Why Christians Should Use Inclusive and Expansive Language for God

Transcript of the sermon preached by Pastor Shawn Coons on June 11, 2023

We're spending a couple weeks at the beginning of June on welcomed, included, embraced, how our call is to reflect God's inclusive love as individuals and as a church. And there's this morning we're going to be talking about something and I don't know that I've ever, in my almost 21 years of ministry preach directly on this. I've tried to model it. Mostly we're going to talk about inclusive language. What do we mean when we say inclusive language? It's using gender-neutral or sometimes what we call gender expansive language specifically for God and for faith. Most often you and I, we refer to God as he and exclusively as he and gender-neutral language would be referring to God as simply God or creator or some other gender-neutral term, gender expansive language would be using he or she, his or her for God.

We're going to start with a scripture lesson that kind of gets at some of why we might want to do this and we're going to begin with Paul this morning, the writings of Paul and some people may say, "Okay, we're talking about gender-neutral, gender expansive language in our faith, we're talking about gender and we're going to go to Paul." Paul is not often the most friendly person, some people think. When it comes to writings and scripture, particularly regards to women and sometimes in regards also to people who are LGBTQ plus, but we heard last week that we can't simply just take one isolated piece of scripture. We take the witness of scripture, we take the principles behind it, learn what scripture is like in its context, but also what it's like in other contexts like us today. We need to do that with Paul's writings as well.

And if you look at the whole of Paul's writings, you're going to see some strong themes come through and one of those themes is the radical love and grace of God that Paul found personally. Undeserved love, undeserved grace. If you remember Paul's story when you first meet Paul, he's called Saul. He is a Pharisee, he is a Jew and he is vehement, merciless in his ... I hate it when I do that. He is merciless in his persecution of the followers of Jesus, even to being kind of a cohort in the stoning of Stephen in Acts chapter eight, I believe it is.

Shortly after that Paul meets Jesus on the road to Damascus and he has this experience of God calling him, of God calling him even though he's done these awful, awful things and that radical acceptance of Paul, by God, that grace that was shown to Paul by God shapes his ministry and he preaches that the grace of God is a gift for everybody regardless of anything we have done, anything we've left undone. And so if we hear Paul's writings with that underlying principle, we get a little bit different perspective on some of his writings. I can't excuse them all, but that's another sermon. Anyway, this morning we're going to read from First Corinthians chapter nine, starting with verse 19.

Paul writes, "For though I am free with respect to all, I've made myself a slave to all so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law. Though I myself am not under the law so that I might win those under the law to those outside the law, I became as one outside the law though I am not free from God's law, but I'm under Christ's law so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that I might by any means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel so that I may share in its blessings.

Do you know that in a race the runners all compete but only one receives the prize run in such a way that you may win it? Athletes exercise, self-control, in all things. They do it to receive a perishable garland, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly nor do I box as though beating the air, but I punish my body and enslave it so that after proclaiming to others, I myself should not be disqualified." Says the word of the Lord. So Paul writes, "I have become all things to all people." Usually when we say something like that, we say just the opposite. You can't be all things to all people. And when we think of someone who is all things to all people, oftentimes, if you're like me, you think of a politician who is trying to please everybody. And when they're speaking to this group of people, they're representing their views and they're saying, "Oh yes, I'm I'm fully on your side." And then they speak to a completely different group of people maybe with competing views or priorities and say, "Yes, I'm a hundred percent with you, your priorities are my priorities."

We think of that sometimes when someone's trying to be all things to all people and they end up kind of if you stand for everything you end up standing for nothing kind of thing. But this is not exactly what Paul is talking about here. Paul is talking about having a larger purpose in mind and with that larger purpose in mind, everything else doesn't matter. Everything else can be malleable, everything else can be flexible. Paul is talking and somewhat by kind of following customs and trying to fit in with people. When I was reading this, I was reminded of my family's recent trip to Ethiopia where when we visited folks, when we visited people and had they had us in their home, we followed their customs. Sometimes we'd remove our shoes. We visited a cathedral in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia and we were supposed to remove our shoes as a sign of respect as we were walked in. So we did.

