Monton Unitarian Church

19^th February 2023

A name and a story for God?

Welcome – by Erika A Hewitt

Welcome to this morning, this day, and this opportunity to be together in community—which is a time of joy, comfort, and sometimes challenges. This community is a place where we come to learn more about being human.

We’re not here because we’ve figured out life’s questions, or because we think we’ve got it right.  We come here to learn more about being in relationship together: how to listen, how to forgive, how to be vulnerable, and how to create trust and compassion in one another.

Let us move into worship, willing to be authentic with each other, honest within ourselves, and open to connection in all its forms.

Chalice Lighting – by Jennifer Kitchen

Come sit by our fire and let us share stories. Let me hear your tales of far-off lands, wanderer, and I will tell you of my travels. Share your experience of the holy with me, worshipper, and I will tell you of that which I find divine.

Come and stay, lover of leaving, for ours is no caravan of despair, but of hope. We would hear your stories of grief and sorrow as readily as those of joy and laughter, for there is a time and a place and a hearing for all the stories of this world. Stories are the breath and word of the spirit of life, that power that we name love.

Come, for our fire is warm and we have seats for all. Come, again and yet again, come speak to me of what fills your heart, what engages your mind, what resides in your soul. Come, let us worship together.

Prayer – by Lyn Cox, adapted

Spirit of Life, ancestor of the stars and the sun, you who embrace the vastness of space and us along with it, be with us today. Hold us in our worry, our exhaustion, our grief – and our joy, excitement and anticipation. Keep us close as we sit with our truth, whatever that may be. Lead us to rest in the quiet, to find healing and renewal in this time of companionship.

You whose arms open with the spinning galaxies, help us to make room, as you do, for all that is. Open our hearts to our loved ones, our neighbours, the beings with whom we share this planet. Lead us to reach out to others in compassion. Turn us toward one another in mercy, right relationship, and reconciliation.

You who have seen the rising and setting of suns, of seasons, of civilizations, remind us of all that we have learned from the history of the world and from our own histories. Give us the courage to face our mistakes, and to repair them whenever possible. Help us understand our interdependence, our gravitational relatedness with all of the other spinning lives around us, and lead us to treat those relationships with care.

In this space, filled with the people among us who shine like stars, this space filled with the sparkle of love and care, we give thanks for this moment to be together. May our senses be open to the beauty of this day, this season, this world.  Amen.

Story – The Two Champions, a retelling by Anthony Nanson

This story is written by Anthony Nanson, after a story he heard from the English storyteller Richard Walker, who in turn heard it from the American storyteller Dan Keding, who shaped the story around a saying he was told by his Serbian mother.  And why do I tell you all of that?  Because that’s part of this story’s story – and the importance of names and stories is what this service is about.

So now – let’s hear the story!

There were two kingdoms that share a common border.  In one country they worshipped the sun, and in the other they worshipped the moon.  Because of their religious differences, the two kingdoms went to war.  Each gathered an army, and the two armies met at the frontier.  Row upon row of warriors, sunlight glinting on their war gear, faced each other across the no-man’s land.

It was agreed that each army should send forward a champion to fight in single combat.  The strongest, most skilful warrior in each army was selected.  The two men advanced towards each other, grim faced, with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other.  On the chest of one was emblazoned an image of the sun; on the chest of the other, an image of the moon.

When they met, they fought like demons.  They fought all morning long, as the sun rose higher in the sky.  They fought through the midday heat, when the sun was at the zenith.  They fought on and on as the sun descended towards the west.  They were both such strong and skilful fighters that neither man could gain the advantage.  They were still fighting, nose to nose, locked in each other’s arms, when at last the sun went down.  But by then they were exhausted.  They both collapsed on the ground, too feeble even to crawl back to the camps their respective armies had made for the night.

“I hate you!” groaned the Champion of the Sun.

“I hate you!” replied the Champion of the Moon.

“I have to kill you,” said the Champion of the Sun.  “Back home I have a wife who loves me and a little boy who wants to be a warrior like me.  I have to protect them from the likes of you.”

“I had a wife,” said the Champion of the Moon.  “Your people killed her in the last war.  That’s why I have to kill you.”

The moon rose.  Presently, the Champion of the Sun asked the other man, “What was she like, your wife?”

