Tag: gender

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Easter Easter sunday

Easter Sunday

Would you have got up at dawn on Easter Sunday to anoint a body that had been dead for 3 days?

I’ve only ever seen one dead body and that was of my sister who had been dead only two days and had something done to her that made her look like she was sleeping. I know there are some traditions where burial is an open coffin but again the body had been preserved and made to look nice. This was Palestine in spring. I’m presuming the women knew Joseph of Arimathea had taken Jesus’ body and laid it in the tomb was because they did know where to go.

I still think they were really brave to be willing to go to deal with that level of decay, to speak with Joseph of Arimathea- not just a man but who was probably above their station. Jesus is continuing his ministry, even in death, of breaking down gender, cultural and class barriers.

From https://cbnisrael.org/2021/02/02/biblical-israel-first-century-tombs-and-burial/ Read the whole article. It is really insightful

Now as we know from an article I wrote a while back, I love a good sunrise. But I like that because it is my time out, my time to connect with the world, my time alone. Would I have wanted to visit the tomb of my friend who I had seen murdered on a cross for all to witness knowing there would be guards around? But also I think there would be other people there too. I don’t think the women who went to Jesus’ tomb were the only people to go to their loved ones to either anoint their bodies or just be visit their grave.

I do think we often think it was just the women, however many of them it was, who were there. Like no one else would have died over that period. Like no one else would have had to be buried quickly because of the Passovers.

We build up this serene picture of the Marys and maybe a couple of other women, going to this garden type place, as the sun rose and there being no one else about.

I think Mary didn’t recognise Jesus because she wasn’t looking at him because he was one of many others there. She was not surprised or perturbed that there was a gardener in this graveyard. I do think she only spoke to him because he was walking alone. I don’t think she even looked him in the face. It was him speaking her name that made her look up at him and really see who it was.

How often do we walk around and not really see? We don’t see the pain, the love, the fear, the masks, etc on people because we have our heads down dealing with our own sh*t, our own losses and grievances, wanting our own questions answered – which is where Mary was when she asked this man if he knew were Jesus was.

The other day I bumped into an older lady I hadn’t seen in ages and as we were chatting. I don’t know how it came about but said something along the lines of how her eyes are dry where she is crying often. [She lost her husband 4-5 years ago and her daughter 2-3 years ago] and I just made some joke about how when I laugh I cough. I was thinking of something else, wanting to get to the park in the hope of bumping into a friend, and had just stopped to make polite conversation. I was not really looking at her. I was not really listening to her. I wonder how often I do that and God doesn’t highlight it for me?

We all are busy. We all are caught up in the moment. I think we are often too frightened to be vulnerable ourselves so we hide behind our control.

To me this whole scene around Jesus’ tomb talks about going where we feel called no matter who else is about, not being afraid to ask the questions even if we don’t know who we are really asking them of, but then being willing the whole time to keep our heads up, our eyes open, be really present in that moment and who knows what or who we might really see.

In churches across the country today the person at the front will say “He is risen” with the congregational response of “He is risen indeed” but I have started doing my best to say that every morning. Jesus did rise on Easter Sunday but he is now fully risen all the time which means for me to really see him and all his amazingness I need to be continually in the moment of knowing “He is risen indeed” and being able to be vulnerable, to not need to control the situations but to just see what happens.

Taken at Easter 2022 on my local beach and in my local park. Abergele, Conwy. Photographed by myself

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gender presumption

Presumption

No presumptions with this little dog. Photographed by myself near Moelfre April 2023

I was amazed at my own presumptions the other day. Husband brought back a handout from church around Luke 24:13-35, where the disciples meet Jesus on the road to Emmaus but don’t recognise him.

Lots of it is things I’d known or thought previously but it is Lorna Bradley’s opening line that I’ve been chewing over for weeks now

And their eyes were opened – the two disciples of Jesus – Cleopas and one unnamed and ungendered …..

UNGENDERED!! How many times have I presumed, without even thinking about it, that it was two men? And I’m sure that’s because the Bible says “disciples of Jesus” and for years we’ve been led to presume that ALL Jesus’ real disciples were men even though women are mentioned, but they are there in the supporting role.

Lorna doesn’t say if the other disciple was male, female, trans, non-binary, or whatever. She does not say if they were friends, siblings, parent/child, lovers, spouses. She actually just puts it out there, states, the fact that the other disciple is unnamed and ungendered, and then goes on to explore the piece.

