The first part of the Trinity is that of “Father.” This is the example that Paul uses in Romans 8 when he notes that we can cry out to our “Abba,” a term denoting the closest relationship one can have with their father. 

For some, this is the easiest part of God for you to get. Your father was a steady, solid presence in your life. When it comes to knowing grace, obedience, love, and justice, for many of you your father’s presence is what comes to mind when you think of where you first experienced those things. Understanding God as a father, is easy to do, because the example of an earthly father, or step-father, is one that brings joy and direction for you.

For others, this may be the hardest part of God’s presence to grasp. 

For some, the very idea of “father,” is not one we like to dwell on. I understand, personally, how hard this can be. 

My parents divorced when I was a toddler. At the time this happened, we moved from Georgia, the state of my birth, to North Carolina, where I would live to this day. 

The presence of father in my life, was not one that I could call “full.” After their divorce, my father became a non-presence in my life. For various reasons, I grew up without knowing him. 
Throughout the years, there would be others who would fill this void, but none could ever fully be my “father.” 

Growing up, as I encountered communities of faith, understanding God as Father was not something I could do easily. 

After all, all I had know was an empty void where I did not really have one. Presence, in this case, was not something I could relate to. God as father, for me, was a presence of absence and disappointment. 

I simply could not grasp ‘the loving father,’ part of God.

Yet, for both groups in the room this morning, I think it may be beneficial and helpful to step back and look at this part of the Trinity, and the presence of God, less as ‘Father’ and more as ‘Parent.’

You see, when we start listing the characteristics and attributes of God, we often say things like: strength, might, sovereign, and obedience- all attributes we often list under the earthly heading of ‘father.’ 

Yet, we would also list characteristics such as: grace, hope, or gentleness- common attributes given to the term ‘mother.’ To stir the water further, many of you, as I listed these characteristics, did not put them under the traditional heading. 

For you, the common characteristics of ‘father’ were lived out by your mother, or by someone else in your life- and vice versa. 

You see, for us to understand the imago dei fully, the understanding that we are created in the image of God, we would be remiss to pigeonhole God into just the idea of ‘father,’ in the part of the Trinity- because it is evident in scripture, that God has qualities of both “father” and “mother.”

Dr. Yolanda Pierce, an Associate Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, sums up this idea best when she describes her own connection to the presence of God. She says:

“I was being raised in a household where I instinctively understood that the divine presence was manifest in the loving hands and arms of mothers, and most especially in the life of my grandmother who raised me. My grandmother’s kitchen was a theological laboratory where she taught me how to love people just as naturally as she taught me to make peach cobbler and buttermilk biscuits. I watched and listened as she ministered to the sick and the lost, with a Bible in one hand and a freshly baked pound cake in the other, despite having no official ministry role. I knew that if God was real, if God truly loved me as a parent loves a child, then God was also “Mother” and not only “Father.”” (“God As Mother and Father,” by Dr. Yolanda Pierce, TIME magazine, 2015).

So, all that to say, I think focusing on God during this time as ‘parent’ may be helpful for us to understand God’s presence around us. It may give us a deeper level of connection.

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Written in a sermon I preached for Father’s Day in 2021.