Hear "Trouble Will Bury Me Down"
Sermon Preached at the San Francisco Swedenborgian Church on April 5, 2009 (the second day of my seven day street retreat).
Scripture readings: Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 and Mark 11:1-11
Monday, April 13, 2009
Street Retreat Blogging
If you are interested in following my experiences living on the streets for 7 days and 7 nights (as I have done for 7 years now), check out: http://www.mystreetretreat.blogspot.com
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Palm/Passion Sunday
Jesus rides into the crowd on a donkey (John), no a horse (Mark and Luke), no both a horse and a donkey (Matthew)...
In a great case against literal interpretations of the bible, this is one of those stories that everyone has heard (the church going ones anyway). Yet, the details are a bit fuzzy. Like the oft overlook diversity that exists in the birth narratives.
What Jesus rode doesn't really matter, since the point is the irony of the glory that comes before the suffering pain and awefulness of the story that follows. It's that grand welcome, that end up being a trap like a good spy movie or episode of Scooby Do.
And there are still a good number of Christians continue the trap of over exaggerated welcome - followed by judgement, trial and death of individuality (and sometimes creativity and fun).
My dream is for a church that welcomes people, all people (especially those who disagree with me), and continues the welcome with the more gritty change and transformation that comes from staying in relationship. This means that we don't throw out our tradition with the bath water. I myself am a fan of reclaiming the roots of the tradition (which usually prove to be much more radical anything I could ever come up with) and rituals with an ability to also welcome and honor the new traditions and rituals that move people living today.
This week I visited First United Methodist in Vermillion (FUMV), South Dakota. The Human Rights Campaign sent me there as a part of the trainings about faith and gender identity that are happening in all the congressional districts that are needed to pass ENDA. I learned that this congregation in the midst of the "bible belt" where fundamentalism is an assumption, is a church practicing radical welcome. If it can happen here it can happen anywhere. I was also excited to learn that FUMV has a donkey at their Palm Sunday worship each year. They're still looking for one for this year, so if y9u've got a donkey to lend for a couple hours, I can't think of a better cause!
This Palm Sunday I will be preaching at the San Francisco Swedenborgian Church. It will be the second day of my annual street retreat (where I live on the streets of the tenderloin for 7 days and nights). Check out my street retreat blog to follow my journey through holy week. I will be riding neither a donkey or a horse (famous last words...).
In a great case against literal interpretations of the bible, this is one of those stories that everyone has heard (the church going ones anyway). Yet, the details are a bit fuzzy. Like the oft overlook diversity that exists in the birth narratives.
What Jesus rode doesn't really matter, since the point is the irony of the glory that comes before the suffering pain and awefulness of the story that follows. It's that grand welcome, that end up being a trap like a good spy movie or episode of Scooby Do.
And there are still a good number of Christians continue the trap of over exaggerated welcome - followed by judgement, trial and death of individuality (and sometimes creativity and fun).
My dream is for a church that welcomes people, all people (especially those who disagree with me), and continues the welcome with the more gritty change and transformation that comes from staying in relationship. This means that we don't throw out our tradition with the bath water. I myself am a fan of reclaiming the roots of the tradition (which usually prove to be much more radical anything I could ever come up with) and rituals with an ability to also welcome and honor the new traditions and rituals that move people living today.
This week I visited First United Methodist in Vermillion (FUMV), South Dakota. The Human Rights Campaign sent me there as a part of the trainings about faith and gender identity that are happening in all the congressional districts that are needed to pass ENDA. I learned that this congregation in the midst of the "bible belt" where fundamentalism is an assumption, is a church practicing radical welcome. If it can happen here it can happen anywhere. I was also excited to learn that FUMV has a donkey at their Palm Sunday worship each year. They're still looking for one for this year, so if y9u've got a donkey to lend for a couple hours, I can't think of a better cause!
