![\"Famous-bible-mothers_3\"](\"https:\/\/bendroth.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Famous-bible-mothers_3-300x300.jpg\")
<\/a>It is a practice in almost\u00a0all mainline Prot\u00adestant denominations to use what is called “inclusive language” in our hymns, pray\u00aders, liturgies and sermons.\u00a0 What do I mean by in\u00adclusive lan\u00adguage?\u00a0 Namely, that when we use language to talk about our faith in our chur\u00adches that both females and males are in\u00ad\u00adcluded and af\u00adfirmed.\u00a0 This happens in two ways: how we talk about God and how we speak about one another.<\/p>\nThe ex\u00adclusion of women when we talk about our rela\u00adtionship to one an\u00ad\u00adother in the body of Christ is seen all the time, particu\u00adlarly in our hymns.\u00a0 We sing a\u00adbout the “Faith of our fath\u00aders,” <\/em>(what about our moth\u00aders?).\u00a0 We ex\u00adhort “Stand up O men of God,”<\/em> (what about the wo\u00admen?).\u00a0 In “Be thou my vis\u00adion”<\/em> we de\u00adclare, “Thou my great Father, I thy true son,”<\/em> (what about the daughters?).\u00a0 \u201c\u00adIn Christ there is no east or west in him no north or south\u201d\u201d<\/em> which is a wonder\u00adful hymn that celebrates the universal oneness and in\u00adclu\u00adsivity of the church.\u00a0 Yet in the third verse we sing, \u201cJoin hands then brothers of the faith, whate\u2019er your race may be! Who serves my Father as a son is surely kin to me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n So this universal church that cuts across races doesn\u2019t clear the gender hurdle, at least not in this hymn.\u00a0 Clear\u00adly, this should not be in the church of Jesus Christ where there is neither male nor female (Gal. 3:28).<\/p>\n When we apply inclusive language to God, however, the issue becomes a lot thornier.\u00a0 The argu\u00adment for changing our language about God goes some\u00adthing like this: when we speak about God as our Fath\u00ader, and Christ as his son, we are using mas\u00adculine lan\u00adg\u00aduage that excludes women.\u00a0 To al\u00adways re\u00adfer to God as “he” is to the neg\u00adlect of women who are al\u00adso created in the divine im\u00adage.\u00a0 Words like “Lord” and “King\u00ad\u00addom” are freighted with dom\u00adin\u00adant male imagery and are therefore to be jetti\u00adsoned.\u00a0 More inclusive words like “Holy One” or “Sov\u00ader\u00adeign” are to be used.\u00a0 The king\u00addom of God is better de\u00adscribed to mod\u00adern people as God’s “sphere,” “common\u00adwealth,” or “realm.”<\/p>\n Now before you pooh-pooh this stuff as so much lib\u00ader\u00adal theological tripe, let me remind you that how we speak about God can deter\u00admine how we think about God.\u00a0 If you only speak of God as Judge, King, or Master you can per\u00ad\u00adceive of God as distant, other, and over you, but not necessarily beside you.\u00a0 On the other hand, if you only speak of God as Friend, Shepherd, and Guide you do so to the neg\u00adlect of God’s majesty and holiness, God\u2019s other\u00adness, and God becomes your buddy or old man.\u00a0 If God is spoken of only in mas\u00adculine terms, then what of the feminine in God?\u00a0 Many women have exited Christianity because they thought it no longer held a place for them.<\/p>\n Je\u00adsus revealed God as “Father” and spoke of God as such some 140 times.\u00a0 To be sure, this God was not like any hu\u00adman father–neither indulgent nor domineering–but ten\u00adder and strong.\u00a0 The Council of Toldeo, an ancient Church council, spoke of the universe as coming from \u201cthe womb of the Father.\u201d So, clearly this is not any ordinary father. Jesus further expressed his rela\u00adtionship to God as a unique, filial one; he was God’s only son.\u00a0 The im\u00adpact of this language is not to affirm the “maleness” of God, but to teach that God is father-like or parental.\u00a0 It al\u00adso underscores the familial relation\u00adship of the triune God.\u00a0 They are in a mutual, indwelling relationship to one an\u00adother.\u00a0 Clearly, the Fatherhood of God is part of the Biblical revelation.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, feminist theologians are on\u00adto some\u00adthing and I think it is this: our con\u00adcep\u00adtions of God are too nar\u00adrow.\u00a0 Most theol\u00adogy up until recently has been written by white, North American or European males.\u00a0 In\u00adevit\u00adably, the\u00adol\u00adogy will pass through that mas\u00ad\u00adculine fil\u00adter and some im\u00adportant accents in the Bible will be missed.\u00a0 One of those im\u00adportant aspects is the motherhood or fe\u00admaleness of God.\u00a0 So instead of throwing out “Father God” and “Christ the son,” I prefer to return to the Bible and see how we can cap\u00ad\u00adture a broader, fuller, more accurate un\u00adder\u00adstanding of the God revealed in its pages.\u00a0 Rather than dis\u00adcard traditional, time-tested understandings of God, I would rather bring fresh insights to how we perceive God.\u00a0 Instead of calling it “inclu\u00adsive” language, I would rath\u00ader call it “generous” language.<\/p>\n Let’s begin our survey with a prophecy in Jeremiah 31: 15: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weep\u00ading, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be com\u00adfor\u00adted, because her children are no more.”