God, Mother of Us All

Ormewood Church on Easter

This is excerpted from my talk for Ormewood Church this past Mother’s Day. The complete scripture was Wisdom of Solomon 7:22b-30 (NRSV), a portion of which I’ve included here. The “her” is Wisdom, Sophia. Thanks to organizing pastor Jenelle Holmes for inviting me! 

There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy…loving the good…humane…steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle. …For she is a breath of the power of God…in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets; for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with Wisdom. 

If you saw all these qualities in a personal ad or on a resume, you just might want to meet this person! I say “might” because this is a list so awesome many of us would feel intimidated.

This is a description of Sophia, Greek for Wisdom, and in Jewish wisdom literature, you could say she was the feminine side of God, the counterpart to God the Father. This scripture was written by a Jewish mystic deeply influenced by Greek philosophy who lived around the time of Jesus. As I grow older and the world seems more and more stupid and ignorant, wisdom becomes a quality I pray for in all our leaders and all of us!

In another text it is said that Sophia was with God from the beginning—without Wisdom nothing was created that was created. If this sounds familiar, the mystical Gospel of John takes as its prologue a similar assertion, that the Word, or Jesus, was with God from the beginning, and without Jesus, nothing was made that was made.

On this Mother’s Day, I invite us to think of motherhood as sometimes biological and sometimes spiritual. Note the present tense in the following examples. We need to hear these words even today:

“As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you,” God declares through the prophet Isaiah (Is 66:13).  

Jesus laments over Jerusalem, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a mother hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (Mt 23:37). 

And the Psalmist gives us that comforting goal of resting in God:

I hold myself in quiet and silence,

            like a little child in its mother’s arms,

            like a little child, so I keep myself.  (Ps 131:2, NJB)

One of our spiritual mothers, the 12^th century Julian of Norwich, even prays to the founder of our faith as “Mother Jesus.” 

And, when told his mother and siblings have come to see him, Jesus himself famously says, “Who are my mother and brothers and sisters? Those who do the will of God in heaven.”

I say the Lord’s Prayer every morning. Early on, I changed the “Our Father” to “God, Mother and Father of us all.” I pray this way because my biological mother and father loved me in different ways and I returned that love in different ways, and so it is in our relationship with God, I believe. For many without a mother or a father, or who have an imperfect mother or father, God may serve as a spiritual foster mother or father.

The Christian faith grew from a handful of persecuted followers scattered throughout the Roman Empire in the first century after Christ to the equivalent of almost a state church by the fourth century, becoming culturally fashionable and politically advantageous. Even the Emperor claimed to be a Christian.

This mixing of church and state made some followers of Jesus nervous, anxious that his countercultural teachings, such as concern for the poor, the marginalized, the sick, the old, orphans, children, and those with disabilities would be lost in the collusion and confusion of church and state. They were also worried about the transformation of what had been a Christian movement into a religion and religious institution, the Church.

So, so-called spiritual mothers and fathers went out into the wildernesses of the Middle East to pray. They became known as the Desert Mothers and the Desert Fathers. They did not believe Jesus came to save only Christians—rather, they believed that Jesus could save the whole world from its excesses, its materialism, prejudices, hatred, self-absorption, violence, and cruelty.

They were concerned for the interior life that we in the 21^st century would understand as the spiritual life.

But the spiritual life for them was as real as the exterior life in which they labored to be self-sustaining communities that could welcome and feed the stranger, the refugee, the pilgrim, and those escaping mistreatment and injustice, including women.

Paying attention to our “interior dwellings,” our souls, proves to be the beginning of an intentional spiritual life that will benefit our guests, whether young children or elderly parents, neighbors or strangers.

My mom and dad were role models of this spiritual life in different ways. My dad enjoyed studying scripture and teaching Sunday school. My mom was more of an adventurer in the spiritual life, reading the writings of mystics and contemplatives of various traditions. In this sermon, you can hear my father the teacher in my words, and my mother the contemplative-wannabe in my regard for the spiritual life.

But it was not until my mom was in her 80’s that she had what could be called an amazing epiphany. And, a surprise to me, it came at the hands of a Baptist preacher from Atlanta, the Rev. Charles Stanley, whose television broadcast she watched whenever she was unable to attend her Baptist church in Los Angeles. On one of her visits here I took her to First Baptist of Atlanta, by then moved to the suburbs, and she was thrilled to meet Rev. Stanley, though I had explained he was not affirming as she was of gay people like me.

Her “ah-hah” in the final year of her life, she explained with some glee, was that she had always known that God loved us generally, but for the first time in her life she had come to believe that God loved her personally, thanks to Rev. Stanley.

Surprised, I kidded her, “Mom, haven’t you been reading all my books?!”

The 19^th century English poet and mystic William Blake summed it up well when he said, “We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.”

The spiritual teacher Henri Nouwen added that our time on earth is a brief span to say to God, “I love you too.”

A related post: “Peace! Be Still!”

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

The Lord's Prayer--What It Means to Me

The prayer that Jesus taught has different meanings for each of us. These are some of mine:

“God, Mother and Father of us all…”

Theology rather than ideology prompts me to begin “the Lord’s Prayer” in this way. My own mother and father loved me in different ways, and I loved them in different ways, and so addressing this prayer to both Mother and Father God feels more complete.

