The “Womb-ish” God
May 13th, 2007
Gary Harder
Text:
Psalm 36:7-9
Psalm 57:1-3
Deut. 32:10-13
Introduction
I was just a bit discombobulated. There I was, some years ago now, one of only two men amidst 200 women at a theology conference held at at Conrad Grebel University College. “Women doing theology” they named it, so it was perhaps not surprising that not many men applied. Except that the brochure stated specifically that they wanted men to attend in order to hear women doing theology. After all, throughout most of Christian history men have done theology and women have dared only listen in if they dared anything at all. Seemed fair to me, so I attended. Added incentive was that Lydia was one of the main presenters.
This same Lydia has commented often about what it feels like to be the only woman at a male dominated conference or committee – which is what church has mostly been until quite recently. “I won’t ever again be the only token woman at one of these meetings”, she has said more than once, and said with some passion.
I can be reasonably comfortable in various settings, including some in which I am in the minority, and even when I am surrounded only by women. So I sailed into the conference in good spirits, looking forward to some good theological stimulation. Until we got to the first hymn as we started our worship. I hadn’t expected my reaction or my sudden hesitation. I am a singer. I belt out my bass line loudly and with confidence – no doubt too loudly. But suddenly I hear an all female choir, a beautiful choir, but one with only melody and alto. A bass voice sounds like it will be an intrusion.
And suddenly I am discombobulated. It just doesn’t feel right to sing out an intrusive bass line into that swelling female sound. But I do want to sing. I have come to this conference to participate, not to be a spectator. Is that a mistake? Should I sing the alto line in my falsetto voice – something I can easily do – and therewith try to become like them in a way in which some women have felt they have had to become like men in order to compete in a man’s world? But that didn’t seem to have integrity.
I hesitantly venture a 1/4 volume bass line, and even so a few eyes turn my way. Are they eyes of welcome or of reproach? I am unsettled where I do not expect to be.
The women’s choir has become a metaphor. Over the centuries, probably ever since about thirty or so years after the death of Jesus, theology has been mostly a male choir performance with only one or two women’s voices daring meekly to squeak out a melody line before being immediately silenced. A male voice Gregorian chant is beautiful all on its own, I suppose, just like a women’s choir can be beautiful. But over the long run boring if that’s all you hear. In the long run limited and less than God intended, and maybe even oppressive and abusive.
Only two men among 200 women? “But it says ‘Women doing theology’. Why should we men come to hear women doing theology? And anyway, isn’t theology objective – it’s about God not about us, so what’s the point anyway? Theology is theology”. I suppose men forget that they have expected women to listen to their choir over all these centuries. And I suppose they forget that all thoughts about and experiences of God are filtered through our human-ness – which includes being either male or female. Which means that males and females just may have different insights into the nature of God.
On occasion I really enjoy singing in our TUMC male Quartet. I do enjoy the sounds and harmonies of an all male singing group. But not if those are the only sounds I hear. In the long run I want to sing in a mixed choir, and I long for the time when the world wide church, including the larger Mennonite church, invites women’s voices as a full part of a nicely balanced mixed theological choir.
Mothers Day
But what has any of that got to do with mothers day? I’m not sure. Maybe only that here again I am a male voice trying to sing a Mothers day song, and I’m a bit reluctant to sing too loudly. Mothers day Sunday morning is a bit tricky at the best of times.
It is a bit hard to know how to celebrate mothers day in the church. There is a “discomfort zone” surrounding it.
Mothers day was originally established as a day to emphasize world peace and disarmament. Men were getting the world into war after war. So some women in the United States got together to say there must be a better way. “Our country doesn’t have to be more macho than the next country”, they said. So mothers day was established as a day to focus on love and peace. It was a day started by women to focus on alternatives to war. It did not start out to honour mothers.
When I grew up the Sunday School took charge of the mothers day service in church. Sometimes we children had to recite poetry by memory. Very sentimental stuff. Mom as super mom. Mom as best mom in the world who does everything for us in the house and still has energy at the end of the day to tuck us into bed with a prayer and a hug.
It was good to honour our mothers. But even then there was some discomfort. Most moms did not see themselves as super moms. Many felt a lot of pain and some sense of failure in their mothering. Not all children turned out as the mothers wished.
