A Textured Mother’s Day

What I said at our faith community on Mother’s Day, 2021

When kids ask questions, they're looking for answers, sure, but what they're really looking for is you. You get to be with them during times of questioning. You get to be with them in times of change. 

And you is better than your answer. 

You know this. Because you know your answers haven't always worked! But when your answer falters or isn't quite adequate or proves to be plain wrong, you get to figure out the next step with them. 

When the children get older, the challenges get more complicated. When friendships go haywire, or outside influences creep in, or when illness wreaks havoc, or the shadow of death looms near, there are many questions to process. It can be overwhelming. At times, it can cause you to think you're doing something wrong. And undoubtedly, there are things you can improve upon, but mostly, problems serve as a particular type of texture, an up and down pattern, the randomness of which creates an opportunity to come together. And "together" is how you're going to do this thing. So, problems are not an indication you're doing something wrong with your life. It may be that that the problems exist to give you a life.

What's true with our children and us is true with God and us. We tend to think the troubles provide evidence we're doing something wrong. Probably not. Though, of course, all of us have areas in which we can improve. More likely, it's the troubles that open you up to be with God, to go to him with your issues, to provide texture to be in relationship with him. As the old theologian, Leonhard Cohen said, "It's the cracks that let the light in." Problems don't mean you're doing something wrong with your life. No, they can be the very thing to cause you to spend more time with God, and so, you could say problems the way to get a life.  

You know, we humans tend to repeat the same kinds of things over and over. One of them is thinking we can get somewhere that will make us happy, whole, or complete. You know, smooth "the texture" out. Sometimes the message of Christianity exacerbates the problem as if God is going to fix it for us. As if all we have to do is rely upon him, and he'll fill in the gaps. Yeah, get him, and then you'll arrive, be whole, complete, saved, or whatever the particular word is. I don't think it works that way. You never arrive. You're always on a journey. He's not interested in fast-forwarding through your problems. He's interested in being with you. 

If evolution tells us anything, it tells us that everything is changing. Nothing stays the same. The very moment you get somewhere, well, then you’re somewhere else. The very moment you get something straight, something comes along to cause it to be crooked. It makes me think about my wife giving Phoenix the dog a bath. She'll take her upstairs and clean her up only to have Phoenix the dog run outside and get dirty.

I kind of think the whole universe is like Phoenix the dog. The moment it gets clean, it's already getting dirty.

Life isn't static. Life constantly changes. That means we’re always dealing with a measure of dirt, grime, brokenness, jagged edge, unwelcome molecule, unwelcome event, problem, temptation, question… texture   

Generally speaking, Christianity took all this texture and called it bad. I'm oversimplifying here a bit to make a point, but generally, we took all the problems, the questions, the existential angst and labeled it as wrong, sinful, or evil. Then we built a theology on a God who steps into the texture and cleans it up, sets hard and fast boundaries, establishes hierarchy, you know, smooths out the texture. We said, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," and interpreted the verse as being evidence that God moves in from some other place to fix all our problems.

Except that the very next verse, the notorious Genesis 1:2, says, "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." We don't have time to get into all the implications of this verse, nor do I have the expertise, but suffice it to say that the verse could be seen as a way to begin to understand how all this creation stuff happens. And for our purposes today, I want to point out that the word "empty" is not a great fit. Formless can work, but not empty. The Hebrew phrase tohu wa bohu doesn’t exactly mean empty. Rather, the whole of it means something like risk and promise, chaos and potential. If you were to graph it out, you would see a type of texture. Within the texture, there would be a lot of ups and downs. And honestly, maybe more downs than ups. In other words, it's hard to see the promise in the middle of all the risk, difficult to feel the potential in the middle of all the chaos. The point is, it might be small, but there's possibility there. It's not nothing. It's something. 

Creation wise, the scientist might say that… in the trillionth of a second before the scorching fireball of microscopic particles grew and shrank, expanded and cooled to form everything within the cosmos… that something tiny was going on. Okay, the scientist wouldn't say it that way at all, but the point is very big things–like the universe, can come from very small things–like the quantum field of nothingness that preceded the beginning of the universe.

In other words, it wasn't empty. 

Let me attempt to take a side trail for a moment. At first, you'll be wondering where I'm going. Tree limbs will be slapping you in the face as you try and follow, but just trust me for a minute. We'll connect with the more well-known paths in a few minutes. 

On the side trail, I want to say that Christianity grew alongside the development of humanity and civilization. We don't often think of it this way, but the development of Christianity didn't come from somewhere else. God didn't import it from some other place; from an “empty space.” It developed as humanity developed.  

As you know, when it comes to the development of humanity, I'm wholly Girardian in my thinking, as in Rene Girard, who proposed that civilization developed within the mimetic interplay of desire that leads to imitation, that leads to conflict, that leads to scapegoating. Scapegoating, according to Girard, is the way we figured out how to get to peace. Except that the peace never lasts. So, when the conflict arises again, we repeat all the previous things we did to get to peace. We name a new person guilty, engage in more sacrificial scapegoating, and more killing to get to peace. Except that peace doesn’t last either. Yes, surprising, isn't it? Killing doesn't lead to peace.

As the old bumper sticker says,
"Fighting to get to peace is kind of like having sex for virginity." 

For Girardians, civilization rests upon religion, and religion rests upon scapegoating sacrifice. Another way of approaching this is to say that what's put humanity at dis-ease is its misunderstanding and misappropriation of power. For scapegoating cannot exist without misuse of power, or influence, or positional authority, all of which is used to transfer problems onto the other person. 

