“GOD TALK FOR BELIEVERS AND NON-BELIEVERS” WITH READINGS

by Priscilla Wiltke

11/10/02 Sermon

 

Intoning the Chime – Priscilla Witke

 

Call to Gather:  Patrick Bell reads

 

We Arrive Out of Many Singular Rooms

 

We arrive out of many singular rooms, walking over the branching streets. We come to be assured that brothers and sisters surround us, to restore their images on our eyes. We enlarge our voices in common speaking and singing. We try again that solitude found in the midst of those who with us seek their hidden reckoning.                                                                         

 

 

Chalice Lighting—Amy Knudsen reads, Priscilla lights

May the light we now kindle inspire us to use our powers to heal and not to harm, to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse, to serve the spirit of freedom.

 

Hymn #31  “Name Unnamed”

 

Meditation Introduction – Priscilla Witke – We used the readings and the Special Music as the “Spoken” part of the meditation.

 

Reading – Patrick Bell

 

Who is She, neither male nor female, maker of all things, only glimpsed or hinted, source of life and gender?

She is God, mother, sister, lover: in her love we wake, move, grow, are daunted, triumph and surrender.

Who is She, mothering her people, teaching them to walk, lifting weary toddlers, bending down to feed them?

She is Love, crying in a stable, teaching from a boat, friendly with the lepers, bound for crucifixion.

Who is She, sparkle in the rapids, coolness of the well, living power of Jesus flowing from the Scriptures?

She is Life, water, wind and laughter, calm yet never still, swiftly moving Spirit, singing in the changes.

-- Brian Wren

 

Special Music – Barb Martin- “Everybody Says Don’t”

                                                by Stephen Sondheim

 

Second Reading – Amy Knudsen

 

I saw that night, for the first time, a Mother in the Deity. This indeed was a new scene, a new doctrine to me. But I knowed when I got it, and I was obedient to the heavenly vision. . . . And was I not glad when I found that I had a Mother! And that night She gave me a tongue to tell it! The spirit of weeping was upon me, and it fell on all the assembly. And though they never heard it before, I was made able by Her Holy Spirit of Wisdom to make it so plain that a child could understand it.

--Rebecca Jackson

Silent time

 

Sung Response #184  “Be Ye Lamps unto Yourselves”

 

Sermon

 

Hymn #51  “Lady of the Season’s Laughter”

 

 

(Closing words)  Priscilla Witke

 

Blessed is She who spoke and the world became.  Blessed is She.

Blessed is She who in the beginning gave birth.

Blessed is She who says and performs.

Blessed is She who declares and fulfills.

Blessed is She who whose womb covers the earth. . .

Blessed is She who lives forever, and exists eternally.

Blessed is She who redeems and saves.  Blessed is Her Name.

 

                                                --Sabbath Prayer

 

 

 

 

    GOD TALK FOR BELIEVERS AND NON-BELIEVERS

                                                                                                           

                                      By Priscilla Witke

 

God exists. Some believe God exists as a reality. Some, like myself, believe God is a creation of human imagination and do not believe in a reality of God. But anyone who lives in this world lives in a world in which the concept of God is alive and powerfully influential. Whether as reality or influential concept, God exists.

 

Even though I am an agnostic atheist I think about God. Why? Because when I hear a word I unavoidably attach some meaning to that word. For the same reason most people, whether believers or non-believers, think about God. Therefore God exists and wields tremendous influence. If something wields influence maybe we should talk about it. Because of that influence I want to talk about God concepts and how they influence the world.

 

My text this morning is a book called SHE WHO IS written by Elizabeth Johnson. Johnson is a professor of Theology at Fordham University, a member of a religious community, the sisters of Saint Joseph of Brentwood, NY, a good writer and perhaps a person who works well with others as, in her introduction she lists, by name, 42 people who helped her with preparation of her book.

 

I enjoy this book. I have not read the whole book. I like the way Johnson thinks and the way she writes and as they say, “she makes me think.”

 

I assume Johnson believes in the reality of God. She never questions the existence of God in the sections of “SHE WHO IS” that I have read.