This Palm Sunday I will be preaching at the San Francisco Swedenborgian Church. It will be the second day of my annual street retreat (where I live on the streets of the tenderloin for 7 days and nights). Check out my street retreat blog to follow my journey through holy week. I will be riding neither a donkey or a horse (famous last words...).
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Righteous Anger
This week's text features Jesus overturning the temple tables in a rage about consumerism and trying to make a profit on the sacredness of temple ritual. What did he expect really? The temple was also a bank and the safest place to keep money. It was also a regular feature for the faithful to purchase their livestock for sacrifice. Busy as we all are, we can understand how convenient it would be to arrive at church (lets face it most San Franciscans arrive late) and have everything ready to go.
So what is with the righteous anger? Though today in our current economic state it's easy to get angry at capitalism, the sacrifice of the poor and the churches who have tightened their belts to think about numbers in the pews and their potential giving.
It's a good time to yell about workplace discrimination, bathrooms that are not accessible, the sexualization of trans people and political surgery requirements that leave lower income (and suregically disinterested) trans folk without proper id.
What is more surprising than Jesus' anger, is our lack of it today. Why aren't we demanding access to health care, fair voting rights, that the rights of minorities not be left to majority votes and for justice for those who are used as raw material to produce goods and services.
Where is our anger? Righteous or not.
So what is with the righteous anger? Though today in our current economic state it's easy to get angry at capitalism, the sacrifice of the poor and the churches who have tightened their belts to think about numbers in the pews and their potential giving.
It's a good time to yell about workplace discrimination, bathrooms that are not accessible, the sexualization of trans people and political surgery requirements that leave lower income (and suregically disinterested) trans folk without proper id.
What is more surprising than Jesus' anger, is our lack of it today. Why aren't we demanding access to health care, fair voting rights, that the rights of minorities not be left to majority votes and for justice for those who are used as raw material to produce goods and services.
Where is our anger? Righteous or not.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Divine Sex Changes in Genesis
When culture began to believe that men were superior to women, it reinterpreted the queer creation story into a story of a woman coming from a man in order to reinforce cultural assumptions. And for centuries, patriarchal assumptions continued to reinterpret and sometimes guide our scientific assumptions of sex and gender.1
Still, the earliest listeners and readers of our sacred scriptures believed that sex changes were a miracle of God(dess), beginning with the first sex reassignment surgery that was preformed by God(dess) trans-forming the intersexual Adam into a male Adam and female Eve.2
This first sex change was not the final act of creation that ended the need for any other sex changes. Ancient Israelites believed that there were more than two genders: male, female, barren women and Eunuchs.3 While rejecting the assumption that you cannot be fully a woman or man if you cannot procreate, we must continue to lift up the sacred stories of the God(dess) who not only performs sex change miracles but uses gender queer individuals as agents of God(dess)’s work in the world.