<\/em>\u00a0 These are the tears of the mothers whose children were carried off in\u00adto exile.\u00a0 God tries to comfort Rachel: “Dry your tears–I will bring them back,”<\/em> God says, but Rachel\u2019s tears are in\u00adcon\u00adsolable.\u00a0 Yahweh becomes so moved by the depth of the compassion that Rachel has for her little ones that God takes on the role of Rachel weeping.\u00a0 “I have sure\u00adly heard Ephraim\u2019s moaning,”<\/em> says Yahweh.\u00a0 Eph\u00adraim was a promin\u00adent and powerful tribe in Israel and symbolizes the lost, ex\u00adiled na\u00adtion.\u00a0 Ephraim cries out for help, “You dis\u00adciplined me like an unruly calf…restore me, and I will return, because you are the lord my God.”<\/em>\u00a0 Now Yahweh, who has become Ephraim\u2019s mother says, “Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight?\u00a0 Though I often speak against him, I still remember him.\u00a0 Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him”<\/em> (v.20).<\/p>\n One commentator notes that the word “compassion”<\/em> comes from the Hebrew root which literally means “trembling\u00a0womb.”<\/em>\u00a0 Thus she translates the passage, “For the more I speak of (Ephraim), the more I do remember him.\u00a0 Therefore my womb trem\u00adbles for him; I will truly show motherly-compassion up\u00adon him.”<\/em><\/p>\n There are many other passages in the Old Testament which affirm the maternal nature of God.\u00a0 Hosea 11 un\u00admis\u00adtakably depicts God as a mother car\u00ading for a very difficult child.\u00a0 “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.\u00a0 But the more I called Israel, the fur\u00adther they went from me…it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them.\u00a0 I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love.” <\/em><\/p>\n In Hosea\u2019s day it would have been moth\u00aders who took care of children and nur\u00adtured them.\u00a0 The imag\u00adery would not be lost on ancients and it should not be lost on us.\u00a0 God is the mothering God who wipes our noses, keeps us from danger, and teaches us to walk.\u00a0 The image is that of a mother holding her baby\u2019s fingers as she takes her first steps.\u00a0 This passage raises child\u00adcare to a dignified and hon\u00ador\u00adable task.\u00a0 Perhaps if the church had lifted up passages like this more often, men would have seen if God will stoop to do the lowly par\u00ad\u00adent\u00ading that usually fell to women, then surely it is not be\u00ad\u00adneath them.<\/p>\n Isaiah 46: 3-4 invokes the same imagery.\u00a0 “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth.\u00a0 Even to your old age and gray hair I am the one, I am the one who will sustain you.\u00a0 I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will res\u00adcue you.”<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 Here God takes on the role of a nursing mother.<\/p>\n The same promise of maternal com\u00ad\u00adfort is made in Isaiah 66: 13: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”<\/em>\u00a0 Mothers often dry the tears of their child\u00adren. The promise finds its fulfillment in Rev. 21:4 when at the end of time God will “wipe every tear from their eyes.”<\/em><\/p>\n God is also depicted as a nursing mother in numer\u00adous other places.\u00a0 In Hosea 11:4 God says, “I was like someone who lifts an infant close against her cheek; stooping down to Ephraim I gave him his food.”<\/em>\u00a0 You can imagine a mother holding her child close to her cheek, bent over her baby, while he nurses.\u00a0 Commentators interpret Ps. 34:9 which reads, “O taste and see that the Lord is good,”<\/em> \u00ad\u00adas a nursing image.\u00a0 Perhaps the most memora\u00adble passage in this regard is Ps. 131: 1-2, where the Psalmist sings, “I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.\u00a0 But I have stilled and quiet\u00aded my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”<\/em>\u00a0 God weans us and sends us into the world to be responsible, produc\u00adtive peo\u00adple, but we must also allow our\u00adselves the time to lie in the lap of God “like a weaned child with its mother.”<\/em><\/p>\n God is also likened to a mother eagle.\u00a0 Speaking of God’s loving care toward Israel in Deut. 32: 10-11 Moses says, “In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howl\u00ading waste.\u00a0 He shielded him and cared for him; he guard\u00aded him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up her nest and hovers over her young that spreads her wings to catch them and carries them on her pinions.”<\/em>\u00a0 This is an image of God protecting the eaglets, but also of bearing them up, of empowering them to fly, and cat\u00adching them when they fall.<\/p>\n Jesus would not be unfamiliar with this im\u00adagery for the Psalms often speak of this aspect of God’s mother\u00adhood.\u00a0 Ps. 57, for in\u00adstance, says: “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge.\u00a0 I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the dis\u00adaster has passed.”<\/em>\u00a0 Jesus was speaking of God’s deep compassion which characterized his life, teaching, and mis\u00ad\u00adsion.<\/p>\n St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th cent. Clearly grasped the impli\u00adcations of Jesus\u2019 hen-image when he wrote: “But you, Jesus, good lord, are you not also a mother?