I. Introduction/Welcome Back
Anne: Tonight,
we continue our conversation about masculinity, femininity, and our faith. We
will attempt to climb this mountain, to have a discussion and to address it
seriously.
Cody: We
will strive to have compassion for voices other than our own, even if we do not
understand what is being said, and we will try to recognize our own voices
might cause harm to others. For we are a community of faith based in the
redeeming love of Jesus the Christ.
Both: And
with that, our journey continues…
II. Experience
Anne: I’m
five! I like adventure stories and running outside and playing in the dirt!
When I play pretend, I like to be the hero!
Cody: Girls
shouldn’t play in the dirt.
Anne: Well I
do.
Cody: Girls
should play inside with Barbie Dolls. Girls can’t be heroes anyway.
Anne: I
don’t like Barbie Dolls. They’re stupid, and I’m not. I’m strong!
Cody: Only
boys are strong. That’s why boys are always the heroes in your favorite
stories.
Anne: I’m
fourteen. I don’t wear make up. I don’t like dresses. I do like my long hair…
But I’m not a good liar, so I still can’t pretend to be weak. In fact, I’m
trying to show how strong I am by being kind of violent. I can’t stop yelling
at people sometimes. But I don’t like that either.
Cody: Just
be a girl!
Anne: I just
said I’m a terrible liar. I’m just not the girl you want me to be!
Cody: Then
you’re not a girl! You’re dyke! Butch!
Anne: I am so a girl! I’m just… odd?
Cody: Freak.
Anne: I’m
twenty. I’m still a freak, but I’m beginning to like myself this way. Dresses
are nice every once and a while, but I really haven’t changed much.
Cody: And
you got rid of your one redeeming feature, your long hair. You’re not even
trying to be a girl! Look around you, real women have long hair and wear
make-up and eat salads and have better grades and volunteer more and cuss less
and don’t meditate and you are a—
Both: Freak…
Cody:
I’m five. I’m tired of toy
trucks. I want to play house.
Anne:
Boys most definitely don’t play
“house.” They play with Legos and ride on bikes and make a mess in the
dirt. Sometimes they even eat worms.
Cody:
I like cooking, but I don’t want to
eat worms. That’s gross. If we can’t play house, can we play store? I’ll go
grocery shopping, and –
Anne:
Just stick with the stuff in the boys
toy aisle, ok? Look, let’s get you a G.I. Joe.
Cody:
I’m 15. I don’t understand why I
can’t wear this shirt.
Anne:
Guys are supposed to wear ties,
polos, letterman jackets. And that color is, well, off. Guys don’t wear
that color… unless…
Cody:
Unless what? I think lavender is a
perfectly fine color.
Anne:
Never mind. Just put on this
blue shirt instead.
Cody:
I’m 21. I thought about medical
school, but nursing just sounds so much more enjoyable. I love working
with the patients and every day is different –
Anne:
Do you understand what’s going to
happen if you become a nurse? You’ll be a joke! Don’t be [a girl! Don’t be –]
BOTH.e A FREAK
Both: Do we see the problem here?
III. Reason
Cody: Our
society and many others have long operated on the assumption that there are two
kinds of people in this world: There are women; There are men. Two, only two. A
binary, a dichotomy. Two balanced forces, forever opposite and, in a perverse
way, “balanced.” When one is violent, the other is passive. When one is
emotional, the other is stoic. Lustful versus Sexual “Purity.” Rational versus
Emotional. Bread-winning versus Caregiving. And as we explored last Sunday:
When one is powerful, the other is weak.
Anne: This
society belief in a binary is called genderism.
Of
course, we’ve hidden from the fact that these boxes have been challenged for a
long time. In Western history in particular, we have King Henry III of France,
who frequently cross-dressed and was addressed as “her majesty” by the royal
courtiers.
Cody: Joan
of Arc wore men’s armor into battle, dressed as a boy behind enemy lines, and
kept her hair cut short during the Hundred Years War in Europe; a political
enemy had her burned at the stake for her habits of dress (after the War the
Church would condemn the trial that resulted in her death, too late).
Anne: In
1654, Queen Christina of Sweden abdicated the throne, dressed in men’s
clothing, and took the name Count Dohna. And of course, the 1969 Stonewall
Riots in New York were ignited by the actions of Sylvia Rivera, a transwoman.
Also, did you know that in 1975 Minneapolis adopted the first local
antidiscrimination law protecting transgender people?
The binary has long been challenged, and now it is beginning to wear
thin. Where there used to be solid walls defining two genders, now there
appears to be plastic wrap. Things are looking blurry, yet so often we continue
to keep ourselves locked in. Defined rules are breaking, and gender roles are
spilling over. Truth is, the more we look around, the less “masculine” and
“feminine” fit into these boxes. Truth is, the more we live into this century,
the less so-called “feminine” traits seem to oppose so-called “masculine”
traits. More and more people don’t seem to fit into either box quite right.
Their gender is more fluid, less stereotype-able, and God they are fantastic!
But
not everyone sees it that way.
Cody: It’s
scary seeing things change so fast. The thing about a dichotomy—on which a
hierarchy is based—is that there are those who are used to being on top in that
hierarchy, and there are those who gain prominence by fulfilling the
dichotomy’s expectations. They are not going to see challenges to those
structures in a favorable way.
Anne: "The
horror of [...] prejudice,” states Dorothy Allison (a famous writer and a
self-identified lesbian femme), “is that some people begin to think that the
security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others,
that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are short and
brutal."
Both: It’s a
filthy lie, our Christ teaches us… But repeat a lie enough, and it begins to
sound like truth. It begins to sound like a good enough reason to gossip, to
bully, to insult, to attack those who don’t fit in the box.
