ncclaguna.org

by the Rev. B.J. Beu

       When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he gifted us with what has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer:  “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name….”  Jesus constantly referred to God as “Abba,” which is Aramaic for “Father.”  In modern parlance we could even translate “Abba” as “Daddy.” 

       Many Christians use Jesus’ language as proof that God is also our Father, and by extension, that God is male.  This extension is where the logic breaks down.  The fact that it is appropriate to view God as Father devotionally is not to say that God can only be viewed as Father theologically.  Jesus was making a point about God’s intimacy with us, not about God’s gender.  Jesus refused to view God in cold, impersonal terms, showing us that God is best known through the closeness of a parent-child relationship.

       God loves us as a father loves his children.  With this understanding, it is just as appropriate to say that God loves us as a mother loves her children.  This is not a new idea, though some claim it to be a perversion of Biblical truth foisted upon us by a “feminist agenda.”  In the third century, Gregory of Nanzianzus referred to God alternately as Father and Mother in his writings.  (Gregory of Nanzianzus, one of the revered Cappadocian Fathers, was a Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church and was no feminist!)  When we do not recognize the legitimacy of understanding God in feminine imagery, we cut ourselves off from valuable insights and a fuller understanding of God.  Gregory felt free to express truths of God as he saw them.  Can we do less?

       I am a good father to my son Michael and he loves me. But his relationship with me is not the same as it is with Mary.  Michael looks to me to feel safe; Michael looks to Mary to feel comforted.  When I am not able to spend much time with Michael because of work, he grows closer to his mother.  But when Mary is not able to spend much time with Michael because of her travels, Michael grows closer to me but becomes even more needy of his mom’s attention.  There is just something about the bond between a mother and child that is never truly duplicated.

       As we celebrate Mother’s Day on May 10, I encourage us to think of ways that our mothers, and those who have been mothers to us, have gifted us and helped shape us into the people we are today.  Then think of ways that God’s love is like a mother’s love.  If we are to understand the fullness of the Divine Presence,

we must free ourselves from the bondage of thought that masculine imagery alone is worthy of God—we must free ourselves to find the Divine Presence in many ways. 

       At Neighborhood Congregational Church, we have taken the step of beginning the Lord’s Prayer with “Our God” rather than “Our Father, who art in heaven.”  Since this only eliminates the masculine language for God, it does not take the next conceptual step of seeing God in the closeness that a mother has with her children.  Only when we are able to speak as easily of God as our Mother as we are of God as our Father will we have freed ourselves from the bias of our patriarchal heritage.  Until then, we continue to betray something holy about God and about ourselves.

       Yours on the journey,

       Pastor B. J.