Our recent societal and political experiences with the concept of gender are highly charged, to say the least, and often the insistence of a black and white interpretation of God’s word is used as a club to injure others who do not share our viewpoint. Sarah Neff, a student at Duke’s Divinity School, guest preaches today at Raleigh Mennonite on the topic of God’s gender in our ongoing sermon series, “I’m not so sure about that.” Sarah asks us to give the book of Genesis room to breathe and some well needed pauses to separate verses we have unwittingly entangled when we speak of God’s image and the creation of genders in humans. We may be created in God’s image as male and female but the triune God in their wholeness has no gender as we know it and is not made in our image. Moreover, even the seemingly binary creations of male and female, day and night, and water and land in Genesis, which seem clear and proscriptive for use in developing theology, upon further examination appear less an exhaustive instruction manual for world-building and more a poetic reflection on the good gifts of God’s creation, with humans as the capstone. Twilight, dawn, estuaries, and marshes, not included in Genesis, are all less than binary expressions of day and night or water and land, yet we know God made and loves these creations as well. Ultimately, Sarah reminds us that our ultimate example of understanding gender and yet breaking gender binaries resides in the life of Jesus. Although born a male, Jesus used his privileged position to dignify and uplift women and the “other” as equal in society. Amongst other males, he eschewed violence, patriarchal displays of dominance and self-aggrandizement, and taught mercy, love, and sacrifice. If we can find it within ourselves to give room for the scripture to breathe, perhaps we can then follow Jesus’s example and give room for a theology beyond a rigid binary.
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