Does not understanding raise her voice?
At the highest point along the way,
where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
If you’ve been following along in the Lenten brochure you’ll have noticed that I’ve changed the version of the passage that we used today.
When Donna and I sat down to choose the passages for Lent, I already knew I wanted to preach on Proverbs 8, and the Feminine Divinity in the passage, but I didn’t pay much attention to the translation.
That was, until I started to write this sermon and that’s when I got stuck on the phrase, "On the heights along the way, at the crossroads, she takes her stand," which is in the NRSV (New revised standard) and the one we used in the booklet.
I knew I wanted to talk about my Landscape of Faith and about my journey having two paths. And I knew I wanted to reflect on the time when those two paths met.
But I couldn’t get past the image of the crossroads as being the wrong image. For me, a crossroads is a place where paths meet – but then go off along the separate ways.
I kept saying over and over that my image is of two paths meeting and merging into one path – that’s my journey. Then I opened up a different translation of this passage – the New International Version – and there it was:
Where the paths meet, and I could relax.
Where the paths meet is where she takes her stand. This, here where the paths meet I stand and share my landscape with you.
Today is International Women’s Day and it an honour for me to stand up here and speak about how important Feminine Divinity is to me. It is an honour to stand here and share an aspect of my faith with others, giving voice to a face of God very rarely seen or spoken of in church.
Before going too deep I must remark on the fact that the concept of Feminine Divinity is huge, much too vast for a morning sermon. It has been a challenge to reign in my passion for this subject to something containable and relatable. This is a subject I’ve been researching and writing on for a number of years. I could, but I won’t, talk all day about this subject.
Wisdom calls out. Understanding raises her voice.
These lines matter so much. It is very important to me that we understand each other. One of my favorite books on this subject is ‘The Divine Feminine: Biblical imagery of God as Female’, by Virgina Ramey Mollenkott. She begins with definitions – what she means when she says certain phrases and it’s important that you understand the definitions I use, which I take directly from her book.
“The female and feminine are two different things. Female is a person of specific gender, whereas the feminine is an aspect of a person of either gender.” This applies to male and masculine as well.
However this distinction is not without issues. To discuss feminine aspects of a person, or in the case of this sermon – God, we must conform to society norms of what feminine vs. Masculine aspects are which of course leads to stereo-types. To me this feels like a bit of backsliding to divide aspects of personality and human qualities in this way, given all the work that’s been done to bring justice to gender issues.
However, stereo types exist for a reason, whether we like them or not. For this purpose, I use them because I am talking about history and tradition – and times when roles of women and men were clearly defined and strictly controlled. It’s tricky because the feminine roles I will comment on, “childbearing, nursing, being a comforting and soothing presence” are roles that both define a woman’s power and have been used to repress it; and of course in today’s world many of these roles not strictly “women’s work” anymore.
I come back now to Proverbs and the line – where the paths meet, she takes her stand.
Here I stand where my two faith traditions meet. To understand where I’m coming from, you have to know where I’ve been.
For a time I sought God’s Wisdom in the form of a woman. I needed more than what church could offer me. Along this path I met the Divine as Mother Earth, Grandmother Moon, Queen and Lady.
Worship was outdoors, among the trees and under the stars. We had an altar table; like this one, butwith two candles; One to represent the Lord and the Lady. The earth was our mother, the sun our father and there was balance.
When I prayed, I prayed to the Mother and Father of us all, the wise old woman in the woods; the lady maiden along the shore of a Lake.
Along this path all of creation was and is sacred, imbued with the unity of the masculine and feminine. Equal. Respected. Divine.
And for awhile that was enough. It was perfect.
But then this other path met in the woods; this path that had been my childhood growing up in the church. A path where Jesus walked with love and compassion, and something happened that I just couldn’t ignore.
The paths merged. And I was called to bring my two faith journeys together. Create unity and balance between the two faiths that I love.
During Lent, 3 years ago, almost to the day, I stood up here giving my first sermon on how my ‘Journey was like the Wilderness and how I found a way’. I spoke these words:
‘For me, the wilderness has been a place of solitude and comfort. A place to listen to the wind rustle in the trees, hear water splash over rocks, meditate on bird song and raven talk. It is a place to get away from the busy, busy that is everyday life.
