This post is based on a sermon preached two years ago in the midst of General Conference at the United Church of Rogers Park, my home church in Chicago. I originally posted the text below to Facebook following that sermon. In light of the recent decision by the Judicial Council in relation to the upcoming special session of General Conference, it seemed à propos.
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In the liturgical calendar followed by many churches, today is celebrated as Trinity Sunday. This is the day we celebrate the fullness of God as found in the Trinity. Now if you are like me, you grew up with the traditional language for the Trinity - God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (or Spirit). The imagery for the three persons of God was also pretty similar.
God the Father is an old white guy with a long white beard. Jesus is a younger white guy with a brown (or blond) beard. And, if you were lucky, the Holy Spirit is a dove. Of course, with the language of Holy Ghost that was common in my church growing up, I sometimes had the image of something out of Scooby Doo in mind. And, like that show, once you pull off the mask you frequently find another old white guy.
And then comes Wisdom. With all of the traditional male imagery for the Trinity, what do we do with this text from Proverbs on Trinity Sunday?
Proverbs 8:1–4, 22–31
Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out: “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live. The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth— when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
Here we see Wisdom alongside God when the world is created. And Wisdom here is female. In Greek translations, Wisdom becomes Sophia. Sophia, Holy Wisdom, was celebrated in the early church. So if Sophia was with God at the time of creation, where is Sophia in the Trinity?
Now in the Western church, if Wisdom is brought up, she is most often attributed to the Holy Spirit. But in certain Eastern Orthodox traditions, Sophia is the second person of the Trinity that becomes incarnate in Christ. If we compare the first few verses of John to the text from Proverbs, it is easy to see why.
John 1:1-4
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
Very similar language is used to describe both Wisdom and the Word, Sophia and Logos. Wisdom. She. Christ. He.
Some of you may know that the General Conference of The United Methodist Church has been taking place over the last couple of weeks. The General Conference meets every four years to make decisions about the running of the entire denomination. The General Conference makes decisions about the operating budget, decisions on resolutions related to the stance of the church on various issues, and reaffirms or changes the church's official doctrines on various issues.
This year (and for much of the last 40 years), the topic of human sexuality was particularly contentious. Specifically, we as a denomination struggle with the question of homosexuality (and other non-hetero expressions of sexuality). Should we continue to officially exclude and perhaps become more punitive in our treatment of LGBTQI clergy and candidates? Or should we do away with our condemnations and harmful language? We are not the only denomination that is or has been struggling with these questions, but it is one we are still struggling with as a denomination.
But what happens to this conversation if we consider the place of Wisdom? In particular, what do we do with the Orthodox traditions that equate Wisdom with Christ, and how might this reframe the conversation? Wisdom. She. Christ. He.
Perhaps this is a route to get beyond our concern over gender not only in God, but also in our churches and those that lead them. For if the incarnate Christ, both fully human and fully divine, is the incarnation of that aspect of God also known as Wisdom, then Christ is both male and female. What does that do to our convictions and beliefs in regards to LGBTQI issues?
Perhaps this provides us a way forward. If Christ exists outside of the gender binary that we consider normative, why can't the church do the same? After all, in Christ "[t]here is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all...are one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). This text tells us that the divisions we have created no longer matter once we are joined to Christ.
As Christians, then, we are called to embody this message to the rest of the world. If Christ is Sophia, both male and female, and if we once joined to Christ are no longer male and female, then why do we keep insisting on these divisions that we ourselves have made.
By reclaiming the feminine in God, we not only name the feminine as equally divine alongside the masculine. In reclaiming the female aspect of God, we blend female and male in one being, erasing the need for distinct genders in the church.
Wisdom. She. Christ. He.
May we be Christ's Wisdom to the world.