 

Johnson says that the way we talk about God is important. I quote: “What is the right way to speak about God? This is a question of unsurpassed importance, for speech to and about the mystery that surrounds human lives and the universe itself is a key activity of a community of faith. In that speech the symbol of God functions as the primary symbol of the whole religious system, the ultimate point of reference for understanding experience, life and the world.”

 

I give evidence of this importance of the symbol of God in a reverse way at the start of this sermon. As soon as I say, “God exists” I take steps to clarify what I mean. I do this taking into account three factors. I know that in this community the right of conscience and the free and responsible search for truth and meaning are more highly valued than agreement on the nature or existence of God. I know that a significant number of our members are atheists or agnostics. I know that a significant number of our members believe in a reality some call God. Therefore I shape my language about God to acknowledge the diverse beliefs of our community and to demonstrate my commitment to the free search for truth. I take that care in shaping my language because my experience leads me to agree with Johnson that the question of how to speak about God is very important.

 

Johnson’s examples of the effects of how we speak about God are directly God oriented. For instance she says, “A religion... that would speak about a warlike god and extol the way he smashes his enemies to bits would promote aggressive group behavior…(while) speech about a beneficent and loving God who forgives offenses would turn the faith community toward care for the neighbor and mutual forgiveness.”

 

On a second point Johnson says: “The unfathomable mystery of God is always mediated through shifting historical discourse.” I take this sentence to mean that what individuals understand about God is shaped by the way God is talked about when those individuals live. Johnson elaborates, “language about God has a history…there has been no timeless speech about God in the Jewish or Christian tradition. Rather words about God are cultural creatures…As cultures shift, so too does the specificity of God talk.” I think Johnson is right about this history and this means we too can choose what we say about God based on our understandings of reality.

 

Above Johnson referred to “the unfathomable mystery of God” now she continues, “The reality of God is mystery beyond all imagining. So transcendent, so immanent is the holy mystery of God that we can never wrap our minds completely around this mystery and exhaust divine reality in word or concepts.”

 

Johnson’s insistence on the limits of human ability to describe God has been unexpectedly helpful to me when I talk with friends or family who do not question God’s existence. I have developed greater ability in those situations to say, when appropriate, that I think it is impossible for people to be sure they fully understand God and God’s desires.

 

Johnson believes we cannot “exhaust divine reality in words or concepts” because that is her understanding of the nature of God. As an atheist I am comfortable agreeing with that we cannot exhaust divine reality in words or concepts based on the evidence of human cultural and religious history. There are so many different, often conflicting, perceptions about the nature of God that any specific speech about God will only ever partially represent possible concepts of God.

        

The sub title of “SHE WHO IS” is “The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse”. Johnson emphasizes the limits of human ability to fully describe and understand God because she believes that there is a serious distortion in the images in common use in our time when referring to God and she thinks changes are needed.

 

 I like the way Johnson talks about the issue of gender. Here is one of my favorite sentences. “The women’s movement in civil society and the church has shed a bright light on the pervasive exclusion of women from the realm of public symbol formation and decision making, and women’s consequent, strongly enforced subordination to the imagination and needs of a world designed chiefly by men.”

The phrase, “pervasive exclusion…from the realm of public symbol formation and decision making” strikes me as a precise and accurate description of one type of inequality experienced by women. Women’s ideas and thoughts have been only indirectly part of public conversations and public decision making for much of recorded history. I find the image “strongly enforced subordination to the imagination and needs of a world designed chiefly by men” accurately descriptive. Here is why.

 

There is somewhere an effective family snapshot of my nephew and his wife with their toddler daughter sitting between them. They all look attractive, loving, and competent. One day my father asked how I could look at this picture and doubt that Father was the perfect image for God. I could not get across to my dad that I did not mind his seeing God in my nephew in that picture but that it was important that he see God in my nephew’s wife also.

