The Holy Spirit as Feminine

             In 1991 on our sabbatical, we spent a month in England touring and enjoying the great history and geography of that country.  On Trinity Sunday that year, we were in Coventry, the place where Lady Godiva had her great ride.  We were at the great Cathedral where the second or third priest on their staff preached an excellent sermon on the Trinity.  That has been my experience in ministry.  Clergy avoid  talking about the Trinity if they can  .  It is much too complicated to explain.  Is it three gods, or what?  What are we talking about here? So they generally pass the sermon on to a lesser member of their staff.  I loved what that priest said in his sermon, but I loved the architecture of the place even more.  Coventry Cathedral was bombed by the Germans in November of 1940.  The wreckage of the old church stands beside the beautiful new building. When Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the then Dean of the Cathedral went through the wreckage, they found a cross made of the burned pieces of lumber that formed the roof of the church.  That cross now stands in the ruined sanctuary of the burned church.

              What they have done to commemorate the history of the place is remarkable.  Over the altar in the new Cathedral is a massive hanging of the risen Christ on a throne holding a scepter.  The seated savior looks out over the crowd of parishioners through an etched glass window onto the wreckage of the old cathedral.  The etchings on the window are all of the saints of the church, the apostles, and many others who have died in the propagation of our faith.  It is a great theological statement about how Christianity has struggled in this world to bring hope and reconciliation in a world full of terror and destruction.  I think that Coventry Cathedral is one of the great buildings of Christianity. 

            But they didn’t just build a building.  They also created an organization called the Community of the Cross of Nails.  It is a group dedicated to reconciliation and the bringing of hope to places in the world where it is lacking.  They have done a lot to bring together people in England and Germany who experienced horror and destruction during World War II.  Dresden was also bombed by the Allies toward the end of the war.  Coventry has reached out to them to provide words of friendship and the two cities have joined together in some hopeful projects to bring a sense of forgiveness and hope to the residents of their cities. They also have reached out to Japan and other places destroyed by war to bring hope and change to them. This is silent Christian work that means a great deal to the world, even though it doesn’t get much publicity.

            I think that is the essence of what Christianity is supposed to be about.  All around us are places where turmoil and disaster have overwhelmed many people.  Like the people of Coventry, we need to reach out to these people and offer the ministry of the Christ to them. It is too easy to simply condemn the turmoil in the many places in the world where it devastates people.  It is much better to reach out and to help. 

            But let’s get back to the Trinity.  In the scripture from the Book of Proverbs that was read a few moments ago, the writer speaks of Wisdom as the foundation on which God brought all of creation into being.  She is the pronoun used to describe Wisdom, This is the undergirding of the Holy Spirit.  Wisdom tells us that She was here when all of the world was created. That She was daily God’s delight, rejoicing before God always and rejoicing in the inhabited world and delighting in the Human race.  I notice the fact that the Holy Spirit is described to us in feminine terms.  This gives us Jesus, the male portion of God and the Holy Spirit the female side of God.  That ought to tell us what our Creator thinks about the relationship that we all ought to have with each other.  All of our genders are necessary in the ongoing maintenance of this great creation,. If that isn’t obvious to us, we are in great trouble.  I can’t understand all of the gender bashing that seems to go on in this society.  We need to love one another.  That is Jesus commandment; and it seems to me that setting one gender against another is a rather stupid way of doing that.

            I want to honor the Trinity.  I want to recognize that all of God is active in this world.  The keeping of female Wisdom at the top of the deity is a very good idea. I’m impressed that the Roman Catholic Church is beginning to investigate the possibility of the ordination of women.  The Pope thinks that perhaps some of them could be deacons.  I’m glad to hear that.  The ordination of women in the Episcopal Church has been a great gift. My first associate rector at Christ Church was Pat Carnahan.  She headed up the establishment of St. Brendan’s in Franklin Park and was their first rector, She is a great priest who built a great congregation.

              When I look around this parish, I see women doing a lot of the thinking.  The leaders of our vestry and the movers and shakers in this place are our women.  The men help immensely, but the women make many of   the decisions.  Leaning on their wisdom is essential for us to fulfill our mission. We are fortunate to have all of our talented people.  They are a gift to us and to the world around us.