Expanding Language to Expand Prayer

Excerpts of a Sermon by Cynthia Bauleke
First Congregational United Church of Christ, Bellingham, Washington

We live with voice mail, whether we like it or not, we have learned to listen with a discerning ear to determine if the voice on the other end of the line is live or recorded, and if it is important enough to us, we wait for the beep to leave our message. We may live with voice mail, but most of expect immediate attention from God when we pray.

Praying, communing with the Divine, is perhaps one of the most intimate things we do. Prayer is an act of love in which we can feel profoundly connected to God. Connecting with the Ground of our Being gives us a way to sort through and bring perspective to the happenings of our day. Prayer is a source of solace and peace, it can spark our creativity, or challenge us, or empower us to move beyond our comfortableness finding new ways to live our faith.

Language shapes worlds, it shapes the way we think. Because our human brains cannot contain the infiniteness of our Refuge and Strength, we cannot ever completely understand, or name, the One who used the name I am who I will be. Any language we use for God is a metaphor. We know God is not our father, but God in some ways, has the qualities and a relationship with us like a father. In some ways God has the qualities and a relationship to us as of a mother. No matter how profound, rich, or comforting our metaphors and names for God, they are not themselves God. By using a variety of names we expand our image of God.

Often we use metaphors retrieved from the Bible and from our tradition. In the Bible there are over a hundred different names used for God:

Creator, Light, Awesome, Steadfast,
Loving One, Keeper, Shelter from the Storm
Midwife, Mother, Womb, Mother Hen
Father, Lord, King and Prince of Peace

From our tradition we look to the mystics of the middle ages, where we find maternal imagery used for God as well as paternal metaphors. One of my favorites is Julian of Norwich who wrote of Christ our Mother. If I were truly radical, I might suggest we sometimes use only feminine images and pronouns for God. Most of us would agree that God is neither male nor female, so it shouldn’t make any difference if we refer to God as he or she, since we are limited by our English language.

The point is not to be trendy, or change for the sake of change, but rather to open up, to expand our understanding of God, how we view God, how we relate to God. It is possible that we will come nearer to God as we think about the ways in which we pray and imagine new metaphors reflecting our relationship.