The earliest readers of the Hebrew Bible believed that barren women and circumcised men were models of the androgynous ideal (like the Divine Androgen).4 This means that God(dess)’s command that all men be circumcised could be said to be a requirement that all faithful believers undergo a physical sex change. Numerous barren women also received divine sex changes when God(dess) notices them and opens their wombs: Sarai, Rebecca, Leah, Rachael, Zulaikaha, and Hannah.5
While the type of sex change that comes from circumcision or the opening of a womb seems very different then the surgical and hormonal sex changes that some transsexuals undergo, the story of Dinah’s sex change may speak more to the contemporary transsexual experience.6 This story begins with Jacob, a character so gender queer, that even Luther notices.7 But, how could he not notice when the text seems to go out of its way to note that everything that Jacob does is feminine: female pronouns are used to describe him and it is noted that he “dwells in tents” (Gen 25:27) which were known to be the space of women. Even more queer is the fact that this effeminate male is able to amass so much masculine power, which the patriarchy of the time defined as the ability to “take” multiple wives and produce many male children.8
Jacob’s children come as the result of at least two divine sex changes (Leah’s womb is opened in 29:31 and Rachael’s is opened in 30:22) and ultimately produces twelve male offspring, who become known as the twelve tribes of Israel. Though its not recorded in the text, ancient readers believed that after eleven of the sons were born (six to Leah, two to Bilhah and two to Zilpah), that Leah prayed to God(dess) to have a girl so that her sister Rachael could bear Jacob’s final male child, Joseph.9
While some sources believed that Dinah’s sex change occurred in Leah’s womb and others believed it was happened after Dinah was born they all agree that it was God(dess) who changed Dinah’s sex from male to female. Yet most commentators fail to notice that the cost to Dinah for her divine sex change is the loss of the privileges given to men in a patriarchal society.10 As a woman Dinah endures the subjugation commonly endured by other women of her time when she is raped by Sehecham (34:2-7) and “treated like a whore” (34:31). Dinah ultimately dies giving birth to Benjamin.11
Despite Dinah’s unfortunate fate, the prayer of Leah has been used by trans individuals as model for praying to God(dess) for a sex change. Qalonymos ben Qalonymos in Even Bohan (1322) prayed:
Our Father in Heaven! You who did miracles to our fathers by fire and water; you who turned [the furnace] in Ur of the Chaldees [cold] to stop it from burning [Abraham]; you who turned Dinah in her mother's womb [into a girl]; you who turned the rod [of Moses] into a serpent in front of tens of thousands; you who turned [Moses'] pure arm into a [leper's] white arm; you who turned the Red Sea into land, and the sea floor into solid and dried-up earth; you who turned the rock into a lake, the cliff into a fountain - if only you would turn me from male to female.12
The sex changes in Genesis could be read as enforcing strict gender binaries, as God(dess)’s way to trans-form the gender queer into “normal” procreative men and women. But, we have already seen how God(dess) uses Jacob in gender queer ways, without correcting or changing the ways Jacob is queer in gender. Michael Carden, who called Jacob a “pretty-boy nancy,”13 describes Jacob’s youngest son Joseph as “twitling, minicing, in rainbow garb and with painted eyes, Joseph is a flaming young queen.”14 God(dess) continues to use gender non-conforming individuals not only in the book of Genesis, but throughout our sacred texts.
1. See Laquer, Thomas, Making Sex: Body and Gender From the Greeks to Freud, Harvard UniversityPress, 1992.
2. The Jewish midrash argues that: “Men and women were originally undivided, i.e. Adam was at first created bisexual, a hermaphrodite.” [Plaut, W. Gunther, The Torah: Genesis- A Modern Commentary, 1974, 24.] See also, Gottwald, N. K. 1985. The Hebrew Bible--a socio-literary introduction. Includes index. Fortress Press: Philadelphia
3. Carden, Michael, “Genesis/Bereshit,” The Queer Bible Commentary, Ed. Guest, Deryn, et. al., SCM Press, 2006, 27.
4. Ibid, 33, 35 and 49.
5. Ibid.
6. See Carden, Michael, “Genesis/Bereshit,” 47-51.
7. LW5: Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 26-30: Genesis 29:29
8. See Carden, Michael, “Genesis/Bereshit,” 47-51 and Stone, Ken, “1 and 2 Samuel,” The Queer Bible Commentary, Ed. Guest, Deryn, et. al., SCM Press, 2006, 212.
9. See Berakhot 60a and Tanhuma 19:5.
10. Rosen, Tova, Circumcised Cinderella, 89.
11. Carden, Michael, “Genesis/Bereshit,” 51.
12. As it appears in Rosen, Tova, “ Circumcised Cinderella,” 87.
13. Carden, Michael, “Genesis/Bereshit,” 50.
14. Ibid, 53.
Still, the earliest listeners and readers of our sacred scriptures believed that sex changes were a miracle of God(dess), beginning with the first sex reassignment surgery that was preformed by God(dess) trans-forming the intersexual Adam into a male Adam and female Eve.2
This first sex change was not the final act of creation that ended the need for any other sex changes. Ancient Israelites believed that there were more than two genders: male, female, barren women and Eunuchs.3 While rejecting the assumption that you cannot be fully a woman or man if you cannot procreate, we must continue to lift up the sacred stories of the God(dess) who not only performs sex change miracles but uses gender queer individuals as agents of God(dess)’s work in the world.
