God of our ancestors, Lord of mercy, you who have made all things by your word, with you is wisdom who knows your works and was present when you made the world. Send her forth from your holy heavens and from your glorious throne dispatch her, that she may be with us and work with us, that we may know what is your pleasure." I was delighted when I saw what the readings for Eucharist were today, with that Ezekiel passage with the waters of life, the river, you know, which echoes Genesis 1 and Sirach 24. wisdom, and then the water that stirred up in John 5, which kind of suggests at least the spirit and baptism and that whole baptism into Jesus' death, so I thought, yes. I know it, I know it.

[01:06]

One of our sisters, one time, one of our older sisters read that reading and I don't know how she did it. We all, I mean everybody's heard it, but she had us, you know, with this waiting and it was kind of like we're all sitting on the edge of our chairs, like, what's going to happen next? Amazing. What I'd like to look at this morning, and I apologize to you, one of the readings I had suggested was Colossians 3, and it was supposed to be Colossians 1, but if you read Colossians 3, it's not wasted. But I'm going to talk about Colossians 1. Wisdom teaches us how to be like God. If we go back again to that to that Genesis reading, both to Genesis 1 and 2, human beings are created in the image of God. And then in Genesis 3, there's the temptation to take control of that and to be God without being human. But there's a great desire in us to know how to be like God, because that really is what it means to be fully human, is to be in the image of God.

[02:16]

It's wisdom, really, the wisdom of God who teaches us how to do this. And so, first of all, I'd like to look at the third Old Testament text about who wisdom is. We looked at Proverbs 8 and Sirach 24, and I'd like to look at Wisdom 7, and then begin to look at the New Testament texts about Jesus' wisdom. So, that's my general direction. Wisdom 7 is probably the most ecstatic hymn about the Wisdom Woman. The author of Wisdom 7 simply cannot say enough. And of course, this author has the advantage of or takes advantage of the Greek language and uses all the vocabulary that he knows, I'm assuming he's

[03:21]

male, all the vocabulary that he knows. Actually, this book is credited in all of Greek literature, secular Greek literature as well as biblical, as being the coiner of several Greek words that are used first in this book and then show up in the Greek language consistently. This author has a great vocabulary at his command, and he's pulling it all together to tell us how wonderful wisdom is. And he begins in verse 22 by listing 21 adjectives. You know, what more could you have? A perfect number times a perfect number. Three times seven. So this is as good as it gets. In her is a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, agile, clear, unstained, certain, not baneful, loving the good, keen, unhampered,

[04:28]

beneficent, kindly, firm, secure, tranquil, all-powerful, all-seeing, and pervading all spirits, though they be intelligent, pure, and very subtle." What else can you say? What you're supposed to say at the end of that list is, wow. But he goes on, for wisdom is mobile beyond all motion, and she penetrates and pervades all things by reason of her purity. So by this time you should be asking the question, who is this? Who, of whom you can say all these things, all powerful, all seeing, beneficent, kindly, firm, secure, mobile beyond motion, penetrating all things. But we haven't got enough yet. Five statements come in the next two verses.

[05:32]

She is an aura of the might of God. And so she is the outpouring of God's power. She is a pure effusion of the glory of the Almighty. The Almighty has the glory, but she is the way we experience it. Therefore, nothing that is solid enters into her, because she is the resurgence of eternal light. God is the light. She is the shining. Now, if you can separate the light from the shining, you can separate God from wisdom. She is the spotless mirror of the power of God. In the Old Testament, there is the tradition that you cannot look at God and live, that if you see God, you will die. Now, it always kind of intrigues me that every time that's mentioned, it's somebody who says, I saw God and I didn't die.