My daughter and my wife don't normally wear dresses, but that was the custom when visiting people so they wore dresses at that point. I remember in seminary I took a class of school down the road. It was a historically Black college, Virginia Union University, and I remember walking across the campus with Reggie one day, one of the students there and we were just kind of walking in their quad, in their courtyard and I was about to kind of walk through the middle of it and there was this kind of logo in the center of it, kind of an emblem of the school and Reggie me to walk around it said, "We don't walk across that as a sign of respect." And so of course I did that. When we are with other people, we try and follow their customs. When in Rome you do as the Romans. That is what Paul is talking about here is respecting other people so that when you have something important to say, they can listen to you.

Paul was willing to meet people where they are because he cared for them. Paul was willing to meet people where they are because he loved them and he wanted more importantly for them to experience the love of God. The last thing Paul wanted was for something he did that really didn't matter to get in the way between someone else and the love of God. And so this is the attitude, this is the posture that you and I should have. And so as we talk about the language we use about God, the language we use about our faith, I want you to keep that in mind because language is tricky, it's personal and we have a tendency to get defensive when someone says, "Maybe you should use different language." So I want you to keep in mind this attitude that what's important is showing God's love.

We know that language is powerful. We know that the words we use shape our perception of reality. There was a study I read about this week where they took two groups of people and they had gave them an article about crime and in one article they described crime as a beast that that's tearing up the city. In another article that the other group had, they described crime as a virus that's hurting the city and then they gave each group a survey and they measured kind of their attitudes and the group that had crime described to them as a beast were much more in favor of having more police on the streets, more having more law enforcement than the group that was described as a virus and they were more prone to say, "Well, let's try and address the systemic causes of crime." Words shape our perception of reality.

Another example of this, they took German speakers and Spanish speakers and they asked them, "Describe different kinds of objects." And one of those objects was a bridge. The German speakers associated bridges with adjectives like pretty and elegant and peaceful and slender. Spanish speakers used adjectives to describe a bridge like tall and long and powerful. Now in German it's a gendered language and so objects have gender bridge is feminine and so they used feminine kind of characteristics more than masculine. While Spanish bridge is a masculine word and so they use more masculine terms, but here's my favorite that I thought is really interesting. There's this aboriginal tribe in Australia, the Punthamara and they don't use right and left as their kind of measure of where things are. They use cardinal directions, north and south and east and west. So they will say, "That microphone's not to the right of me, it is to the west of me."

Sorry I had to face north to figure out where I was. But that's kind of the thing. This tribe, they don't have to do that. They always kind of know where they are. They know the direction they're facing. Because their language requires them to know, they have this awareness of their position, they have this awareness of their reality about where they are and it's really kind of interesting. When asked to put images in chronological order, you and I who speak English, we will probably put them from left to right because that's the way our language goes, right? If you're a Hebrew speaker that goes right to left. And so if you're putting images in chronological order, you might put the first one on the right side and then go to the left. The Punthamara tribe, when they are asked to put images of chronological order, they go from east to west. And so here's east, there's west, and if they're facing this way and you put them in chronological order, they're going to put them this way.

If they're facing this way, they're still going to put them east to west. No matter which way they're kind of seated and oriented, they're always going to put those images east to west. The language we use shapes how we think. It shapes how we see the world. The language we use shapes our faith. It shapes our image of God. I want you to do an exercise with me. I want you to picture the Garden of Eden right now. We heard from the first creation story in Genesis one. Now we're going to go to the second creation story in Genesis two. Picture that biblical Garden of Eden. Picture how it looks, maybe the lush vegetation, maybe lots of fruit around, picture the sounds, maybe the wind going through the leaves, birds and animals, the smells maybe of the earth and the trees and picture Adam and Eve in the garden and you can picture the fig leaf or not. That's up to you. And picture God. I mean in Genesis chapter two, God comes and speaks with Adam and Eve. Picture God walking alongside Adam and Eve. Hear God speaking to Adam and Eve.