The earliest readers of the Hebrew Bible believed that barren women and circumcised men were models of the androgynous ideal (like the Divine Androgen).4 This means that God(dess)’s command that all men be circumcised could be said to be a requirement that all faithful believers undergo a physical sex change. Numerous barren women also received divine sex changes when God(dess) notices them and opens their wombs: Sarai, Rebecca, Leah, Rachael, Zulaikaha, and Hannah.5
While the type of sex change that comes from circumcision or the opening of a womb seems very different then the surgical and hormonal sex changes that some transsexuals undergo, the story of Dinah’s sex change may speak more to the contemporary transsexual experience.6 This story begins with Jacob, a character so gender queer, that even Luther notices.7 But, how could he not notice when the text seems to go out of its way to note that everything that Jacob does is feminine: female pronouns are used to describe him and it is noted that he “dwells in tents” (Gen 25:27) which were known to be the space of women. Even more queer is the fact that this effeminate male is able to amass so much masculine power, which the patriarchy of the time defined as the ability to “take” multiple wives and produce many male children.8
Jacob’s children come as the result of at least two divine sex changes (Leah’s womb is opened in 29:31 and Rachael’s is opened in 30:22) and ultimately produces twelve male offspring, who become known as the twelve tribes of Israel. Though its not recorded in the text, ancient readers believed that after eleven of the sons were born (six to Leah, two to Bilhah and two to Zilpah), that Leah prayed to God(dess) to have a girl so that her sister Rachael could bear Jacob’s final male child, Joseph.9
While some sources believed that Dinah’s sex change occurred in Leah’s womb and others believed it was happened after Dinah was born they all agree that it was God(dess) who changed Dinah’s sex from male to female. Yet most commentators fail to notice that the cost to Dinah for her divine sex change is the loss of the privileges given to men in a patriarchal society.10 As a woman Dinah endures the subjugation commonly endured by other women of her time when she is raped by Sehecham (34:2-7) and “treated like a whore” (34:31). Dinah ultimately dies giving birth to Benjamin.11
Despite Dinah’s unfortunate fate, the prayer of Leah has been used by trans individuals as model for praying to God(dess) for a sex change. Qalonymos ben Qalonymos in Even Bohan (1322) prayed:
Our Father in Heaven! You who did miracles to our fathers by fire and water; you who turned [the furnace] in Ur of the Chaldees [cold] to stop it from burning [Abraham]; you who turned Dinah in her mother's womb [into a girl]; you who turned the rod [of Moses] into a serpent in front of tens of thousands; you who turned [Moses'] pure arm into a [leper's] white arm; you who turned the Red Sea into land, and the sea floor into solid and dried-up earth; you who turned the rock into a lake, the cliff into a fountain - if only you would turn me from male to female.12
The sex changes in Genesis could be read as enforcing strict gender binaries, as God(dess)’s way to trans-form the gender queer into “normal” procreative men and women. But, we have already seen how God(dess) uses Jacob in gender queer ways, without correcting or changing the ways Jacob is queer in gender. Michael Carden, who called Jacob a “pretty-boy nancy,”13 describes Jacob’s youngest son Joseph as “twitling, minicing, in rainbow garb and with painted eyes, Joseph is a flaming young queen.”14 God(dess) continues to use gender non-conforming individuals not only in the book of Genesis, but throughout our sacred texts.