[06:38]

So we don't have any record of somebody seeing God and dying. But you have that notion that to look at God is something that is completely beyond the power of human beings to endure. It's just too much for us. But wisdom is the spotless mirror of the power of God. It makes me think of the way we deal with eclipses. You know, we don't do that so much with mirrors. Mirrors still would be too much for us, but we do it with reflection. you know how you get the little hole in the piece of paper and you watch the eclipse because if you look at the sun itself you'll be blinded so how do we see God? it's through this spotless mirror and a spotless mirror has no distortion so she's the spotless mirror of the power of God and then the final statement in these two verses she is the image of God's goodness so

[07:40]

God is the light. She is the shining. God has the glory. She is the outpouring. She's the mirror of the power of God. She's the image of God. By now you should really be saying, wow. And she who is one can do all things and renews everything while herself perduing. Passing into holy souls from age to age, she produces friends of God and prophets. For there is not God loves, be it not one who dwells with wisdom. She is fairer than the sun. She surpasses every constellation of the stars. Compared to light, she takes precedence. For that, indeed, night supplants. But wickedness prevails not over wisdom. Indeed, she reaches from end to end mightily and governs all things well. She can do all things.

[08:45]

She renews everything. She's fairer than the sun and the stars and better than light. And she governs all things well. Who is this? Who is it that you can say is one and can do all things? Of whom can you say that? Of whom can you say mobile beyond all motion or better than light? I only know one answer. The only answer I know is God. She is, and the text says this, she is an image of God. This is one of the ways of talking about God. Now, Proverbs 8 started us on this road. Sirach 24 moved us a little farther, but it's not until Wisdom 7 that you have this declaration that lists all the attributes that you can predicate of God.

[09:53]

Who is this wisdom woman? Is this not an image of God? Now, of course, we have to remember we're still in the Old Testament, and so we don't have a notion of Trinity. We can't really think about Trinity in the Old Testament. It's going to be centuries before we get to that concept, even though this is very late. But this sets us up, at least for some of that idea, And if we go back and start thinking about all of these texts, as the breath of God, wisdom as what comes forth from the mouth of God in Sirach 24, wisdom as the word, wisdom as the breath of God. You've got the beginnings of a notion of wisdom as the spirit, of wisdom as God's word.

[10:56]

You have wisdom present at creation, the artificer of creation, the mother of all things, as the author Wisdom says in verse 12, the one who is the designer of creation. So as you begin to put all those things together, you can see the images that we talk about when we talk about the Trinity. The image of the Word of God, the image of the Spirit, the image of the Creator. Wisdom is a way of talking about God. I'm just going to let that sit for a minute. While I'm letting it sit, there's a book by Elizabeth Johnson that's downstairs in your bookstore, She Who Is, which is probably the best explication of this that I have read anyway.

[12:03]

And one of, I'm going to say this again, she says it about 15 times, one of the things that she says, she quotes Saint Augustine, and she says, we have to remember that whatever we say of God is incomplete. Augustine says, when we have understood, what we have understood is not God. So we keep seeking understanding. We have this infinite capacity for truth. We keep looking for it, but the one who eats of me will hunger still. When we have understood, what we have understood is not God. God is always greater than our understanding, always greater than our imagination. So we need as many ways to talk about God as we can possibly collect in order to at least nourish all of our imagination about God. But this is God as wisdom, the wisdom of God as an image of God.

[13:09]

Can't separate wisdom from God any more than we can separate the shining from the light. Keeping that in mind, there's a text in Well, before I, yeah, I'm going to keep going with this. There's a text in Proverbs, at the end of Proverbs, that begins, when one finds a valiant woman, her value is far beyond pearls. And then it goes on with all the wonderful things she does. She obtains wool and flax, she makes cloths, she secures provisions, she gets up at night, distributes food, and so on. It's a great, it's a great text about the ideal wife. Now this is at the end of Proverbs. Remember the figure that we had at the beginning of Proverbs. We had two female figures at the beginning of Proverbs. We had wisdom and folly. The young man reading Proverbs is being encouraged and exhorted and pushed, literally, to take wisdom's offer, not folly's offer.

[14:22]

He's encouraged to court wisdom, to camp under her window, to sing her songs, to be at her gates, to take her into his house. So he's really being encouraged in this image to take wisdom as a wife. What's happening at the end of Proverbs then, the closing of this, is what is it like if you take wisdom into your house as your wife? This is a portrayal of wisdom as wife. You have wisdom as prophet and wisdom as hostess offering the banquet in the beginning of the book, and now you have wisdom as wife at the end of the book. There are a couple of little suggestions of that, besides the structure of the book, in the text itself. The second last verse, verse 30, says, charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting. And then, you know, in Hebrew you stack up words next to each other and we keep filling in the blanks.