And I want you to think. What was God like in your image? What was God like? Chances are for the majority of us, God took a male form. Chances are when God spoke, we heard a male voice. Maybe it's that kind of classic Michelangelo white beard, almost Zeus looking figure of God walking there in the garden. But God is not a man. I mean the Bible uses male language to refer to God and so it shapes it that way for certain, but God is not a man. In Genesis chapter one, we heard Steph Reed that we were created in the image of God, male and female. Didn't say man was created in the image of God and, "Oh, God also created woman." That God created us in God's image, male and female.

God is beyond gender. God is beyond our human limitations. And intellectually I think you and I, we know that. If we're asked point blank, "Is God a man?" We're going to say no. God is beyond gender. God is beyond our human categories, but probably we can't help default to that sort of thinking of it. And this may not seem like much of a problem, it's very typical. But there are people who find exclusively masculine language about God problematic, who have a hard time hearing about the message of God if God is always referred to as a male.

Some people may have had a difficult relationship with a father and so to hear God called father all the time may bring up really bad associations and they don't have good associations with that. Others will find that this exclusive use of masculine language reinforces kind of a patriarchy, reinforces a sexism in our society. It makes women seem less godlike over time, that men are more godly somehow and women are not. And I would argue that in many Christian traditions over time and still today with the role that women play in leadership or in the life of the church, that that patriarchy is built into certain Christian traditions and, to some extent, our Christian tradition as well.

For other people, just calling God he or father is just too limiting it. It's not big enough for God. It ignores biblical aspects, scriptural aspects of God that we find in the Bible that we find in Christian tradition. One of the themes that we find in scripture, especially in the Old Testament, especially in that first part of the Old Testament, is the prohibition against idolatry. That's making an idol of God, a carved image of God, a visible statue or something right there, you can see, "This is our God, this is who we're going to worship." The Hebrew and Israelite people are told over and over again, "Don't reduce God to an idol. Don't reduce God to an image." The danger of idolatry is that you've limited God to just what you see before you.

I think that our language can be an idol if we limit ourselves to any small set of language about God, whether that that's masculine or feminine or maybe some people think of God only as a judge, only as a strict disciplinarian and they have that kind of idol of God or other people think of God is simply just the loving person who accepts everything no matter what and never has a bad word to say and never asks anything of you, that can be an idol. But when we also say God is only masculine and that that's all I'm going to speak about God, we're limiting God a little bit and we sort of make an idol of our language.

God is bigger than that. God is bigger than any language we can use. Let's admit that first. But the Bible has many feminine images of God. First one we'll highlight this morning, Deuteronomy 32:18. "You were unmindful of the rock that bore you. You forgot the God who gave you birth." It is women who give birth, not men. Isaiah 66:13. "As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. You shall be comforted in Jerusalem." Luke 13:34. These are Jesus words. "How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hand gathers her brood under her wings?"

Our first hymn this morning spoke of wisdom and it's this from Proverbs and it personifies wisdom as a woman and many people will hear echoes of the Holy Spirit described in that verse of Proverbs. So when we expand our language about God beyond just masculine language, we're not only honoring this larger biblical witness about who God is, we are making it so that some people will be able to hear us more, will be able to hear about God more, about God's love more. We are doing what Paul did. To someone who has difficulty with masculine exclusive language about God, we are meeting them where they are.

This goes beyond gender language if we're talking about inclusive language. One of the things that I became aware of kind of midway through my career and I've tried to honor it a little bit more is there is language in our faith. There's language in the Bible that talks about light and darkness and almost exclusively light is good. Think of images as white as snow. We're made white as snow, we're purified. That's good. And the language of darkness is bad. In our society today, I mean that goes beyond faith. And there there's many examples where dark is bad and light or white is good and we have to be careful about that language. Similar, we have to be careful with language about disability. We have traditionally in scripture, in the Bible, in our faith, in our hymns, we've traditionally linked being blind and deaf, crippled or lame as less desirable, as less than whole. As something is wrong with you, you have any of those conditions and you need to be made better or whole.

