Scripture: Exodus 3:7-15
To begin, I want to talk for a few moments this morning about inclusive language. I should briefly repeat what I said last week by way of explaining that I have decided to use these last few sermons I will be giving at Sojourners to look back on what I think have been some of the themes of my preaching over the last ten years, but not just my personal interests in preaching but those parts of it that have related to what I have understood Sojourners to be about or what I hoped we would be about. It’s a way for me of trying to sum up some portion of my preaching, but it’s also a way of expressing my appreciation for some of things I believe Sojourners has stood for and continues to stand for that have encouraged me in my preaching and that I have tried to encourage in my preaching.
Inclusive language is a topic that sort of fits with what I just said and sort of doesn’t. I may have preached a sermon or two in the past ten years where I focused directly on inclusive language, but mostly I don’t see it as having been a theme of my preaching as such. It is, however, a personal commitment I have in my preaching. That is, I may not have actually preached on the topic very much, but I am committed to using inclusive language not only in my preaching, all of my preaching, but in anything I say or write for worship. And to be very clear, what I mean by inclusive language is not just the way we talk about human beings but the way we talk about God. I was committed to the use of inclusive language to a degree, to a fairly high degree, I think, when I came here. Over the course of my time here, I have become even more strongly committed personally to the use of inclusive language.
As to whether Sojourners is committed to inclusive language as something we believe in as a community, as to whether it has the status of a “core value” among us, I guess I would want to say yes, but it’s not really a yes, but more of a y-e-e-e-e-e-s, and notice that I said I would want to say yes, not that I am ready to give a resounding, unqualified yes. Since I am the one who writes or chooses the vast majority of the materials for worship, you will rarely see a male reference to God in print in the bulletin unless it is in combination with a female reference. Part of the statement that appears every week in the bulletin as a welcome that immediately follows the order of worship says: “Our congregation strives toward cultural diversity and inclusiveness of all persons in policy, practice, and language…,” though it does not specifically mention the language we use in speaking about God or to God. We have chosen to use the New Century Hymnal put out by the UCC which has changed the words to hymns so as to remove the exclusive use of male pronouns in referring to God as well as to humans. Many years ago the worship committee decided to purchase an inclusive language version of the New Testament and Psalms to use for our scripture readings in church. There was not at the time, though I believe there is now, an inclusive language version of the Hebrew scriptures. We have frankly not followed up on that, and need to, so sometimes scriptures are read that refer to God as “he”. But for the most part, we have a practice of using inclusive language in worship—hymns, scriptures, prayers, sermons—that is the result of conscious decisions that have been made by various groups and individuals beginning with the earliest days of the congregation. It is definitely a value that is part of who we are at Sojourners.
But the reality also is that we are not all at the same place on this issue. Some of us are at a point where we wince if God is referred to as “he”, especially if it happens several times in a short space of time. I have to say that for me when I hear God referred to as he several times in quick succession, it doesn’t take too long before it feels like a barrage. On the other hand, some of us may wince when some attempt to use inclusive language seems particularly inelegant or unpoetic. Some of us support inclusive language up to a point but resent tinkering with the language of scripture or even with the language originally used by the writer of a hymn. For some of us it is very important to make a conscious effort not to use exclusively male language in referring to God. Some of us are conscious of it sometimes, but other times just don’t think about it or slip into using the male language out of habit. For some of us the male language may be more deeply a part of how we think about God and how we relate to God, and we find it harder to give up. When I refer to God as “she” in a sermon, as I occasionally do in some contexts, some of you may scarcely notice, some of you may think “oh that’s cute; the minister just referred to God as a she”, some of you may think I am doing it to make a point, that you happen to agree with, some of you may be slightly offended, since you don’t happen to agree with the point you think I am trying to make, and some may be simply distracted by the idea that I am trying to make a point, maybe wondering what point exactly I am trying to make and as a result not hear whatever other point I may have been speaking to.
Inclusive language is not something that you are just for or against. Our attitudes are varied to say the least—as to how important an issue it is to us personally, how important it is to the community, what kinds things we find offensive or hurtful vs. what we can let slide, what it means exactly in all the specific instances the issue may arise. And how we deal with the issue is one thing, and how we deal with one another around this issue is an additional thing. It is not a simple or one-dimensional matter, even though I believe we have said in a number of ways that we are committed to using inclusive language.
I raise all this today partly because it is my hope that inclusive language will be an ongoing matter of importance for Sojourners. I don’t mean by that that my hope is that we will all magically find ourselves in agreement, that everyone will arrive at the same attitudes, find themselves with the same feelings, and agree to the same practices. And I am not about to make my best argument for why inclusive language is a good thing. I’ve already said I believe it is and that it’s important to me, though there are frankly still some things that I struggle with around this issue. But it’s not my intention to get into the details of it or to try to state my case for inclusive language this morning. What I do hope is that we will see it as a matter that is important enough that we commit to struggle with it together, not to dismiss it as unimportant, not to retreat into holding tight to our own attitudes, figuring that we’re never going to agree and therefore we’ll just quietly tolerate our different approaches. It’s a value I believe is important. Even more, it’s an issue I believe we need to struggle with together. And it does involve some struggle. And it does involve a process of listening to one another and working on being able to say why the way we talk to each other about God is important to us and where our feelings about it come from, and listening to one another is undeniably I think a core value of Sojourners. If I were going to be around for a while, I might even have some ideas about how we might struggle with this together. Since I’m not, I will simply state my hope that it happens, that there be ways for that conversation to take place in both thoughtful and caring ways.