[15:27]

Well, literally in Hebrew you have the woman, fear of the Lord is to be praised. It's just three words. The woman, fear of the Lord is to be praised. Now, we have translated that as the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. But an equally legitimate, in fact, an easier translation is the woman who is fear of the Lord, is to be praised. Proverbs begins with, the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. Proverbs ends with the description of the woman who is fear of the Lord. There's another echo which I think reaches a little farther. This is a little bit of, I'm not sure I'd take this one, but in verse 27, she watches the conduct of her household in Hebrew. The first word of that verse is sopia, which echoes the Greek Sophia. Is that chance?

[16:32]

I don't know. It might be. I wouldn't base my whole argument on that one. But there's a pretty general scholarly consensus now that this is the Wisdom Woman. Now, if the Wisdom Woman is a way of talking about God, this is a portrayal of God in the image of the ideal wife. Okay, so just stretch your imaginations just a little bit. Probably. Now, and I'm unrepentant if that's what it's doing. If wisdom is the image of God the mirror of God, the aura of God's might, the shining of God's light, the breath of God, the word of God.

[17:40]

Then when we get to the New Testament, it's really not surprising that the New Testament authors begin to tell us that that's a way to look at Christ. Who is Christ? Christ is the Word of God. Christ is the perfect image of God. And so Christ is the wisdom of God. In 1 Corinthians, the first two chapters, Paul says that directly, that Christ is the wisdom of God. In the Gospel of John, the beginning of that Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through Him, and without Him nothing came to be. What came to be through Him was life, and this life was the light of the human race.

[18:42]

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. That's an echo of those wisdom texts in Proverbs 8 and Sirach 24 and Wisdom 7. In the beginning is the Word. Who is wisdom? And it's through the Word, through wisdom, that all things come to be in those texts. Wisdom is better than light and the darkness does not overcome it in Wisdom 7. So the author of the prologue of John has over here on the corner of his desk somewhere Proverbs 8, Sirach 24, Wisdom 7, and is using those images to say, this is wisdom who was present at the beginning. Now the new news, of course, in this chapter, The great, well, the good news in this chapter comes in verse 14. And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.

[19:44]

Now there's Surah 24. And we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth. And then later it says, while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God who is at the Father's side, has revealed Him. The Word of God, the Wisdom of God, becomes incarnate in Jesus. Jesus is the incarnate Wisdom of God. The One who reveals what God looks like, being the perfect image, the perfect mirror, the one who pitches a tent among us, is incarnate wisdom, is Jesus.

[20:45]

In Colossians We read, Christ is the image of the invisible God. Now there's your echo of Wisdom 7. The firstborn of all creation. In Proverbs 8, Wisdom says, God begot me at the beginning of his ways. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible, the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through him and for him." Now all those texts talk about creation happening through wisdom. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. So far that could have been right back in those texts about wisdom, but we get some new information here too. He is the head of the body, the church. Okay, so now we've got the gathering that he is the head of the body, the church.

[21:50]

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. So not only the firstborn of all creation, but now the firstborn from the dead. This whole question of death has been a big problem for wisdom until you get to the to the wisdom of Solomon, but now Christ, the wisdom of God, is the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent. If the life of all creation comes through him, then the life after death comes through him, comes through wisdom. For in him all fullness was pleased to dwell, And again, new news, through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross. Now, making peace through the blood of his cross is almost jarring in the midst of all this thinking about wisdom.

[22:53]

But that's the amazing news in the New Testament. That's the amazing news in Christ that wisdom incarnate has taken on all of human experience, reunited us to God. We got separated back there in Genesis 3, and this reconciliation comes through the blood of His cross. They always take these books out of my book. Now take your imaginations back to Genesis 3, back to the story in the garden. If this reconciliation happens through wisdom incarnate, through the blood of his cross, Paul says in the letter to the Philippians, Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.