All these things are learning. All these things are ... There's not hard and fast rules, but it is to be aware of our language that is to be loving. And maybe this is a good place, it's just a little segue, but I think it's appropriate. It's a good place to mention that we love through our language in many different ways. And one of those ways is by using someone's preferred pronouns, by using someone's preferred name. There is a lot to be said about this, but I just want to say this, what harm does it do us to call someone how they want to be called?

We do know it does harm to mis-gender someone, to misname someone or dead-name someone. I mean do you this with other people? Someone comes to you and they say, "Hi, my name is Jen." You say, "Well, I'm sorry your name is Jennifer and I'm not going to call you Jen." We don't do that. And I would guess, well, I know many of you are grandmothers and grandfathers, but how many of you are a grandma, a grandpa, a Mee-maw, a mamma, a Gigi, a nana? We want to be called what we want to be called, right? And that's okay. Being aware of our language and its potential to exclude even when we mean well, if we pay attention to this, if we are aware of that, we can make someone feel loved. We can help someone to feel God's love.

I remember a simple example of this in Florida. I was asked one time to give a prayer at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast and I gave a prayer knowing that it was probably mostly people identified as of faith. It's probably a Christian faith, but I knew it could be beyond that. It wasn't explicitly Christian group. And so I made more of a general prayer and I had a rabbi come up to me who was there and she said, "Just really appreciate that I felt included in your prayer." And I'm like, "Well, yeah, that's kind of what we do."

Our language matters. One other person I remember that, and I don't know what she thinks today. When I was in my first church in Michigan, I kind of took from someone in seminary when I closed every one of my sermons and I've sometimes done it at the benediction here, I would say, "The name of God, the Father, son and Holy Spirit, one God, mother of us all." And I'm trying to use that gender expansive language of using both images. And so we're talking one night in youth group about our language about God or whether God's male or female. And Jessica, who is one of the kids in the youth group says, "Well, how we often say the father, son and Holy Spirit, one God, mother of us all?" And for Jessica that was something the church often says. I guarantee I was the only one Jessica ever heard say that. But when we model it, it becomes kind of normal and people get used to it and especially for younger generations, they're going to hear and they're going to be able to speak differently about God and more inclusively.

So I realized, as we kind of draw to a close here, language about God is personal, language about faith is personal. And as I said before, it's very easy to get defensive. And so if I've offended you, if I've made you feel defensive, that wasn't my intent. I'm not going to say that anyone needs to change their language about God, but I want you to consider it. I want you to be aware of how you speak about God, how you speak in your faith. Going back to Paul, does any of us want to get in the way? Does any of us want to get in between someone and the love of God?

Paul said, "As long as I get to tell someone about God's love, as long as I get to show someone God's love, I'm willing to accommodate myself to them. I've got one goal, one goal in mind. I've got one prize, I'm running forward. Everything else doesn't matter. I'll do whatever it takes to achieve that." Our goal is to love. Our goal is to respect. Our goal is to include, our goal is to welcome and embrace. And if that means being aware of our language, then let's do that. If it means changing our language, shouldn't we do that?

I know it's hard and we're not asking that we're going to give up all of our gendered language about God. We're going to hear music today that has gendered language about God and there's nothing wrong with that, but we should be aware and we should try and be as inclusive and expansive as possible. And if it's too much to change your language right now, then just be aware. Just think about it. Just notice how you speak. Take note. I want to close this morning with a short little, I guess poem, but it's actually, it's from a piece of music by Brian Renn. It's from a libretto, from the song of the Three Children. "God is not a she, God is not a he. God is not an it or a maybe. God is a moving, loving, doing, knowing, growing mystery."