We do live in such interesting times (by which I mean, terrible and terrifying times) that on the one hand Twitter this past week has had many pictures of young women (and young men) who face execution in Iran for protesting against a government that, among other things, imposes compulsory wearing of the hijab for women, along with many deprecatory comments about ++Sarah Mullaly, many, sadly, from Roman Catholics ("sadly" because, in fact, many Roman Catholics not on Twitter are not such "social warriors" but are kind and considerate to people in other churches ... as, indeed, Pope Leo has been in his public letter to ++Sarah).*
Of course not all Anglicans are being kind to ++Sarah, seeing the occasion as a useful opportunity to put the ecclesiastical boot into the Anglican Communion. Installation wars? Friendly fire from frenemies?
I wonder what Jesus makes of it all? He was no stranger to disputes and disagreements within his own camp, but tended to subject the warring parties to some direct guidance, none of which disclosed which side was right, but all of which said, in today's language, pull your head in!
In Matthew 20:24-28, the twelve disciples are at odds with each other, 10 versus 2 upstarts (James and John) and Jesus tells all twelve to be servants and slaves to others, not to lord it over others.
John 13 is intriguing. It both honours Simon Peter and discloses how frail and fallible he was, while subtly revealing that another disciples was actually "boss", but not through a role he plays, but through the intimacy of his relationship with Jesus.
The honouring of Simon Peter is through a simple device: there are only three speaking parts in the chapter, which is effectively a dialogue between Jesus and Simon Peter apart from four words (in ET) spoken by another disciple. The disclosure of Simon Peter's flaws occurs when he questions whether his feet should be washed or not, and when he asserts that he will lay down his life for Jesus but Jesus dismisses this by predicting that he would deny him three times. By contrast, the third speaker is the disciple "whom Jesus loved" who reclines "next to Jesus". This disciple is boss!
The (21st cerntury) point then is that important though Simon Peter and the Petrine church is, Jesus is closest to the disciple who says least and claims nothing for himself.
Which brings me back to our new Archbishop of Canterbury. I am confident that as Jesus looks upon her, he is not thinking "But she is not a real bishop, "Null and Void" and all that" nor is he thinking, "How could the CofE get Scripture so wrong that they agreed to ordain women as bishops and now, oh folly of follies, even appointed one to be the Archbishop?". No, he will be judging her as he judges you and me: is she serving God's people? What is the state of her heart? Does she love the church with the love with which Christ loves the church?
I have a feeling that when Leo meets Sarah at a forthcoming Vatican meeting - I have deliberately dropped both their titles from this sentence - they will get along just fine as followers of Christ.
Because they both love Jesus Christ and want nothing more than to serve the church Jesus loves.
As one astutue commentator has noted this week, all the dark clouds of negative comments re ++Sarah reveal one silver lining: the dear old CofE is not yet dead ... people care enough to slag it off!
*Archbishop Sarah's reply is here.
Now, we/I can celebrate Sarah Mullally's installation/enthronement as a terrifically good thing, for many reasons; now we/I can also celebrate her installment by David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury, who is in a committed same-sex civil partnership, as another great symbol of hope; I might also register my disappointment in a minor/less than minor area...
ReplyDeleteThe liturgy of the installment itself, paradoxically, continued to primarily use male language for God.
Like women's ordination, there is no strong theological reason for this, at least not for Anglican Christians. It's a habit we persist with but one that masks the true grandeur and glory of God, and continues to subtly and not so subtly affirm the belief that males are superior.
If you want to reflect further on this, please see the wonderful sermon Carole Graham gave recently at the Transitional Cathedral (see link below, sermon beginning at 25:17), meditating on the encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well.
"Despite numerous biblical images of God as female, the church repeatedly thinks and speaks of God as male. Terms such as King, Father, Lord; pronouns such He, His, and Him, they litter the pages of our liturgies and hymnbooks. And their continual use has the potential, I believe, to create the impression that to be male is to be like God, and, as such, superior to females. And that in turn can so easily lead to the assumption that women can be dominated, can be treated as inferior, and made to feel of lesser worth.
But God - that divine being and creative force that is the source of all love - God has no gender, which I why I prefer to speak not so much as created in the image of God, but, rather, being created out of the *essence* of God, out of that self-giving love that comes from the very heart of God."
My heart sings.
Link to Carole's sermon:
https://www.youtube.com/live/iIdp-FIqrVk?si=YvGOgXTG_N7kv8Di
Hi Mark, thanks for what you shared. Not quite the same but.. I found this beautiful thing yesterday. Three women speakers in the lead-up to a No Kings rally - a UMC minister, a Rabbi, and a TEC priest. The priest, Elizabeth Kaeton, shared her contribution on Substack and she talked about Deborah from the OT, then offered this prayer:
DeleteA prayer for matriarchs
God of our Mothers,
Whose almighty hand called forth matriarchs
to lead, liberate, and love your people.
You inspired mothers and sisters,
daughters and aunts,
to be your divine messengers throughout time.
Surround we pray
the fierce, fearless, and faithful women of our day,
especially the women of Ukraine, Gaza/Palestine, and Israel,
Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia,
Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and Qatar,
Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates,
immigrant women in this country and others who are under constant threat,
and the women who lead and defend their communities
with grace and courage
to boldly contend with injustice and oppression.