And then there were the married women who couldn’t have children when they wanted them. Some children had died, and mother’s day highlighted agin their loss and their grief. Or there were single women who felt that they were seen as somehow incomplete for not being married and not being mothers. And there were single mothers who were made to feel badly because they didn’t fulfill the ideal picture of a family, the one with a man at the head of the home.
Some women have told me that they stay home from church on mothers day because it is too painful to be there. Is having perfect children, or having children in the first place, the only way to have value as a woman?
Its very hard to sing loudly on this one, which ever voice part you sing.
An affirmation
And yet, mothering is so central to all of life. Femaleness is so central to all of life. We need to and want to affirm and celebrate mothers and mothering and femaleness. We want to give thanks for our mothers. And most mothers want to give thanks for the privilege of mothering.
Can we do so without idealizing the perfect mother? Can we do so while allowing for and recognizing humanness and failure and pain? Can we do so without assigning worth and value to a woman only for being a mother?
Each of us has a unique relationship with our mothers, be they alive or already dead. We have various mixtures of gratitude and love and fond memories and anger and resentment and disappointment to deal with.
Likewise each mother has a unique relationship with each child. Each mother too has various mixtures of gratitude and love and fond memories and anger and resentment and disappointment to deal with.
Maybe we all need to reminded of the crucial and central role mothering plays in sustaining any meaningful life in our world, and in simply sustaining all life itself. Without mothers there would be no life.
Femaleness
Mary Malone, who spoke at that “Women doing theology” conference, said that the church has had a great deal of discomfort over the centuries with “femaleness”. Yes, the Bible does seem to have a very high view of mothering. Israelite society highlighted motherhood as a very special, very creative, very skilled role. To mother well was deserving of highest praise. Nothing in life was more important than to fulfill ones parental responsibilities as well as one could.
And yet even here there was a discomfort with female-ness. Women’s bodies were a problem. When they menstruated they were deemed unclean and needed to undergo cleansing ceremonies. And when they gave birth to a daughter they were deemed unclean for twice as long as when they gave birth to a son. Their sexual hungers were always an impure temptation to mislead gullible men. And their intellect and spiritual awareness was considered inferior to that of men. Women were not trusted as witnesses, for example.
And so for most of the history of the church Christians have wanted to overlook the fact that in the Bible itself God Herself is sometimes seen as being female – is sometimes seen in fact as being a mother. But how could that be if femaleness is inherently a problem, either because it is sinful or unclean or inferior?
It seems to me that the Bible makes the basic affirmation that God is neither male nor female, but beyond both. And yet mostly God is described in the Bible with male images – father, king, warrier, etc. But there are also some very important, very profound female images ascribed to God. Mostly these have been ignored in the churches discomfort with femaleness. And so the church has mostly tried to limit the divine choir to male sounds and eliminate the treble voices altogether. I think God weeps at that limitation.
I want to highlight three of many female images of God; three treble voices which would improve any choir.
Birthing
The first female image of God is that of birthing. God is one who gives birth. The birthing image is used throughout the Bible. God is the creator. And the creative work of God is often expressed in birthing imagery. Isaiah 42:14 uses the simile of Yahweh God experiencing labour pain.
“For a long time I have held peace. I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in travail, I will gasp and pant”. And out of God’s travail comes a new world in which the blind are safely led and the darkness turns to light.
Deut. 32:18 uses similar imagery. “You forgot the rock who begot you, unmindful now of the God who gave you birth”.
Paul picks up similar language in Acts 17. “From one ancestor God made all nations to inhabit the whole earth,…so that they would search for God, and perhaps grope for God and find God – though indeed God is not far from each one of us. For in God we live and move and have our being;…for we too are God’s offspring”.
The N.T. says over and over again that we are children of God, born of the Spirit, or reborn into eternal life. And that gives a picture of God as a Devine mother – creating, birthing, giving new life to the world. Like John 3. Jesus to Nicodemus, “You must be born from above”.
Spring reminds us of the awesome creative power and the incredible birthing impulse in God. God, like a divine mother, is one who continually gives birth to new life – in nature and in us humans.
