Sermon - July 27, 2025 (Matthew 9) Resurrecting the Divine Feminine

Today I get the honor of wrapping up our sermon series “Eve Isn’t Evil” – a month’s worth of messages dedicated to seeking out and appreciating the divine feminine in our scriptures.

Here’s a recap in case you missed any or all of these sermons:

The Mothering God

I kicked us off the first Sunday of the month with an overview of our series and an exploration of Isaiah’s use of the Divine Feminine who motivated his suffering people by reminding them of God’s compassionate care as a Comforting Mother tending for her needy babies.

Eve Isn’t Evil

Next, Alison gave listeners plenty to think about in her exploration of the fabled Garden of Eden about the mythological first man and first woman as they sought to tend and enjoy God’s creation before being distracted by the theological snobbery of that talking serpent. Christians are free to think what they want to think, but upon closer interpretation the text as is shows that Eve isn’t evil, Adam isn’t innocent, the serpent isn’t the devil, and God’s punishment isn’t an excuse or justification for condemning and oppressing women.

Mary Isn’t a Prostitute

And finally, last Sunday Alison guided us through the fallout following 6^th century Pope Gregory the Not-So-Great’s sermon which depicted Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. Somehow His lie became the prominent viewpoint for centuries—and as Alison pointed out last week, “When a lie is spoken and believed by people for generations, it becomes a kind of twisted truth that is difficult to undo.”

Instead we were gently encouraged to see Mary Magdalene for what the Bible text actually says about her: that she was lovingly healed of 7 demons by Jesus, and a woman who supported Jesus and his disciples with her own means and who went on to have an active role in Jesus’ mission.

A Restoration Project

So What does a motherly depiction of God, an appreciation of Eve, and a new viewpoint of Mary Magdalene accomplish? For starters, I think such learning, relearning, and unlearning helps us to establish a new baseline of spiritual truths to live by. For far too long the Judeo-Christian narrative has elevated masculinity and downplayed femineity. For far too long Christ’s Church has been led to believe that God is only Fatherly, that only Eve is to blame, and that Mary Magdalene was only a prostitute. Combined with the fact that there are only a handful of positive stories about women in the entire Bible, as the years go by, that only bleeds over into everything else, religious or otherwise.

How in God’s name can we truly embrace our divinely infused humanity if we are only supposed to honor and cherish hetero-males? If God’s Church is only meant to be male-controlled—than we are not only severely limiting ourselves but limiting God. Enough is enough. We need a restoration of equality, and the Church is an excellent place to exemplify this in how we communicate, act, and lead.  

Barbie’s World

For inspiration, look no further than Barbie. While it was grossly overlooked at the Oscars, the movie, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, was easily one of the best films of 2023.

How refreshing it must have been for women to revel in the movie’s first moments as Barbie and her fellow dolls reside in Barbieland, the matriarchical—female-controlled—society. While the Kens spend their days considering playing at the beach their profession, the Barbies hold prestigious jobs in law, science, politics, and so on.

When I first became interested in Feminist Theology, I assumed that the religious landscape is, was, and always has been male-controlled. I thought that surely Barbieland was the kind of society that only existed in fiction.

I was wrong.

The Patriarchy was a Judeo-Christian framework, brought in by them and for them. In other words, over the span of humankind, the majority of ancient cultures was actually very women friendly.

From the book “When God Was a Woman” by Merlin Stone:

“Through an intensive study of the Bible, archaeologist and priest Roland de Vaux asserted that, …there were women among the clergy of the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, and the Minaens—but no women in Hebrew ever held a place among the Israelite clergy…and In ancient Israelite tombs, the Hebrew husband was placed higher than the body of the wife, so that the woman’s inferior status was also demonstrated after her death.”

But from the mighty Minoans of ancient Crete to Babylon, Sumeria and Egypt, women were considered Godly. In other words, Barbieland was a historical reality. Across societies spanning thousands of years women were remarkably free and in many places, powerfully so.

The ancient Greek Heraclides Ponticus summed it up best: “From of old they have been ruled by the women.”