It made me wonder if we would read this piece differently if they were homosexual partners, young unwed lovers, a father and daughter/son, even a married couple. To Luke these are just two disciples of Jesus who were out for a walk trying to piece together what had gone on over the last few days. One is named. One isn’t.

Interestingly the name Cleopas, which appears only in this story in the Bible means “Glory of the Father” or “Glory of Everything” and is either the male derivative of Cleopatra or a shortened version of Cleopatra or shortened version of Cleopatros. So it could be that the Cleopas we’ve always presumed to be male was in fact female as was their traveling companion.

It is the presumption that intrigues me. How many times do we all read things through our own lens of expectation, of prejudice, of culture, of lifestyle, of what we know? How often do we stop to realise what we have done?

But from our own presumptions and censoring and prejudices we tie organisations including religion into boxes, put people groups into boxes, put ourselves and those around us into boxes.

This does follow on from Cultural Diversity and will fit in with the post I am doing for 21st May. That person waving/not waving the Union Jack at the coronation is “obviously ….[fill in your own]. We make presumptions as to whether someone smiles/doesn’t smile at our cheery “good morning”, replies/doesn’t reply to our message, wears certain clothes and talks in a certain way.

And I don’t think God cares. Not that God doesn’t care for people. I believe God cares more than we could ever imagine. But God doesn’t care what gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, family background, education, etc someone has. I think this is why that story has someone in with no gender and the other person with ambiguous gender in it. And if you start looking there are many stories in the bible where once one lets go of one’s presumption then things could be more ambiguous than we’d presumed.

I wonder if I look harder how many stories I can find, where I presumed one thing and so pictured the story in my head a certain way, in fact actually are about “Glory in Everything” and especially “Glory to God” and not to gender, sexuality, orientation, or even belief.

Just this one phrase in Lorna Bradley’s piece has set me off on a whole new way of thinking. As Rick Rubin’s says in The Creative Act [and I paraphrase because I can’t find the actual quote in the book because I’ve underlined so much in there!] “sometimes we need to look at the minute to see the infinite”

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angels gender

Does The Gender of Angels Matter?

Take at sunrise on the Hill of Tara St Patrick’s day 2016. A sun angel

My lovely young youth group and I were looking at Angels in the Bible the other Sunday evening and wondering about what gender they were or if they were any gender at all.

The story of when the angels visit Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah, which is often used as one of the key stories to condemn homosexuality doesn’t make sense when looked at regarding gender. So the angels turn up, the men of the town want to have sex with them, Lot is says No but then offers his daughters. Now surely if these men of the town were homosexual being offered women wouldn’t quite hit the mark for them. So I wondered if this story was being used out of context, like too often happens???

The vicar who supports me with this youth group said that he thought that the original languages didn’t have genders and that these came in with Latin translations. But he couldn’t remember for sure.

The two things that struck me were that

One we are now obsessed with gender with there being numerous different gender types that people can identify with. Is this a throw back to things like this? Things like when it was important for spiritual beings like Angels and God to be defined by a gender, by a certain sex?

Two that biblical angels were powerful, strong, mighty warriors, faithful messengers, obedient. All traits that are often associated with men. Not so long back women were seen as weak, easily manipulated, unfaithful, disobedient, needing protection.

So I do wonder if those in the Church who wanted power made sure that all the traits to aspire to were “male”, so both Angels and God had to be male. Also I do wonder if our obsession with the myriad of different genders is because we are searching to get back to that place where people were people and gender didn’t matter, but because there is such a strong emphasis on the male/female divide that for now there has to be these other things to identify with.

Imagine if we didn’t care about gender, if we just let people be as they are – strong/weak, faithful/unfaithful, able to protect/needing protection, etc etc. What would it be like if no one worried if you were male, female, trans, queer, asexual, and more? I wonder if we could all live much more at peace with ourselves then too.

