Woman, Wings, Dragon, Earth by Shada Sullivan
Originally preached at the NewChurch Live Women’s Summer vespers, June 18th, 2012. (Thanks go to Anita Dole’s study guide for inspiration…)
Welcome everyone. Tomorrow is June 19th, a very special day in the New Church. We will be celebrating a new connection between God and humanity; we will be celebrating God’s incredible mercy and love; we will be celebrating the power of knowing we are part of God’s plan.
Let’s start this evening by reading from the book of Revelation, portions of chapter 12.
12 Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. 2 Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth. 3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. 4 His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. 5 She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. 6 Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
13 Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. 14 But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. 15 So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. 16 But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Even in this short reading – two thirds of one chapter – there is so much to talk about. The book of Revelation is generally believed to be predicting the return of Jesus to earth, but those of you who are new to the New Church might have noticed that we are not waiting for this to happen. We believe that the events in Revelation represent spiritual events that have already happened, and are continuing to happen to the betterment of every human being living right now. And we believe that these events also illuminate a larger picture of how faith and church interact with the world and how our own inner experience of faith and church can interact with the world. So, let’s explore a few of the figures in this story, so that we might be better able to discern how it can speak to us.
The woman clothed with the sun is such a beautiful and beloved figure in New Church theology. She represents a new heaven and new church. Just to be clear, when I talk about church, I am not referring to an earthly organization made up of people in a hierarchy, but rather the manifestation of God’s connection with people in this world, whatever form this is taking. And the woman represents a new hope and a new way to engage with God. She represents the fulfillment of Jesus promise to return to us and balance the spiritual equation. Because if the incarnation was God reaching out to us, now we are being given a way to reach back, a new spiritual capacity to love God and to understand that all things are connected to Him. And this is important, because sometimes the world seems so disconnected from God. Even His Word can seem so disconnected from a God of love. This feeling of disconnect can cause us to want to distance ourselves from religion, to ask “What is the point?” And so the woman clothed with the sun is given “the wings of a great eagle.” These wings represent spiritual intelligence and circumspection, a God-given ability to see truth and to understand the underlying order of things, to recognize and make connections, to see the story of God’s Word as a grand love story between God and humanity. The wings represent the opening up of that potential within us, this potential to feel moved by the beauty and truth of God’s ordering of the universe.
The woman clothed with the sun also gives birth to a child. This child represents doctrine. Doctrine can be such a loaded word but all it means is how we think about truth, and what we think that truth is calling us to do. So thus the child represents a doctrine of life, a living religion, brand new and alive. And the women needed to labor to give birth to the child, because when the truth moves us to act it can sometimes take a lot of work to figure out how that needs to show up in our lives. But when we do that work, and figure out how truth needs to show up for us, this effort to produce our own doctrine of life is protected by God. And it is not so much that our own precious interpretation or construct of doctrine is protected, but rather, God protects our sacred capacity to see truth and let it move us somewhere.
But giving birth can make us vulnerable, and so when the truth moves us to act, then the dragon is waiting to devour whatever we bring forth. The dragon represents worldliness and selfishness, our own and that of our environment. It represents materialism, selling out, entitlement. And in the context of religion, it represents the idea of faith alone being able to save us, believing that faith should give us a free pass so we can do whatever we want. And we can also see in the dragon the kind of anger and hate that arises when we don’t get what we want. I think we are all familiar with the dragon part of ourselves.
Finally, there is the earth – the good ground – when we live grounded in love. If the woman is a new way, and the wings a new ability to see truth, and the child is what the truth calls us to do, then the earth is the actual doing of it. The earth is solid, making a stand for love, actually living a good life. In both a personal and organizational context, earth represents moving beyond the life of the mind, where we tend to over-complicate and rationalize, and putting one foot in front of the other in service to what is good.
These are the players, and so you might be asking at this point, well, where am I in all of this? What does this really have to do with my life? For me, the two female images, the woman clothed with the sun and the earth (which has since ancient times been known as “mother earth”) are the most helpful in bringing this narrative home to me, in connecting to the story for myself in the here and now. Both figures represent churches, both represent ways that are integral to connecting God to all people – both men and women.
The woman clothed with the sun is a beautiful figure, made even more beautiful when paired with her wings. Together they represent a connection with truth, with heaven, with God, an ability to see God and to love how He has put it all together, to see patterns and order and beauty. She teaches us that being under the wing of God allows us to soar, to rise above our circumstances, and that is our protection because right after she is given wings she goes into the wilderness, into temptation. For us, when we can view our circumstances with God’s eyes, and know that all things come from Him, that is what can sustain us, just as the woman is nourished in the wilderness.
Mother earth can teach us about the power of love, about seeing the truth and grounding it, establishing a connection to God in the living of life through each sacred moment. The earth was also provided with a protection: the capacity to open wide and swallow the flood. The dragon spewed water out of its mouth like a flood, that he might cause the woman to be carried away…Haven’t we all felt that we are going to be carried away by the world? The false assumptions, the complacency…life in this world gets under our skin and suddenly we’re floating and we’re miles away from where we thought we were? The dragon has also been described as “crafty reasonings.” Aren’t we all familiar with the crafty reasonings of the ego, that voice in our head leading us away from the grounding of love? But it is the earth that swallows the flood and saves the woman, saves our ability to see and understand God, and turns that great flood of falsity into the nothingness that it really is – the flood in turn devoured by love.
To me, this narrative is so meaningful because of its holistic message about how to live. That no matter how the world might try to tell us differently, we are all part of God’s plan and part of his vision of history. It is powerful to understand how God provides for us, that both soaring high and grounding down protects us spiritually in essential ways. And as women, it is further meaningful that church – the connection of God with people – is represented by feminine figures. We can understand that our natures are integral to the connection of God with the world. In a world that sometimes seems so masculine, it is important to know that we are needed, that God needs us. And he needs the whole of us…earth and sun…wings and ground….a new heaven AND a new earth. Amen.