I crave the wild places. I crave the solitude and the connection to the Divine that I only feel in the wilderness. I seek it out because like the wilderness in Christian tradition, it is a place where one can grow, listen and change.
I was alone, but I wasn’t. There was always a gentle presence waiting in the wilderness. This was what I was looking for.’
I spoke then as I do now about the point where my paths merged, about having had a vision and being very afraid of what all of that meant.
In my vision, I was in the woods, there was wilderness all around me. At that time and in that place the gentle presence was a wise old woman, a Crone as old as the Earth. She spoke to me about dreams and hopes. In the woods there was an old church. I went inside and saw Jesus standing on some steps. He spoke to me about healing and wisdom.
I wanted so much for these two to meet. I wanted to bring the Earth Mother inside, but she couldn’t come in. I wanted to bring this Christ Light outside, but he couldn’t step from the church.
Since that vision I have been working at figuring out how not just to merge my own spiritual paths into something that makes sense, but also how to bring the feminine into church more.
For the longest time I had no idea how to do this. Here in this place, thought out Christian history God has been spoken about using male nouns he, him, father, son. Our stories focus on men – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, Mark, John, Peter, Paul. In the Hebrew Scriptures, especially – God is powerful, domineering, demanding and let’s be honest – jealous and mean. He sends floods and plagues, he asks fathers to sacrifice their sons, he tells his chosen people when they are invaded, ravaged, pillaged and plundered they had it coming.
Finding a nurturing, loving, tender God is not easy. I wonder if men find this imagery for God as difficult to relate to as women do? These are overpowering larger than life stereotypes in the extreme, perhaps as un-relatable to men today as for women? Perhaps one day will have some men in our congregation speak to this?
God becomes compassionate and loving though the stories of Jesus in the Christian Scriptures – but he is still He – father, Abba, Lord.
But he’s not.
And here’s where things get exciting. Throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures God is referred to as He, yes– yet there are regular references to God having qualities that are distinctly, traditionally and stereo-typically associated with the feminine –
Examples – Deut. 32: 18 – you deserted the rock, who fathered you; you forgot the god who gave you birth. – Gave you birth.
Isaiah 49: 15 – can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget you, I will not forget you.
Mollentkott comments in her book on this passage – “Clearly, the comparison of God’s love with the love of a nursing mother indicateDod that in the authors eyes, such mother love in the most constant, most reliable and most consistent of all forms of human caring”
Again in Isaiah 66: 13 – as a mother comforts her child, So will I comfort you.
And not to leave Christian Scriptures out of this list – one of my favorites: God a mother hen. Luke 13:34 (NIV) “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” What a wonderful image. We can picture it so easily can’t we? A hen running about the barn yard, as a hawk swoops over head, trying to get her chicks safe under her wings.
1 Peter 2:2-3 writes, “ Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
Confusing grammar aside, Mollenkott comments on this passage “remember that in biblical times all babies were breast fed babies, this clearly is an image of Christ as suckling newborn Christians.” Something only a mother or other woman could do. Yet it’s also a symbol for what a relationship with Christ is like – as spiritually nourishing as a mother’s milk.
Then there’s John 7 37- 38. In the NRSV - ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”
But that’s not the only way it’s written, this line is translated many different ways – ‘From His (meaning Jesus’) belly shall flow living water, from out of his heart shall flow living water’ in one of the oldest English translations – the Wycliffe bible – ‘rivers of living water shall flow out of his womb’.
We use water in our ceremonies that nurture and symbolize new life. We wash clean the metaphor avoiding comments about how each of our lives began – within water of our mother’s wombs and the flowing of water at our births. This image of how Life comes into being is such a powerful one and important one that the writers of the scriptures could come up with no better metaphor for what their relationship with God was like.
There are many, many more. I have a list. For me finding these images of a nurturing, comforting God was very healing for me. It was, please excuse the pun, a God send – here is a God in scripture I canrelate too. Here the two paths came together.
In Proverbs: Understanding raises her voice, she takes her stand. Who is “She?” She is Lady Wisdom, Hokmah in Hebrew, Sophia in English. God’s wisdom.
