Today is Trinity Sunday in the church's calendar. The Trinity is a
mystery of the Christian faith. I am content to let it remain so.
I have, in the
past, blogged about the Trinity and looked at the various metaphors that have
been used to try and explain Trinity. None of them are really satisfactory,
perhaps the best we could say is the Trinity is a bit like ... So, today I am going to say that it remains a
mystery and I am okay with that. I don’t need to have explanations for the
great mysteries of the faith.
Yet, the
readings used today are interesting. They did unsettle me as I was once again
confronted with the patriarchal nature of the Bible. Often it is insidious, patriarchy
just creeps in and our minds, and even the whole culture we live in, take it in
without realizing it.
God has been
made male!
I had an
interesting conversation with a youngster last week. It was with a child who
has no religious background or teaching whatsoever.
Something minor had rocked his small world and
he ended up in my room. He sat and said he hated “him upstairs”, he then went
on, “why does he do this?”, “why does he not like me?” etc., etc.
I asked him, “Why
do you think God is a he?”
He looked at me
like I was stupid and said, “Well, of course God is a man. Obviously, God couldn’t really be a woman.”
God is not male
or female, all language about God is metaphor pointing the way to some of the
characteristics of God. Yet, in the collective thinking of our culture (and
this little boy) God is male. God couldn’t be female because women are
inferior. Even when that is not voiced it can often be perceived in the way
women are treated.
Since the early
eighties feminist theologians have tried to rescue the image of God from patriarchy.
Verses that use feminine metaphor have been highlighted and lift from
obscurity. When the Trinity has been discussed all the feminine images have
been brought to bear. The spirit, ruach, is a feminine word in Hebrew. It is
also feminine in Aramaic, a language Jesus probably spoke and in which the
Gospel of Matthew was purported to be written. In Greek the word spirit is neutral
(ungendered).
I am aware that
in these languages every noun is given a gender. Anyone who has studied French
or Spanish is aware of it. Yet, somehow it is different with the spirit,
culture has imbibed it in such a way as to speak of the spirit and God as male.
The passage we read today in John (15:26-16:15) has fourteen masculine
pronouns/names. I don’t think it is about whether these pronouns are there in
the original text. It is about how they
are read and imbibed by the culture we live in.
Just like it had
happened for my little boy, the use of these pronouns reinforce that we have a
male God. And if we have a male God, then the image of male as superior quickly
follows.
One of the understandings
of our community is equality. The understanding begins, “In the Lindisfarne
Community gender, sexual orientation, age, race or class are not barriers to
service and function.”
In saying this one
of the things we do is refuse to accept God as a male. I want to challenge each
of you as you think, speak or write about the Trinitarian God to be aware of
language. Be aware of how language shapes culture and thinking. If you start to say or write a male pronoun
or image, stop and ask yourself, “why”.
