Readings for Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Lent
Isaiah 49:8-15
Psalm 145:8-19
John 5:19-29
This sermon was preached at the Chapel of Our Merciful Saviour in Eureka CA at a deanery-wide gathering of the Episcopal Church Women on Wednesday March 14, 2018.
This Saturday is the feast day of Ireland’s most beloved saint about whom many legends abound. Perhaps the most famous legend of St. Patrick is the story of him driving all the snakes out of Ireland. Although he would have come in real handy for the Israelites last Sunday when they were being poisoned to death by serpents, this story of St. Patrick is, unfortunately, fictional. However, St. Patrick was a real human being, who was born in the 5th century in Romano-Britain, the son of a deacon named Calpurnius. When he was a teenager, he was kidnapped by pirates who sold him into slavery in Ireland, where he apparently prayed a hundred times a day and then eventually escaped. He returned to Britain, where he became a priest and then a bishop and then felt a strong call to return to Ireland as a missionary bishop. Another legend about St. Patrick that has a lot more historical validity to it involves his unique strategy in sharing the Gospel and the mystery of the Trinity with the people of Ireland. Patrick knew that in order to be effective as a missionary, he needed to know his context and know his audience. He knew that the pagan Celts were pan-entheists, which meant that they believed that divine power resided within the plants, and trees, and groves, and lakes and rivers; and he also knew that they believed that the number three had special spiritual significance. So St. Patrick brilliantly decided to teach the Holy Trinity to the Celts by using a plant: the three-leaved shamrock. Just as the one shamrock exists as three different leaves so too does the one Christian God exist as three persons. This afternoon, I feel invited by St. Patrick to preach a little bit on the Holy Trinity and also to be aware of my context, to know my audience: this gathering of Episcopal Church Women.
In our Gospel this morning, a lot of attention is given to the Father and the Son. Within this relatively short Gospel reading, the words “Father” and “Son” appear 18 times! Clearly, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was formulated within a patriarchal society, leaving us mostly with male-dominated terminology for the divine. However, each of the three persons of the Holy Trinity can be understood as feminine and female; and these understandings are rooted deeply in the Scriptures.
Today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah includes a comparative reference to God as a mother nursing her child. The prophet asks, “Can a woman forget her nursing-child? Or show no compassion for the child of her womb?” God is also compared to a pregnant woman. Christian theologians would agree that here Isaiah is talking about the first person of the Trinity, usually understood as God the Father. However, here God is comparing Godself to a mother. In fact, one of the earliest names for God within the Hebrew Scriptures is El Shaddai, which is usually translated as “God Most High” or even “God of the Mountains” but is more accurately translated as “The breasted one”; the one who nurses and nourishes. So according to Scripture, it is not inappropriate to speak of the first person of the Trinity as God the Mother.
When it comes to the second person of the Trinity, we cannot deny that Jesus of Nazareth was a man. However, one of the most developed personifications of God’s presence in the world is the biblical figure of Wisdom, also known as Sophia. And Sophia is portrayed in Scripture (in the book of Job and the book of Proverbs) as a woman: Lady Wisdom, who was with God at the beginning of creation and who constantly invites all of us into her house to eat her food and to drink her wine (9:5). Jewish people today talk about this feminine personification of God’s presence in the world as the Shekinah. So Jesus is the male incarnation of the feminine Sophia, which is synonymous with the Logos (the Word) in John’s Prologue: In the beginning was Sophia and Sophia was with God and Sophia was God.
The third person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit; and in Hebrew the word for “spirit” is a grammatically feminine word: “ruach” which also means “wind” and “breath.” The Ruach Hakodesh (the Holy Spirit) is the creative spirit that hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation, in Genesis. (A very feminine image). And the ruach is indeed the divine presence that permeates and pulses within all living things, as the pre-Christian Celts believed.
So as one of my professors Sandra Schneiders used to say, “God is not two men and a bird.” The mystery of the Holy Trinity is certainly beyond anything we can grasp and God transcends all gender, but there is biblical precedence for understanding the three persons of the Trinity as not always male, but as female. We can understand the Trinity as God the Mother, God the Lady Wisdom and God the Creative Feminine Spirit.
With this in mind, let’s hear the Gospel again, but this time let’s replace the Father with the Mother and the Son with Lady Wisdom.
Jesus said to the Jews, “Very truly, I tell you, Lady Wisdom can do nothing on her own, but only what she sees the Mother doing; for whatever the Mother does, Lady Wisdom does likewise. The Mother loves the Lady and shows her all that she herself is doing; and she will show her greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. Indeed, just as the Mother raises the dead and gives them life, so also Lady Wisdom gives life to whomever she wishes. The Mother judges no one but has given all judgment to Lady Wisdom, so that all may honor her as they honor the Mother. Anyone who does not honor Lady Wisdom does not honor the Mother who sent her. Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes her who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.
Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of Lady Wisdom, and those who hear will live. For just as the Mother has life in herself, so she has granted Lady Wisdom also to have life in herself; and she has given her authority to execute judgment.”
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 
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