“Is the Church A Mother?”
Rev. Alison Longstaff, May 9, 2010
Church of the Good Shepherd, Kitchener, ON
Isaiah 2: 1-5 and Revelation 22: 6-17
“The primal call is the call to love. It is the call to be loving and to accept love in return. It calls us beyond rhetoric, beyond excuses; it calls us out of ourselves.” David Spangler
Here we are in church on Mother’s Day, and I am charged with the yearly privilege of preaching a sermon that manages the confluence of Christian worship with the widely secular but not unworthy commemoration of “mother” in our calendar year. Mother’s day as a national holiday in North America is credited to the American Anna Jarvis, who fought and succeeded in seeing a day set aside for honouring one’s mother, singular, in the American calendar year. But the roots of “mother’s day” go back even beyond the “Mothering Sunday” found in the British isles---originally the day established by the Catholic Church to honour the Virgin Mary and the Mother Church. Though today the British Mothering Sunday looks very much like to our North American Mother’s Day, in medieval times worshippers returned from smaller surrounding parishes to worship in the central “mother” cathedral.
But before the advent of Christianity, a day to honour mothers finds its origins in pagan traditions from Greece, Rome, and Egypt. All of these womb countries of the birth of Christianity originally had a day set aside to honour the mother-goddess of their tradition: Cybele in Greece, Juno in Roman culture, and Isis for the ancient Egyptians. It seems it is in our DNA to want to honour the great mother.
So here we sit together in 2010 in this Swedenborgian church building---Swedenborgians from different branches worshipping beside each other, with semi-Swedenborgians and non-Swedenborgians---on this strangely commercial yet anciently grounded day for mothers. How do we worship well together on such a day? How do we honour “mother church” together today?
Good question.
Let us begin by exploring deep into the origins of Christianity. From whom did we inherit the identification of God as Father and the church as Mother? Is such identification a manifestation of the natural order of the universe, or a reflection of the language and thought of a particular culture in a particular time? There are many female images of God in the Hebrew Bible. However, time and culture have veiled them so completely as to leave only a thoroughly male face in the Jewish narrative. This Male-Divine imagery carries forward into the Greek Testament, and is reflected in today’s Scripture reading from Revelation. We see the Divine as the Husband and the church as the bride---a metaphor which has an important resonance for us, but which has unfortunately been used to prescribe the dominance of the human male gender over the human female throughout Christendom ever since.
Is it really true that God is all-male and the church female?
Swedenborg tells us that neither gender was created to be nor ever should be considered superior or dominant over the other, but are one in God and perfectly balanced. So if they are balanced in God, my guess is they ought to be balanced in the church. And if they ought to be conjoined and balanced in both, how did they get so terribly out of balance? Weel we did it. Again and again we humans make our earthly religions reflect our own imbalance, in the name of doing God’s will. And these sad imbalances perpetuate harm to both genders, rather like an improperly supported foot or a slight twist in the pelvis will eventually damage ankles and knees, hips and back.
I submit that we will keep ourselves in balance when we let charity, or love, or the Golden Rule be our guiding principle. In other words, I submit that we do church best when we come from love.
Did you know that many of our earliest Christian leaders were women---wealthy patronesses who hosted the followers of “The Way” in their homes for communion and worship? These early followers of Jesus were banned from worshipping in the synagogues, and were generally persecuted for being so different, and they needed somewhere safe to congregate. It was primarily wealthy women of some status in Roman society who had resources enough to harbour this prohibited group. These women, wealthy enough to have time and resources at their disposal, embraced Jesus’ guiding principles of social justice and reached out to the poor, the sick and the enslaved, as Jesus had done. This was the earliest expression of “mother church”. These early Christians were very motherly; unlike modern Christians there were no great houses of worship to keep up or maintain, and they had only the simplest of worship rituals based on Jesus’ words to be baptised and to share communion in remembrance of him. They spent their time reaching out to the most broken, the sick, and the marginalized. They included everyone, even the slaves, who in turn learned to feed, shelter and comfort the lost and the sick. They were small and terribly persecuted, yet continued to live Jesus’ message the best they knew how. This is our ancestry.
How much doing church has changed in 2000 years!
You see, not too long after Emperor Constantine legitimized Christianity in the Roman Empire, the early political leaders within what was to become the Roman Catholic Church used the dominant male imagery of the Scriptures to justify equating the male gender with God and the female gender with human weakness, and gradually pushed the rich and educated women out of all leadership roles, claiming church leadership as the sole realm of the male. All too quickly, doing the Christian religion began to be about property, ambition, hierarchical power structures, and arguing over who had the right doctrines, and not about helping the outcast or the wounded.
I am reminded of one Brother Cadfael episode in which the head Abbot of the monastery upon hearing there is a possible plague in the village, cries for the doors of the monastery to be shut against a throng of injured and sick peasants seeking refuge in their walls. Brother Cadfael says, “But what of these poor people in need of our aid?” The Abbot replies in agitation, “What does the church have to do with helping people?”
This is unfortunately what church can become in the hands of an exclusively male leadership. Don’t get me wrong! If women were solely in charge, things would be equally twisted in a different way. I submit that it is only when our two genders work together in mutual respect that we can be the most balanced “body of Christ” in the world.