“She was lovely.  We’d been sweethearts since we were children.  I used to play with her in the woods near here.”

“Sounds like you had a happy childhood,” said the Champion of the Sun.  “Not like mine.  My father made us work all day in the fields and he’d beat us if we complained.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the Champion of the Moon.

And so they talked about their childhoods and the other things they had done in their lives.  They talked and talked as the moon rose higher in the sky.  Still they talked as the moon descended towards the west.  Only for the last hour or two of the night did they sleep.  Side by side they lay, their swords and shields dumped beside them.

The sky turned grey, then pink in the east.  Sounds and smells of breakfast-making emanated from the two camps.  The two sleeping champions were woken by the warmth of sunshine on their faces.  Wearily, painfully, they creaked to their feet.  They looked into each other’s eyes.  Then they embraced, and leaving their swords and shields behind, walked back to their respective armies.  They could not fight each other anymore, for you cannot fight someone when you know their story.

Reading – The Guardian, 7^th Feb 2023 – Church of England to consider use of gender-neutral terms for God

The Church of England is considering whether to stop referring to God as “he”, after priests asked to be allowed to use gender-neutral terms instead.  The church said it would launch a new commission on the matter in the spring. Any potential alterations, which would mark a departure from traditional teachings dating back millennia, would have to be approved by synod, the Church’s decision-making body.

The Rt Rev Dr Michael Ipgrave, Bishop of Lichfield and vice-chair of the liturgical commission responsible for the matter, said the church had been “exploring the use of gendered language in relation to God for several years”.

“After some dialogue between the two commissions in this area, a new joint project on gendered language will begin this spring,” he said. “In common with other potential changes to authorised liturgical provision, changing the wording and number of authorised forms of absolution would require a full synodical process for approval.”

The specifics of the project are as yet unclear.

The bishop’s comments came in response to a question asked at synod by the Revd Joanna Stobart, vicar of Ilminster and Whitelackington in Somerset, about the progress on developing “more inclusive language” in services.  It is unclear what would replace the term Our Father in the Lord’s Prayer, the central Christian prayer that Jesus is said to have instructed his followers to say together down the generations.

Conservative critics have hit back at the possibility of changes, with the Rev Dr Ian Paul telling the Telegraph that they would represent an abandonment of the Church’s own doctrine.

He said: “The fact that God is called ‘Father’ can’t be substituted by ‘Mother’ without changing meaning, nor can it be gender-neutralised to ‘Parent’ without loss of meaning.

“Fathers and mothers are not interchangeable but relate to their offspring in different ways.”

A spokesperson for the Church of England said: “This is nothing new. Christians have recognised since ancient times that God is neither male nor female, yet the variety of ways of addressing and describing God found in scripture has not always been reflected in our worship.  There has been greater interest in exploring new language since the introduction of our current forms of service in contemporary language more than 20 years ago.  There are absolutely no plans to abolish or substantially revise currently authorised liturgies, and no such changes could be made without extensive legislation.”

Prayer – by Anna Jarvis

What is God, but the invisible light that streams from soul to soul, when the blessing of true relationship has been found.

What is God, but the tangible compassion that wells up inside when the true meaning of brotherhood and sisterhood and siblinghood has finally been allowed into the heart.

What is God, but the verdant life that blossoms and flourishes when people come together to care, to share, to offer, to receive, to create.

What is God, but the joy that bubbles up from within, when people live in peace and compassion, laugh and cry, find and let go, heal and grow.

What is God, but the love that forms community, that powers community, that grows community, and that flows out into the world around community to sow its seeds into the hearts of those who see the blessing that is loving community.

Let us spend some time now, giving thanks in our hearts for the blessing of this community, and praying for those on this earth whose communities are shattered, or torn apart by war, or embittered by old wounds, or striving for sheer physical survival.  Let us be silent together now.

What is God, but the love that forms community, that powers community, that grows community, and that flows out into the world around community to sow its seeds into the hearts of those who see the blessing that is loving community.  Amen

Reflection – Naming God?

