With special thanks to Dr. Patricia Kirkpatrick for recommending Sally McFague's book, Metaphorical Theology, Fortress Press, Philadelphia PA, 1982.

It is with great delight and a profound sense of honour that I stand in front of you this morning on the occasion of the dedication of the beautiful superfrontal and vestments created by my friend Elizabeth Adams who is present with us this morning along her family. Elizabeth and I have been friends for a while, I didn't think it was a long while, until I remembered that we first met during the preparation of a diocesan conference for women called Alive in the Nineties. This conference was to mark the beginning of the ecumenical decade of churches in solidarity with women. Well the decade is almost over! So our friendship has been highlighted by the great events of the ecumenical decade, including a trip to Brazil to mark the middle point in 1993. This expedition to Brazil was also to attend, as you have probably already guessed, a women's conference, but a remarkably different one than the first one held five years earlier in Kemptville. It was a trip and a conference that changed my life, but that is a whole other sermon. However, there is one story from my travels with Elizabeth that I would like to share with you.

the ecumenical decade of churches in solidarity with women . . . is almost over!

There was a fairly large contingent of Canadians to this event, including pilgrims from the Ottawa Valley: besides Elizabeth and myself, there was Katherine Wallace, Deborah Bethel, Judy Lackey and her husband our former Bishop Ed Lackey, who as you know now resides with the angels. We gathered in Toronto with the rest of the Canadians to board our plane to Brazil. Our destination was Bahia in the north, with a stopover in Rio to change planes. We got to Rio to a kind of chaos you don't encounter in North American airports- unless it is Christmas holiday season and everyone is snowed in for a couple of days. It was chaotic, we did not speak the language, we were tired etc. so we made our way to the departure lounge to await the announcement of our flight to Salvador, Bahia. It was a rather large waiting area, and as we trickled in, we sat in different areas of the lounge. Elizabeth and I clung to each other as much in fear as in companionship I think, and found ourselves a corner to sit down. At some point we found ourselves engaged in a conversation with a very interesting man who lived in a kind of commune in the jungle where he and his house mates grew some kind of wild crop he didn't quite define, and mined for amethyst and other precious gems in his spare time. He was a very interesting man and we listened and spoke at length, until we sensed that we had been sitting there for a long time. We wondered what had happened with our flight because there had been no announcement. We decided it would be a good idea to ask the information desk about our flight and as the three of us approached the desk, (our new companion was also destined for Bahia) Elizabeth and I scanned the room for familiar faces. Not a pilgrim in sight. We inquired about our flight, only to be told that the last call had been given more than five minutes ago- and we had better hurry! Well, we found our feet very quickly, and made a beeline for the gate. We ran up the ramp to the airplane, and there, waiting for us with one foot on the ramp and one foot inside the plane, his arms stretched dramatically across the door like a silent movie heroine, was Ed Lackey. I think his eyebrows also went up when he saw our friend the miner following behind.

As Elizabeth and I rushed passed him muttering apologies he said,
"Oh good, I was afraid you weren't going to make it."

You know, I have this sneaking suspicion that when I die, Ed will be waiting for me at the Pearly Gates with the same comment!

the model of God as friend

All this to say that, yes Elizabeth and I are friends, but also to say that what you see in the female companionship before you, the flesh and blood friendship of Elizabeth and I, the companionship of the two sisters Martha and Mary, and their friendship with Jesus, are illustrations, metaphors for a very powerful yet (I think) neglected theology, and one of the most difficult models for God that we just cannot seem to wrap our heads around. It is the model of God as friend, and I will come back to it, but right now, I must tell you another story, this one about the altar superfrontal. This story will illustrate, I hope, the other reason why I asked Garth if I could speak to you this morning.

It was after the ten-fifteen service in - end of February?, early March?- when the altar frontal arrived, and I was lurking about the corridor between the sacristy and the sanctuary door when Garth came down the hall and said, "Have you seen the new altar frontal- the altar guild is setting it out- you should see it!" He then lowered his head and his voice, and said in amazement, "it has tea cups on it!"

Tea cups? I thought. How odd. I really have to check this out! So I made my way into the sanctuary to see the unfurled superfrontal radiating in the noon sunlight. And there were tea cups alright, but there was much more.

There was Martha and Mary with her hair streaming into the tree of life, the kite-shapes tethered to the earth, the colours and the textures. And the tea cups! Oh, the tea cups! I had expected to chuckle or guffaw, but instead, I had to sit down. The imagery was so rich, I thought to myself, now I understand why people pray with icons. For there, on the altar of God were the images of two women, sisters of Bethany, waiting for their friend Jesus to join them in a cup of tea.

In the gospel as it was read today, John tells us that Martha and Mary prepared supper for Jesus, and this in itself has great significance, especially for women, for theologian Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza writes, "Both Christian feminist theology and biblical interpretation are in the process of rediscovering that the Christian gospel cannot be proclaimed if the women disciples and what they have done are not remembered. They are in the process of reclaiming the supper at Bethany as women's Christian heritage in order to correct symbols and ritualizations of an all- male Last Supper that is a betrayal of true Christian discipleship and ministry." In her brilliance, our Elizabeth has taken playful liberty with the gospel story and has turned the dinner, quite appropriately I think, into a tea party. You guys may not have gotten it, but the significance is not lost on me, and I would wager many of my sisters will attest to its ability to move her soul. Celebrated here is probably the most female ritual of all, sharing a cup of tea, complete with images of women who were friends, disciples (dare I say apostles?) of Jesus, in the very place where we remember the last supper of Christ traditionally understood to be a male-only event, the place where female images are a rare sight indeed. It is so appropriate that these works of art come to us as gifts of Thanksgiving that celebrate the lives, work and ministry of the members of the St. John's Women's Club. In turn, the fruit of their labours- their contributions to our community and the gifts of art, especially the superfrontal with its rich imagery, give us all the opportunity to remember the discipleship and ministry of all women and to give it a place, a visible place among us at last.