So here we are today, honouring Mother, and originally the mother-goddess---the Divine Feminine---yet I am guessing that some of you in the pews are squirming to even hear the word “Goddess” spoken in a Christian church. As if the loving side of God was somehow unchristian. As if there was no feminine sphere which emanates equally from the sun in heaven.
I am here to assert that speaking of the Creative, nurturing, “congugial” side of God as “the Goddess” is not unchristian, and certainly not unSwedenborgian. I say, “Let’s stop getting caught in stereotypes and limited thinking and acknowledge the wholeness of our Great Creator!”
We know from Swedenborg, (and also in our heart of hearts) that the Divine transcends gender. The source of all that is truly masculine and truly feminine exists in the One Source of all life. We are all made in God’s image, be we black or white, red or yellow, child or adult, rich or poor, male or female. In fact, Swedenborg tells us that Goddess worship, while abhorred in most Christian circles is traces back to our most ancient human worship of God, in which we honoured all aspects of the Divine. Goddess worship was an expression of gratitude and respect for the creative, abundant, nurturing, or “congugial” face of God. Only later did humankind get mixed up, (like we always do!) and think that the feminine aspect of God was a separate entity from the masculine aspect of God. Once we then divided God, we assumed there must be a hierarchy, and that one aspect of God must be superior to or better than another, and the mess just grew from there. But the masculine and feminine are most perfectly one and inseparable in the Divine. The Creator is ever and always both God and Goddess equally. It is we who separate them and then put them at odds with each other, not God.
Our limited human understanding struggles to comprehend how both genders can become one human form. We long for---we need---a face for the Divine. We need to have something warm and living with which to connect. And since most of us recoil at an androgynous picture of God, we innately pick one gender or the other to embody the Divine for us. The Divine did indeed come down and manifest in human form---in the male form of Jesus, for all sorts of correspondential and cultural reasons. This face of God is deeply satisfactory for many. But the incarnation of God in the form of our Lord Jesus need not limit us to thinking that both genders are not equally created in the image and likeness of God.
There is a reason Mary was virtually deified in the Roman Catholic Church. As spiritual children we need, not just a heavenly Father, but a spiritual Mother too. One that transcends and is not limited by the flawed and imperfect face of the church on earth. In fact, some people have been so traumatized by male caretakers or so indoctrinated by horribly twisted teachings about the nature of the very male Christian God, that they need a female face on the Divine if they are to feel that God is even remotely trustworthy or caring. Do you think God, who is all love, really minds what vehicle we use to approach, so long as we approach at all?
So, is God male or female? The answer is “yes.” Is God a God of love, or of strength? The answer is “yes.” Should the church be unconditionally loving and giving and selfless, or strive to protect its children and provide for them and its future well-being? The answer is also, “yes.” The Divine is neither male nor female, but transcends and encompasses ALL aspects of everything that is both loving and wise. The Church as well, though made of mortals, still should strive to be in God’s balanced image: creative and protective, giving and guarding, loving and firm.
The church needs to be balanced and united even as God is. The yin and yang appear connected on every level. If the church is a broken female, then it is equally a broken male. If it is a embodies a beautiful and tender mother, it can equally reflect the strong and reassuring embrace of a good father.
I entitled this sermon “Is the Church a Mother” to encourage us to examine the question on all levels. Does it help us or hamper us to view ourselves as a mothering energy, or is that an old model that needs to be updated? How motherly are we as a congregation? How fatherly? Indeed, in this changing age, where fewer and fewer families attend church at all, when society is hyper mobile and all of us are over-scheduled, do we even know what the purpose of church? Is traditional Sunday worship more and more an out-dated old grandmother, parked in the corner in a wheelchair waiting for her last days? Can we possibly be reborn to become something truly new---something that lives in our hearts and touches all the travellers we meet---something that calls in and offers respite and healing to the spiritually broken and lost of today?
This congregation has been in the process of trying to answer that question for several years now. I think we are on the right track in choosing the mandate of Love as our foundation, God’s Word as our means, and healing activity in the world as our goal. Love is the face of the Mother, yes, but increasingly the face of Fathers today too. Love, the very essence of our life and the source of all our deepest joy is the heart and soul of the Divine. Love, not doctrinal battles, nor even repeating the name of Swedenborg will be the birth mother of the New Church in Swedenborg’s prophesy. May we each be part of that great mother.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another.”
Amen
Isaiah 2: 1-5 1 This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: 2 In the last days the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. 3 Many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4 He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. 5 Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD.
Rev 22: 6 Then he said to me, "These words are faithful and true." And the Lord God of the holy prophets sent His angel to show His servants the things which must shortly take place. 7 "Behold, I am coming quickly! Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book." 8 Now I, John, saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. 9 Then he said to me, "See that you do not do that. For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God." 10 And he said to me, "Do not seal the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand. 11 He who is unjust, let him be unjust still; he who is filthy, let him be filthy still; he who is righteous, let him be righteous still; he who is holy, let him be holy still." 12 "And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last." 14 Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. 15 But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie. 16 "I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star." 17 And the Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let him who hears say, "Come!" And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.
Emanuel Swedenborg Divine Love and Wisdom 47 “To be loving is to love others outside of oneself, and to be close to them because of that love. A fundamental of love is also to be loved by others, for without this, there is nothing reciprocal in the relationship. The essence of all love comes from this reciprocal connection, it is indeed its very life, and the source of all pleasure, enjoyment, delight, sweetness, blessedness, and happiness.”
