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While fatherhood language is indeed central to Scripture’s witness, it’s far from exclusive, God is also presented in Scripture as a mother (Isaiah 66), a good shepherd (Psalm 23), the rock (1 Samuel 2), a healer (Jeremiah 30), a gardener (Isaiah 5) – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!
Such a wide variety of metaphors is overwhelming. But these are anything but an accident. As pastor and author Lauren Winner writes in Wearing God, “the Bible gives us these images because each image holds a different way (maybe many different ways) into our life with God.”
No one metaphor – not even that of Father – can fully encapsulate God. And that means that no one person, no one role, no one story, has a monopoly on God either.
When we celebrate the reality of multiple metaphors, when we joyfully lean into this divine mystery, we are free. We are free to encounter anew God’s story, our own story and the story of our neighbors. We are free to let our stories, in all of their joys and sorrows, truly and deeply shape us.
This message is excerpted from “Multiple metaphors” by Hannah J. Hawkinson in the June 2020 Gather magazine. Today is the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. Today is Father’s Day. Today is the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Today we commemorate Onesimos Nesib, translator, evangelist, 1931.