We’re going to make an intellectual dive; at least to start. We’re going to come out through our gospel reading, and hopefully some practical applications for life, but we’re going to start at a far different place.
We’re going to start with feminine images for God.
For decades I’ve felt a push from some scholars to consider the Holy Spirit to be feminine. At its best, it is an attempt to draw our understanding of God to be something more than exclusively masculine. I agree completely that we fundamentally misunderstand God if we picture God as only male. The problem is that using the Trinity to do that simply creates a mess. The Trinity is described as: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Well, it is of course tough to make the case of Father as feminine. It is similarly tough to make the case of Son as feminine. The Holy Spirit seems like the perfect place. The justification for doing so is that the word for spirit in Greek is a feminine word. Greek words have gender.
The most obvious problems to this are that you’ve made a very weak argument at best. Also, that you’ve ignored the Gospel of John, which distinctly refers to the Spirit as “He”. And finally (and perhaps most disastrous) you’ve made a fundamental mistake of interpretation that Christians easily make without knowing it.
The idea of the Holy Trinity does not exist in the Bible. It is a doctrine that began to form in the early church. It was complex and controversial. So in the 4th century, when Christianity became legal, the Council of Nicaea did, among other things, work to hash out the complexity. The result is the Nicene Creed.
Now don’t get me wrong. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with the Nicene Creed. However, it is easy for us to put the cart before the horse. It is perfectly possible to read the Bible and logically come to the doctrine of the Trinity we find in the Nicene Creed. But you’ve put the cart before the horse when you’ve decided to use the Nicene Creed as a lens to see the Bible. The result is at best a stretch. At worst it is total garbage.
When you try to make the Holy Spirit feminine you are doing things backwards. The Bible has a highly developed masculine understanding of God. And, it also has an equally highly developed feminine understanding of God. But if you keep reading it through Nicaea, you’ll never see it.
Underneath our gospel reading for today is a very rich feminine understanding of God. We easily miss it. That’s mostly because Jesus refers to God as Father. But the biblical authors don’t make a crisp male/female distinction in God. It is we who read that into it. It’s also because it is not direct. Jesus’ words there are based on ancient Jewish wisdom literature. And to the ancient Jews, Wisdom, or Woman Wisdom, was the feminine expression of the Divine. We saw that in the first reading from Proverbs 8.
Woman Wisdom/Divine Wisdom, not human cleverness called “wise” as Jesus criticizes in what he says in verse 25, is the revealer of God’s hidden truths. Here these words from the book of Sirach, which is ancient Jewish wisdom literature that Jesus references but isn’t in Protestant Bibles:
Sirach 51:23-30
23 Draw near to me, you who are uneducated,
and lodge in the house of instruction.
24 Why do you say you are lacking in these things,
and why do you endure such great thirst?
25 I opened my mouth and said,
Acquire wisdom for yourselves without money.
26 Put your neck under her yoke,
and let your souls receive instruction;
it is to be found close by.
27 See with your own eyes that I have labored but little
and found for myself much serenity.
28 Hear but a little of my instruction,
and through me you will acquire silver and gold.
29 May your soul rejoice in God’s mercy,
and may you never be ashamed to praise him.
30 Do your work in good time,
and in his own time God will give you your reward.
Do you see where Jesus is getting it when he says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.”
Here Jesus is the revealer of God’s hidden truths. Actually more than that, he is the Divine Wisdom.
When we allow this ancient feminine understanding of God to speak with its full voice in this gospel reading, we start to understand its words for us today.
We start to be stunned by this passage from Matthew because all of those who should recognize the revelation of God taking place in their midst fail to get it.
Last week we read that John the Baptist, who had baptized Jesus, who knew his own unworthiness, and had heard the heavenly voice did not get it. Also those who had their own games to play and found that neither John nor Jesus met their own criteria of what God should be like, didn’t get it.
In our gospel reading today Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, where Jesus had lived and worked didn’t get it.
The scholars and the wise, who could explain much but missed the revelation in their midst didn’t get it.
Those who did get it were the “babies,” the unpretentious “little ones” who made no claims, but could be given the gift of revelation, which comes from God alone.
When we talk about receiving God as a child we aren’t wrong to say that it is to receive God with childish innocence. Nor are we wrong to say that it is to receive God with childish dependence. But we aren’t grasping the whole picture if we don’t include that to receive God as a child means that we receive it as a simple gift.
Do you come to understand God, do you come to have faith in God, through: logic, reason, education, philosophy, and other human tools? You can certainly use all of those things to develop a more rich grasp of God. But none of those things will create faith or point you towards God.
To receive God as a child means that we receive it as a simple gift.
That is an easy simple concept. And it plays out across our entire lives.
When you receive something as a simple gift that you did not earn it doesn’t allow for pride, or arrogance, or haughtiness, or rudeness. (You may note I’m pulling on 1 Corinthians 13 there.) It creates humility, an authentic -and ironically- deeply powerful meekness, and creates a serenity of purpose within yourself. That is the kingdom of God at work within you. That is what Jesus brings. That is Wisdom.
Let the world play its games of pretense and wealth, its shallow games of looks and entertainment, its lies of fulfillment and purpose.
Instead, we discover in Jesus the invitation to learn and become a disciple. We discover a life orientation towards God’s kingdom. We realize that while the yoke is easy and the burden is light, we do not feel content to sit back and do nothing. No, we feel “response-able” in the world around us. And we give thanks and praise to God for the gift that leads to it all!
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