All of us are called to be co-creators with God. But I wonder if the call to be co-creators with God doesn’t strike home particularly to women, and to mothers. In birthing they take part in the divine image in a special way. Giving birth is an incredibly high calling.
Nurturing
A second mothering image used of God is that of nurturing her children. God is like a mother hen gathering her brood under her protective and comforting wings.
Psalm 36: “How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and yo give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life”. (7-9).
Many passages speak of “taking refuge under God’s wings”, or of God spreading protective wings over us. Psalm 57 begins, “Take pity on me God, take pity on me; in you my soul takes shelter; I take shelter in the shadow of your wings”.
Jesus says in Matt. 23:27, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not”.
The wings of a hen symbolize nurturing, cuddling, giving intimate warmth. How desperately children need that. How desperately we all need that.
The child within most of us has a built in tape recorder, it seems. And we have one particular tape we are tempted to play over and over again. “I’m not worth much. I’m not much good. I blew it again. I so often get things wrong. How co
uld anybody really love me. I sometimes hate myself. It’s hardly worth living.
And mother helps the child eject that tape and put on another one. “I love you. You are a beautiful, special person. You’re worth everything in the world to me. Come cuddle awhile, and let your low self-esteem be renewed. Let the image of God blossom in you again”.
And when mother does that, or father for that matter, they are only doing what God, the divine mother is always doing to us, children all, inviting us to take refuge under the protective wings of one who is sometimes like a mother hen. And we are nurtured again, bathed in love, protected when the going gets too rough.
Sending
A third image is that of sending, of chasing the children out of the nest, of exhorting them to test their own wings and to risk leaving the safety of home. God as a mother eagle.
Whereas the mother hen clucks to gather her chicks into her nest and under her wings, the mother eagle launches her chicks out of the nest. “The difference between God as hen and God as (mother) eagle is the difference between intimate cuddling and dynamic empowerment. And we need both”. (Mollencott, p.92).
Deut. 32:11-12 says, “As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up and bears them aloft on its pinions, the Lord alone guided him”.
Exodus 19:4, “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore obey my voice and keep my covenant”.
And of course the familiar passage in Isaiah 40 reads, “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles…”
The mother eagle (never the father eagle), I am told, takes the eaglets on her wings, swoops downward suddenly to force them into solo flight, then stays close enough to swoop under them again whenever they grow too weary to continue on their own. The goal is learning to fly. The goal is to be able to leave the nest, become independent. The goal is to mature and to be able to make your way as an adult in the world. The goal is internalized strength.
In this image, the same God who as mother hen clucks for us to relax within the security of her loving wings, as mother eagle launches us into flight so that we learn how to fly on our own and to feed ourselves. God empowers us to reach out and develop our fullest potential. God encourages us to risk what is yet new and untried.
To nurture and then to send. This is the dual role, the delicate balance entrusted to all mothers. Nurturing and protecting the child. And yet lifting the child on wings and helping her/him grow toward maturity and independence. Sending the grown child out of the nest, Not hanging on. Not smothering. Rather, enabling, freeing, empowering, launching.
Such is God’s love. Such is mother love. Such is parental love, needful from the father too. But we are focusing today on mothering images.
Birthing. Nurturing. Sending. Awesome God images. Awesome mothering images.
Conclusion
Today, on this mother’s day, we praise mothering, and we praise femaleness. We don’t want to idealize the super mom. Nor do we want to name mothering as the only significant part of femaleness. But I, at least, want to acknowledge the rich, wonderful treble sounds in the human choir. As a male I also confess that we males have over the centuries, and still today, tried to filter out the treble sounds from the voice of God and from the voices of women. I confess our impoverished hearing and our creation of a limited “half-choir”.
Today I give thanks for a creator God constantly giving birth. I give thanks for God the nurturer constantly inviting us to take refuge under her protective wings. I give thanks for God the sender lifting us out of the nest and challenging us to fly and to discover new worlds.
Today I give thanks for all mothers and for all who mother us whether they are biological mothers or not. I give thanks for my mother, who has modeled birthing and nurturing and sending in particularly effective ways.
Ah, to hear all the voices, female and male. Ah to hear a full choir with all the voices singing the glory of God and the love of God.
May the “womb-ish” God bless all mothers and all females in a very special way today.