine feminine in prehistoric images. Indeed, imagine yourself in a prescientific era when you didn t understand the dynamics of conception and birth. Rather, all you knew was that some humans had the mysterious capacity to reproduce another of the species from within themselves. Amazing! All across the globe in these earliest cultures, scholars have found figurines and images of people with rounded, fully belly and large, heavy breasts... images of the Mother, pregnant with new life. With her capacity to bring forth new life, the pregnant Mother surfaces again and again as a powerful symbol. Stone and others argue that the male God of monotheistic, patriarchal religions superseded these early female gods. And yet, remnants of the divine feminine linger within the Judeo- Christian tradition. Indeed, some have argued that the high place of priority given to Mary, mother of Jesus, is a way the tradition has created space for a kind of feminine divine. Of course, in polytheistic traditions, there exists an abundance of gods of many genders. Whether Hinduism or the Ancient Greek or Roman gods and goddesses, polytheism makes room for a range of gender expression on the divine realm. All of these representations of a female divine does not mean that there are no gender politics within the realm of the divine. Not all female gods receive a place of prominence, nor do they all represent the values we d want to teach our children to emulate even if they convey the full experience of life... and death. The Hindu goddess Kali comes to mind. A Hindu goddess full of complexities as the goddess of death and as a figure of motherly love, Kali is a fierce goddess. Scholar Wendy Doniger writes, Although depicted in many forms throughout South Asia (and now much of the world), Kali is most often characterized as black or blue, partially or completely naked, with a long lolling tongue, multiple arms, a skirt or girdle of human arms, a necklace of decapitated heads, and a decapitated head in one of her hands. She is often portrayed standing or dancing on her husband, the god Shiva, who lies prostrate beneath her. Britannica Such an image is a far cry from the docile Mary nursing the baby Jesus or from a simple rock figurine with a rounded belly! 2

3 Such diversity of images of a female divine remind us that there is diversity both in representations of divinity and in mothering. Both reminders are important as we honor the celebration of Mother s Day. First of all, not all who identity as women are gestational mothers whose wombs have swollen and given birth. Not all who identify as women are mothers are docile or who breast- fed their baby. For some who identify as women, mothering has meant adopting children. For some, mothering has meant caring for others children as a teacher, or for animals, or for a beloved partner, or oneself. For some, mothering or being mothered has not felt like an experience of calm nurture with mother and child closely bonded. And, for some or perhaps for all mothers at some times mothering has felt like a complex interplay of simmering rage mingled with abundant love. To be honest, I struggle with the saccharin images of motherhood that are still too often portrayed in our culture that remains deeply rooted in patriarchal assumptions. Mothers have always been and will always be persons who are multi- faceted with good days and bad, strengths and weaknesses, and a capacity to love shaped in part by the love they have or have not received in their own lives. Mothers and mothering is not reducible to a single ideal image. Nor is the image of God reducible to a single idea. Feminist theologian Mary Daly famously wrote, If God is Male, then the Male is God. Her point in writing this was to suggest that our images of God reflect and shape our sense of who or what is ultimately important, valuable, and important. So if your God is an old white guy then this both reflects that old white guys are in charge... and should be in charge. And what if your image of God was a woman? Would this make it simpler? Which image of woman would your God be? A pregnant woman? A loving, devoted mother like Mary? A fierce goddess of death, violence, and love like Kali? My point is not to denigrate female images of God. Such images are profoundly important for many who identify as women who are able to see themselves reflected as one of high value. Often such female images of God also honor many aspects of being a woman that are too often devalued in our culture... and sometimes absent from male representations of the divine! However, no single image of a male God or a female God can capture the mystery, the uncertainty of who or what God is. And so we re back to the asterisk. 3

4 Now I know that there are many here who identify as atheists. I think that s great. In many ways, I share a worldview that embraces this world with its wondrous cycles of life and human capacity without reaching beyond for anything else to give meaning. I understand that the concept of a personal being beyond time who is all- powerful, all- knowing, and all- good can seem nonsensical to a mind firmly rooted in science and the modern, secular world. In fact, one of the very first things I learned about my partner Bill was his pride as a 3 rd - generation atheist. (Before our first date, he asked a friend who was taking classes in religion whether he should be worried about dating a Harvard Divinity School student. She responded, Oh no, they re all atheists over there! ) So am I an atheist? A theist? Some have asked me. I think others have wondered. And I ve deliberately tried to avoid a simple answer. Because I don t believe there is a simple answer. In this sense, I believe in the asterisk. Which is to say that I believe G*d is a symbol pointing to multiple understandings of the nature of the universe a field of exploration that will never be exhausted, contained, or explained in full. For me, what is more important than landing on a comprehensive understanding of God is embracing the experience of living life. A life lived in relationship with myself, those close to me, strangers near and far, the soil/air/water, the animals and fish, bugs and birds. A life lived in search of meaning, of living fully, and of living in right relationship with those with whom I share this planet. As a Unitarian Universalist community, we do not require that you sign on to a single, fixed belief in G*d or no G*d, this G*d or that G*d. Rather, as a community joined in covenant, we seek to live out the words we say together every week: to come together with open minds and loving hearts to search for meaning. In practice this means we hold a variety of views probably more views than we have people in the pews! It means that the challenge we hold is not to clarify our shared belief, but to meet each other with open minds that do not presume we know what another believes. Our challenge is to bring a loving heart to exchanges with people with whom we may think differently. We are a diverse community of multiple religious beliefs and points of views. As our new vision statement says, we are a sanctuary for diverse beliefs and passions. While the word sanctuary certainly gestures concretely to this place where we gather, I hear it mainly as pointing to a space of refuge. We talk about sanctuaries for various wildlife where they can thrive unmolested from fear of attack. What if this is the sense in which we are a sanctuary for diverse beliefs and passions? A place where we can come as we are with our beliefs and not fear being attacked as a heretic or as immoral or simply as wrong? A place 4

5 where G*d is a she, a he, an it, or a none depending on the person you re talking to OR even the day, month, or year that you re talking to the same person? In this sense, we are a sanctuary from fundamentalisms that would insist on clear and unchanging beliefs and in this I include fundamentalists from the left as well as the right. We are a sanctuary from a nihilism that would abandon the search for meaning. We are a sanctuary from an individualism that would simply go it alone rather than seek conversation and companionship in this journey. We are a sanctuary where a life of diversity fostered by open minds and loving hearts can thrive. This is the vision. May it be so. Amen. 5