Pitt Street Uniting Church, 05-Jan-2014 Embodied, Earthy, Love A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Christmas 2A Luke 2: (1-7), 8-20 For Christians it is still Christmas! The decorations have been taken down in the city shops. The Christmas tree in Martin Place has been dismantled. The Santas that were floating in Darling Harbour have been packed away. Not everyone is sad to see Christmas go. Before Christmas, someone told me they d taken a photograph of the back of the Santas in Darling Harbour because it would be good to see the back of Christmas! But our faith tradition asks us to dwell a little longer in Christmas. One day more. Our readings for the second Sunday after Christmas invite us to go beyond the wonder of the birth stories to contemplate what happened for the world at Christmas. To contemplate what is happening for us, even now. So we turn to less familiar and less comfortable Christmas sources, to the prologue of John s gospel and the wisdom of Joshua ben Sira in a book known as Sirach or sometimes as Ecclesiasticus. The book of Sirach is seldom read aloud in church, especially in Protestant churches. Many scholars believe that the passage from Sirach was a source for the claim in John s gospel that the Word was present at the creation of the world. In Sirach, Lady Wisdom sings a song of praise to herself. She knows where she and her glory came from. When the mouth of the Most High opened in the act of creation, she came out like a mist that covered the earth. Wisdom shared God s perspective on things and yet for all her position of privilege, something was missing. Enthroned in a pillar of cloud, Wisdom was able to go anywhere, moving freely over people and nations. But she was looking for something. As nice as it was to cover the earth like a mist, she was seeking a place on earth, a place to pitch her tent. With all A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Page 1 of 5
her divine freedom, she longed for a resting place on earth. She wanted to take root somewhere. She wanted to belong to someone. In this text, the Wisdom of God is named as female, so I want to digress a little before making connections between Sirach and John s gospel, and examine what that might mean for us as we think about God, the holy, the sacred source of creation and liberation. Theologians disagree over how to consider Wisdom as female. Feminist theologians have rediscovered the divine feminine, but they have also noted that while Wisdom is highly honoured, human women in the book of Sirach as a whole, are not. Two chapters before this lofty song of praise to Wisdom, Joshua ben Sira advises his male pupils that the birth of a daughter is a loss. Despite this, interpreters committed to revealing the voices of women in scripture, use Wisdom as representative of a feminine attribute of God. Closely tied to the Father God is the female Wisdom. In Greek, the word is Sophia. Catholic theologian Elizabeth Johnson suggests that Sophia is a female personification of God s own being in creating and saving the world. In keeping with Jewish monotheism, Wisdom represents both God s nearness to the world and God s transcendence. What is at stake for us considering this aspect of God as female? For those of us concerned with the roles of women in society, remembering the works of women, reminds us that Miriam, Deborah, Esther, Mary, and Mary Magdalene, along with scores of others, have played important, often central, roles in promoting God s ongoing work in the world. Not only do women matter to God as agents of justice, liberation and mercy, but God may be made known in feminine form. If God, chooses to send God s wisdom as female, then God may be made known to us in and through women s lives and women s bodies. This has implications for our understanding of the image of God. Though generally we are taught to understand that all human beings are created in the image of God, the history of Jewish and Christian thought has not always treated women as equal to men. A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Page 2 of 5
Feminist theologians point out that women, in our embodiment, have been associated with lesser characteristics. Where men have been associated with reason, and considered more suitable for leadership, women have been associated with passion and irrationality. The church has had a dangerous and damaging history for women and girls. Women, since Eve, have been associated with sinfulness and the power of seduction. To the point of being responsible for the fall of all humankind. One result has been the exclusion of women from leadership. In many Jewish and Christian sects, even today, women cannot be ordained as rabbis, priests or clergy. It is a bit ironic that the Orthodox, the Catholics and the Anglicans (at least in Sydney), who do regard Sirach with its feminine image of God as canonical scripture, are the very churches that still refuse to ordain women. It was encountering the anti-female traditions of my faith as a young woman studying theology, that led to my decision not to wear robes when I lead worship. Until the whole church ordains women, the obvious presence of women s bodies in leadership roles, has power to call the church to gender justice. I do not wear a robe that covers my female body in solidarity with the women who God calls to leadership in other traditions where the church still rejects their call. But it s my decision and I am happy that other women and men make other choices. It is not something I seek to impose on others. ---- Should we get stuck on questions of gender? Theologian Sallie McFague reminds us that all language about God is metaphorical. It is language that says something about what God is like, but language can never capture God. The sacred is beyond human language, whether that language is traditional as in God the Father, impersonal as in Paul Tillichs ground of our being, or the words I m most comfortable with God as source of life, love and justice, or feminized as in Elizabeth Johnson s name for God, She who is. None of these, nor any other names for God, does justice to the greatest of mysteries. Getting stuck on names for God happens when we confuse the name or metaphor for God Godself. A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Page 3 of 5
In considering the language we use for God, we should ask if that language challenges us to think more broadly and deeply about the One who appears as burning bush, as whirlwind, and also through the voice of Wisdom who calls herself She. [end section] ----------- The gospel reading from John is the passage that I spoke of on Christmas Day when I talked about the embodied word of God. The word made flesh and dwelled among us. Like Wisdom, the Word pitched a tent among us, full of grace and truth. It is one of the most familiar and yet most transcendently beautiful passages in the Bible. The transcendent, beyond-words God, took on flesh, came to us, found us, sought us out, took on our own existence, with its pains, its sorrows, its vulnerability and its joys. God is embedded with us in the human predicament as male and female and intersex, as gay and straight, bisexual and transgender. And we claim that the fullness of this God is made known to in and through the embodied life and teachings of Jesus. We can hold on to this when the sacred seems far away and beyond our reach. We can treasure this when the holy feels near at hand, understanding what we are struggling with as individuals or as the church, even when we cannot put it in to words ourselves. Jesus shows us who God is, and we have received from his fullness, "grace upon grace." This sets a tone for this new year, especially when we're facing economic troubles, facing the consequences of our environmental misuse, wrestling with poverty and hunger, and feeling frustrated by a political system that seems incapable of addressing any of these effectively. If we can claim that there is more than enough of everything we need most forgiveness and reconciliation, grace, life, truth, joy, generosity, healing, justice perhaps we can also believe that there is more than enough of what our bodies need to live on: food, water, land, clothing, and shelter. Perhaps our greatest challenge is to understand this abundance as something meant not just for us, or for those strong (or lucky) enough to have it already, but something that God intended to be shared, from the very beginning of creation, with all of God's children. Might A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Page 4 of 5
this even be a first step on the path to peace, if we truly believe there is more than enough for all? Christmas proclaims that God is active in the world today, in our time and place. We might feel tired and relieved that Christmas is over, but with this text we are invited to feel energized and renewed by the good news of the word made flesh. This New Year, we can each can use our gifts to bring a word to life, individually and as the people of God at Pitt Street Uniting Church, to embody an aspect of the word whether that word is compassion, justice, generosity, patience, or love so that it's no longer an "abstract concept". but truly a word made flesh, brought to reality and breathed into life. Among us. Here and now. Amen. A Reflection by Rev Dr Margaret Mayman Page 5 of 5