[24:08]

Now, contrast that with Genesis 3. Those folks in the garden, though they were in the image of God, did regard equality with God as something to be grasped. But Christ Jesus did not. Their problem was that they wanted to, at least Irenaeus says, that they wanted to be God without being willing to be human. Christ, rather, emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness, and found human in appearance. He humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. They wanted to be like God without being willing to be human. Christ, who is incarnate wisdom, came to teach us how to be like God by being human. which goes all the way through obedience, even to death. It's because of this.

[25:11]

Now remember back with Genesis 22, it's because of Abraham's obedience that this begins to be healed. Here is the completion of the healing. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name above every other name, that at the name of Jesus, all creation, every knee should bend, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. How do we arrive at this glory and this glory of union with God and of being like God? It's through being human and being obedient even to death. It's wisdom incarnate who teaches us this. Now, You can take this text, this Philippians 2, and there are several pieces of this I would like to just stop with.

[26:13]

First of all, this regarding equality with God is the original temptation and all temptations. It's the folks in the garden who want to be like God without being willing to be human. The temptation of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, especially in Matthew and Luke, Satan says, if you are the Son of God, do this. You know, it's back to take the power that you have, if you are the Son of God. And of course, you've just had the baptism where the Father says, you are my beloved Son. And then you get the temptation, which is, are you really? If you are the Son of God. It's just like Genesis 1 to 3. Created in the image of God, and then the serpent says, If you do this, you will be like God.

[27:18]

You get to the cross, the passers-by who mock Jesus say, if you are the Son of God, come down from that cross, save yourself. But of course, what happens is that it's precisely by staying on the cross that Jesus gives evidence that he is indeed the Son of God. It's not regarding equality with God something to be grasped, but being willing to be human, becoming obedient even to death on a cross. What I'm going to say next I have combined in my head from Rosemary Houghton and Walter Casper, and I can't undo them anymore, so it's from both of those. They take the transfiguration and say what's happening in the transfiguration is that Jesus has placed absolutely no obstacle

[28:30]

in the way of God. And so God shines through him so completely that to see him is to see God. And of course eventually that's going to lead us to say he is God. But they're saying that there is absolutely no blockage, that he is completely transparent to God, that his will and God's will are so united. that God shines through him. And so we finally begin to say, what you can say of God, you can say of Jesus. And the Transfiguration is an image of that, that shows us the presence of God shining through Jesus. If you go back to Wisdom 7, God is the light and he is the shining. The presence of God simply shining through him because he's totally transparent. Now, I think this is Rosemary Houghton who says that that gives us a real statement about the resurrection because in Jesus there is absolutely no

[29:42]

real resistance to God and so there's nowhere for death to cling. Death simply passes right through because there aren't any rough spots. There's no place that death can hang on. It can't stay. It just goes right through because the presence of God is so completely Jesus' will is so completely united with God's will that life fills him so much and there's no, I have this image of not having sanded something, but there's no rough spot where death can cling and so death simply passes through him and life The transfiguration, because the presence of God shines through him so greatly, is an image of that, of the resurrection. The image of God, the perfect mirror, the shining of God's light.

[30:50]

The first letter to John, of John, says, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands, concerns the Word of Life. For the life was made visible. We have seen it and testified to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and made visible to us. What we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us. For our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing this so that our joy may be complete." This image of God, this shining through of God, and later he says the true light is already shining. And in this letter of John, the next step is in chapter 3.

[32:01]

See what love the Father has bestowed on us, that we may be called children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. We are God's children now. What we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." That's the other side of the arch in terms of the image of God. It's Christ who shows us how to be fully human, Christ who shows us how to be image of God, Christ, who takes us with Him as children of God. And we know that at the end, when it is all revealed, we shall be like Christ, for we shall see Him as He is. And that is to be like God.

[33:06]

I'll let that soak in a minute. I'll do this one first. Now, how do we do this? How do we follow Christ? How do we become like God? How do we learn from Him how to become like God? Obviously, one of the things we're being told is it's not a grasping at equality with God, but it has to do with obedience and it has to do with free, chosen obedience. Benedict's chapter on obedience I think really is a chapter that gives us this image of the transfiguration and this image of Christ as the person through whom God completely shines.

