SERMON PREACHED AT St JOHN’S EAST BENTLEIGH
(SUNDAY 13th March) 1988
In our series of Lenten study sermons, we have been travelling with our Lord from the dreadful scourging that he received at the hands of Pilate’s henchmen towards the seemingly tragic and utterly lonely death on the cross. Last week Debra [Saffrey] reminded us of the moment when Christ stumbled on his pain-filled journey towards Golgotha. This week we turn our attention in one sense away from Jesus and dwell for a moment instead on that group who remained faithful to him when all others had fled; the band of frightened, sorrowing, but determined women. But in thus turning our attention away from Jesus we shall, I believe, discover new depths – or be reminded of truths we may have forgotten – concerning our Lord.
As I picture that poignant moment near to the end of the
life of Christ I picture also another group of sorrowing but determined women
that I have seen myself, and seen recently. Some of you may have been following
the excellent series Women on Women that has been screened on Channel 2;
last Thursday the documentary “The Fully Ordained Meet Pie” was shown as part
of that series. The documentary covered the fight of women to be ordained, and,
towards the end showed footage of the last General Synod at which the Ordination
of Women to the Priesthood was narrowly defeated in the patriarchal House of Clergy.
As the women left the auditorium weeping and singing “we shall be ordained,” they
must have known all too clearly the pain of the women who remained faithful to
Jesus even on the cross, when all others had fled. We may in the next few
minutes find another connection between these two groups of mourning women.
Legend has it that at one stage, as Jesus staggered beneath
the weight of his cross, a woman who has become known to posterity as “Veronica”
offered her headcloth to Jesus so he could wipe away his sweat and blood. While
there is no biblical evidence for this scene, which has become one of the
fourteen Stations of the Cross, and while fundamentalists might sneer at it, it
is a highly possible incident. Certainly, Luke records another incident where
Jesus turns to a crowd of weeping women following him and says,
Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me,
but weep for yourselves and for your children.
(Luke
23: 27-28)
Just who that group of women were, and whether they were
weeping specifically for the plight of Jesus, or whether for the hideous
spectacle that presented itself each time a criminal was crucified, we cannot
tell. Whatever the case, the compassion of Jesus towards the women is
remarkable. For Jesus lived in a culture that scorned women, a culture that
treated women as property, that divorced women at will, and that remained
terrified of the female body. Jesus turns even in his pain, and has compassion
on the women, as he has done so often in the gospel narrative. It is, it seems,
women who see most clearly into the heart of Jesus. In Mark’s account of the
gospel it is the women who first received the good news of Easter and who are
commissioned to proclaim that news first to the disciples and then to the world.
In terms of modern psychology, we might say that Jesus
appears to have responded to women from the depths of his own femininity. It is
a widely held belief that none of us can claim to be utterly masculine or to be
utterly feminine in our psychological makeup, but hold together within our
psyche elements of both. The Orientals in their mysticism speak of Yin and Yang,
while Jungian psychology speaks of the animus and anima, our
masculine and feminine aspects. It is in a society where we are not able to
hold those opposites in tension within us that we find enormous and subtle evil;
the male dominated culture of ancient Rome, and most of the known ancient world,
is an example of all that can run amok when the balance is lost, and where
creativity, sensitivity and nurturance become forgotten irrelevancies.
But whatever is within Jesus at any point in the gospel
record is within the deepest being of God, Father, Son, and Spirit. We scratch
with great inadequacy to find ways in which to express this truth in words, but
we must in the end affirm the simple truth that if both man and woman are
created in the image of God then the being of God must incorporate both
what we call masculine and what we call feminine. The ancient biblical writers
saw that truth only too clearly.
In my favourite New Testament passage our Lord cries out as
it were with the pain that only a parent can know,
Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and
stoning those who are sent to you. How often would I have gathered your
children together as a hen gathers her brood but you would not!
(Matt. 23: 37)
The same image is frequently used of God the Father in the
Old Testament literature:
How precious is thy steadfast love, oh God!
The children of men take refuge in the shadow of thy
wings.
(Ps. 36:7)
The imagery is feminine – the pain or heartache of
parenthood is certainly within the experience of God, but so too is that
specific experience that Joyce Nicholson refers to as “the heartache of
motherhood.” [[1]]
Some of you may at this point be wondering what I am driving
at, what kind of a statement I am wanting to make about our triune God. I do
not wish to say to you that God is Mother – not exclusively. Jesus, in the Garden
of Gethsemane, cries out in his anguish,
Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee.
(Mark
14: 36)
There can be no doubt that he saw his relationship to God as
an intimate one of Son to Father. But neither do I want us to go away with the
misconception that we may see and speak of our God as exclusively masculine.
God, Father, Son and Spirit, is masculine but is so much more. God, Father, Son
and Spirit, is feminine, but is so much more. God, Father, Son and Spirit, dare
I say it, is androgynous, and is so much more.
The women around Jesus at his otherwise isolated end were
there, I would suggest, precisely because they had discovered in him a kindred
spirit. It is fascinating that mystical-feminist women and men have often
turned to speak of Jesus with great sisterly affection. Many mediaeval mystics
speak of being suckled by the risen, wounded Christ, and the mystical Julian of
Norwich, saint, was probably the first woman to produce a complex theology of
the motherhood of God. We must equally be open to explore that notion.
What, then, has this to do with Lent, and with the journey
of our Lord from the scourging to the cross? I believe that if we read
sensitively and perceptively our gospel we will constantly find our image of
God to be broadening. I am relatively conservative. I do not (yet) want us to
begin addressing our God as mother, though many do, and I too may one day
decide that it is a necessary corrective to our masculine imagery of God. But I
do want us to realize increasingly that the Jesus who we proclaim to the world
reveals to us a God who is the God who gives us birth – and rebirth – and who
is so much more vast than we can ever wholly realize.
And so, as we with Jesus trudge towards Golgotha, let us
realize the significance of the fact that it is the women who are now the only
ones faithful, and that it is precisely the women, despised by society, who
have been most closely touched by Christ-love.
And let us give thanks to our God, Father, Son and Spirit, who
creates, suckles, nurtures and defends us throughout our lives.
Amen.
1 comment:
Thank you Michael you have put it so I can understand and agree with.
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