Is The Church a Mother? sermon May 10, 2015

Mother's Day is the one day a year in which I use a feminist order of service. It includes the "Our Mother" and a feminist Swedenborgian affirmation of faith.  These can be found at the end of the document.

 “Is the Church A Mother?”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, May 10, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Isaiah 66: 12-13; Revelation 21: 2, 9-11; DLW 47

“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 honoring 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 honor 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 worshipers returned from smaller surrounding parishes to worship in the central “mother” cathedral.

But before the advent of Christianity, a day to honor 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 honor the mother-goddess of their tradition: Cybele in Greece, Juno in Roman culture, and Isis (not to be confused with the extremist Islamic group, ISIS) for the ancient Egyptians.  It seems it is in our DNA to want to honor the “great mother.” 

So here we sit together in 2015 in this lovely Swedenborgian church building—Swedenborgians from different branches worshiping 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? And how do we honor “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 an 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 foundationally true that God is all-male and the church, therefore, is 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?  Well, that was humanity’s doing.  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.

With these deep unquestioned assumptions about the male and female genders in relationship to church and power and authority in the very air we breathe, how do we return to balanced thinking and feeling as a church body so that our church might reflect something closer to the Divine balance?

The early followers of Jesus, who identified as Jewish, were increasingly persecuted by their fellow Jews and were eventually banned from worshiping in the synagogues because they were so different.  They needed somewhere else safe to congregate.  It turned out that the ones who had the resources to harbor this prohibited group were primarily wealthy women of some status in society.  These women became some of the earliest leaders of the new “Way” which later began to be called “Christian.” These women, with time and assets at their disposal, embraced Jesus’ guiding principles of social justice, spending much of their time reaching out to the poor, the sick and the enslaved, as Jesus had done. 

This was the earliest expression of “mother church”. 

These early Christians, of both genders, were very “motherly.”  Unlike modern Christians, they had no great houses of worship to maintain, and they had only the simplest of worship rituals.  Their worship template consisted of Jesus’ words to be baptized and to share communion in remembrance of Him.  They spent all the rest of their time reaching out to the most broken, sick, and marginalized in their surrounding society.  This included everyone, even the slaves, which was highly unusual in those days.  Even the slaves in turn learned to feed, shelter, and comfort those even more lost and in need than themselves.  These ancient Christians were small and terribly persecuted, yet they persevered in living according to Jesus’ message the best they could. 

This is our ancestry. 

How much would you say church involvement today resembles our simple beginnings?

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.  This gradually pushed the rich and educated women out of all leadership roles, claiming church leadership as the sole realm of the male.  Not too long after that, doing the Christian religion began to be about property, ambition, hierarchical power structures, and arguing over who had the right doctrines—not about helping people. 

This is not the fault of men or maleness.  This is the fault of the human condition, in which we repeatedly subvert and corrupt programs and institutions for our own personal gain, power, and advantage.  We expect so much from our religious communities, and then feel so disillusioned when they reveal themselves to be as flawed as the humans who made them.  Like a mirror, religious institutions can show us the very best of the human condition to the very worst.

There is a BBC episode from the Brother Cadfael series in which the head Abbot of Cadfael’s monastery hears that there is a plague in the nearby village.  He cries for the doors of the monastery to be shut against the throng of injured and sick peasants begging for help within 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 a painfully common attitude among many modern Christians.  An intellectual club with a pecking order often based on genetics is unfortunately all too often what churches can become underneath while professing Christian beliefs on the surface.  This is what happens when “faith” or ideology becomes separated from “charity” or love of the neighbor.  It is the physical manifestation of a spiritual imbalance—ideas separated from what is good for people is the same as “men” in control without the balancing input of “women”.  If “women” (spiritually or physically) were solely in charge, things would be equally imbalanced in a different way.  All too often, people hear a cry for balance as a desire to obliterate all men’s influence. So silly! We need balance.  We need shared respect for the gifts the other perspective brings.

I submit that it is only when our two genders (as with love and wisdom on the spiritual plane) work together in mutual respect that we can be the most balanced “body of Christ” in the world.

So here we are today, honoring 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 possibly 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, traces back to the most ancient forms of human worship, in which we honored 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 that feels safe and resonant and familiar.  We need to have someOne 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 heavenly 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 the very male Christian God, that they need a female face on the Divine if they are to feel able to believe that God(dess) is even remotely trustworthy or caring.  Do you think God(dess), 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 must be balanced and connected on every level even as it is represented in art.  The church is not just a broken female; it is equally a broken male.  It can be the embodiment of a beautiful and tender spiritual mother, as it can equally reflect the strong and reassuring embrace of a good spiritual 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, and the roles of mother and father are increasingly overlapping, do we even know what church is supposed to be anymore?  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 individual hearts and touches all the travelers we meet—something that calls in and offers respite and healing to the spiritually broken and lost of today no matter whom we encounter or where we are in our daily routine?

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 when we choose 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 Father 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, and is not Love without being perfectly one with Wisdom.  Wisely loving presence in all we do, not doctrinal battles, nor even recruiting people to have heard of Swedenborg, will bring about the birth “the New Church” of which Swedenborg prophesied.  Father and Mother are needed for any birth—Wisdom and Love.  As these are increasingly united in each of use, we each become part of that great birth.

“A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.  She gave birth … and her child was held and protected by The Divine.”

(Rev. 12:1-2,5)  

Amen

Revised. Originally preached May 2, 2010, Church of the Good Shepherd, Kitchener, ON

The Readings

Isaiah 66: 12-13  

For this is what the Lord says:

“I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream;
you will nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees.
As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you;
    and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”

Rev 21:2, 9-11

I John saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”  And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 

Emanuel Swedenborg DLW 47 

To be loving is to love others outside of oneself, and to be connected to them because of that love. A fundamental requirement 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 this mutual respect and warmth is the reason we feel such pleasure, enjoyment, delight, sweetness, blessedness, and happiness.” 

The Lord’s Prayer As “Our Mother”

Our Mother who is within us; we celebrate your many names. Your wisdom come. Your will be done, unfolding from the depths within us. Each day you give us all that we need. You remind us of our limits and we let go. You support us in our power and we act with courage. For you are the dwelling place within us the empowerment around us and the celebration among us now and for ever.  (Text by Miriam Therese Winter: Medical Mission Sister, Professor of Liturgy, Worship and Spirituality. Author of WomanWord and other books and resources for Ritual.)

FEMINIST AFFIRMATION OF FAITH

We believe in The Creator, The Divine Feminine, The Light of the World, whose eternal spirit moved upon the face of the waters at the beginning, and moves within us now.  To a world in darkness the Eternal Love became one of us, transcended every human frailty, overcame the hells, restored balance and saved all humankind.  Today the Divine Love comes to us anew in a global spiritual awakening within each human heart. She speaks in a new way through the Sacred Scriptures bringing a refreshing new understanding and softening our hearts to each other. Swedenborgians call this new awakening the Second Coming in Spirit. This Second Coming invites us to an ever wiser and ever more compassionate life.    As we increasingly live lives of love and wisdom, the more we walk in the light of the spiritual Holy City, The New Jerusalem.  Amen.