[34:30]

The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience which comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all. And it goes on to say, no sooner did this one hear than he obeyed. And such people as these immediately put aside their own concerns, abandon their own will, lay down whatever they have in hand, leaving it unfinished, and with the ready step of obedience, they follow the voice of authority. So, almost at the same moment as the Master gives the instruction, the disciple quickly puts it into practice in the fear of God, and both actions are completed as one. There is no hindrance. Joan Chidester in her book on the rule says the goal of Benedictine spirituality is to develop a transparent personality. the person through whom God shines so completely, because there's nothing that gets put in the way.

[35:42]

And that's what Benedict is talking about with this obedience, that the command of the Master and the action of the disciple happen as one. You can't even see the gap there. And it's not that the disciple then disappears. The disciple doesn't disappear. It's the disciple who chooses this, because look at all the energy in these words. unhesitating obedience, those who cherish Christ above all. They carry out the order promptly. They immediately put aside their own concerns. They abandon their own will, the ready step of obedience, almost at the same moment, quickly, swiftly. It's love that impels them to pursue everlasting life. They're eager for the narrow road. They choose to live in monasteries and have an abbot over them. People of this resolve unquestionably conform to the saying of the Lord, I have come not to do my own will, but the will of the one who sent me."

[36:49]

Their compliance is not cringing or sluggish or half-hearted. There's no place for death to cling. That cringing and sluggish and half-hearted is just a little bit of introduction of death in there. The obedience is given gladly, God loves a cheerful giver, and guess what? Don't grumble. If there's any death creeping in, it's there, because God sees the grumbling. That's a wonderful chapter, full of energy. Now, Well, two more places and then a couple of comments. The end of chapter 7 gives us almost the same kind of image. After ascending all these steps of humility, the monk will quickly arrive at that perfect love of God which casts out fear. Through this love, all that he once performed with dread, he will now begin to observe without effort, as though naturally,

[37:58]

from habit, no longer out of fear of hell, but out of love for Christ, good habit, and delight in virtue." And at the end of the prologue, we get all this about preparing our hearts and bodies for the battle of obedience, but after we get started, don't be daunted immediately. The road will be narrow at the outset. But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God's commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love." You can't read the Rule of Benedict when you're tired. You've got to have the energy to go with this. And it's the energy that comes from the image of Christ who is the life of God and the image of God among us. Christ who is the wisdom of God, who teaches us how to be like God, which is teaching us how to live. Remember the goal of wisdom is the good life?

[39:02]

And this is the good life. We all live in the real world and that energy is sometimes flagging. What Benedict is saying to us, I think, is that we have to keep coming back to it. Even the chapter on Lent says that, you know, this kind of charging forward should be our daily lives. But since this observance is that a few, you know, that at least during Lent we should kind of charge our batteries again and get going. I have one more thing I want to say about this and then let you pick up any piece of this you want to. We have wisdom in the Old Testament, the wisdom woman as an image of God. It's a way of imaging God in

[40:05]

feminine terms. We have images of God in the Old Testament where we have images in masculine terms, we have neuter images of God. God is a rock, God is a fortress and so on. The wisdom woman is probably the strongest feminine image of God that we have in the Old Testament. And now we know from systematic theology that God is neither male nor female. But to image God, we have to have images. We can't image in the absence. I have a couple of stories to tell you about that and a couple of comments. This is a story that a sister from a community, not my own, told me. But she was telling me about their sister Magdalene. And one day on the Feast of Mary Magdalene, my friend ran into Sister Magdalene.

[41:07]

She said, Happy Name Day. And Sister Magdalene said, oh yeah, you know, she's a good patron for me. She was a sinner. Well, my friend said, my friend's a New Testament scholar, and she said, you know, there's nothing in the New Testament that says that she was a sinner. That's a later tradition. But what we do know is that she was the first witness to the resurrection. All the Gospels tell us that. Okay, they went off, didn't think about it. A couple years later, July 22nd, my friend runs into Sister Magdalene. She says, Happy Name Day. Magdalene said, yes. And do you know that she was the first witness to the resurrection? The way we imagine The figures in Scripture and the way we imagine God has a lot to do with the way we imagine ourselves, with the way we image ourselves. Imagination is really important. And in fact, that's one of the greatest gifts of Scripture.