And on this Mother's Day, 2021, it seems appropriate to say that historically, women have often found themselves on the wrong end of power. In other words, women have been scapegoated a lot. For much of recorded history, women have not only been objectified, they've also been vilified, thought of as “less than,” “incapable,” and otherwise “unable.” And it's always those kinds of people who get scapegoated the most. (Though I should say that "the strong" can be scapegoated as well, but the point here is that most often it's the "powerless" who are offered up as victims.)

The bulk of our theology for the last two thousand years has grown up with and around the misunderstanding of power. We can call it patriarchy. Patriarchy, quite simply, is the idea that males get to determine how things are. Now, when you're in power, you are going to do everything you can do to justify your power, even to the point of saying that the gods set it up this way. In Christianity's case, we were told that God ordered things to be this particular way. And so, if you are a male, you will read the Bible as divinely decreeing your position of power. And you will see God as male. Never mind the scores of references in the Hebrew Bible to God's feminine characteristics; you will imagine God as male, strong, in power, coming "in" from his position and fixing, cleaning, ordering, and filling things. 

I intentionally use the word filling here to get back to the point at which I took this side trail. Remember, that's where we talked about the phrase tohu wa bohu being more than just "empty."

Now it’s Mother's Day, and I don't want to be too crude (not that I'm looking to be crude on regular days), but for most of history, it was imagined that women played no active role in the child-bearing process. Women were thought of as simply a type of receptor. That life was in the male. So, when the male deposited himself in the female, he was depositing life. There was no understanding of eggs, fertilization, cytoplasm, or genetic division. There was no partnership. Nope, man was the one responsible. Man fills woman. She is there to do what the man programs her to do. 

And if that's your view of creating a baby, what do you think your view of creating the universe is? 

Well, you'll determine that somewhere back in time, that there was a space, a space known as “less than,” “incapable,” “sinful,” you know, an empty space… and God, as male, came along and filled it, imposed his will upon it, and programmed it to do what he wants it to do. 

When you're a male in power, you'll view God as being male and in power. This is generally how you're going to see it; that you're simply a reflection of God's power. And then you get to fill whatever you want to fill. Oh, and then you can also say, "I'm not responsible. God set it up this way." 

But what if the way you've understood power is a bit off? (Ha, yes, a bit off indeed.) What if you're importing your perspective, a perspective influenced by your position of power, onto a reading of Scripture? And what if you built a church on 2,000 years of this kind of thinking? (Well, you’d have a mess. Welcome to 2021. )

More questions: What if what we start with wasn't empty, evil, or sinful? What if what was happening within those first few moments of what we now know as our universe was just, well, chaos and potential? That it was neither moral nor immoral. That it just was? Just the texture? And what if God was in the middle of all of that, not coming in from somewhere else to impose his will? But a God interacting, coaxing, inviting it all to come together, hovering over the thing like a mother hen, even more, within the thing, like a spirit of energy, who catalyzed it all, by being in all? What if he was the one in whom we move and live and have our being? 

If that's the case, then it's not a top-down male-dominated universe that programs things exactly how he wants them inside of a world with no power, agency, or autonomy kind of God. Instead, it's a flattened hierarchy, non-gendered, fluid, full of energy, yes, risky and combustible, but humble, willing to work with the creation down to the smallest level kind of God. 

A God who loves his creation and subjects himself to the changes and problems within creation to be in relationship. A God who looks like… Jesus. 

Jesus, who willingly entered into the problems, voluntarily associated with the down and out, the poor, the diseased, foreigner. Jesus, who didn't view all those people as divinely cursed, or not chosen, or incapable, or less than, or empty. But, rather, as people to enter life into and with. The problems for Jesus weren't evidencing life as bad. No, the problems simply allowed him to be with people which wound up giving them a life. And, I would say, gave Jesus a life too. Because a God not in relationship? It's pointless. If you can't do life with others, you don’t have a life. It's true for humans, and it's true for the gods!

It's Mother's Day, a day to celebrate relationship. Moms, you are the nexus of all our relationships. Maybe that's why you're so aware of all the problems in our culture. You're interconnected in fantastic ways. You feel things deep within you. You intuit things. And you know things to be specific ways even though you can't always articulate it. You are strong. And complex. And interesting. And completely unpredictable. You are full of anxiety but also full of capability; full of so much texture. 

Historically, you have been the ones to be on the wrong end of the power differential. Which means you are blessed. Coming from me, this means nothing, but coming from Jesus? It means something. Maybe it means everything.

Think about it, the reason we know about Jesus is because of the people at the wrong end of the power differential. Who was standing at the foot of the cross? Mary and the other Marys. Who else? I imagine the woman caught in adultery. The Samaritan woman. The woman healed by touching Jesus. The woman who poured perfume on Jesus' feet. The women who had their brother brought back to life. These "powerless" human beings are the reason we know about Jesus today. These people deemed to be without rights, intelligence, and capability are why we know about a person named Jesus.

Because with God, there is nothing "empty." 

It might be the most minor thing, it might be a quantum field of almost nothingness zapping around, but the very tiniest of things can result in something as large as the universe. 

And it might be the most microscopic measurement of hope or love or grace… but we need you to access it, be open to it, to bring it to bear against all the violence and power-hungry, scapegoat-addicted male-dominated hierarchy and structure of this world.  

It's Mother's Day. So, for all you moms… moms who've lost kids, for all the women who want to be moms but who haven't been able to, for all the grandmothers, and great grandmothers, aunts, nieces, sisters, and daughters… I hope you know you are not empty… no… you have the ability to grow new things inside of you. Yes, there's a lot of texture out there but it’s not meant to overwhelm you, it’s meant to give you a life. We need you. You are the hope of the world.