Asherah

But It’s not like women merely stopped being influential after the arrival of a patriarchical age. Hardly. How boring would the Bible be if Abraham didn’t have Sarah, if Isaac was without Rebekah, or one that didn’t feature Miriam, Esther, Rahab, Ruth, or Deborah, plus many more, all respectively deserving their due for their mighty acts of courage, compassion, and faith.

Of course, a casual reader will never pick up on the handful of references to the previous age of Goddess mythology and Matriarchy Rule, but they’re most certainly there. Here’s one: The most famous Canaanite Goddess is Asherah and the Old Testament contains about 40 references to her. She was the mother of the Canaanite pantheon—but I’ll bet no one here has even heard of her.

That might be because the Old Testament writers didn’t want you to. Of the 40 references, there’s almost no consistency in translation. In other words, Asherah is never given the kind of platform she earned for every other ancient Near Eastern culture where Goddesses held a range of responsibilities, including: protecting cities, inventing writing and agriculture, fighting wars, ruling the underworld and heaven and inciting love, and oh, birthing humanity.

Unfortunately for the patriarchs writing and copying the Bible, it was impossible to not repeatedly testify to her power. She was after all, royalty. And people of the Bible took notice, even naming their daughters and sons after her—like Leah’s handmaiden Zilpah who named Jacob’s son Asher, which in the Hebrew language meant happiness, but everywhere else, that sort of name meant something far, far more Divinely awesome.

Resurrecting the Divine Feminine

To truly resurrect the divine feminine in our society and culture, perhaps we ought to take a page from the story of Jesus healing the hemorraging woman and the synagogue leader’s daughter from Matthew 9.

In back to back stories of what exemplary faith looks like, let’s learn how to harness the divine feminine within each of us— and to couple this with the divine masculine as we become, well—truly human again—just as we were designed to be but let slip through our fingers back in the beginning.

In both stories extraordinary power is manifested by Jesus at the presence of extraordinary faith placed in him. First, the woman suffering from constant hemorraging seeks to touch to hem of Jesus’ cloak---fully believing that’s all it would take. Just a touch of the fabric. And not only did her amazing plan work, but she became one of only a few people in the Bible whose faith blew the Son of God’s mind.

Where in your life do you need to enact such mind-blowing faith in Jesus? What are you waiting for?

And then there’s the synagogue leader’s dead daughter. The outpouring of love of the girl’s father is truly moving. He refuses to quit on her. She had died. His request is not for healing then, but he had the gall to want resurrection for her. The weight of such a request was surely not lost on Jesus.

Unlike the hemorraging woman’s personal faith in Jesus that made her well, the girl in the second story was dead. Out of options. Perhaps her resurrection then came about because of the extraordinary faith of others?  

How is that even possible? How Can the faith of one person affect God’s treatment of another person like that? Well, isn’t that what we believe happens through our prayers and our acts of love and care for people? Such faith isn’t just possible, but encouraged! Do we not commit ourselves to believe for the infant who is baptized and cannot believe for themselves? Are we not on the hook for believing on behalf of young children or the ill and dying when they are communed and do not understand? Do we not believe for the hospitalized or grieving who cannot see the light of day?

Jesus continually sent people packing with his teaching; teaching that asserted that God was up to something new. From the professional funeral mourners who laughed in his face at the thought of his resurrection capabilities, to the absurdity that merely touching the hem of his cloak provided healing, Jesus is always and ever on the move, calling for extraordinary faith, and granting healing from the inside out. No, our prayers don’t always manifest in the way we’d like them to, but even when we think we’ve outmaneuvered or kept hidden from God, Jesus always seems to know when we believe in his power for our lives.  

Conclusion

Imagine then our impact if we truly embraced ourselves, sons and daughters as Divine? Masculine or Feminine, male, female, they/them, however the Spirit chooses to make Herself known is and always will be an extraordinary Mystery, a multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-gendered, and multi-gifted presence and power. And this same Spirit of Creation who relies on you and me and our communities, congregations, and families, desires us to bring God’s healing love into the world—are you up for it?

I mean, really. I’ve got you and you’ve got me. So Isn’t it time to write a new resurrection story, St. Luke? As equally loved and cherished siblings, baptized into Christ’s Divine healing and unifying grace—let’s celebrate who we are: Faith-filled disciples, differently gifted, but equally loved, forgiven, and set free in Jesus’ name. Amen.