1. See Laquer, Thomas, Making Sex: Body and Gender From the Greeks to Freud, Harvard UniversityPress, 1992.
2. The Jewish midrash argues that: “Men and women were originally undivided, i.e. Adam was at first created bisexual, a hermaphrodite.” [Plaut, W. Gunther, The Torah: Genesis- A Modern Commentary, 1974, 24.] See also, Gottwald, N. K. 1985. The Hebrew Bible--a socio-literary introduction. Includes index. Fortress Press: Philadelphia
3. Carden, Michael, “Genesis/Bereshit,” The Queer Bible Commentary, Ed. Guest, Deryn, et. al., SCM Press, 2006, 27.
4. Ibid, 33, 35 and 49.
5. Ibid.
6. See Carden, Michael, “Genesis/Bereshit,” 47-51.
7. LW5: Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 26-30: Genesis 29:29
8. See Carden, Michael, “Genesis/Bereshit,” 47-51 and Stone, Ken, “1 and 2 Samuel,” The Queer Bible Commentary, Ed. Guest, Deryn, et. al., SCM Press, 2006, 212.
9. See Berakhot 60a and Tanhuma 19:5.
10. Rosen, Tova, Circumcised Cinderella, 89.
11. Carden, Michael, “Genesis/Bereshit,” 51.
12. As it appears in Rosen, Tova, “ Circumcised Cinderella,” 87.
13. Carden, Michael, “Genesis/Bereshit,” 50.
14. Ibid, 53.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Isaiah 40:21-31
Let this be my official angry retort to those who argue that they know what is natural, to those who think there is one bodily "normal" way to look male or female. These same individuals then talk about the normal variations that happen when babies are born and talk about them being "disordered or malformed". They say surgery is the answer. Some say same sex loving folk ought to get the parts others are able to keep private corrected through surgery. While I don't want to talk the surgery will make you natural and "normal" people out of being accepting of trans folk who choose surgical options, I must quote to you these words from Isaiah (which of course are also quoted back to me just as strongly): "21Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 23who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing."
And as a reminder to myself, that when I am told these sometimes well meaning, but nonetheless misguided comments, that I should respond boldly: "Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? 28Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."
Then we can all hold hands and sing together about being raised up on eagles wings. Well, this is my dream anyway. It never seems to work that way. It usually end with someone telling me I am not a REAL Christian (or insert any other category in my life). And all I did was quote scripture. Why is it so hard for some to think that scriptures words of freedom of welcome and hope only apply to others who think the same way we do.
This of course is my reminder that the words of hope and freedom are just as much for others who disagree with me. And then I must put faith in the mystery that is God(dess), and who thankfully is big enough to be a God(dess) for both me and "them."
Epiphany 5B
Let this be my official angry retort to those who argue that they know what is natural, to those who think there is one bodily "normal" way to look male or female. These same individuals then talk about the normal variations that happen when babies are born and talk about them being "disordered or malformed". They say surgery is the answer. Some say same sex loving folk ought to get the parts others are able to keep private corrected through surgery. While I don't want to talk the surgery will make you natural and "normal" people out of being accepting of trans folk who choose surgical options, I must quote to you these words from Isaiah (which of course are also quoted back to me just as strongly): "21Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 23who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing."
And as a reminder to myself, that when I am told these sometimes well meaning, but nonetheless misguided comments, that I should respond boldly: "Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? 28Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."
Then we can all hold hands and sing together about being raised up on eagles wings. Well, this is my dream anyway. It never seems to work that way. It usually end with someone telling me I am not a REAL Christian (or insert any other category in my life). And all I did was quote scripture. Why is it so hard for some to think that scriptures words of freedom of welcome and hope only apply to others who think the same way we do.
This of course is my reminder that the words of hope and freedom are just as much for others who disagree with me. And then I must put faith in the mystery that is God(dess), and who thankfully is big enough to be a God(dess) for both me and "them."
