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Marion Millin  I shall never forget the day I heard a rabbi saying that the Jewish tradition had over seventy different names for ‘God’ including female gender words.
Unpack the issues...
Hebrew words for God include: Shekinah — the “in-dwelling presence” of God, often translated as “glory” (see Exodus 40:34–38) Ruah — the “wind, breath, spirit” of God (see Genesis 1: 1-2) Hokmah — the “wisdom” of God, (see Proverbs chapters 8 and 9)
and feminine metaphors for God such as: a beloved lover (Song of Songs) a mistress of the household with the Israelite people as her maid (see Psalm 123) a nursing mother comforting her child (Isaiah 49:14-16 or Hosea 11:4) giving birth and experiencing labour pains (Isaiah 42:14) — an image which New Testament people like the apostle Paul in Romans 8:22 and the writer of John’s gospel in John 16:21 & 17:1 are also happy to run with.
I found this mind blowing, for I had grown up in a church where God was named entirely as male or in masculine metaphors. I now realise that Jesus, like any Jew today, would have been familiar with this ‘feminine face of God’ which I see reflected in his choice of similes (Matthew 23:37’s mother hen gathering her chicks under her wing) and of his imaging of God’s domain or kingdom as also valuing women’s work (for example, the milling and leavening of flour in Matthew 13:33 or searching for a lost coin in Luke 15:8-10). Indeed it was his radical inclusive behaviour towards women which proved such a problem to the patriarchal culture of his day, which usually treated women as a subset of men’s lives. Jesus, on the other hand, intentionally engaged with those on the margins of society, many of whom were women, valued them as God’s beloved, created equally in the human image that God intended; brothers and sisters together in one family. And yes, there are many clues within the Gospels which show that there were women disciples (Luke 8:1-3) and that many of the significant events in Jesus’ life involved women. These include his first miracle at Cana; his revelation of Messiahship to the Samaritan woman at the well; the priestly anointing of his head by a woman with perfumed oil; women’s faithfulness at the foot of the cross; and Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Lord. Unfortunately, as can be seen in later New Testament epistles and pseudo Pauline writings, the radical implications of Jesus’s egalitarian perspective became submerged as his followers moved out into the extremely patriarchal Graeco-Roman world. The Greek writings of the New Testament show that the Early Christian Church did use feminine gender words and concepts such as Sophia and Numina in referring to the “wisdom” and “indwelling presence” of God but these have become lost in translation. It has long puzzled me as to why members of one half of humanity have tended to transfer images of themselves onto God and claim they are the real and right ones. Of course, the important thing to remember is that God is neither male nor female, but rather a living Being who transcends such categories. So I now quite happily change words in hymns and “he” becomes “God”, and “Father” becomes “Creator” or “Mother” or “Beloved”. As writer Carol Lyn Pearson said when referring to the church and its masculine theological concepts, "for too long we have been living in a Motherless house." In her video-play entitled When Mother Wove the Morning, she brings to life the stories of women through the ages to highlight the issues women are still facing under patriarchal hierarchical ideologies. In one particularly moving passage from the video, Carol Lyn points out that to know oneself at the deepest level is simultaneously to know God. "I know myself and I am female and so I know the femaleness of God, as a man knows God's maleness. And the femaleness of God is wonderful. “It is gentle and it is powerful. Oh, I can imagine God as Mother... I see a hand setting out in the sun a little plant that is a thousand olive trees; I see fingers weaving a cloth that is a universe of flowers, rainbows, oceans, grass, the horns and hooves of cattle; I see a wonderful shoulder rocking a baby that is the millions of us. Let the words `Father' and `Mother' rest on your lips and let their image smile in your heart. For if you cannot, if you can see no femaleness in God, then you will see nothing of God in the Female. But if you can, you will see God in everyone."
Rev Marion Millin is associate general secretary (pastoral) for the Uniting Church Synod of WA.
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