"...The template of all reality is Trinity : Trinity that is
totally male AND totally female. We are told this in the first chapter of our
Scripture. “Let us create humanity in our
image, male and female they were created.” the creation story says [Genesis 1:26].
Within the Trinity perfect love and are perfectly loved. We come to know who
God is through exchanges of mutual knowing and loving.
We will always run into trouble when we try to name or
describe God with human words. We do not have either genderless or gender
inclusive pronouns to use when talking about people. This is a problem for
people with gender dysphoria so perhaps some will be developed in coming years.
If Wisdom was present in the beginning as John tells us
Christ was; where does Wisdom fit with the Trinity? Was Paul correct in naming
Christ the Wisdom of God and has the Body of Christ been severely limited
through the centuries as it has ignored this? As we heard earlier, Paul saw
Christ as both the Power and the Wisdom of God. If the Church had honoured this
image it may well have come to call Christ, the daughter of God with subsequent
very different outcomes for women through the centuries.
Total exclusion of women in the Church did not occur until
after the Reformation. The Orthodox Church has at least one famous icon that
depicts a member of the Trinity as female. The Roman Catholic Church has always
had Mary, revered as the Mother of Christ. But after the Reformation, neither
men nor women in the Protestant Churches had even one woman to look up to. How
much might our portrayal of God as totally male influence male dominance and
violence against women? It is surely something to prayerfully contemplate."
Rev Julianne Parker
For full sermon see sermons page
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