The Gender of God

This week we’ll start looking at some of the female images of God in the scriptures and then shift midweek towards how those images culminate in a Christ and what that means for us.

Perhaps you grew up hearing mostly male images for God: Lord, King, Father, Daddy. It can feel disorienting when we start to realize that God doesn’t have gender. But this shouldn’t be but so surprising if we read scripture carefully. When God gets to choose a name, that choice is Yahweh. Yahweh is God’s personal name and it has no gender at all - it just means “I am” (more or less).

Throughout scriptures there are all sorts of ways the authors think of God and how God describes Godself. Think of images like Rock, Morning Star, and Prince of Peace, for example. Some are gender neutral, some are male, and some are female images.

in Deuteronomy 32:18 Yawheh speaks of giving birth to her people - clearly a female image: “You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.” And then there’s the verse that inspired a large tattoo on a certain co-pastor (who will remain nameless, but her initials are B.R.): “Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open” (Hosea 13:8). That is no ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ picture of God - it’s terrifying, powerful, and very female.

How does this talk about God’s gender sit with you? Are you open to exploring new images of God if they might help you know God more deeply and freely?