Why do we think of God as a man?

Readings on which message below is based:

 

Proverbs 8:1-4 New International Version - UK (NIVUK)

Wisdom’s call

8 Does not wisdom call out?
    Does not understanding raise her voice?
² At the highest point along the way,
    where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
³ beside the gate leading into the city,
    at the entrance, she cries aloud:
⁴ ‘To you, O people, I call out;
    I raise my voice to all humanity.

Proverbs 8:22-31 New International Version - UK (NIVUK)

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,
    when there were no springs overflowing with water;
²⁵ before the mountains were settled in place,
    before the hills, I was given birth,
²⁶ before he made the world or its fields
    or any of the dust of the earth.
²⁷ I was there when he set the heavens in place,
    when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
²⁸ when he established the clouds above
    and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
²⁹ when he gave the sea its boundary
    so that the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.
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 the human race.

John 16:12-15 New International Version - UK (NIVUK) adapted to gender neutral language

¹² ‘I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. ¹³ But when the Spirit of truth comes, they will guide you into all the truth. The Spirit will not speak on their own; they  will speak only what they hear, and they will tell you what is yet to come.¹⁴ They will glorify me because it is from me that they will receive what they will make known to you. ¹⁵ All that belongs to the Lord is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what they will make known to you.’

The other day, I decided to watch a movie called "The two Popes".  In essence it was a story of two people, Popes Benedict and Francis who had spent a lifetime devoted to understanding the mystery of God, and yet their experience had led them to two almost diametrically opposed views and interpretations of the Gospel.  The film showed how they came to listen to each other and found that in the other they were hearing the voice of God. They became friends. They both changed. They didn't compromise, they changed.

At present, the Methodist Church is debating Marriage and relationship, and it is with that in mind that I am called to mind some thoughts I have had previously on the power of symbol and how we can mistakenly limit God by unconsciously making God in our own image.

When I am in the congregation I am often questioning everything I see and/or hear, so I guess some of you are probably wondering why I had the audacity to adapt an accredited translation of scripture, John 16,  into a gender neutral version of my own creation.  Fair question.

One of the reasons is that I fervently believe that as a preacher I am challenged to keep the word of God as alive, vibrant and relevant as possible.  Another reason is that I am also a feminist.  Yes, I know that probably sounds odd, how can I be a feminist when I am a man; well I think I am in good company.  In my reading of the Gospels, I have become convinced that Jesus himself was, and equally I have become convinced that as a church we have consistently disenfranchised women and belittled their roles and/or abilities.  Even today, there are some people who think that it is wrong for women to have a serious role in Church Leadership.  So with all this in mind, I wanted to produce a different image of the Holy Spirit.  As an aside, that which we call the Holy Spirit was often given a feminine aspect in Jewish traditions such as the Shekina, as aspect of God that was perhaps most famously imaged in recent years by one Leonard Nimoy, who some of you may have come to know as Mr Spock from Star Trek. Nimoy wasn’t just an actor, he was also a talented photographer and one of his photographic projects was to imagine in human form the feminine aspect of God.  The photos are thought provoking. For too long, language has produced an image of God to be masculine. Why is this? “God is spirit”. These are Jesus’ words not mine, you can find them in John 4:24. Consider this then. Whenever we give God a gender; notice here the order I have written.  We give God a gender.  We do this if we call God; Father, Father God, even Lord, or He etc; and we limit God. We do this because we create God in our own image. We can know this because we have made the conscious decision to image God in our minds as male. As a result we create God in our own image rather than reflecting carefully on how God created us in their image.  It is an unconscious action but it determines our thinking and causes us to so often get things wrong

As a society, we have a traditional image of Fathers as leaders, of disciplinarians, as doers, as being good at planning and fixing things; Mothers meanwhile, are portrayed as showing caring, unconditional love, self-sacrifice.  Why are these activities limited to one gender?  Whenever we say he or she, we give these images and hence their associated meanings to that which we are talking about.

In the Church, especially within the Catholic tradition, women are encouraged to aspire to the image of Mary. The mere fact that the Church banned all images of Mary without a child, speaks volumes of the recommended role for women in society, where male images are depicted holding scriptures (showing knowledge) or weapons (showing power). Does this not show the inherent danger in imagery or symbol?

In our Old Testament Reading today from Proverbs, the author clearly gives Wisdom a feminine gender. Wisdom clearly isn’t a real person; like most scripture the writing is metaphysical; it is written to make a point. The point of proverbs is that the author is trying to discuss ideas or concepts. So, they have made them to be a character.  Clearly though, these ideas are suggesting that at the heart of God is both male and female. Some commentaries think that the author of Proverbs is relating to an ancient middle eastern Goddess, or that the language is suggesting that Wisdom is a child of God.  All we can say for certain is that the identity of Wisdom, if there is one, is clothed in deep mystery; much like God really.

Jesus of course was real. We know this from independent historical writing, indeed we know more about the historical Jesus than we do about Julius Caesar, so no doubt about it, someone called Jeshua ben Joseph lived. That’s Jesus by the way.  He was real, and as a real person, he would have had to have a biological sex, and he would have identified as a gender.  From what we do know from the available sources, Jesus identified as male. So, when I think of Jesus, I imagine a young man. When I think of God, or when I think of the Holy Spirit, I am at a loss.  Rather than finding this threatening, I actually think this is a good thing and a good place to be as it opens myself up to the mystery of God.  It stops me from putting my image over and above what the Trinity really is.

In our childrens address earlier this morning  we tried to draw the Trinity and saw how hard it is. The closest we can get is ………”it is something like this”. We discussed analogies such as fidget spinners; when the adults were asked what they thought the silence spoke volumes: the concept or idea of the Trinity is hard to get your head around

So let’s be straight for a moment. The Trinity is NOT a fidget spinner.  The Trinity is NOT a Celtic Knot or a Shamrock leaf. God does NOT have both sets of genitalia. The Trinity is not some slightly weird family of three.  God is so much more complex than the average person’s view of him/her/them.  We don’t even have the language to properly describe God and so the only way open to us is; oddly for me; to follow some of the evangelical arguments and enter into a relationship with God to experience God, to fully immerse the self in the divine and as a consequence to let God open our minds to the infinite. In those times, times that I would call “True Prayer”, God opens the self to the truth that male is not superior to female; that female is not superior to male, but that both are reflections of the divine and it is in both and in the appreciation of both as equal partners that we can come close to the equality and love experienced in the Trinity.

So, to conclude: Today is Father’s Day; a day that Churches often do badly. The message I have often taken away from services are that fathers are OK but often not great because we compare them with God as the perfect Father.

If we stop seeing God as a Father, and stop limiting men to having male only attributes, but see humans as children of God, having the capacity to show masculine and feminine aspects of nature, then perhaps we could start to celebrate days such as Father’s Day and Mother’s Day as celebrations of relationship, celebrations of love, celebrations indeed of the very relationship that exists at the very heart of the Trinity itself; at the heart of God.

In the Triune name of God, of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit

Amen