[42:10]

It gives us this wonderful breadth of images. The Psalms are so rich. My other story is About myself, about eight or nine years ago, my editors and my students were all telling me that I had to do something about my God language, and I'm still working on that. Because I consistently used only masculine terms for God, and I was beginning to be edited out for one thing, and my students were beginning to complain. So I thought, you know, the only way I'm ever going to change my language is to change my imagination. So I made a Lenten resolution. I believe in creative Lenten resolutions. I made a Lenten resolution that every time I prayed, whether it was in community prayer or my own Lectio or whatever, that I would make a deliberate effort to image God in feminine terms.

[43:10]

I knew I had the masculine images, and so I thought, well, you know, I'll supplement. So all through Lent, I did that. And it was, that's really hard if you take the texts we've got, you know, it's kind of hard, but I kept working on it. Good Friday came, and we have a Way of the Cross that goes down the hill to our cemetery. And I was making the way of the cross, and I had gotten kind of in the habit of thinking about God in feminine terms. And as I was going down the hill, I kept thinking of God in relationship to Jesus as feminine. And I couldn't bear it. I really couldn't. It was a real revelation to me of the heartbreak of God, in a sense, in the Passion, that I had never seen with the image of God as Father. Now, I certainly haven't given up the image of God as Father, but I have simply stretched my imagination to add the image of God as Mother.

[44:12]

All God language is metaphorical. There is no God language that completely captures God. We simply don't have that kind of capability. If we have understood, what we have understood is not God. And so we need all the imagination we have. We are told at the beginning of Genesis that God created human beings in the divine image. Male and female, God created them. That all human beings are in the image of God. And you know, Israel is forbidden images. The only images of God, this is scary, the only images of God they have is each other. And so the best images of God we have are the folks sitting in this room. The wisdom woman is an image of God. Christ, of course, is the perfect image of God. Now we've got a gender change there.

[45:15]

But we need to remember that that's the whole thing. And if we go on in the New Testament, we read that we are all members of the body of Christ. And so the whole Christ, head and members, is like the creation of humanity in Genesis 1, male and female in the image of God. Now, Jesus, of course, was male. But if we are all part of the body of Christ and we are all part of the image of God, then we need to be able to use all the images we can of God. I think the wisdom woman particularly is given to us so that as well as imaging God as father and Christ as brother and lover, that we can also image God as mother and sister and friend.

[46:19]

One more note, this is a footnote. Luke 15, we had that Gospel Sunday. You know, there are a couple of parables before that. There's the one of the lost sheep and the one of the lost coin before the prodigal son. Of course, all three of those image God. You have God as the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep. You have God as the housewife who sweeps the house and looks for the coin. And you have God as the father who welcomes the lost son back. And I have a friend who says, you know, we've got lots of churches dedicated to the Good Shepherd, but we have yet to dedicate one to the Good Housewife. So, just ponder that. Okay. Churches dedicate to Our Lady. Right, but she is not God. I know, but she didn't expect it. No, I know. I know. Yeah. Right. Oh, we've got, yeah, we have a lot of those.

[47:26]

And we've, we've done that kind of as a, as a substitute, but we, we really haven't given ourselves the permission or stretched our imaginations enough to, to look at the feminine images of God that we've given, that were given already in scripture. I think. Now that's a judgment. There are a lot of problems with that. That's right. physically strong, but that's always masculine. And that the masculine cannot unconditional tenderness and love and affection. You have in the present-day society of women who destroy their children.

[48:27]

They die now for whatever reason. They've got people who go to abortion mills. Well, I saw you there. I don't have the answer. Oh, I don't either. I don't either. I agree with you completely. Right. Right. I agree. And I think that's absolutely true, that the stereotyping and the denying of all human qualities to all human beings is part of this problem. I agree with you. I don't have any problem with that. The fact is that they're complimentary.