So reread some of those stories and try not to see the Angels as male and see how you get on

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FIFA World Cup

The World Cup and Human Rights

From BBC.co.uk’s coverage of FIFA world cup page https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015ypx

I think there are lots of issues to do with holding the World Cup in Qatar but I think there are very few that are unique to Qatar. The main one is that the World Cup is usually held in the summer so the players can play for their clubs as well as for their country. Because it is being played in the winter this year there are going to be differences within the club games. But I am not quite sure why there is being such a fuss about the human rights issues.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think there are major human rights issues in Qatar and much of the Middle East around woman’s rights, LGBTQ rights, migrant rights, but I do not believe this area is unique for it. The Olympics were held in China which also has a poor record on human rights. The world seem to have forgotten the Tienanmen Square massacre, where Chinese troops slaughtered their own people for protesting. But still the Olympics went ahead.

There are many countries that have appalling human rights records whether to do with sexuality, gender, race, religion, age, and yet still major sporting events happen in these places. But then like many of the people who are allowed in as refugees does it depend what are view of these people are?

I think of the people crossing both the Mediterranean and the English Channel in tiny boats at exorbitant prices. First the question needs to be ask about the human rights in their countries that they are leaving, second why do they not stop in other countries along the way and work so hard to get into the UK, and then third why is the UK so reluctant to let people in? Do we have a good human rights record in the UK when it comes to certain people groups?

I do think it is right to use these big events to raise issues about the state of human rights in these countries and challenge the leaders of these countries about how they treat others. But I do think so much in sport also comes down to money. Qatar was willing to pay billions to get ready for this event, and they are preparing for other major events too. These oil rich countries do have the money to do this. With the budget, if that is what it is called, that has come from the UK chancellor this week is anything to go by the UK cannot afford to hold a major sporting event.

Yes these countries to do need to sort out how they treat women, LGBTQ people, migrants, and others, but then so does the UK. Perhaps instead of just muttering about it there could be a major campaign by world leaders to look at human rights issues, to change their own policies first and then to encourage other countries to do the same.

But I do think we need to stop looking at the economic issues and what we really want. If the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics or Formula One motor racing or major golf tournaments or other sporting events can only happen in places that can afford them and who treat others well then maybe they would have to cease. Who would be happy with FIFA announcing that there would be no more World Cup because no one could really afford it as we are in a world recession?

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questioning Triune God

Does it really matter?

The grounds of Hawarden Castle. Photographed by myself July 2022

I’ve got an important post to write so I am procrastinating. So this one comes as my not quite so controversial post but still up there.

What does it matter what gender or sexuality God is? Have you ever thought that? Or do you just go along with what you have been conditioned by church and by society?

Jesus calls God Father but was that just to make it easier for people to understand? Would he have made things harder in a male dominated society if he had called God “Parent” rather than Father? Jesus himself compares himself to a mother hen wanting to draw Jerusalem under his wing. Also God made man and woman in their image. It isn’t that man was made in God’s image and woman was anything left over. It says clearly that man and woman were made in God’s image.

I believe “he” is used because of not being able to use “it” as that seems impersonal. Of course now the word for someone not idenitfying solely as male or female is “they”. God is all and so must cover all genders and none so they would be a much better pronoun to use – even if it is confusing after so many hundreds and thousands of years of God being he.

The triune God is not like the gods of Greek, Roman, Norse and other mythologies which have many gods, some male and some female. The triune God covers all genders. It must do otherwise they couldn’t have made man and woman in their image.

But does it really matter? Is it because of something deep within that makes us want to talk to a male god not a female one? Or a transgender one?

Also what about Jesus and his sexuality? In The Last Temptation of Christ there is a controversial scene of Jesus imagining having sex with Mary Magdalene; a temptation he never succumbed to. But what if Jesus was asexual, not interested in sex with either men or women? Or what if he was gay? Perhaps it was because of his asexuality or homosexuality that he was not betrothed at thirty years of age?

But my point here – as well as hopefully making you think – is to wonder why it matters what sex God is, what sexuality Jesus had. Why do people get so upset if one says God might be a woman? or Jesus might be gay?

Surely if God is totally amazing and made the whole universe and made us in their image it shouldn’t matter their sexuality.

Surely if Jesus came to take away our sin and pain and open a doorway back to full relationship with God it should not matter what his sexual leanings were.

Maybe if we could focus on the amazingness of God, of Jesus, of relationship with the triune God and stop worrying what pronoun to call God or who Jesus might or might not have fancied we could get on with loving ourselves and each other fully and stop making judgements.

My challenge to you today it to try to call God “she” or “they” and to try and wonder how Jesus stayed true to himself and resisted the temptation to fit in.