Hagia Sophia: The Feminine Face of God
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
March 1, 2020
In the sixth century of the Common Era, a church was built in Constantinople by the order of the Roman Emperor Justinian and the Empress Theodosia. The church was the third one constructed on the site, replacing an earlier church constructed by the Emperor Constantine. This new immense domed cathedral was constructed in a short period of five years, to send a message that Rome still dominated a region prone to conflict and insurrections. It was built with such haste that at one point the dome collapsed. But the builders were not deterred and the cathedral rose again. The cathedral, a wonder of architecture to this day, was named Hagia Sophia – Holy Wisdom. It was adorned with gold and silver, and mosaics covered its surfaces. The interior was described this way, by visitors in the beginning of the 21st century: “The interior of Hagia Sophia is an icon of paradise. The rivers of Eden flow in green marble across the ivory floor, under the dome of sunlit heavens. We strolled among the groves of trees created by the marble columns and filigreed carvings of leaves and vines. Its space embraced us and surrounded us with signs on every side that earth is the dwelling place of God. Wisdom – God’s presence – permeates all things…” (in Saving Paradise, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker, Boston: Beacon Press, 2008. pp. 203-25.)
Wisdom – God’s presence. Holy Wisdom. “Whoever finds me finds life.” (Proverbs 8:35.)
In our reading this morning we learned that Wisdom – Hokhmah in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek – was a manifestation of the Holy, present from the very beginning of time. Sophia offered us another creation story: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.” (Proverbs 8:22-23). Wisdom, Sophia, becomes a co-creator, participating in all of the creation that followed. “…I was beside him, like a master worker…” (Proverbs 8:30.). And wisdom, both named as Hokhmah in the original Hebrew scriptures and as Sophia once they were translated into Greek, was personified as female. God’s co-creator, partner, master worker, and mediator, was considered to be female.
It couldn’t last.
Many years later, when authors began to tell the story of Jesus Christ’s ministry on earth and his role as the Son of God, the language changed. Yet another new creation story emerged, with these familiar words that opened the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” (John 1:1-4)
Sophia – Wisdom and female, evolved into the Logos – the Word, and male.
Now, it is very difficult to determine why that should be; why the feminine presence of the holy would be replaced with the male. Perhaps it is as simple as grammar: as a masculine article for the word ‘Logos’. Perhaps it is a reflection of the incarnation of Jesus Christ as the Word of God – divine reason and knowledge and logic brought to life in human form, in a male human form. Perhaps it reflects an ancient patriarchal society. Scholars love to debate all this: to consider pronouns in all the different translations of the Bible through the millennia, and to debate the nature of the Holy. It’s fascinating, but my friends, it is a tall order for a Sunday morning.
What concerns us here today, as we begin to consider the topic of Wisdom, and also begin the commemoration of Women’s History Month, is how female presences and voices were so lost to us throughout history. For when we look at scripture and at literature, we see that they are present, if only we know where to look for them. We heard the story earlier of the ancient Greek goddess Athena, known for her wisdom. We read a selection of earth-centered poetry by Starhawk: “I call upon your soul to arise and come unto Me, for I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe…” But because of Western Christianity’s emphasis on the Gospels of the New Testament, we lost sight of the feminine side of the Holy. Because of translation decisions throughout history, God, and God’s Word, the Logos, came to be seen as exclusively male.
All this reminds me of the time I was talking about religious belief with a former neighbor, and she was struggling to put her beliefs into words. “I mean, I know that God is a boy,” she said finally.
I was newly in seminary at the time, and found it hard to respond sensibly. I don’t think I said anything at all. But what I would say to her today would sound something like this: “Why would you make God so small?” For whatever God is, surely God is larger than our human comprehension and cannot be labelled, or permitted only one gender. After all, in the Book of Genesis, God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…” (NRSV, Genesis, 1:26). There is space in those words: space for different genders, for different skin colors, space for all the variations and expressions of humanity.
The language attributed to Wisdom, to Sophia, is beautiful: lyrical and life-giving. Wisdom’s oration in the Book of Proverbs, which you heard earlier, was full of words such as rejoicing, delight, and happiness. She said,
“Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
18 She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called happy… (Proverbs 8:17-18)
Wisdom – Sophia -is offering to all who will listen a way of life that promises goodness. All her paths are peace. This is one side, one element of wholeness, balanced later by the description of the Logos, the Word, as divine reason, as a light in the darkness. Together, Sophia and Logos – Wisdom and the Word – become a balanced whole, two separate but equal aspects of the Divine, two mediators for God reaching out to humans, to God’s creation. Two actors who carry out God’s creation.
Late in his life, the monk Thomas Merton discovered Sophia and turned to her along his spiritual journey. Merton’s study and reflection led him to write a prose poem to Hagia Sophia – Holy Sophia. The poem begins: “There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden whole-ness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and joy.” (Thomas Merton, Hagia Sophia). Hear those words that are celebrating life itself: fecundity, wholeness, joy.
What can Sophia offer us? When we think about Wisdom today, we are likely to think in terms of knowledge, or about the lessons we have learned from the experiences of our human lives. We hope for wisdom to respond to the problems of our daily lives: to know the right thing to do, the right thing to say. But knowledge doesn’t bring us wisdom. It is something apart.
Suppose we were to think of Wisdom as a source of life: the source of all the joys of life, as well as goodness, mercy, and peace. What might our lives become if we were to broaden our view, to listen for the voice of Wisdom as a guide, leading us toward a path to all that is creative, all that is life-sustaining? What if we think beyond Wisdom as a virtue, and see her as a creative force that can guide us? After all, this was a force so revered in the early church that cathedrals were built in her name. A cathedral that 900 years later became a mosque: still there, still known as Ayasofia. What might we discover if we open to the voice of Wisdom? Might we deepen into life, into our creative impulses, into working to create more love and peace in the world?
Sophia has been with us from the beginning of time. She waits for us to invite her into our lives, to help us to grow in love and in wisdom.
I leave you with the conclusion of Thomas Merton’s poem; chosen not only for its wisdom, but for its beauty, as a gift for us all.
“The shadows fall. The stars appear. The birds begin to sleep.
Night embraces the silent half of the earth. A vagrant, a destitute
wanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A
homeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without
identifications, without even a number, a frail expendable exile
lies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world and
entrusts Himself to sleep.”
May you find your way down a new road, and may you find all that you seek.
Blessed be.
Amen.