There are, of course, gender issues involved in all this. Inclusive language is an issue partly because for some people predominantly male references to God are associated with the patterns of male leadership and authority in the church, is a reflection of male being the default assumption in both church and society, because male images of God can be associated with testosterone type qualities—power, aggression, domination— and because for some people male images of God make God seem more distant and more difficult to relate to. Such a quick listing will of course not do justice to the feelings that can be involved in this issue, but there is that whole set of issues. In addition to trying to be sensitive to such feelings in others, I have some of those reactions myself and it is part of the reason I am committed to inclusive language. But there is more.
I am conscious of the issue of inclusive language always in my preaching. I am conscious of it partly in the context of the gender issues associated with it, but also in the context of a broader issue that I do think of as a recurrent theme of my preaching as well as a question that haunts my preaching, namely the question of how we talk about God at all. It is not something that should be taken for granted, our ability to talk about God in any way, by any of us, least of all by ministers who undertake to do it often, are expected to do it often, may be thought of as having been trained to do it skillfully, or who may be thought of alternatively as people for whom it’s supposed to come naturally, and some of whom kid themselves into thinking they have a pretty good handle on knowing how to speak about God.
Personally, I have always felt inadequate to the task. I come face to face with that inadequacy every week when I sit down to put pencil to paper, or I should say finger to keyboard. I do not know how to talk about God. I do not know how to begin or where to begin to talk about God. Sometimes I have acknowledged that sense of inadequacy and the irony or the paradox of preaching in my preaching, the sense of wonder and the sense of being overwhelmed in the face of trying to talk about God that I wish came through in every word I said but that I know mostly doesn’t. Sometimes I have expressed my conviction that religious folks are the farthest from speaking genuinely and with integrity about God when they do so easily, smoothly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. We take the name of the Lord God in vain when we use it profanely, meaning not so much when we use it as part of a curse word as when we use it glibly, as though the name of God were not hallowed, as though it were not filled with fear and trembling, as though we knew exactly what we were talking about, as though we had God pegged, as though we were in possession of God’s truth and could pull any part of it out at a moment’s notice. I have spoken directly on this matter I think fairly often. I have spoken of it in indirect ways quite often. I hope that awareness has always lurked not far below the surface of my preaching.
I chose the scripture from Exodus today because it is a place where God talks with Moses about how he is to talk with God after Moses has expressed his inadequacy to talk of God or to do what God is calling him to do. Moses would prefer to be just left alone. Not an option, as far as God is concerned. Not really an option, I think, for us, though sometimes we want to think it is—being left alone by God. Not having to speak of God. Not having to think about God. “But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘the god of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘what is his name?’ what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM. God said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me.’” There is much scholarly discussion about this exchange and what God says to Moses, how it is the origin of the name Yahweh, which later was modified into Jehovah, and whether it is properly translated I AM WHO I AM or I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE or I AM ONE WHO CAUSES TO BE or some other meaning. I am not going to enter that discussion. I’m not qualified and for present purposes not interested. But I like the passage because God asks to be spoken of in this suitably mysterious way. If we turn this into an explanation of different names for God—Yahweh, Jehovah, Lord—we miss the point. Moses is given the impossible task, as we are, of speaking of God in a way that recognizes the unspeakable nature of God.
As a personal matter, God is most intimate and most real for me when she/he is inside the beat of my heart or is a catch in the throat. There is not a word for that, and when I try to refer to that “presence” by saying God, all of a sudden the reality of it escapes out into the air and is gone. Nevertheless, if we are to share our humanity, we need to try to speak to one another of God in whatever inadequate ways we may have. Part of trying to find a language for God for me is to try to find language that does not involve gender biases that may carry messages I don’t intend and don’t desire. But it also involves working at finding words that come closer to speaking of who God is for me and what we might mean when we say we believe in God or that we love God. I know I have lots of work left to do on that. And when—very shortly—I no longer have to find some way to speak of God every week, I hope I will keep at the task anyway, trying to find ways to speak of God, to imagine God, to find some language for God.
I chose the hymn we are about to sing because it happens to be one of my favorites. It is not only the melody, but the words that touch me, and I admit that the modernized version of the words in our hymnal don’t quite do the trick for me. They have taken out the “thou” in Be Thou My Vision. So I went looking for, and found, an inclusive language version of the hymn that retains the “Thou” language. Sometimes God needs to be a “thou” for me, not just a you. And the last lines of the hymn will serve as the best I can do for today to end a sermon on finding a language for God. The words go back to 8th century Ireland but they express, with some modification they express God for me as well as most words are able. And the last lines that we will soon sing together go: “Heart of my own heart…heart of my own heart, whatever befall, still be my vision, O Ruler of all.” Amen.
Jim Bundy
January 10, 2010