God Our Mother

Thoughts on the gender-full nature of God for Mother's Day

One of the most persistent myths I find myself unraveling in Christian conversations is the idea that God is a man.

And I don't mean that people think Jesus Christ is truly God and truly human (this is true!). I mean that, at least once a day on TikTok or Instagram or even just in my real life bopping around town and talking to people, I hear people talk about God as male. 

Usually, this response is bandied about after I have referred to God using she/her pronouns, or when I say that God is bigger than any human construction of human limits -- including gender. People tend to say these few things: "God is our Father, therefore, God is a man;" or: "Jesus was a man and called God 'He,' therefore, God is a man."

Y'all. This is baffling.

And — this is actually heretical theology, because even the most ancient, orthodox, conservative, Biblically-literalist reads of God say God is bigger than human beings.

Which means God cannot be bound to something as limiting as a human construct, like gender, much as God cannot be white, or tall, or hairy.

In fact, the most repeated image and description of God in the Bible is God appearing as a storming, dark cloud (especially in the book of Exodus). Which is a decidedly non-anthropomorphic (aka: non-human) image. 

But this myth persists.

Partially, I think this is because we ascribe divine power onto things that humans see as powerful. In a patriarchal world, where masculinity is might and we are still working for gender equality, we see men in positions of power. And it’s tempting to say: this is God’s power. Or it’s tempting to say: whatever we feel is powerful must be what God’s power looks and feels like. In 1973, the theologian Mary Daly said “if God is male, then the male is God.” Even when we do consciously unravel the idea that using male pronouns for God does not mean God is literally a man, there are consequences to single-pronoun use for our beyond-gender God. 

And while I obviously am a fan of using the Trinitatian formula – saying, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” this is why in our prayers and in my sermons you hear me use all pronouns for God. Because even Our Father calls himself a mother, a woman in labor, a storm cloud, a mother hen, and more. Father isn’t a gendered term, actually, but a relationship.

This is why I’m Father Lizzie, and a cis woman at the same time.

As we are approaching Mother’s Day I think it especially appropriate to reflect on the images we have in the Bible where God is described not only with feminine language, but explicitly as our mother.

Here are just a few of my personal favorite passages:
 

Hosea 11:3-4 (CEB) God as mother caring for infants: 

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk;

        I took them up in my arms,

        but they did not know that I healed them.

I led them

        with bands of human kindness,

        with cords of love.

    I treated them like those

        who lift infants to their cheeks;

        I bent down to them and fed them

Deuteronomy 32:18 (NIV) God who gives birth

“You deserted the Rock, who fathered you;

    you forgot the God who gave you birth.” 

Isaiah 49:15 (KJV) God compared to a nursing mother

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

…And maybe my most favorite? Is this line that Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 23:37, where Jesus says:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (King James Version). 

I cherish this image of Jesus, gathering us, her wild and wearisome brood, under her wings.

Tucking us in gently and perhaps sometimes a bit forcefully, wrangling us into a dark and warm sanctuary to rest. The way I sometimes wrestle my overtired toddler to sleep. The way I sometimes need Jesus to trip me up so I find myself laying down instead of running on the endless rat race I use to measure my self worth.

Jesus is our Mother in the best sense. Not in a replacement or enshrining of women only being worthy by being mothers — but by being the God who formed us and who wipes our chins, chortling to Herself at our mischief.

Jesus is our Mother in our mothers,

and Jesus is our Mother when our own mothers are not there,

and Jesus is our Mother when our own mothers have failed us.

And that is good news indeed.