Fourth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 9 - Year C - 7.6.2025

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 8 – Year C

Church of the Atonement

The Rev’d Charles Everson

July 6, 2025

Our first reading from the final chapter of Isaiah presents a culmination—a vision that gathers the long arc of exile, return, and divine promise into a final word of comfort and judgment. The original audience was likely part of the post-exilic community in Jerusalem, a people returned from slavery in Babylon but still haunted by loss and facing the painful task of rebuilding. The prophet’s voice here is not only exhortative but also maternal—calling a traumatized people to joy, and revealing God’s tenderness that undergirds that call.

“Rejoice with Jerusalem… all you who mourn over her.” The invitation to joy is addressed not only to the inhabitants of the city, but to those who have loved her from afar, even when she was all but destroyed. The Hebrew root for "mourn" points to those who have grieved Jerusalem's fall. Now, their grief is to be turned into rejoicing, for the city is restored—not merely structurally, but relationally and spiritually.

Then the imagery shifts decisively: Jerusalem is no longer merely a city, but a woman, a mother. “That you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast.” In the ancient Near East, maternal imagery carried powerful theological meaning—evoking not only nurture but also covenantal fidelity. To be nourished at the breast of Jerusalem is to be restored to covenantal belonging. The verb “to nurse” implies more than physical feeding; it speaks of dependence, intimacy, and trust.

The metaphor is extended in the divine voice: “I will extend prosperity to her like a river.” The word for prosperity here is shalom which means peace, fullness, wholeness. And not a trickle, but a river. The wealth of the nations comes not as tribute, but as an overflowing stream. This is not meant as Hebrew nationalistic triumph; it is a vision of eschatological abundance. The nations are drawn in, and Jerusalem becomes the site of divine mothering for the whole world.

In verse 13, we encounter one of the only places in Scripture where God is directly likened to a mother: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”  The verb for comfort here is nacham—the same root used in Isaiah chapter 40: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” Here, the promise of comfort reveals the very identity of the One who speaks it.

While Scripture frequently refers to God as Father—and rightly so, particularly given Jesus’ own language about God—we must hold that metaphor within the broader testimony of Scripture, which occasionally reveals the divine in maternal terms. In Deuteronomy 32, God is likened to one who gives birth; in Isaiah 42, God cries out like a woman in labor. These images remind us that God is not constrained by human gender categories. God is not subject to biology, and all human metaphors, whether masculine or feminine, are imperfect analogies. They point toward, but do not fully define, the divine mystery.

This vision of God as Mother has been further developed by many of the medieval Christian mystics and theologians. St. Julian of Norwich, writing in 14th-century England, proclaimed, “As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother.” For Julian, Jesus’ nurturing love, especially shown in the sacraments, was maternal in its tenderness and fidelity. St. Hildegard of Bingen, nearly two centuries earlier, sang of the “maternal love of creation,” seeing divine wisdom—sophia—as both generative and compassionate. Even St. Anselm of Canterbury, known more for his logical rigor, addressed Christ in prayer as “our Mother,” who gathers and nourishes her people with sacrificial love. These voices remind us that the maternal language of God is not a modern novelty but a deeply rooted stream within Christian tradition—a stream that flows from Scripture, through the Church, and into the lives of those who have most closely tasted the intimacy of divine love.

The doctrine of the Trinity helps us hold this complexity with integrity. God the Father is not male. "Father" speaks to a relationship of parental adoption and intimacy, not to anatomy. Jesus, on the other hand, in his incarnation, was male—historically living and breathing in a specific time and culture. And the Holy Spirit, grammatically feminine in Hebrew and neuter in Greek, transcends gender altogether.

So why do we persist in calling God “Father” in our public liturgies? The short answer is because Jesus did.  The longer answer is that we believe that Holy Scripture is the primary and foundational means by which God reveals Godself (for lack of a better term) to humanity, and in the Scriptures, the first person of the Trinity is referred to as the Father.  Of course, this is in part because of the patriarchal society in which the Scriptures came about.  But it is also, in part, because until DNA-based paternity testing was invented in 1988, fatherhood could be questioned. Maternity was obvious, biologically unambiguous. A human baby is pushed out of a mother’s body, and there are nearly always witnesses. But paternity could be denied. To call God “Father” in the ancient world was to proclaim something radical: that God has chosen us, that we are not accidental offspring, that we do not belong to the divine milkman, but are intentional heirs. St. Paul writes that we have received the “Spirit of adoption,” and through that Spirit we cry “Abba, Father.” Adoption, in Jesus’s time, was a legal act of irrevocable belonging. An adopted child could never be disowned. The Church Fathers picked up this image and wove it into the doctrine of salvation: to be saved is to be adopted into the life of God.

So we are adopted by a Father whose paternity is unshakable—and we are comforted by a God whose maternal love is boundless. When we speak of God only in masculine terms, we risk distorting the fullness of divine compassion. We may begin to assume that God’s glory is found only in might, rather than in the quiet fidelity of mercy and care. But Isaiah 66 reveals a God who cradles and nurses, who lifts, rocks, and rejoices over her children.

As Christians, we also see this passage from Isaiah as a prefiguring vision of the Church. Jerusalem, the mother city, represents the Church, the mother of the faithful. In the baptismal font, the Church gives us new birth. In the Eucharist, she feeds us with the Body and Blood of Christ. In her holy sacraments, she comforts us with maternal care. The Church is not merely an institution, it is a vessel of divine nurture.

Many of us have been wounded by patriarchal religion, had abusive or distant fathers, or feel spiritually orphaned. The comfort of God is not abstract and disembodied—it comes through the arms of Mother Church, through the words of Scripture, through the body and blood of Christ made known to us at the altar, through the touch of a friend. God mothers us through one another.

So, dear friends, we rejoice with Jerusalem. We receive comfort from the God who mothers us. We rest in the arms of a Church that feeds and cradles us. And we proclaim, with joy, that we are adopted by our heavenly Father—named, known, and forever held close in the embrace of God. Amen.