Throughout all of Proverbs God is referred to with a feminine pronoun – she raises her voice, she takes her stand.
In Proverbs 3: Happy are those who find wisdom,
and those who get understanding,
14 for her income is better than silver,
and her revenue better than gold.
15 She is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire can compare with her.
17 Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
18 She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called happy.
and those who get understanding,
14 for her income is better than silver,
and her revenue better than gold.
15 She is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire can compare with her.
17 Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
18 She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called happy.
This is God they’re talking about. Why the change in gender? Why the image of a woman bringing Wisdom to God’s Chosen people. Because it’s what the people needed to hear.
Proverbs was written after the Hebrews returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. This was a spiritually traumatic time for the Hebrew people. They had been conquered, deported, held captive and the temple destroyed.
They returned to their Promised Land, destitute, homeless and they had no home for God either. While in exile they had come into contact with other religions, other societies with different customs, some Hebrew’s have married outside of the faith. They have brought their “foreign wives” back with them and this, according the prophets writing at this time is keeping the people from being reconciled with God.
Proverbs is divided into speeches between Divine Wisdom – Sophia and a ‘foolish woman’ and ‘strange woman’ and in some translations “the adulterous women” who is not to be trusted, she will lead good men astray. Do not get trapped in the ways of this adulterous woman, says proverbs 7, [Her] lips drip honey, and [her] speech is smoother than oil. In the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword.
Instead focus on a relationship with God’s Wisdom – a woman of virtue and understanding; a metaphor for calling the God’s people back into a right relationship. The Hebrew Scriptures often refer to God’s relationship with his people in terms of a marriage. In the pre-exile writings Hosea is called by God to marry the promiscuous Gomer “For like an adulterous wife this land in guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord”.
This unfaithfulness to the Lord was a problem before the exile and rather than fall back into these old patterns the writers of Proverbs, recognized the need for the Hebrew people to have a new relationship with God; the need for a God who was forgiving, compassionate, loving and a little bit gentler than their previous understanding. To this day Jewish people welcome Shabbat with the words, “Come my friend, to meet the bride; let us welcome the presence of the Sabbath”
Here is a God who embraces the traditional feminine qualities of nurturing, loving, supporting community builders, those that tend to gardens and bring life into the world.
With these writings God changes subtlety and becomes able to fulfill the spiritual needs of a people who are recovering from trauma of exile and need more gentleness in their lives. Sophia as God’s wisdom is able to do that.
And it’s what I needed to hear too. For my own journey I needed to hear God in scriptures speaking as a woman, who understands the world as I see it. It has given me the opportunity to have an image for God that deepens my relationship to the divine and makes it possible for me to continue to hold respectfully to my other faith. With Sophia my two paths merge together to one.
These passages in scripture are few and far between yes, but they are there. She is there in the high places, where the paths meets she stands. Asking to be heard, her wisdom calling out.
The image I chose for the power point today is one of the soul collage cards I’ve made. I call it “Grandmothers laughing at me” and I choice it for this reflection today because it calls to mind my relationship to Sophia – a person who carries the wisdom of the ages, the understanding of an elder, a witness to the world throughout a long and fruitful life.
And it speaks to the Landscape of my journey. Years ago I had a vision; A vision of an Earth Mother in the woods and Jesus in a church and the impossibility of the two ever meeting on common ground.
Yet here and now with the wisdom of Sophia and the recognition of the feminine divine in scripture the Earth Mother dwells within the church the same as she dwells outside the walls. She laughs with a welcoming delight at being seen and being heard in this place. She has called out, she has raised her voice and here where the path meets she stands. Proverbs 8 ends with Sophia saying the following:
Proverbs 8:22-31New International Version (NIV)
22 “The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,[a][b]
22 “The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,[a][b]
before his deeds of old;
23 I was formed long ages ago,
at the very beginning, when the world came to be.
24 When there were no watery depths, I was given birth,
30 Then I was constantly[c] at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
31 rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in human kind.
23 I was formed long ages ago,
at the very beginning, when the world came to be.
24 When there were no watery depths, I was given birth,
30 Then I was constantly[c] at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
31 rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in human kind.
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