[49:33]

And it doesn't mean... Thank God. We have to take on the role of the priest of the altar. It doesn't mean that. By that fact, they're even less significant in the eyes of the Lord God. That's right. After all, the post-Jewish name, as we, as Catholics, identify with, it's the closest to God is Mary, our mother. After Jesus. Yeah. Well, Jesus is God. Yeah, but he's also human. Yeah, but he's also human. Yeah. Yeah, but you're right. You're right. I mean, Mary is totally human. She's not divine. Right. She's not an infinity. Right. But the humanity of Jesus is totally different. I don't understand that father, but I mean that's what bothers a lot of people. Emphasizing the fact that the humanity of Christ, and that's fine, but you can't ignore his divinity. So he's totally different.

[50:35]

from the rest of us, in that sense. Yeah, we have a hard time with that, with that Chalcedonian doctrine. We either are emphasizing Christ's humanity or divinity. We have a hard time holding it together. I have, I had a student from India who had never encountered Christianity until he came to the college. He was a physics student and I was teaching Christology and I got to the point of Chalcedon and I said, you know, Jesus is 100% human and 100% divine. And he whammed his pen down and he said, that's impossible. I said, exactly my point. But it's still true. What I'm pleading for is the recognition that all of us are in the image of God. I know. I know. But sometimes it gets lost. So it's possible to image God then both in masculine and in feminine terms. That's my plea.

[51:37]

That we're all created in the image of God and therefore that that it's possible for each of us to image God, none of us are complete as an image of God, we know that for sure, but that if we're all created in the image of God then it's possible to image God in both masculine and feminine terms. That's basically what I'm saying and that the wisdom woman in the Old Testament is probably one of the the strongest biblical things we have that takes us there. Now, believe me, I struggle with this too. You know, I grew up in the same church you all did. So I think, and I think it really is a challenge for us, but I think it's a significant challenge

[52:44]

Sister, how do you go about this exercise of the feminine aspect of God, especially taking account of the best, strongest image that we have of Him that strikes being so masculine? Right. Oh, right. Well, and I think that's certainly true. I think you can't deny that Jesus is the perfect image of God. You know, I'm fine with that. But I think if you do, well, part of what we do with all images of God, I think if we remember that they're all metaphorical. is that we take what we know of God and what we've been given as revelation, and we keep lining it up with our experience. And that's kind of what metaphor does, is juxtapose two things.

[53:51]

And you know that metaphor always has a gap, that it's not... There never is a total identification in metaphor. But when we image God as Father, we have an image of what we think fatherhood is and what a good father is. And those of us who were fortunate enough to have good fathers, you know, have a wonderful image that we can begin with. We know our fathers weren't God, but we at least have a start. And so then we think of God as father and we think, okay, if you take those qualities and, you know, make them astronomically greater because it's God, then that's what you have as an image of God as Father. Now the same thing is true of Mother. You know, to look at God as Mother, we have the same kind of possibility of comparison. And it really, as I've been thinking about this, now some of this comes out of, all of it comes out of my own experience,

[54:59]

Some of the strongest images of God and some of the strongest revelations of God and God's care for me and God's love for me have come through the sisters in my own community. I cannot deny that for me they have provided a real image of what God is like. Now again, not complete, and again, you know, there are days that I could bop most of them on the head, but they have really given me a sense of the goodness and the care and all of that of God. As well as a lot of men I have, you know, who have been wonderful in my life. So I guess what I'm saying is that we've limited, I think, our imaginations too much. And I would not throw out any images.

[56:03]

Oh, there was one other thing I was going to tell you. I believe in keeping all the images we've got. I don't want to lose any. When we were translating, we got a lot of letters about using Lord, and we had some real struggles trying to decide what to do, because Lord has a masculine sense, and a lot of people were seeing it as a dominating sense. Well, and we didn't want to give it up because we've got Philippians 2 with Jesus Christ is Lord, we've got the whole thing with Yahweh being, you know, and then Adonai and the translation is Lord. We thought it carried too much theological freight. We also discovered that black women were writing to us and saying, don't give up Lord. So, you know, it wasn't an across-the-board issue either. And what we did was go through the text, and this is what you're saying about the stereotyping.

