A sermon by the Reverend Sarah Grondin, preached at St. Jude’s Oakville, on Sunday March 16, 2025.
May only the truth be spoken, and may only the truth be heard. Amen.
This past Tuesday, along with my clergy colleagues in the Trafalgar Deanery, I attended an all-day Anti-Racism training session. The training session was held by the Diocese, and the goal is to have all clergy and licensed lay-workers participate in this training first, and then roll it out to others in parish leadership.
I’m grateful that we have the opportunity to engage in these kinds of educational events, because there’s always more to learn and unlearn. And we need to keep checking in with ourselves and examining our biases. Because when we know better, we do better.
Two major focuses of the day were how much our word choices matter, and how much representation matters. And when I read our Gospel reading for this morning, with those two thoughts rattling around in my squirrel brain, it sent me down a bit of a theological rabbit hole… my favourite kind!
In our passage today from Luke, Jesus says, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…” And it got me thinking of the various places in Scripture where God is referred to as female, and all of the theological writings that speak about the divine as both male and female, and make heavy use of mother imagery when describing God and God’s relationship to creation.
Now I know the idea of thinking about God as female has probably already caused some of you to check out, but stick with me—this isn’t a diatribe against all things male. Scouts honour! I want you to stick with me, because I think we all gain a much richer and fulsome image of the Divine when we can embrace all of God’s self revelation, not just the bits that refer to God as Father.
I wasn’t quite sure where to start, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to start at the beginning. “In the beginning… God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’… So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
What does the image of God mean? Is God a person? Does God have a body? Does God have to worry about grey hair and aching joints? Throughout Scripture God has revealed Godself as Spirit. In other words, God doesn’t have a body, and God doesn’t have a gender: God is not male or female, just as God is not gay or straight, white or black, old or young.
God is bigger and more mysterious and indefinable than we can even begin to imagine. But it’s hard to relate in any kind of personal way to something that we can’t connect, at least in part, to things we’ve actually experienced. So we do try to put labels and qualifiers on God, because we have this desperate need of something to grasp onto.
One of the most common ways we do that with God is to think of God as male, and to think of God as our heavenly Father. To think of God in other ways, such as Mother, causes many of us to squirm and might even feel like we’re committing some kind of blasphemous sin. (spoiler alert: definitely not a sin!)
But I know even I still often default to thinking of God as male, because that’s how I encountered God in liturgy, and hymns, in art, and sermons for most of my life. Language and representation matters.
Since then, I’ve learned about the many places in Scripture where God is spoken of in feminine terms, and reading the works of medieval mystics like Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, and Hildegard of Bingen blew my mind as I read about the ways they intimately described God as giving birth, as carrying us in the womb, as a mother who shelters her children.
This wasn’t the God I was used to hearing about, and it felt both weird and wonderful. So, I invite you to come with me down the rabbit hole… I know it might feel uncomfortable, but try to keep your heart and your mind open. Because the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways, and you just never know what she might want to say to you today.
To go back to the Old Testament for a moment, there are many places where female imagery is used when speaking about God, especially in relation to the Holy Spirit. If we look at the book of Genesis again, Elohim, creates the heavens and the earth. The noun is masculine and the verb ending is masculine.
In the second verse, the ruach Elohim the spirit of God hovers over the water. The noun, spirit or breath or wind, is feminine, and the verb ending is feminine. This ruach Elohim used in Genesis, is also identified with the mother eagle of Deuteronomy 32:11. The eagle hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, and takes them up.
In the book of the Prophet Isaiah there are many references to God as female. For example, the imagery of birth is used again in Isaiah 46, “Listen to me, O house of Jacob…who have been borne by me from your birth, carried from the womb;… I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.”
In the Psalms God is described as a midwife, God is described as a mother bird protecting her young, God is likened to a mother who feeds her children at her breast. In Hosea, God is referred to as a mother bear protecting her cubs. In Proverbs we repeatedly hear about God as Wisdom, Sophia, which is feminine.
Not to cause you Biblical whiplash, but if we set that aside and jump back to the New Testament, to our passage today for example, God is once again described as a mother bird sheltering her young. In the series of three “Lost and Found” parables that Jesus tells, we hear about God depicted as a shepherd, as a woman, and as a father. Jesus also talks about God as a baker-woman kneading dough.
Now, maybe all of those scripture references are totally old hat for some of you… but maybe some of you have never heard them before, and the wheels in your mind are starting to spin a little faster as you think about what this means for how expansive our God is, and how limited our language is.
It’s perhaps not really surprising that many of us are so uncomfortable with the idea of referring to God as female, because we’re so used to hearing Jesus call God ‘Father’ much more often than he uses any other imagery. But as biblical scholar, Dr. Johnson has pointed out, the number of times Jesus uses the word “Abba” or “Father” goes up dramatically as the chronological dates of the Gospel texts go on.
In the Gospel of Mark, the first of the gospels to be written, approximately 40 years after Jesus’s death, there are only 4 mentions of “Abba.” By the time the Gospel of John is written at least 40 or 50 years later than Mark (so 80 or 90 years after Jesus’s death), the number of times “Abba” is used has increased to over 100 times.
So as church tradition gets further codified, the writers depict Jesus using a male, paternal address and metaphor for God much more frequently. It’s a matter of theological development rather than abundant use by the actual Jesus.
Jesus’ language for God was expansive, and when we adopt a more open approach to speaking about the Divine, we allow for new ways to relate to God, we allow for all people to see themselves as made in the image of God, and we help break down the barriers for those who have difficulty with the metaphor of Father, for whatever reason.
I want to share with you an excerpt from St. Anselm’s Prayer to St. Paul. “O St Paul, where is he that was called the nurse of the faithful, caressing his sons? Sweet nurse, sweet mother, who are the sons you are in labour with, and nurse, but those whom by teaching the faith of Christ you bear and instruct?”
And a few verses later, “And you, Jesus, are you not also a mother? Are you not the mother who, like a hen, gathers her chickens under her wings? Truly, Lord, you are a mother; for both they who are in labour and they who are brought forth are accepted by you.”
The prayer gets incredibly weird after that as St. Anselm refers to himself as a dead chicken… but we don’t need to go there!
What I want to leave you with today as we continue on in the Season of Lent, and join Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, is the encouragement to think of God in a multiplicity of ways, and to try new ways of relating to God. Talk to God our heavenly mother, whose body is broken for us, and who feeds us from that same body. Rest in the all-encompassing embrace of Holy Spirit as she whispers in your ear that you are a beloved child of God.
When you feel afraid or lost, remember God gathers you up under her wings, like a hen covering her young. There’s a gentleness to that image, but also one of fierce protection as Jesus suggests in our Gospel reading today.
God is far bigger than any metaphors or labels or boxes we might use to try and contain God’s vastness to suit our own comfort levels. But language and representation matters. So let’s not shy away from the beauty and power of feminine imagery when describing God. Instead, let’s embrace the nurturing, compassionate, and life-giving aspects of God and God’s presence.
My prayer this morning is that we would all go forth with hearts and minds open to the beauty and wonder of the divine, in all its forms. Amen.
