The Mother of All Wisdom

Easter 6A

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments… those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” This week’s Gospel begins and ends with love, which is only fitting on a Sunday when we remember the self-giving love of mothers.

My friend Leslie Nipps has written a Mother’s Day prayer which reminds me that this loving vocation is shared by many—

We pray in thanksgiving for the divine gift of motherhood in all its many forms; for all mothers; for our own mothers, those living and those who have died; for the mothers who have loved us and for those who fell short of loving us fully; for those who hope to be mothers someday; for all whose yearning to have children has been frustrated; for those mothers who, through death or separation, no longer see their children; and for those among us who have mothered others in need. Lord, for all those who mother, thanks be to God. Amen.

Perhaps ironically, the masculine preferences of our Anglican tradition were on full display last week, if you happened to be watching the coronation of King Charles III. But nobody will ever be able to think of this particular king without remembering the long and fruitful ministry of his mother Queen Elizabeth II. Once upon a time it was common to say that behind every great man was a woman, but Elizabeth modeled a kind of female power that didn’t hide in the background. She not only nurtured her children, but also lived a very public life on her own terms. I give thanks that our generation offers us so many good ways to be a mother, to be parent, and to be a woman regardless of our maternal status.

Jesus said “I will not leave you orphaned,” reminding us of how much we all need good parents. Of any gender. And I would never want to celebrate mother’s day in a way that diminishes the love of fathers. But I do want to point out that the spirit of the feminine was well-represented in passages we just heard from John’s Gospel, if we know what to listen for. Try this translation on for size—

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever. She is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because the world neither sees her nor knows her. You know her, because she abides with you and she will be in you.”

Greek is a gendered language: it’s nouns can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. And the word pneuma, which we translate “spirit”  is in fact a neuter noun. That is to say, the spirit doesn’t have to be male. English Biblical translators have typically masculinized the word in most of our Bibles, but there’s really no good reason to do that unless we are used to thinking in terms of a “woman behind the man” gender hierarchy.

Which was not the case in the Hebrew scriptures, in which Holy Wisdom—a corollary of the Spirit—was portrayed as a woman. “For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness… while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls, and makes them friends of God, and prophets.” We show our love for Wisdom, wrote the author of the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, “through the keeping of her commandments.” Does that sound familiar? If not, let me refresh your memory: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” said Jesus

Hearing these echoes in of Wisdom the Gospel of John is something Biblical scholars have long noticed: there’s even a term for it. Metalepsis is a literary device that shifts figurative speech from one narrative to another, making a familiar character richer in meaning. So when the figure of Lady Wisdom of the Hebrew scriptures reappears in the guise of the Spirit of Jesus, John’s hearers would have been able to imagine God—the same God whom Jesus promised will not leave us orphaned—as having both male and female characteristics.

Of course our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters already know this through their deep devotion to the Virgin Mary. She is the one who did not abandon her suffering son, even at great risk to herself. And because of this, they know she will never leave them orphaned, either. Although she is not God, she serves an icon—a window into the divine nature—through the steadfastness of her love. Through her, the parenthood of God takes on both female and male characteristics. Her human motherhood expands our understanding of the fatherhood of God.

Jesus stated that those who love him will keep his commandments. And the great commandment of Jesus? You know it: “love God, and love our neighbor as ourself.” That means inviting our neighbors to join us in the loving unity between Father, Son, and Spirit, which has aspects both female and male. It’s the echoes of the Wisdom of Solomon, reappearing in John’s Gospel, that invites full inclusion into the family of God without gender preference. “On that day,” Jesus said, “you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” The fluidly-gendered Spirit of Jesus is in all of you, regardless of how you identify or who you love. Biblical love comes to us—and is commanded to us—by figures both male and female, and indeed by those who might identify as both. Which reminds me to wish a Happy Mother’s Day  to the fathers and uncles and grandfathers who play mothering roles in our lives.

“All of us are God’s offspring,” Paul preached in front of the Athenian Areopagus. If you are not familiar with that famous sermon, it’s worth reading the whole 17^th Chapter of Acts carefully. It’s a masterwork of rhetoric, in which Paul defended the fundamentally Jewish mission of Jesus by appealing to Greek sensibilities. He quoted their own philosophers and poets, and paid respect to their own deities, while claiming that the one creator God is actually the object of all worship. And even more radically, he proclaimed that—by virtue of this common parent—we are all brothers and sisters. “From one ancestor,” Paul preached, “he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth.”

I am inclined to think that this is the heart of the hope we celebrate on Mothers Day. Not just that we pause to honor the ministry of good mothers, although we should always do that. Not just that we recognize the many people in our lives who play mothering roles, although we should do that too. It is that we recognize each other as brothers and sisters. Children of a common parent in our triune God. Nothing would make a mother—or a human or divine parent of any genders—happier. As a mother myself (of sometimes of bickering children) I can testify that the love of my children for each other is a gift finer than any bunch of flowers of box of candy. So this Mother’s Day—and every day—let us honor our common parent by loving one another as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.