Do we really understand why
it is important to have balanced images,
language and metaphors for God?

Can we stand to hear about it again? Can we listen without sticking our fingers in our ears and humming, oh no not this again what's wrong with God as Father anyway? Well, I'm here to say that there is nothing wrong with the image of God as father per se. It is a good image if you have had a close and loving relationship with your father, like Jesus did. I think Jesus' birth father Joseph must have been a very remarkable man because Jesus, being fully human, would have used his experience of his relationship with Joseph as his model, a metaphor, for his relationship with God. God as father is a metaphor. Sally McFague, a theologian who writes at length about metaphorical theology, explains that a metaphor is seeing one thing as something else, pretending that "this" is "that" because we do not know how to think or talk about "this", so we use "that" as a way of saying something about it. Thinking metaphorically means spotting a thread of similarity between two dissimilar objects, events or whatever, one of which is better known than the other and using the better known one as a way of speaking about the lesser known. So we talk about God as father as one way of pretending this is that because we do not know how to think or talk about God so we use father as a way of saying something about God. And it is right that we speak in human relational terms or use human models as metaphors because that is the core of the Christian gospel- human relationships. The focus of the parables is always on persons and their way of being in the world, and their way of being in community. It is about relationships: friends, lovers, spouses, children, extended family, churches, neighbourhoods, this planet Earth. McFague says that if we look at Jesus as a parable of God, we have no alternative but to recognize that personal, relational language as the most appropriate way of talking about God. But through the exclusive use of the God-as-Father metaphor, the patriarchal nature of God language and the model of God-the-Father has become idolatrous. The hypothetical character of the model has been forgotten and what ought to be seen as one way to understand our relationship with God has become identified with THE way. When a model becomes as idol, the distance between image and reality collapses, "Father" becomes God's name and patriarchy becomes the proper description of governing relationships at many levels.

And consider this: religious language is not only religious but also human, not only about God, but also about us. We were created in the image of God, but the reverse is also true; we imagine God in our image. Images that are excluded are not legitimated and honoured: female images, racial and cultural images, the poor, the elderly, the sick, and experiences of many people are not reflected. The aim of metaphorical theology is to envision ways of talking about the relationship between the divine and the human which are non-idolatrous but relevant; ways that are meaningful to all peoples, the traditionally excluded as well as the included. The root metaphor of Christianity is not God the Father but rather the kingdom or rule of God, a relationship between the divine and the human that NO model can encompass. The divine-human relationship therefore demands both the limitations of the Fatherhood model and the introduction of other models, like female images, and equal relationships which represent alternatives to patriarchy. Fiction writer Ursula LeGuin says, "Truth lies in the imagination." Talking, thinking, praying about God takes lots of imagination. God is a very large topic, so large she is practically indescribable, but we can start with metaphors.

religious language is not only religious but also human, not only about God, but also about us

We can start then, with the metaphor of the two women sitting in their house, with Jesus, participating in a women's ritual, taking tea, sharing stories. If we can expand our imaginations to thinking all three of these images as metaphor for God, what kind of trinity is this that is present? What divine presence can we find not only in the person of Jesus, but of Mary, and Martha as well? Here then is Jesus, Mary and Martha, a metaphor for God, female as well as male, as friend, participating in a women's ritual, taking tea, sharing stories. A compassionate, listening God, an anointing God, a caring and busy God full of hospitality. A metaphorical theology is a theology based on human relationships, in this case, on friendship. Friendship is at the heart of a non-patriarchal church, a church where relationships are based on equality. A theology of friendship is a non-patriarchal understanding of God, the God who is Jesus as friend, who likes women and talks to them, respects them, teaches them, learns from them. He sits at table with these women as equals. If we have difficultly with this idea of equality with God, we can remember that Jesus had no trouble with it at all. He never put himself above another human being. Jesus came as a servant. He came in love to serve not because he wanted to show what a great guy he was by how he could humble himself, but in compassion, with a desire to be hospitable, the way we are when we serve our friends- tea for instance. The theology of friendship is a theology that makes it possible for us to truly understand that the core of the gospel message is the rule of God- the rule of love.

Use your imagination then to see the culturally feminine scene of Jesus sitting at a kitchen table with women, taking tea. Children probably run around, pull his hair, maybe steal his cookies. He likes women, takes them into his confidence, supports their desires: to read and pray, to study the torah, to be apostles, ministers, prophets even. For when Mary anoints Jesus, feminist Scholars like Schussler-Fiorenza will tell you, the real story probably was that Mary anointed Jesus' head (the way it is told in Mark's and Matthew's gospels), which would have been understood immediately as the prophetic recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, the Anointed One. A woman named Jesus by and through her prophetic sign-action. It was a politically dangerous story, then and, some would say, even now.

Our altar superfrontal then is politically subversive!

It shouts out to us about the wonderful possibilities that God represents, the salvation of ourselves and our planet, the richness that is available to us through our imaginations about God, the abundance of the Sacramental Universe, the unconditional love and acceptance of God present in the person- in the friendship- of Jesus Christ which means- low and behold- in the presence and love of our friends, our community around us, each one of us individually and as a whole who constitute the body of Christ. The imagination runs wild- the multitude of metaphors for God- what are we waiting for? It spells the end of patriarchy, someday, soon I hope. Amen.

Text: Copyright © 1997 Rachael Crowder

.