Easter 6, Year A 2023: John 14:15-21

  One of the most difficult things for native English speakers who are learning other languages is grammatical genders. For us, almost everything is a neutral “it”. The refrigerator, the window, the bag. I took German in college, and learned that in German, the refrigerator is masculine, the window is neuter, and the bag is feminine. It can be difficult to wrap one’s head around the knowledge that the language isn’t making an anthropological statement about the refrigerator being a man. When you aren’t used to grammatical genders, it’s easy to both laugh at cheese being “him” and then feel a little offended that god is also “him”. And at the same time, knowing that cheese and god are under the same grammatical umbrella might take the sting out of it all a bit.

Sometimes the offense is merited. For example, in Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament, a group of 100 women is the feminine gunay. A group of 99 women and one man? Switches to the masculine anthropos. It’s hard not to feel like your whole gender is being dismissed when all it takes is one man to make the whole group “masculine”.

And language is complicated. English being an amalgamation of other languages adds to the complexity. Some words that we have taken as names embrace their grammatical gender without most of us batting an eye. My own daughter’s name is Greek for wisdom: Sophia.

This brings us to the person of the Trinity about which Jesus is telling his disciples in today’s Gospel lesson: the Holy Spirit. Jesus begins with telling them about another “comforter” or “advocate”. The word translated as “advocate” and “comforter” means both of those things so fully, that typically theologians don’t bother picking a translation and just transliterate the Greek, “paraclete”, and call it a day. And while “paraclete” is a noun, Jesus is really using it as an adjective to describe “τὸ Πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας”, “the spirit of truth”, the Holy Spirit. “Spirit” in Greek is a neuter word. But “Spirit” in Hebrew, ruach, is a feminine word. That ruach is the spirit which hovered over the waters in creation and breathed life into the first human beings. However, no one in Judaism would make the case that God is a woman by means of the spirit being feminine. At most, some rabbis might make the case that God is both man and woman by reading Proverbs. But Jews view the Spirit differently than Christians do. The ruach is part of God; something that belongs to God. Christians see the hagia pneuma, the Holy Spirit, as a co-equal part of the Trinity. That means the Holy Spirit is God, not merely an attribute of God or something controlled by God.

Some Christian Feminists have taken ahold of the feminine attribute of the Holy Spirit in the way in which we refer to it, particularly as heard in the Nicene Creed. In the words of theologian Gail Ramshaw, “Some feminists refer to the Spirit as she, thus at the least recalling the feminine gender of the Hebrew word ruach, perhaps also identifying some divine characteristic that we associate with the Spirit as female. I find it problematic to reintroduce into American English archaic gender distinctions, and I judge it a no-win situation were the Trinity to be constituted by two he’s and one she. So just as I do not refer to God as he, I am not one to call the Spirit she.” (Under the Tree of Life, 119) In addition, with all that we continue to learn about gender, we are requiring God to fit into categories we don’t always fit into ourselves. God is bigger than us, but in our attempts to fit God into human categories, we manage to somehow shrink God until God is smaller than we are. Yikes.

So in the same way as we can find traditionally masculine characteristics of God without God needing to be a man, we can find traditionally feminine characteristics of God without God needing to be a woman. But sometimes, in this search to identify with God, we forget that we’re going about it backwards. We are made in God’s image, not God in ours. To quote Dr Ramshaw again, “I hope for the time when, beyond the male theologians lecturing on God as father and the women’s groups praising God as mother, each sees God in the other, as the other. I hope for the time that God need not be like me - it’s always handy to have God resemble me - but God is like the other, and I am drawn to that other as a necessary part of (my being).” (95)

It’s very convenient for God to be like us. In our longing to make God like us, we forget that God can most be found in the other. In those outside society. The ones who the early Christians embraced the call to care for. During the Easter season, as we read through the Acts of the Apostles we hear of the places in which the early church grew. Acts 4 says, “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as they had need.” (4:32-35) The need was so great that two chapters later, the first deacons were commissioned to better facilitate food distribution. The church was so young that it was still considered a movement within Judaism. The Apostles were preoccupied with spreading the Good News. And yet, they knew where their crucified and risen Lord’s heart was: with those who needed their care.

Jesus on the cross shows us that God can always be found with those who are suffering, whether they are suffering in body, mind, or spirit. Whether their suffering is great or small, it is with them God can be found. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, the autobiographical work about the hopelessness and horrible suffering he and his fellow prisoners endured at Auschwitz and his struggle to maintain his faith in the face of such suffering and brutality, Wiesel tells of a boy who was hanged for collaborating against the Nazis. As he looked on, he heard a man behind him ask, “Where is God? Where is He?” Then half an hour later “Behind me, I hear the same man asking, ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows.’”

While we are discussing whether God is more like a man or more like a woman, God is waiting with the suffering, asking where we are. Asking us to be more like God instead of trying to make God more like us. We know where to find God - I don’t have to tell you where the suffering is. And while it unfortunately isn’t hard to find, we know, more often than not, how to alleviate it. Find God. Care for God. Show our love for God by showing our love for God’s beloved creatures. Amen.