Scripture Hosea 11:1-8
When Israel was a child, I loved them,
and out of Egypt I called my child.
They, the Baals, called to them,
they went out to the Baals;
they sacrificed and to idols,
they offered incense.
Yet it was I who walked toddling Ephraim,
taking them by their arms;
yet they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with human ties,
with bonds of love.
I was to them like those
who lift babies to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.
Sermon
The first three centuries of the Jesus movement were chaotic. There was never one Christianity. People were scattered across the known world, and depending on where they were and whose voices they heard, they believed different things, especially about Jesus. Among some groups, Jesus was believed to be a man, a mortal, who was anointed by God to do all the things he did. In other groups, he was believed to be divine, but not one with God, and subservient to God the Creator. In still others he was believed to be, somehow, fully divine AND fully human. There was no single understanding of who Jesus was.
There were writers, people like Paul, who believed himself to be an apostle, though one “untimely born.” But there were also writers such as Marcion, founder of the Marcionites, who believed that the God of Jesus and the God of the Old Testament were two different gods entirely. There were the Ebionites (whose name means “the poor ones”). They were adoptionists, meaning: Jesus was human, but God adopted him and made him divine. They rejected Paul completely, and, instead, believed that Jesus’ brother, James, was the true leader of the early church.
Then, Constantine came along. Emperor of the Roman Empire, he decided, rather late in the game, to become a Christian, but he really, really wanted Christians to get their acts together and come to some agreement as to what exactly were their essential tenets of faith. His motives were mixed. He badly wanted the Roman Empire to be united: one God, one creed, and one church. In the year 325 he called a council of 300 bishops, the Council of Nicaea, and set them to one task: he wanted them to write a creed. And they did! In it, they declared Jesus fully divine, the Son of God, at one with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and proclaimed them to be God in one substance and three persons. The doctrine of the Trinity was, not exactly born, but, for the first time, codified. (It had been kicking around Christian spaces since late in the first century.) Some have described the Trinity this way: That God is one, tells us what God is; that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, tells us who God is.
Once the creed emerged from the council, all other interpretations of God, Jesus, and Spirit were banished. Bishops who had refused to sign onto the creed were exiled. Writings showing other understandings were forbidden, and being found in possession of those writings was a crime.
Other voices, many written as early as those whose theology won the day, were buried, lost, destroyed, or, in the case of the Nag Hammadi library, also known as the Gnostic gospels, were placed in clay pots and buried in a field in Egypt, waiting for a local farmer to find and unearth them in the 20th century. Included in this treasure trove were The Dialog of the Saviour, which includes lengthy conversations between Jesus and Mary Magdalene,[i] and the Gospel of Thomas, which includes a controversial statement by Jesus. When the male disciples try to have Magdalene expelled from a gathering because she is a woman, Jesus says,
Behold, I shall lead her, that I may make her male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Thomas, saying 114).[ii]
Also found in these writings was the Gospel of Philip, where we read:
There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, who was called his companion. His sister, his mother and his companion were each a Mary.[iii]
In other words, among these long-hidden writings, we find at least three texts where Mary Magdalene is shown to be an important member of Jesus’ inner circle. The writings banned by the early church included much that argued for women’s parity with men as disciples.
The original formula of Trinity is this: God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or as theologian Sandra Schneiders described it, two men and a bird. And for two millennia, this has held: the central language we know for the Trinity is male. Even the Spirit, which in Greek is a neutral noun and in Hebrew is a feminine noun, is often given masculine pronouns. In an interview and in her writing, Schneiders asked the question: Why has the church limited the language we use for so long, when scripture itself offers us the images of God as diverse as mother, father, friend, sower, baker, lamb, gate, water, wind, fire, and light?[iv] In fact, the solidification of our understanding of God as being male when our theology reminds us that God is pure spirit has resulted in harm to women throughout the ages, harm that still carries forward to our day. To quote another theologian, Mary Daly, “If God is male, then male is God.”[v]
Scripture offers us many images of God as a woman and as a mother in both the Old and New Testaments. In our passage from the prophet Hosea, God is reflecting on God’s relationship with her covenant people, Israel. Here, God uses language describing her role in caring for them as that of a mother. To fully understand this passage, we need to remember that God is meditating on the Exodus, the time when God, through Moses, let the people out of enslavement and into freedom.
When Israel was a child, I loved them,
and out of Egypt I called my child.
The first thing a mother gives her child is life, but a close second is love. In fact, most women will have the experience of loving the child in her womb from the moment she realizes she is carrying them. Here, God has given Israel, personified as her child, life, but it is through her love that God calls her children out of Egypt and into liberation. But almost as soon as they are free, the people turn to an idol, the golden calf constructed by Aaron’s orders while Moses was on Mount Sinai, face to face with God. Throughout the history told in the first five books of the Old Testament, the pagan gods, here called the “Baals,” call to the people again and again.
They, the Baals, called to them,
they went out to the Baals;
they sacrificed, and to idols,
they offered incense.
In response, God expresses, not anger—not at first, anyway—but sadness. She reminisces. Here, she mentions Ephraim, not an individual, but one of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Yet it was I who walked toddling Ephraim,
taking them by their arms;
yet they did not know that I healed them.
God is a mother, teaching her beloved child to walk. (In the Hebrew, it reads, literally, “I taught feet”!) She takes Ephraim by the arms to help them keep their balance, yet—God’s people don’t know it is God who is caring for them.
The last portion of our passage speaks especially strongly to the Exodus experience.
I led them with human ties… which is to say, leading with the connection of parent and child…
with bonds of love… and not bonds made of chains.
I was to them like those
who lift babies to their cheeks.
Another translation of that last sentence is,
I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws…
…which is very different.
It all comes down to different versions of the ancient texts, and the words “yoke” and “infant.” Yoke in Hebrew is spelled with letters equivalent to: A L. Infant is spelled A L L.
Both are correct. And both show a loving gesture, whether it is lifting up a child gently to nuzzle their face OR to remove a heavy burden that has been weighing one down.
The last line of our passage, “I bent down to them and fed them,” is the first task of a new mother, often feeding the infant from her own body. And I admit, all the actions in this passage are the actions of a loving parent—mother or father. The central message isn’t gender, but love.
The ancient church has handed down to us a mysterious concept that I, personally, keep messing up, which I, from day to day, wonder about and wonder at. Gone are the days when I can say, “Well, the different members of the Trinity are just God showing up for us in different ways…” because I have learned that it turns out to be a heresy called “modalism.” But the heart of the Trinity remains the loving heart of God, giving us life, and liberation, and love. In fact, that is another possible formula for the Trinity: Life, Liberation, and Love.[vi] We can struggle with it. We can wonder about it. We can wonder at it. But our best bet might be to welcome it, to let dwell deeply us, so that we can see all the ways God has, in fact, shown up for us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] The Dialogue of the Saviour, circa 150 CE, Wikipedia.
[ii] Gospel of Thomas, circa 100 CE, Wikipedia.
[iii] Gospel of Philip, circa 200 CE, Wikipedia.
[iv] U. S. Catholic, “God is more than two men and a bird,” Interview with Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, I. H. M., May, 1990.
[v] Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Towards a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press,1985), 40.
[vi] Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year A (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), 351.