Second Sunday after Christmas

January 4, 2009

Luke 2:41-52

Now the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem every year for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. In the name of God Almighty: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Last Sunday afternoon I went up the river to join Paige and Jennifer as they visited with Uncle Darren at Grandma Patty’s house. At 5:45 pm I drove back to town to pick up Elizabeth at Presby Youth Group. Just 15 minutes earlier the mountainside had slid down in a river of mud and closed the road. I was stuck with no way around while Elizabeth was at Pastor David’s house. And that was the way it stayed for over 16 hours. Not unlike Mary and Joseph being inadvertently separated from Jesus, Paige and I were separated from Elizabeth. Of course, I knew full well where Elizabeth was, while Jesus’ whereabouts were unknown. However, I had a concern that Joseph and Mary didn’t have—Pastor David’s son was back from college and staying in the same house as Elizabeth that night. Don’t get me wrong, Tim is a good kid and I trust Elizabeth. But you never know when the whole PK thing might boil over, especially when it is PK times two (plus I’ve heard some stories about those Presbies).

The point of my story and perhaps the point of the Gospel lesson is that parents worry. Parents love their children with unconditional love in a way that is only rivaled by God’s love for each individual person on the face of the earth.

I was talking with someone earlier this week about that The Shack book that I’ve been telling you about. I asked him if he had spotted some heresy in the book when he had read it. (Understand that I’m so full of heresy that my detector is broken [sarcasm intended].) He said that, indeed, the book is chocked full of heresy. “For instance?” I asked. He didn’t want to offend me so I had to coax him to get into the whole “God looks like Oprah” thing. Anyway, his contention is that since God is referred to as Father in Scripture and all of the pronouns for God are “He” and “Him” that God must be primarily masculine in nature. I’ve heard added to that argument that God only made Adam in his image. After all, Eve was made from Adam’s rib and only so that she could be Adam’s helper.

My response is that all the references to “God the Father” have been misread as a gender assignment by a whole lot of people. This isn’t a gender assignment. God has no gender. Or, maybe you could say that God contains all gender, kind of like how the color white contains and reflects all colors. Either way, God is neither male nor female. God is God. The reference to God as Father is not a reference to gender but a reference to role. God is in the role of the Ultimate Parent, with all of the characteristics that the Perfect Parent would have: doting, proud, hopeful, expectant without ever being disappointed in us. We could add to the list without too much mental strain all of the attributes we wish we had as parents ourselves.

There are Episcopal Churches that have made a subtle change to our liturgy that reinforces God’s transcendence over gender. They do not use male pronouns for God. They replace the words “he” and “his” with “God” and “God’s.” For instance, in the opening sentences of our service, I say, “Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” And the congregation would respond, “And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and forever” instead of “blessed be his kingdom.”

I’m not advocating that we as a congregation adopt this unsanctioned change to the Prayer Book. That might get me in trouble with the establishment. However, if anyone thinks that pronouns for God are a bad idea, then their ideals can lead him or her to redact the Prayer Book in whatever non-pronoun way they see fit.

God the Father is a description of the role as parent that God wants to play in our lives. Just because our earthly fathers are male does not mean that our Heavenly Father is. And if certain members of the Body of Christ view that statement as heresy, then so be it. But, sadly, I think that they are making a terrible mistake by casting God in their own image rather than the way it really happened: God forming all of humanity, male and female, in God’s image, the image of eternal love not unlike the love a parent has for a child.

==Amen==