“I am not a number. I am a free man,” was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner. A dramatized debate on individuality and freedom, the story centres around McGoohan, a man who finds himself living in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan community known as The Village. The Village’s inhabitants are known merely by numbers, and McGoohan is Number 6.  Number 6 chooses not to give in to Village authorities but struggles to maintain his own identity. “I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks to Number 2. “I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”

There is a power in a name. In ancient myths of both East and West, to know the name of a god or spirit was to hold power over it. It’s a theme that still holds true today – it’s used beautifully in the modern fantasy works of novelist Ursula K Le Guin, for example. And who doesn’t remember the princess at the end of Neverending Story begging Akeyu to say her name before the whole world was destroyed.  And often people say that knowledge, the ability to name what is happening, or what has gone wrong, is power – with illness, for example, it often feels more manageable once there is a diagnosis, however awful that diagnosis might be – being able to name the previously unknown gives us power.

Think about your personal name for a moment.  It’s so powerful that your brain can hear someone saying your name across a crowded room. Ever since you were born, people around you have been using it to name and define you: “Look at what Anna did! What a clever girl you are,” links the name with the emotion of feeling clever.  “I love you, Anna” links the name with feeling loved.  Sadly, in the same way, “Don’t be so stupid, Anna”, “Why are you so useless, Anna” and other statements can link a name with criticism and shaming.  All these emotions – some uplifting, some devastating – are stored into the single focal point – of your name.  Say your full name out loud to yourself, and you can feel the emotions contained within this powerful symbol – how does your name make you feel?

As Hiroki Niizato says:

“This is why it’s so important to take good care of other people’s names. We cherish the sound of our name being spoken with love, by those closest to us. We also feel the pain upon hearing our name being used in a blaming, critical or belittling way. And then there is the case of no one calling our name, ever – what happens then? We become invisible – there is no “me” – that’s what abandonment feels like, and the name stores that emotion too.”

So there is power in our names, and power in our stories.  But there is also potential for change.  Just because our stories have started out in one particular direction, does not mean that we are bound on that trajectory for the rest of our lives.  Just because during our childhood our names were said with contempt, or dislike, or boredom even, does not mean that we must forever feel contemptible, or disliked, or unwanted.  We can change the narrative. 

In some old cultures like ancient Japan or native American culture, changing the narrative was actually a rite of passage.  You were given a child-name at birth, then later received your adult name when you were old enough. This enabled each person to move past the childish identity attached to their name, along with any sense of insecurity, or powerlessness, or any negative feelings or attitudes, and become a strong adult who has another chance to shape their own identity.  Changing names still happens today – when couples marry, one often takes the other’s surname.  Or when a transperson claims their new identity, they also claim their new name as an indicator of that transition – my Max has just recently legally changed his name, and holding those very posh-looking deed polls in our hands felt very momentous. Of course, you don’t have to change your name to change the narrative – any of us can realise that we need to change at times, to leave parts of our story that we have outgrown behind, and move towards our next stage. That’s all part of becoming – it’s a never ending journey.

Our names and our stories are powerful – both in terms of their power over us, and in terms of how they can change another’s perspective – of us, or indeed of themselves.  When the Champions of the Moon and the Sun heard each other’s names and stories and saw each other as real people, rather than as just “enemy”, they could no longer fight but instead became friends.  When you know someone else’s story you can empathise, understand their motivations and their responses without judgment or fear.  And when you know and acknowledge your own story, you can understand better some of your reactions, responses and prejudices, and learn to change them.

But what about a name for God?  Goodness knows there’s a lot of different names used around the world – Allah, Black Madonna, Brahma, Buddha, Christ, Consciousness, Divine, Divine Feminine, Eshwara, Evolutionary Spirit, Father, Gaia, God, Goddess, Great Interconnectedness, Higher Power, Holy Spirit, I am who I am, Infinite Mystery, Jehovah, Kosmos, Krishna, Mother Universe, Om, Original Organizing Principle, Shakti, Shiva, The Eternal Now, the Life Force, The Tao, The Supreme, The Universal One, Ultimate Reality, Vishnu, Yahweh. And that’s just a tiny handful.

Some of these names are gendered – some are not. Some appear to describe an actual being, others describe a power, a source, a principle rather than a being. Some of them will mean absolutely nothing to you, others may make you feel uncomfortable, others will feel quite normal.

In the Bible, while the masculine pronoun is most often used for God, there is also significant use of the feminine – the Holy Spirit in the book of Genesis is often referred to as Breath or Wind, and the Hebrew word for that, Ruach, is distinctly feminine. In Isaiah also feminine imagery is used, such as a an eagle in her nest, and Jesus also occasionally used feminine imagery, talking about himself as a hen trying to gather her brood under her wing. 