IV. Scripture
Cody: The
second story of the creation of humanity in Genesis[1]
has long been used to promote a gender binary, the roles associated with those
two genders, and the supposedly superior role of one gender over another. Anne: Now I’m going to resist the
temptation to do equally inappropriate exegesis—that is, that Eve was obviously
the culmination of all God’s creative work and obviously that makes the female
the best—and instead point out a teeny little tidbit that we don’t often pay
attention to in English translations of the ancient Hebrew text. In Hebrew, adam is how you say human. Now granted,
for a long time we’ve treated “man” as the equivalent to “human,” and English
translations have reflected that, but adam
nonetheless means “human.” In Hebrew, the word for earth, dust, dirt, ground,
that’s adamah. As in the human one
comes from the earth. And then Adam meets someone… and stops calling himself adam.
Eve isn’t the word used in Hebrew; it’s not even a transliteration.
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how we English-speakers named her when the
Bible was first being translated into the vernacular. Not the point. The second
human is called ishshah, which came
to mean wife and woman. But when the first human meets the second human, adam says, “This one shall be called ishshah, for out of ish this one was taken.” The name adam is not used, and in fact it will rarely be used to refer to an
individual human being ever again in the Hebrew texts. You see, adam is more than simply “human.” I lied
before. Adam means “humanity.” The
first human, ish, is part of adam, and now that there’s another
human, ishshah, they are both
humanity. They are both, together, adam,
God’s creation from the earth. They are in this new venture together, partners.[2]
Cody: Now,
the ancient Israelites did interpret these two to be the first male and female.
Let’s be frank: The fact that there were two humans in the creation story fits
well with what they knew of human physiology; personally, I don’t hold this
against them. I can’t really bring myself to judge them based on my own
scientific standards.
Both: But
that does change how I come to the text. It adds nuance to how I lead my life
in response to the scripture. Gender doesn’t seem quite as clearly defined to
me in the world I live in or in the Bible I read. The sacredness of
relationship, whatever our genders, is emphasized instead.
That brings us to Paul.
Cody: Last
week we talked about how knowing the original Greek changes how we think about
his epistles a lot, so we’re not going to cover that tonight. Instead, hear
again these words that were once used for the baptism of the earliest
Christians:
Anne: “There
is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer
male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”[3]
Maybe Paul was writing this as someone ahead of his time. Maybe he was
describing the vision of the kingdom of God. Maybe Paul was prophesying without
even realizing it.[4] I don’t
know. But I think I know what the point was.
Both: Everyone
has strengths, weaknesses, talents, gifts, needs, and failures within a
community. Gender is not the point here. A person, no matter their gender
identity, can be both caring and strong, empathetic and powerful, caring and
ambitious.
Anne: This
is not to say gender identity is unimportant; like all our identities, your
gender identity helps inform who you are, what choices you make, the
experiences you have, etc. It’s a part of you that cannot be withdrawn from
your everyday life, let alone your faith. And the fact remains that we have
created systems of power around gender that abuse all participants, willing or
otherwise.
Both: But
that’s something we created, not God. God created us to be in relationship, to
love and be loved as human beings, not because we succeed or fail to live into
some arbitrary requirements for your “type” of human. We are called to be in
this together.
V. Tradition
Cody: Of
course, if you think that’s how the Church has been running its committee
meetings for the last couple millennia, you’ve probably been living under a
rock. There really is no way to make Church history look pretty when it comes
to welcoming a mosaic of gender identities.
Anne: It
didn’t take long for the newly institutional church to force women,
self-identified or otherwise, into subservience, treating people as sub-human
creatures. In fact, the years between 150 and 500 CE are considered so counter
to equality of sexes and recognition of a breadth of genders, it is called the
“Patristic” Age.[5] The boxes
defining the gender roles that we are most familiar with in a Western context
were first being constructed during this time period. With Christianity in the
pocket of the Empire, our religion played a major part in created the institutions
and cultures that have since caused irrevocable destruction and pain to
uncountable members of humanity. Remember Joan of Arc? Harm is still being done
because of what they started.
Both:
Nowadays, the idea that there is more to gender than “man” and “woman” seems
new, fresh, challenging, dangerous even. It’s always been there, that grand
universe of gender-bender stuff. Perhaps God has been trying to tell us that
all along. But we’ve only just tasted a bit of its magnificence. Time to chart
a new course, an ancient course.
VI. Conclusion
Anne: We are
flawed creatures, us humans.
Cody:
Obviously; we are pretty sure folks from all across the spectrum of
Christianity have good (and less good) reasons to criticize this very sermon
series we’ve subjected you lot to.
Both: Yet
Jesus the Christ calls us toward inclusion, relationship, and love based on
equality and respect, using his ministry, his life, his death, and his
resurrection as an example. God in her majesty did this. We’ve started the conversation,
at the very least. And as you would know if you’ve ever had to write an essay,
it’s the starting that is the hardest bit.
In a
way, Christ has shown us the way already. Let’s be honest, Jesus broke the
rules. The followers of the Way, that early religious movement, they broke the
rules. Probably in fits and starts, and again filled with all of that
imperfection humanity is. We are here to tell you tonight that it is time to
break the rules and break the boxes with understanding, clear intent, and
faith. Challenge the power structure that is sexism. Challenge the ostracism
that is genderism. And have faith that despite all our many flaws, God’s glory
will out. With our spiritual ancestors as our foundation, have the
conversations, and chart a new course. Let us strive to follow our God. Because we’re all in this
together.
[1] There are two, ask questions later if this is a
surprise.
[2] http://skipmoen.com/2013/02/15/switch/
[3] Gal 3:28
[4] Caolyn Osiek, ‘Galatians,’ from The Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon
H. Ringe (SPCK, 1992). 192-193.
[5] As in you don’t get much more patriarchy then this.
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