Epiphany 5B
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Male brides of a female Christ
Caroline Walker Bynum, in Jesus as Mother, outlines how 12 th century cloistered male saints began to understand themselves as mothers who were the male brides of the mother/father Christ. As these saints expanded the Gospel of Matthew’s imagery of Jesus as a mother hen (23:37) and wrote about the breast feeding Christ who was a mother, they were not implying that Christ was female. Rather, they believed that the male Christ’s humanity was dependent upon the simultaneous nature of Christ’s mother/fatherhood. Unlike the binary sex roles of our contemporary culture, “Medieval authors do not seem to have drawn as sharp a line as we do between sexual responses and affective responses or between male and female.”1 This fluidity of gender went beyond the belief that men could be feminine to the idea that men could take on physical characteristics of the female body while still remaining male.
It is possible to read the works of these saints as reinforcing patriarchal assumptions by giving males not only the ability impregnate but also to birth and breastfeed. It is also possible that they were expressing gender freedom by expressing the language of divine androgyny that they read in scripture. While I reject the former as patriarchal, I lift up the latter. Bynum also argues that works of these 12 th century saints are rooted the Hebrew Bible’s naming of the male God(dess) who “speaks of himself as mother, bearing Israelites in his bosom, conceiving them in his womb (e.g. Isa. 49:1, 49:15, and 66:11-13)”2 and the Wisdom of God(dess) as the divine feminine (Ecclesiastes 24:24-26).
Anselm of Canterbury is one of the first of the 12 th Century saints to write about Jesus (and Paul) as mother/father who nurses an individual’s soul with his breasts.3 Anselm named both Jesus and Paul “fathers by protection, mother by compassion.”4 Bernard of Clairvaux uses female/mother imagery for Jesus, Moses, Peter, Paul, prelates and abbots when he writes extensively about how their wombs nurture, conceive and shelter while their breasts pour out instructions like breast milk.5
Guerric abbot of Igny, takes the mother imagery a step further when he calls the male abbots mothers who give birth to Christ, just as God(dess) the father becomes pregnant with our soul in his bowel for the sake of our salvation.6 Eventually it becomes commonplace for the cloistered male monks and abbots to speak of each other as mothers.
By calling Christ and each other mother, these saints sought to highlight the erotic nature of their union with Christ and to highlight their own humility. While the former is quite queer, the latter is deeply rooted in the patriarchy of the time. By referring to themselves women, they were highlighting their own weakness and need to be nurtured and supported. This comes directly from the assumption that women, by their very nature, were weak. While the male saints considered this a positive description at the time, it is nothing less than patriarchal.7
And when we take a closer look at the queer reading, it too is entrenched in heterosexist assumptions. While the freedom of gender they express can be liberating for queer readers, it should also be noted that the gender trans-formations came out of a desire to avoid the appearance of queer sexual orientation. Bynum notes that the desire to avoid erotic same-sex language when speaking about their sexual unions to Christ. This may be why the saints referred to their souls as “brides of Christ,” instead of “coming out” about the physically erotic relationship that was occurring between a physically male saint and the physically male Christ.8
Postmodern readers who strive to free themselves from dualistic and binary assumptions of male and female may relate to the language of Christ as mother/father. However, instead of believing that the physical and metaphoric motherhood/femaleness of Christ enhances the fatherhood/maleness of Christ, postmodern readers should strive to envision Christ as gender queer. If we were able to see Christ as truly gender queer then the femaleness of Christ would not negate her maleness of Christ, just as the maleness of Christ does not negate his femaleness. Like the 12 th century cloistered male saints Christ’s ability to be a father should be read as dependent upon his status as a mother. But, a queer reading would reject patriarchal privilege that comes from Christ’s maleness, just as Christ often rejects privilege to be with/for the poor, sex workers and tax collectors in the Gospels.
When queer readers name Christ as a gender queer mother/father it is not done out of fear of linking Christ to a queer sexual orientation. If Christ is both male and female, then it is impossible for a Christ to have an opposite-sex relationship. And if it is true as Paul writes in Galatians 3:28 that in Christ we too are no longer male or female, then it is also impossible for any Christians to have an opposite-sex relationship.
1. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, University of California Press, 1982, 162.
2. Ibid, 125.
3. Ibid, 113.
4. Ibid, 114.
5. Ibid, 115.
6. Ibid, 120-3.
7. Ibid, 138-9.
8. Ibid, 161.
It is possible to read the works of these saints as reinforcing patriarchal assumptions by giving males not only the ability impregnate but also to birth and breastfeed. It is also possible that they were expressing gender freedom by expressing the language of divine androgyny that they read in scripture. While I reject the former as patriarchal, I lift up the latter. Bynum also argues that works of these 12 th century saints are rooted the Hebrew Bible’s naming of the male God(dess) who “speaks of himself as mother, bearing Israelites in his bosom, conceiving them in his womb (e.g. Isa. 49:1, 49:15, and 66:11-13)”2 and the Wisdom of God(dess) as the divine feminine (Ecclesiastes 24:24-26).
Anselm of Canterbury is one of the first of the 12 th Century saints to write about Jesus (and Paul) as mother/father who nurses an individual’s soul with his breasts.3 Anselm named both Jesus and Paul “fathers by protection, mother by compassion.”4 Bernard of Clairvaux uses female/mother imagery for Jesus, Moses, Peter, Paul, prelates and abbots when he writes extensively about how their wombs nurture, conceive and shelter while their breasts pour out instructions like breast milk.5
Guerric abbot of Igny, takes the mother imagery a step further when he calls the male abbots mothers who give birth to Christ, just as God(dess) the father becomes pregnant with our soul in his bowel for the sake of our salvation.6 Eventually it becomes commonplace for the cloistered male monks and abbots to speak of each other as mothers.
By calling Christ and each other mother, these saints sought to highlight the erotic nature of their union with Christ and to highlight their own humility. While the former is quite queer, the latter is deeply rooted in the patriarchy of the time. By referring to themselves women, they were highlighting their own weakness and need to be nurtured and supported. This comes directly from the assumption that women, by their very nature, were weak. While the male saints considered this a positive description at the time, it is nothing less than patriarchal.7
And when we take a closer look at the queer reading, it too is entrenched in heterosexist assumptions. While the freedom of gender they express can be liberating for queer readers, it should also be noted that the gender trans-formations came out of a desire to avoid the appearance of queer sexual orientation. Bynum notes that the desire to avoid erotic same-sex language when speaking about their sexual unions to Christ. This may be why the saints referred to their souls as “brides of Christ,” instead of “coming out” about the physically erotic relationship that was occurring between a physically male saint and the physically male Christ.8
Postmodern readers who strive to free themselves from dualistic and binary assumptions of male and female may relate to the language of Christ as mother/father. However, instead of believing that the physical and metaphoric motherhood/femaleness of Christ enhances the fatherhood/maleness of Christ, postmodern readers should strive to envision Christ as gender queer. If we were able to see Christ as truly gender queer then the femaleness of Christ would not negate her maleness of Christ, just as the maleness of Christ does not negate his femaleness. Like the 12 th century cloistered male saints Christ’s ability to be a father should be read as dependent upon his status as a mother. But, a queer reading would reject patriarchal privilege that comes from Christ’s maleness, just as Christ often rejects privilege to be with/for the poor, sex workers and tax collectors in the Gospels.
When queer readers name Christ as a gender queer mother/father it is not done out of fear of linking Christ to a queer sexual orientation. If Christ is both male and female, then it is impossible for a Christ to have an opposite-sex relationship. And if it is true as Paul writes in Galatians 3:28 that in Christ we too are no longer male or female, then it is also impossible for any Christians to have an opposite-sex relationship.
1. Bynum, Caroline Walker, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, University of California Press, 1982, 162.
2. Ibid, 125.
3. Ibid, 113.
4. Ibid, 114.
5. Ibid, 115.
6. Ibid, 120-3.
7. Ibid, 138-9.
8. Ibid, 161.
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