The use of genders when referring to God can be a very sensitive subject, and also a very painful one.  Many who have grown up and absorbed the concept of a masculine God-being, He, the Father, find it comforting and strengthening – for others, it can turn God into an object of fear, if, for example, someone was abused by their own father.  The same, it must be said, goes for mothers – if your primary understanding of ‘mother’ is generally a positive one your reaction to “Mother God” will be different from someone who had negative experiences.

In the creation story of Genesis, in the Bible, after God had created the first human beings, the phrase is used that “God created man in his own image…”.  Very often, however, it feels like it’s actually the other way round – humans depict God according to their own hierarchical or other structures.  Thus in traditional Euro-American Christianity, the image of God is that of an old white man – and that image, constructed through art or in our heads can affect the way we view ourselves and the way we treat people whom we imagine are not made in God’s image.  This can be in terms of age,or  in terms of ethnicity –African images of God, or Jesus are very different from what you are probably thinking of!  And  indeed it refers to gender. But that image ignores those biblical feminine images of Chokmah, divine Wisdom, and Ruach, divine Spirit, and those passages that state quite categorically that God is neither male nor female!  One beautiful phrase I heard was that the transcendent God is a gender-bender God, both masculine and feminine and neither!

Maybe another way of thinking of ‘the image of God’ is nothing physical at all, but is in humanity’s moral, spiritual and intellectual nature.  Maybe we mirror divinity in our ability to identify those unique qualities that seem to make us different –creative freedom, a possibility for self-actualisation, and the ability for self-transcendence.

But the whole issue of ‘the gender of God’, and indeed the name of God, the identity of God, is only an issue if a community makes it an issue. For many in the Church of England right now, it is a major issue, it is seen as challenging the very basis of Christian doctrine, and I can well imagine that it brings with it the risk of schisms in much the same way as same sex marriage does.  And that saddens me, for it feels so unnecessary.

I recognise that the very word ‘God’ comes with a whole load of baggage for many people – it certainly does for me.  For years I couldn’t even say the word without cringing!  That was when I hadn’t yet grasped the concept that ‘God’ didn’t have to refer to an actual being.  Now I use it as a much more open word – I know that each person will apply their own interpretation to it, and that while I can suggest what I hear in the word at that moment, each of you will hear something different – and that’s ok.

But what it draws me to think of most of all is that beautiful Psalm by Cynthia Frado, called Humanity’s Psalm.  So I’ll end with an extract from it that I think sums up where I stand at the moment.

We were made in your image, says ancient Scripture.
Made from the colors of the rainbow,
Shaped with bones straight and curved,
Padded with flesh flabby and lean,
Near-sighted, far-sighted, short-sighted, and long in vision.

We were made in your image, says ancient Scripture.
Made strong and tall, short and stout,
Born with hands tender and fragile,
Aged with hands gnarled and mature.
Large nose, small nose, crooked nose
Who knows the mathematical infinitude of your genetic possibilities?

We were made in your image, says ancient Scripture.
But who are you?  We need to know.
We who have eyes that are brown and blue and green and hazel.
We who are intellectually gifted and mentally challenged.
We who speak the languages of the world and no language at all.
We who know scientific equations and musical sonatas,
and know only the magic of a daily loaf of bread,
and the taunting sounds of racism,
and the mockery of my sexual orientation,
and the lack of respect for our aging bodies.
We who are all of these things and more want to know:
Who are you that we are made in your image?

I am, says ancient Scripture. I simply am.

I am the Light of All-Being,
I am the Divine Spark.
I am the Source of Love,
The most transformative power In the Universe.
All life is in my image. I am in You, And you are in me.
I am in your siblings. They, too, are in me.
I am in your pain and suffering,
And I am in your compassion and joy.
I am Light and Love, And Hope and Possibility…
And so are you.

Blessing – by Tom Schade

My friends, there is a power at work in the universe.
It works through human hands, but it was not made by human hands.
It is a creative, sustaining, and transforming power and we can trust that power with our lives and with our ministries.
It will sustain us whenever we take a stand on the side of love;
whenever we take a stand for peace and justice;
whenever we take a risk.

Trust in that power – whatever name you may give it. 

We are, together, held by that power.