Mothering the People of God

The most common image for God in the Bible is “Father.” Jesus referred to God as “Father” 65 times in the synoptic gospels and more than 100 times in the Gospel of John.

“Father” is the term Jesus taught the disciples to use in their prayers. It is the term used by the earliest congregations. The Apostle Paul refers to God as “Father” more than 40 times in his writings. The term was used by the early congregations (Rom. 8:15), by the earliest church councils such as in the Apostle’s Creed (“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth”) and in Christian churches everywhere across the centuries.

There is no question about God as Father.

The Bible also presents God in female images in both the Old and New Testaments. A look at some of them provides understanding about God’s “mothering” the people of God in addition to God as Father.

First human relationship

Deuteronomy 32 begins with praise of God and all that He did for Israel. But the tone changes in verse 15 with the declaration, “Then he forsook God who made him and scorned the Rock of his salvation.”

Verse 18 sums up the complaint by saying, “You neglected the Rock who begot you and forgot the God who gave you birth.”

The writer compares the relationship between God and Israel to a woman who has given birth to a child. The mother-child relationship is the first human relationship. It is natural, important and is supposed to be valued and sustained. To ignore that relationship is to cut one’s self off from one’s heritage. It is unnatural.

One should not neglect the “rock” from which one came nor forget the One who birthed you, the writer contends.
Numbers 11 recounts God’s care for Israel in the wilderness. In verse 12, Moses reminds God that He (God) had conceived this people and brought them into the desert. Now, Moses says, God “carries them in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing infant to the land which Thou didst swear to their fathers.”

The words move beyond creation of a people. They picture God’s care being like a woman caring for a nursing child. God is a constant presence providing for His own and He will provide for them until His promise has been fulfilled.

Perhaps the Psalmist has this story in mind when he writes in Psalm 71:6, “By you I have been sustained from my birth.” God is not only like a mother nursing her child in infancy. God is like a mother who diligently works to provide food and sustenance for her child all the days of dependency.

Isaiah 66 reports the words of the Lord related to rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple after the Babylonian captivity. Beginning in verse 7, God uses the imagery of a woman giving birth to describe His care for those returning to their homeland.

Then the word picture goes beyond birth and nursing. Verse 12 adds, “You shall be carried on the hip and dandled on the knees.” Who cannot see the picture of a toddler riding the hip of a mother as she walks or bouncing on her knees as she rests?

The words describe dependency of the child and, more importantly, the trustworthiness of the mother. Just so, God will care for His own and His people are to trust their God.

“As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you,” God declares in the following verse. Like a mother God calls His people into being. He nourishes them. He sustains them. He carries them and comforts them. And like a child trusts his mother, so God’s people are to trust God.

In Isaiah 49, the imagery of a mother also is used. Those who have lived in Babylonian captivity complain “the Lord has forsaken me and the Lord has forgotten me” (v. 14).

Again, the Bible presents the response as the very words of God. “Can a woman forget her nursing child, and have no compassion on the son of her womb?” asks God (v. 15).

The response is a rhetorical question. A “no” answer is expected. It assumes the truth that a mother cannot forget her child — not a nursing child, not a difficult teenage child, not even a wayward adult child. God is saying to the captives that He has not forgotten them and never will.

God knows us. God cares for us. God acts in our behalf. That is part of mothering the people of God.

In His last week of earthly life Jesus looked over Jerusalem and with tears in His eyes said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem … how often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you would not”(Matt. 23:37).

God cares for us all

That imagery only adds to the constancy of God as loving and caring, as seeking and sheltering. It only adds to the beauty, tenderness and affection of the picture of God mothering His people from their beginning to the present moment. God cares for us all. He beckons us all to Himself. Ultimately all are offered shelter through Jesus Christ who gave Himself “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

This Sunday, May 13, is Mother’s Day. There is no better example of mothering to celebrate and no better example for Christian families to model than the consistent mothering image of God loving, caring, sustaining, comforting, seeking and sheltering His people.