Gendering God

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Season 1, Episode 12: John 14.1-14. Lectionary A, Easter 5

Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.

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Gendering God

Herb Montgomery | May 5, 2023

To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.

“Gendering God can be either life giving or death dealing. Gendering God exclusively is harmful. How we gender God serves to mold us, and also preserves those shapes once they’ve been molded. Exclusively gendering God as male has served to harmfully exclude women in our Christian communities and frame them as ‘less than.’”

Our reading this week is from the gospel of John:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” 

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. (John 14:1-14*)

This week’ reading is part of the farewell speeches in the Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story. Jesus is saying goodbye.

The first thing that jumps out at me in this part is Jesus’ exclusivity. If you’ve been following my and Todd Leonard’s lectionary discussions over the past few weeks on YouTube (JustTalking), the idea that Jesus is the only means of experiencing gnosis or saving knowledge is very Johannine. It doesn’t work today in our cosmopolitan culture, given universal truths taught in other faith traditions as well as our own. My faith tradition is Christian, but every faith tradition, like mine, has teachings that are life-giving and those that are not. The goal that makes more sense to me is to collect the good in each. 

The second theme in our reading this week that must be addressed is that our reading is very gendered. I assume it was written by men within the Johannine community. There is also a lot of gendering of God in this passage, so let’s discuss this. 

Gendering God can be either life giving or death dealing. Gendering God exclusively is harmful. Elizabeth A. Johnson’s classic book She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse is especially helpful here. Johnson writes: 

“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. Hence the way in which a faith community shapes language about God implicitly represents what it takes to be the highest good, the profoundest truth, the most appealing beauty. Such speaking, in turn, powerfully molds the corporate identity of the community and directs its praxis.” (She Who Is, Kindle Location 807)

How we gender God serves to mold us, and also preserves those shapes once they’ve been molded. Exclusively gendering God as male has served to harmfully exclude women in our Christian communities and frame them as “less than.” 

Johnson continues a few paragraphs later:

“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.” (She Who Is, Kindle Location 825)

And yet the images we use for God can work inclusively when we use symbols to lift up and liberate those our present system pushes to the undersides and edges of our communities.

“Language about God in female images not only challenges the literal mindedness that has clung to male images in inherited God-talk; it not only questions their dominance in discourse about holy mystery. But insofar as ‘the symbol gives rise to thought,’ such speech calls into question prevailing structures of patriarchy. It gives rise to a different vision of community, community, one in which the last shall be first, the excluded shall be included, the mighty put down from their thrones and the humbled exalted—the words of Mary of Nazareth’s song of praise (Lk 1:52), creating conditions for the formation of community characterized by relationships of mutuality and reciprocity, of love and justice.” (Johnson, Elizabeth A., She Who Is, Kindle Location 854)

This challenges me as I reflect on some Bible passages that I’ve cherished at other stages of my journey. One of those passages is from the book of Hebrews:

“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being . . .” (Hebrews 1:1-3)

The exact representation? How does this teaching function for women given that Jesus was male? The church has exclusively gendered God as male based on passages like this and then privileged cis-men in the Christian faith. The belief that the clergy should exclusively be cis-men is just one of those practices, and all of them are rooted in a male Jesus being the exact image of God. This assumption has been at the heart of centuries of harm to women in Christian history, and has led many women to reject Christianity because of the real, concrete harm they have experienced because of these practices. (See Jaqueline Grant, White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus, Feminist Christology and Womanist Response, p. 151-172)

But our stories about God, sex, and gender are not monolithic. We also have stories within our sacred text that remind us that we all bear the image of the divine. We all bear God’s image. In the context of our bodies, wherever our bodies may sit on the spectrum of sex, we all bear God’s image. In the context of gender identity and gender expression, wherever we may sit on that spectrum, we all bear God’s image. Our most ancient origin myths whisper to us these truths. 

In the Genesis story, God made “two great lights,” “the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night” (Genesis 1:16) and yet we have times of day when both lights are active: sunrise, dusk, and twilight. So too in the story, God created humankind in God’s own image: “male and female, God created them” (Genesis 1:26). We also have a spectrum for sex and gender on which each of us lives out our lives. But wherever we find ourselves on this spectrum, it is the entire spectrum that bears the image of the divine. We all bear that divine image. As the Jewish tradition states, “Before each person there goes an angel proclaiming ‘Behold the image of God.’”

In this spirit, a dear friend of mine, Daneen Akers just published a new children’s book Dear Mama God. You can find out more at https://www.watchfire.org/dearmamagod.

After two millennia of exclusively gendering God as male, we don’t get to jump immediately to God being gender-less. We need to spend some time sitting with images of God in all genders. We need an imagining of the divine that is large enough to embrace all gender identities and expressions. 

The closest I will ever come to God in this life, is you, my fellow human. How I treat you matters. How you treat me matters. If we would keep this thought close in our relating and in how we shape our world politically, socially, and economically, what a difference this single thought might make. 

This leads quite naturally to the final point we encounter in this week’s reading. Those who follow Jesus will do as Jesus did. If every person bears the image of God, if every person has intrinsic worth and value, this must impact how we relate to them. Jesus models this in the gospel stories. When Jesus encounters an image-of-God-bearer under the weight of oppression, injustice, or suffering, he sets out to bring them life, healing, liberation, and change. He does this personally for the people in the stories, and he also does so by challenging the systems in his society doing those people harm.

This speaks volumes to me in our context today, as we consider what it means to be a Jesus follower, to do the works of Jesus. The work this sets before each of us is the work modeled by our Jesus: the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone, a world big enough not only to house many rooms but also to celebrate all of our many differences. This is the work I want to be about. 

HeartGroup Application

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.

2. What does gendering God as Mother change for you as a Jesus follower? Share with your group.

3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

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Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.

If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.

And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.

My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com

Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

*Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

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