[57:07]

We went through the Psalm text and pulled out everywhere where it says Lord. And you find the Lord cares for the poor. The Lord supports the widow. The Lord feeds the hungry. And we thought, these aren't dominating images. And so we decided to keep Lord and simply keep redeeming the image and saying, you know, we've imaged that too narrowly, too, that all these qualities are characteristics of God and all with Lord as the subject. So it cuts both ways, you know. But don't you think that the standard explanation of the Pope for not having a woman ordained as a priest, like God had only male disciples, just adds to this masculine world. It makes it difficult for a woman to think of God as female too.

[58:08]

Yeah, I think it does. I don't want to get into the whole ordination question, and I'm certainly not interested in being ordained. I have enough problems. I don't need that, too. I mean, I think that is a problem, and I think it is connected. I think both that issue and the issue of language and translations are connected to this question of image of God. You know, are women really created in the image of God? I had a young woman in class, ripe old age of 18, who wrote a reflection paper for me and she said, I was really glad when you said that in Genesis, when it says, in my Bible, God created man in the divine image, that it meant me too. She said, I always just thought the Bible meant what it said, that God created man and I didn't know it meant women too. And I thought, you know, that's terrible that she got to be 18 without thinking she was in the image of God.

[59:11]

But I really think the heart of it is, are we all in the image of God or not? And wherever that goes after that is fine with me. But I think I'm in the image of God, as well as you all. And I don't think you're telling me I'm not. I'm not hearing that either. But it's just a way of, I mean, it's something I think we, it's a challenge in our church today. It seems that the stereotype was mentioned, but like in the shepherd, you should talk about the image of a shepherd. To be a shepherd, you need all the females. You have to cuddle them. And you probably know lots more about this than I do. Yeah. Mm-hmm. [...] All right. Mm-hmm. [...] Uh-huh.

[60:29]

Masculine name. Well, and that isn't even true because you've got women shepherds all through the Old Testament as well as men. But I agree with you completely that I think we have limited the masculine image. You know, I think that's a terrible loss. Some of the most gentle people that I have ever known have been, or have been, still are, I suppose, are men. You know, I know that's true. And my father was a very tender man. So I, you know, I really do believe that. My mother was a very strong woman, you know, and I think strength can be equally in women. We may exercise it differently. I live with a sister who, for five years, worked for the Atchison Fire Department. She was an EMT, and the only way you can be on the ambulance in Atchison is to be a firefighter. And I learned to stop saying fireman and say firefighter because she wasn't a fireman.

[61:36]

And I didn't want to call her a firewoman. And she said, you know, there are some things I can't do that the men can do. There are some things that physically she's really slight. But she said, there are some things that I can do better than they can do. And between them, it really, the department since has hired several other women because they have said that the combination is really a much better, gives them a much better fire department than having all of one or all of another, you know. I just think, I think there's a wholeness that we have to keep collecting. without denying any of the gifts of any of us. And it's time to quit, but... So anyway... I want to write some more on reflections, I know those are too short. Yeah, we're reflecting. Well, I hope I am. When we pondered with God, without being human, it really struck me.

[62:43]

And somewhere along the line, as you were talking, you said something about The only image of God... Whenever I say only, it makes me nervous. What did I say? Well, your images of God come through the people you are very... a lot through the people that you live with. Yeah, not my only images of God, but... Not sure exactly. We can question it. Oh, I know. All of us are created in the image of God, and all I can think of is that the Messiah is in all of us, and we've got to learn how are we willing to become transparent about ourselves and to be able to see the chosen and the other. This was kind of structured, and the fact that Pliny ended up with a poem about the baptism of Jesus and his temptation, the way he became identifiable with God, part of it shows in his going to his death on the cross.

[63:54]

Yeah, and you've got the heart of what I was trying to say, and I think this makes the scandal of the cross really evident to us.

[64:08]

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