 

I want to use this example of my father and the picture to illustrate Johnson’s point. My father did not try to keep his wife or daughters down. When my sisters and I would ask him science or math questions as children, he gave us thorough, detailed answers, telling us as much as he would have told a son. He helped us all go to college. But, as shown in his strong emotional reaction to the family picture, for my Dad the image that should represent God was unquestionably that of God the Father. Now, up until his older years, my Dad, being a man, was the household member who could most easily be part of public symbol formation and decision making.  When I was an older teen my father was on the church vestry or governing board and no women were on that board at that time. At that time women could not be ordained as priests. So men were the ones who had the positions from which they could describe the world, and in this case describe God. They naturally described the world to reflect their imaginations and needs. I like this concept because while probably some men in some times and some places have deliberately schemed to keep women powerless I think more often a complex set of circumstances simply functioned to put men in the positions where they were the people who were designing the world so people’s ideas about the world just naturally reflected men’s imaginations and needs.

 

I like Johnson’s description of how this reality played out in the traditional church. Having referred to the exclusion of women from the realm of public symbol formation and decision making, Johnson goes on. “In the church this exclusion has been effective virtually everywhere: in ecclesial creeds, doctrines, prayers, theological systems, liturgical worship, patterns of spirituality, visions of mission, church order,  leadership and discipline.  It has been stunningly effective in speech about God. While officially it is rightly and consistently said that God is spirit and so beyond identification with either male or female sex, yet the daily language of preaching, worship, catechesis, and instruction conveys a different message: God is male, or at least more like a man than a woman, or at least more fittingly addressed as male than as female. The symbol of God functions. Upon examination it becomes clear that this exclusive speech about God serves in manifold ways to support an imaginative and structural world that excludes or subordinates women. Wittingly or not, it undermines women’s human dignity as equally created in the image of God.”

 

 

The hymns that we are singing this morning were not in the UU hymnal when I started attending this church in 1966. These two hymns along with number 8, Mother Spirit, Father Spirit and number 23 Bring Many Names please me. Even though I think God is human concept, not reality, I experience a joy in the possibilities expressed in these hymns in such images as “Hold us in your steady mercy, Lady of the turning age”, “spinner of chaos,” “midwife of changes”, “daredevil gambler”. In these four hymns I see pictured a reality that if there is a God She is as much woman as man. That is very important to me. Also important to me, I see pictured a reality that the world is an immensely complex place in which any God must have many aspects.

 

Both those ways of picturing God give me deep satisfaction. Whether or not they reflect a supernatural reality they most definitely exist as a reality of human thought. I feel stronger and more capable of dealing with the world’s difficulties when we sing those hymns.

 

While the UUA and other churches have begun using some God images based on women’s experience, I would guess that still 95 per cent of God imagery in the world that is taken seriously is male and I think we are far from achieving gender equality when it comes to speaking about God.

 

In looking for metaphors for God based on women’s experience Johnson decided she needed to start with the third person of the Christian Trinity or in her words “with the Spirit, God’s livingness…abroad in the world.” That kind of speech, “God’s livingness…abroad in the world” may be uncomfortable for those of us who do not believe in the supernatural. But this speech tells us that Johnson is focusing her attention on what happens in this physical world here and now, an approach to thinking that is quite common in UU communities.

 

Johnson’s final chapter, “Suffering God: Compassion Poured Out” is the one that those of you strongly concerned with social justice might find most full of meaning. In this chapter Johnson works to understand how power and pain may go hand in hand. Some God images she draws from women’s experience are the creative, productive act of giving birth and stories of women who have chosen to work for justice even when such work might be painful, discouraging and or dangerous. Also in breath stopping detail Johnson reminds us of stories of destruction and degradation imposed on women in our world such as rape stories in the Bible and the historical accounts of witch burnings during the 16 to 19^th centuries and looks for metaphors for God in these terrible experiences.

      

This effort/work to speak of God as she might be evidenced in women’s experience and the insistence that only a complex God is capable of handling the complexity of the universe matters to me because I believe, as Johnson says, that these symbols function. Whether they represent human understanding of a reality beyond physical existence or whether they are only human stories of imagined possibilities these symbols function and influence the real lives lived by real people. I believe that as long as the world almost always speaks of God as male women’s dignity is undermined. I believe that as long as the world speaks of God in simplistic terms people will make poor decisions because they underestimate the complexity of life.