That, following the example of those
who have gone before,
they may cast the mighty from their seats
and lift up the lowly and downtrodden.
God of our Mothers, hear us!
Amen.
Adapted from a prayer written by The Right Reverend Deon Johnson, Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Missouri
The link to the full text of what she shared is here:
https://substack.com/@elizabethkaeton399125/note/c-234625299
Thanks Mark and what lovely words by Carole.
ReplyDeleteThe CofE is [in my experience] very traditional in its "state occasions" and retains language from past times the [er!?] colonies have mostly moved on from for such occasions.
Thanks for the timely prayer, Elizabeth. Timely for the world, of course, and timely for me. My Lenten reading has been Silvia Shroer, "Wisdom Has Built Her House: Studies on the Figure of Sophia in the Bible." Wisdom (as seen in Proverbs, Job, the Prophets, Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon) is one of the richest feminine images for the divine in the Bible, including an illuminating way of understanding Jesus and his mission.
ReplyDeleteFrom Schroer's book, I learnt that the Jewish Wisdom tradition flourished in the "postexilic period", in a time of war, suffering, and displacement. After the destruction of the Temple, Jewish faith centred more on the home and family, where women exercised more power, of course. During times of war, women's views, needs, suffering, and leadership are often more visible and able to come to the fore. A Western equivalent would be women in Commonwealth countries taking more professional and leadership roles in World War II (that were once occupied by men). In this context, we are able to see the feminine face of God more clearly too, and, perhaps graciously, we are also in sore need of it. There is an interesting parallel then with the current rise of Christian patriarchy (Warrior culture and consciousness, far right forms of politics and religiosity), our world riven with war, injustice, and great suffering, and the installation of the first woman on the 'throne' of Saint Augustine in Canterbury.
I am with the need for an antidote to the ‘warrior culture’ image, which has been well presented in the comments. But I don’t think God has ‘no gender’ but rather that he has both masculinity and femininity and is beyond gender as we know it. That’s why Scripture presents the image of God as in ‘male and female he created them’.
ReplyDeleteThere is more difficulty too with Jesus being definitely male, though presented with generally understood feminine qualities. People who pray to or talk about Jesus will naturally use ‘he’. And clearly the name of Abba, Father, was dear to him.
Someone (maybe Charles Spurgeon), said that if Jesus is the Bridegroom, each woman and man is the Bride in relationship with him!
The other challenge is that the English language has no pronoun that doesn’t convey gender except ‘it’ which is certainly unsuitable for the Person of God. I don’t know if that is true for Hebrew?
When we've had a conscious experience of Wisdom, either devotionally, and/or, say, through the study of certain sacred texts, then the opening of John's Gospel sounds so directly like Proverbs 8: 22-31, one wonders why John uses "Logos" instead of "Hokmah" or "Sophia". And then comes the earthly ministry of Jesus, in either John or the synoptics, which sounds so much more like earthy Sophia (God with us, prophetically, compassionately, crying out from the "streets and squares") than pure Logos (ordering the universe, high temple rationality).
ReplyDeleteWhy Logos and not Sophia? Both in terms of the Gospels and subsequent church tradition?
In other words, why do masculine christologies tend to so dominate our image of Jesus, over above these other, deeply Jewish, deeply authentic, more feminine understandings? How does this affect how we now see both Jesus and God? How does it affect the sacred balance of God, as Moya suggests, as both masculine and feminine, and how this then influences how we value men and women, in and out of the church?
Moya said, quoting Charles Spurgeon:
ReplyDelete"...if Jesus is the Bridegroom, each woman and man is the Bride in relationship with him!"
I want to absolutely affirm the erotics of this in the best possible sense of the term: for some, many, and even all of us perhaps, love of God (longing, melancholy absence, and moments of intense aliveness and ecstatic oneness) has a deeply erotic dimension.
Jesus - and masculine christologies (Logos, Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, Bridegroom) - offers some/many of us an image, a person, to which we can give us ourselves completely in the full erotic sense (and I do not mean genital sex, but the fullness of that being attracted to a personal being, longing, burning, consuming love that is more than just 'agape'). However, it presents clear difficulties for straight men (among others) and in a way that Sophia does not.
Another way of saying this is: for some the Holy Spirit is instinctively/experientially male, for others female.
I am with you re your comment Moyà as in God being beyond gender and encompassing both masculinity and femininity, . There are so many names for God including Abba, Father being one of the seemingly most tender ones, and then there is the the penultimate all encompassing “I am” … And Mother doesn’t seem to appear in regards to the title of God but is inherent in descriptions of characteristics like, “even if your mother forsakes you I will not forsake you” and when Jesus says about Jerusalem, “I want to gather you under my wings like a mother hen.”
ReplyDeleteIt does appear from scripture in my reading of it that the masculine and feminine traits are both important, as in gender has value, is presented positively rather than negatively.
Acknowledging your post +Peter, I agree, it is the individual’s lived out faith and ultimately their calling by God, that is of far more importance than whether they are a man or a woman. Notwithstanding I have also come across cases of reverse discrimination these days also - one thing to be mindful of I guess. Disrespectful comments on social media are shockingly rife.