\u00a0 Are you not that mother who, like a hen, col\u00adlects her chickens under her wings?\u00a0 Truly, Master, you are a mother.”<\/em><\/p>\n It was not unusual in the Middle Ages to see Christ as a mother.\u00a0 St. John Chrysostom wrote in his bap\u00adtismal in\u00adstruc\u00adtions to new con\u00adverts, “Just as a woman nurtures her off\u00adspring with her own blood and milk, so also Christ continual\u00adly nurtures with his own blood those whom he has begotten.”<\/em>\u00a0 And does\u00adn’t this make perfectly good sense, for Christ gave us life, his life, in his incar\u00adna\u00adtion and death.\u00a0 He nourishes us through the word and the sacraments; he makes us grow through his grace adap\u00adting himself to each of us in his infinite love.\u00a0 The apos\u00adtle Paul says that be\u00adliev\u00aders are those who are “in Christ”–a womb-like image.\u00a0 Baptism is called a “new birth” and the baptismal waters are likened to amniotic fluid.<\/p>\n I could go on.\u00a0 We have only scratched the surface of some of the feminine or maternal images of God.\u00a0 One thing I want to empha\u00adsize, however, is that reclaiming the fem\u00adin\u00adine side of God is not intended to reinforce stereoty\u00adpes of women as gentle and nurturing and men as strong and emotionally out of touch.<\/p>\n Let me be clear: I am not saying that we should stop using masculine images of God. Nor am I saying that you should stop using Father to refer to God. If you find comfort in those images and it is meaningful for in private prayer and how you image God, then by all means continue to do so.<\/p>\n The point of re\u00adclaiming the feminine component of the God of the Bible is to give us a true picture of who God is and to affirm that both the masculine and the feminine are equally present in God.\u00a0 It is to have a fuller, more generous image of God which is always dimmed by our narrow conceptions of the Divine. We are made in the image of God; men and wom\u00aden together re\u00adflect that image in unique ways.\u00a0 But it also reminds us that both masculine and the femin\u00adine qual\u00adities reside in every one of us.<\/p>\n What then are some of the implications of knowing God as mother?\u00a0 First, if God is wo\u00admanlike and motherlike then you women can take great comfort in the fact that your God knows ex\u00adactly how you feel and how you think.\u00a0 God understands your mat\u00adernal longings and the joys and hopes that are uniquely yours as a woman.\u00a0 It means that you are a unique ex\u00adpression of God’s image just as much as men are.\u00a0 And if both men and women are “God\u00ad\u00adlike,” that is the basis for mutual sharing and defer\u00adence to one an\u00adother.\u00a0\u00a0 We cannot pull rank on one another on the basis of sex.\u00a0 We need each other.<\/p>\n For those of us who had mothers who were present and caring we can thank them that they gave us a glimpse of the God who gave birth to us, who cares for and nourishes us, who bears us up, who discip\u00adlines us, weans us, and sends us out into the world.<\/p>\n The last sermon John Robinson preached to the Pilgrims as their pastor before they came to these shores con\u00adtained this line: “God has yet more light and truth to break forth from his holy word.”<\/em>\u00a0 I believe that’s true.\u00a0 We re-read and reinterpret the Bible anew for every genera\u00adtion.\u00a0 We do so very carefully, with an eye to the great in\u00adsights of our forebears in the past and with the rest of the church today, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 We do not want to be guilty of biblical ventrilo\u00adquism–mak\u00ading the Bible say what we want it to say.<\/p>\n Mothers Day, May 8, 2016 Selected Scripture It is a practice in almost\u00a0all mainline Prot\u00adestant denominations to use what is called “inclusive language” in our hymns, pray\u00aders, liturgies and sermons.\u00a0 What do I mean by in\u00adclusive lan\u00adguage?\u00a0 Namely, that when … Continue reading ![\"Mary](\"https:\/\/bendroth.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Mary-carrying-Jesus-233x300.jpg\")
<\/a>This image shows us the God who is vulnerable to our pains and losses, who is susceptible to tears\u00ad.\u00a0 In fact, it anticipates the anguish God will feel when Christ, the “only begotten Son,”<\/em> dies at Calvary.<\/p>\n![\"Jesus](\"https:\/\/bendroth.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Jesus-as-mother-hen.jpg\")
<\/a>Jesus likened himself to a mother hen.\u00a0 Matthew re\u00adcords Jesus as lamenting over Jerusalem saying, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks un\u00adder her wings, but you were not willing.”<\/em>\u00a0 Whereas the moth\u00ader eagle images speak of being stirred up by or car\u00adried upon the wings of God, the hen image speak of the warmth and protection found under God’s wings.<\/p>\n![\"GOD](\"https:\/\/bendroth.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/GOD-AS-WOMAN-2-300x235.jpg\")
<\/a>I am grateful for voices in the church that challenge me to re-read my Bible.\u00a0 And I have received comfort and insight from a mothering God My hope is that you too might experience a God who, as King David said in the Psalms bids us to crawl into her lap “tran\u00adquil and quiet…as con\u00adtent as a child that has been weaned.” <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"