I don’t view mother/father and male/female as binary, but rather as ends of a spectrum, so it’s not an either/or, but rather, a both/and. Saying “mother” and “father” is more personal for me than “parent” or a general term for God. And adding “of us all” replaces “our” in the “our Father.” This prayer reminds me that prayer is a collective, communal practice, and that we are ALL children of God.

“Who art in heaven…”

Heaven is both a destination and a present reality. Heaven is where human will and God’s will coincide. To “go to” heaven is to follow your bliss, in the words of Joseph Campbell, a place where your greatest joy meets the world’s deep need, in the words of Frederick Buechner. And yet it also appears to us in those “thin places” of Celtic Christian spirituality in which heaven can be glimpsed on earth: in beauty, in kindness, in love, and so on. This is where and when and how we experience the awesome essence of God.

“Thy kingdom come…”

“Thy” and “thee” and “thou” were all familiar forms of address in English from 1450 to 1650, and the KJV was translated in 1611, though the translators may not have followed common usage. If they did, though it sounds formal to us, these familiar terms are in line with Jesus beginning the prayer with the Aramaic “Abba,” addressing God as family: “our Father.” It reminds us of our intimacy with God.

“Kingdom” welcomes God’s reign, and rather than associate it with patriarchy, I think of “magic kingdoms” of fairy tales, myths, and legends, that may be ruled by either a king or a queen. In other contexts, I substitute “commonwealth,” because ultimately God’s kingdom is a common wealth which we all share, spiritually and materially. And when I say “all” I don’t mean only Christians or human beings. I pray for the kingdom to “come” because I believe it is divinity that gives it birth, within or among us.

“Thy will be done…”

I believe our greatest bliss is to be found in our assent to this phrase. By “our bliss” I mean not just our personal joy but our collective joy as human beings, as creatures, as creation. My central purpose in saying this prayer daily is to align myself with God’s Spirit and her purposes in the universe: abundant life, creativity, compassion, wisdom, knowledge, reflection, service, to name a few. By such measures, doing God’s will is not tedious duty but awakening pleasure.

“In/on earth as it is in heaven…”

When I pray “your will be done in earth,” I am praying that God’s will may be manifest in my own body—to paraphrase Teresa of Avila, on earth God’s body is our own, my hands, your hands, my feet, your feet are God’s hands and feet.

When I pray “your will be done on earth,” I am praying that God’s will for peace and justice and compassion be manifest in our international relations and governmental actions, in our political discourse and interfaith dialogue, in our houses of worship and in our neighborhoods. Remember, I believe that heaven is where human will coincides with God’s will.

“Give us this day our daily bread…”

This seems a bold request, a kind of “socialist” demand, but where else does our daily bread come from if not from what God has given us? In praying this, I acknowledge that the many ways I am fed—through food, through companions, through wisdom, and more—all come from a divine source.

I also note the allusion to the manna the Hebrews were fed in the wilderness, and how they were only to collect a day’s ration, except on the day before the Sabbath, when they were to collect enough for the next day as well. If they took more than their day’s quota, whether out of anxiety or greed, it would grow wormy. This challenges us to limit our own consumption to what we really need.

“Forgive us our debts/trespasses/sins as we forgive our debtors/those who trespass/sin against us…”

Given the day and what feels most appropriate, I pray one of these pairings.

“Debts/debtors” reminds me that I owe everything to God, and so I should let go of what I think people “owe” me. “Trespasses/those who trespass” makes me think of the ways I trespass not only on God’s territory but on others’ space. “Sins/sin against us” suggests to me my/our most grievous errors.

God’s forgiveness anticipates my own choice to forgive. I believe if I truly know God’s grace, I will become more gracious, and that as I become more gracious, I will truly know God’s grace.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

In his book The Inner Voice of Love, Henri Nouwen wrote to himself, “The more deeply you live your spiritual life, the easier it will be to discern the difference between living with God and living without God, and the easier  it will be to move away from the places where God is no longer with you” (p 23).

Of course, God is everywhere, but the point of this is that the venues in which I may experience God most clearly, dearly, and nearly (to paraphrase Godspell’s “Day by Day”)

are the places that diminish my desire to yield to temptation to be less than I am created and called to be, or surrender to evil, either my own or the world’s.

“For thine is the kingdom…”

Church tradition rather than Jesus has added these remaining phrases of the Lord’s Prayer (an echo of 1 Chronicles 29:10-13), but I like this final threefold, uplifting “letting go.” The commonwealth is God’s, not ours. We may manifest it, be its citizens, and serve as its instruments of peace, justice, and compassion—but we and it belongs to God.

“…and the power…”

I believe we incorrectly equate power with control. God’s power is love, that which persuades, leads, instructs, invites, and inspires us also to love.

“…and the glory…”

For the Hebrews, this is the glory reflected so brightly on Moses’s face on Mt. Sinai that the people asked him to veil himself. Christians are called rather to unveil that glory, to witness that glory to one another and to all, so that we may “grow from one glory to another.” We may see this glory on a mountaintop, on a cross, in an empty tomb. We may see this glory in a loved one, in a baby, in galaxies billions of light years away. It lifts us up, raises our hopes, magnifies our possibilities.

“…forever. Amen.”

God’s commonwealth, love, and glory give us a taste of the eternal. Our time may be short, but it is a part of God’s time from now on. So be it.

See a related post, “A Pragmatic Guide to Prayer.”

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.