“A glimpse of a God that transcends maleness”
Trinity Sunday, May 18, 2008
May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.
Many of you know that a couple of weeks ago I was in Florida.
Flew from Stewart Airport to Orlando, then drove over to St. Petersburg.
I was visiting Fr. Hal Steup.
Hal had been our Canterbury Club chaplain, chaplain to Episcopal students at the University of Washington.
He’s well into his 80s now, not doing so well physically, but sharp as a tack, otherwise.
He’s been on our church mailing list
for more than a year now, and he’s been reading my sermons, every one of them, I think.
Believe me, I gulped when I found that out.
You see, he’s a scholar.
Holds two degrees beyond college.
And he’s reading my stuff.
I was shocked to find out, however, that he’s given my sermons
the Fr. Hal “seal of approval”, all but one of them, that is.
The sermon he did not approve
was the sermon I preached here last year
on this Sunday, Trinity Sunday.
He spent some time with me during our visit, explaining the importance, the significance, of the Doctrine of the Trinity, you know, the doctrine stating that God is one being, existing simultaneously, and eternally, as a mutual indwelling of three so-called “persons.”
Three persons in one God, all three distinct, but one indivisible divine essence.
I must admit that my eyes glazed over
as he was talking about it.
Your eyes probably also did, just now, as I rattled off that Trinitarian definition.
I know, that for many, there’s something quite profound, and helpful, in that doctrine.
But personally, I don’t find it particularly informative to my own spiritual journey, my journey with the One God I have seen in Jesus, the One God whose spirit lives within us and among us.
THEOLOGY: I LOVE IT!
I love talking about God.
I keep a list of synonyms for the word God.
My list is up to 48 names now.
Here are a few of my favorites:
God the Beginning That Has No End
God the Infinite Mystical Center of all Things
God the Holy Presence
God the Nothing that is the Cause of Everything
The Source of all that is and all that shall be
The Source of every breath
The Source of life and hope
The Source of inspiration and courage
God the Caring Presence Within Us, Around Us, and Among Us
God the Mother and Father of us all
WHAT DO YOU THINK GOD LOOKS LIKE?
I have some pictures here to show the boys and girls from our Sunday school.
The idea is to talk a little bit with them about what God might look like to them, and for all of us to think a little bit about it ourselves.
As far as I’m concerned, there are no “wrong” answers.
Here I have pictures a mountain and a flower and a tree. Who created the flowers and the mountains and the trees? God the Creator.
Have you ever looked up into the sky at night and wondered if God might be there? Do you ever think you see God at night in the sky? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And God saw that it was good.
The Bible is full of stories written by many people. We can learn lots and lots about what those people thought God was like by reading from the Bible.
Could God be like an old man with a long beard? A famous Italian painter thought so. This was Michaelangelo’s idea of what “God the Father” looks like.
I think the spirit of God lives in our own fathers, and our own mothers, and even in little babies, and inside us. The Spirit of God is invisible, but it’s here, swirling around everything, and even inside our own hearts.
And finally, what’s this a picture of?
Holy Communion a way that we believe we touch God, and even taste God. We understand that sharing bread and wine is a powerful way to be with God, right here, and right now. Jesus asked us to do this, over and over, to “bring him back.”
OUR OWN IDEAS
We all have our own ideas about God.
There are lots of ways to think about God.
God who made everything.
God who wants us to be all that we can be.
God who mysteriously gets inside all of us.
And your ideas are just as good as mine!
BIBLICAL WAYS TO THINK ABOUT GOD
Ideas of God are based
not only on what we’ve been told about God, but our ideas of God are influenced
by the experiences that have shaped us, by science and the culture in which we live.
Likewise, the language about God
that we inherited from our Jewish ancestors
and from our church Fathers, language about God, was also based on the experiences that shaped those writers in their cultures.
Ancient ideas about God
are a reflection of the patriarchal cultures
in which the language was crafted.
Every once in awhile, however, we get a glimpse of a god that transcends maleness.
In Isaiah, for example, God comforts us like a nursing mother comforts her child.
Jesus said he wished to gather up the people of Jerusalem, like a mother hen gathers up her chicks.
In Proverbs, God gives birth to Wisdom
before even creating the universe.
And Wisdom is a feminine noun.
Genesis says that humans were created “in the image of God.”
Male and female, not just male.
The writer’s concept logically suggests that human beings
(male and female)
would therefore reflect a God who carries both masculine and feminine characteristics.
DAR WILLIAMS SINGS
Dar Williams, was born in 1967 and grew up in Mount Kisco.
She’s been writing songs and singing since 1990.
She specializes in what can be described as “folk-pop.”
She sings at folk festivals around the country, and right now she’s living and performing
just across the river in Beacon.
One year ago she did two concerts up in Woodstock.
One of the songs she did there
was a “classic” of hers:
“When I Was a Boy” is the song’s title.
Now I want you to know that Dar Williams is a gorgeous, very feminine, heterosexual woman.
But in the song, she sings about her own childhood experiences, as a “tomboy.”
She learned to fight.
She scared the pants off her mom
when she climbed anything
she could find to climb up onto.
She says she survived
because she knew all the tricks that boys knew.
Grass-stained shirt and dusty knees.
She was just a kid on a bike, sometimes even topless on her bike!
In this song, “When I Was a Boy”, she sings about gender roles, and how they limit boys, and how they limit girls—
who then become men and women
who are also limited.
She finishes the song by telling the man she’s with, about the “other” life she lived, when she was a boy, a “tom” boy.
She says the man she’s with is the top gun now, that she’s lost and he’s won.
But he says, in the song, “Oh no, no, can’t you see, when I was a “girl”, my mom and I, we always talked, and I picked flowers everywhere that I walked, and I could always cry.
Now, he says, even when I’m alone, I seldom cry.
And I have lost some kindness, but I was a girl too, and you were just like me, and I was just like you.”
SOMETHING HAPPENS TO US
Something happens to us as we grow up.
The freedom to be the whole person
that God intends for us to be gets lost.
The pressure to conform
to a narrow range of behavior
is incredibly intense.
Nonetheless, Genesis says that humans were created “in the image of God.”
Male and female.
This text actually suggests that the image of God transcends maleness.
The “seed” of wholeness, is genetically inside us
in the form of the image of God, both male and female.
And that seed will grow like crazy if we nourish it.
MANY WAYS TO THINK AND KNOW
There are many ways to think about God.
There are way more than my 48 different names for God, many ways to know God and
and be faithful to God.
And on Trinity Sunday, we’re invited to talk about it.
PRAYER
Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life. Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer. Amen.
Jerry Brooks
