Sermon preached by The Revd Neil Fernyhough, 3rd Sunday After Pentecost (June 21, 2009).
Readings: 1 Samuel 17: 1, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49; Psalm 9: 9-20; 2 Corinthians 6: 1-13; Mark 4: 35-41
Today is a doubly auspicious day – it is both Father’s Day and the summer solstice. If you believe what you see in the TV ads, the conjunction is apt; since two of the primary responsibilities of fatherhood would appear to be the quintessentially summer activities of barbequing and washing the family car. Now, I don’t know about your household, or the one you grew up in – but in mine, our little charcoal briquette barbeque had long rusted to flakes in the backyard before I even hit my teens, and washing the car was one of the things I had to do to get my pocket money for the week.
Our preconceptions about fatherhood are shaped by our experiences of it – either as children, or for some of us, as fathers. In western society in the past, the image was one of a stern, somewhat distant CEO of Family Incorporated. There was love, certainly, but it was often expressed formally; an undercurrent to a firm hand of motivation and discipline of the children. More recently, popular culture has tried to burnish the nurturing side of fatherhood – think of all those sitcoms from Father Knows Best on down, where dad is bumbling, but means well.
The fact is, however, that all of our collective experience shows you cannot distil the qualities or expressions of fatherhood into a few crude stereotypes. Apart from the primary and secondary sexual characteristics, we all know that there is no essential difference between mum and dad. And believe it or not, for all the images of the old, white-haired man on the throne, waiting to hurl thunderbolts, Christianity understands that idea. For – and this may come as a surprise to some of you – our tradition is a gender-bending tradition. And this may be one reason why the contemporary church struggles so much with issues of God and gender.
The complicated gender identity of God is present from the beginning. We are told in the creation story of Genesis that humankind is created in the image of God, both male and female. It’s even more complicated when Jesus comes long, identifying himself with Wisdom. Now, in the Hebrew tradition, Wisdom is a distinctly feminine attribute of God who, in Proverbs, is portrayed as a woman present with God at creation; the Word of God bringing all things into being. Sound familiar? It was Jesus, after all, who once exclaimed, “Wisdom is vindicated by her children.” And finally we have the Holy Spirit, also portrayed in Greek in feminine terms, thus compelling ancient artists wary of mucking up an uncomplicated masculine gender for God to render her as a dove.
In recent decades, our eagerness to move away from patriarchal language has caused us to reflect more deeply on the gender of God. In some cases, this has caused us to try and cast the divine in genderless terms, resulting in such delicious circumlocutions as “God wants to bring all people to God’s self, so that God may show God’s love to all God’s children.” Nary a personal pronoun to be found. Even St. Paul gets all P.C. on us – the famous “the grace of Lord, Jesus Christ; and the love of God; and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” being a case in point. It’s as if the First Person of the Trinity is God; and the other two are just along for the ride!
Another, more recent strategy, is to mix things up a little – as we will in today’s Eucharistic Prayer – referring to God as both Mother and Father. This approach hits closer to the mark, I think. For if we are truly made in God’s image, male and female, then God is fully gendered, male and female. In a tradition in which we refer to some people as “Father” or “Mother,” regardless of if they have children (I recall the 90 year old woman, who deferentially referred to me as “Father,” when I went to visit her); where men can be considered brides of Christ; where nuns can take on the name of male saints; and where priests and monks dress in non-gender appropriate clothing (I mean, please – look at what I’m wearing!); there is an undercurrent of recognition that gender differentiation is as much a social construct as it is a biological one; and that each of us has the power to redefine gender by defying cultural preconceptions and inventing our own.
Consider our readings, obviously not chosen to illustrate this point – but rather simply the lections of the 3rd Sunday After Pentecost. In our Old Testament account from First Samuel, David is disdained as not conventionally masculine enough to defeat the fierce Goliath; but by cleverness, he kills him. In the next chapter, which we don’t hear today, David immediately goes on to meet and fall in love with Jonathan, Saul’s son, and enters into a covenant with him because, we are told, “he loved him as his own soul.” Our second reading is from Paul, a man we often caricature as the worst type of father figure: Cranky, domineering, unreasonable, rule-bound. And here, indeed, Paul happily accepts the metaphorical title of father: “I speak to you as children,” he says. And, yet how does Paul view a father speaking to children? “My heart is wide open to you – open wide your hearts also.” How very un-Pauline, or at least unlike our stereotype of him.
And finally, the Gospel. It is an account of a miracle. Now, as I’ve said before, miracle stories serve an important purpose. They verify that Jesus is who he says he is, an emissary of the Father (or the Mother, if you will). Since only God can control nature and overturn its laws, Jesus’ ability to still a storm demonstrates that he has the power of God. But there is always a subtext to the miracles of Jesus, and this one is no exception. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” his desperate companions plead, as the boat threatens to capsize. At once, Jesus “rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’”
In this account, the disciples are – as so often happens – portrayed as helpless children who would perish without the protection of their Mother (or Father, if you will). God, cast in the role of a nurturing parent in whom one can place the trust of one’s very life, does not fail to provide the care and protection when it is asked for.
In all things and in all ways, God is experienced as a personal being. We may not primarily think of her in gendered terms, but we definitely see her as having human attributes. As creatures made in God’s image, we discover ourselves reflected in his face; and the best qualities of human nature are written there. As we celebrate fatherhood, let us also celebrate our Father God, our Mother God – the God who disciplines, the God who nurtures, the great housekeeper, the great mechanic, masculine and feminine, butch and effeminate. All the possibilities of our gender derive from God; and we celebrate them in ourselves. Amen.
© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009
