Why couldn’t Jesus have been a girl?
A sermon posted online caught my attention this week, drawing me in with its catchy title and maintaining my interest with its honest, critical questions. Mark Stenberg, a Minneapolis-based pastor, raises the question (to God, in an email format), “Why couldn’t Jesus have been a girl?” While his narrative tone is meant to be a bit sarcastic, his nuanced questions reflect what I’ve heard many men and women inside and outside the church express; when the Church does not follow the life and gospel of Christ, it is not fully living out the commission of Christ (John 14:12), and gifted people start leaving:
See, God, I’ll tell you how it is down here. Women are leaving the church. Good women. Smart women. Strong women. And we don’t know what to do about it. We’ve got these really perceptive and critical-thinking women who are raising this very serious question. “Can a male savior save women?” Some have decided that Christianity is inherently and hopelessly patriarchal. One of their slogans is: “When God is male, the male is God.”. . . Of course, this is not what Jesus taught.
While I’ve never personally heard the slogan mentioned, it does highlight not only a linguistic, but an ontological problem with the way we depict God and thus, shape the structures of the Church. Some good dialogue has already occurred on this blog around the issue of God being male, and I point to Mimi Haddad’s article What Language Shall We Use? for a biblical and historical overview of language and images for God. But at the point when the argument of Jesus’ maleness gets bogged down in indiscernible, inapplicable ways, Stenberg reminds us:
[T]he point is that Jesus is God is with us. The point is to see this particularity, not as a curse, but as a blessing. . . I expect a blessing of our particularity, our diversity. But a judgment upon all the ways we de-humanize each other through our hierarchy of social roles. What’s more, I expect a blessing of our particularity, our diversity, a mending and a fulfillment of the creativity that God showed in starting this whole thing up.
This quarter’s issue of Mutuality addresses multiple issues raised here. First, Brynn Camery-Hoggatt, who recently won an Evangelical Press Association award for her critique (along with Nealson Munn) of John Eldredge’s wildly popular book, Wild at Heart, explains why Jesus came as a male. She examines the cultural significance of Jesus’ other traits—his Jewish heritage, humble beginnings, family profession—and agrees with Stenberg that Jesus’ already revolutionary incarnation provided an “in” to the culture that still allowed him to up-end such tables as the treatment of women, the sick, and the Gentiles.
Second, reviews of two recently released books about the life of Jesus—Christ the Lord by Anne Rice and Jesus by Walt Wangerin, Jr.—highlight the authors’ depictions of Jesus interacting with, and reinforcing the full value of, people of both genders and all classes and ethnicities. Jesus particularly features a powerful characterization of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a “Deborah” within Jesus’ life. I highly recommend reading the full-color Spring 2006 issue of Mutuality.
The thrust of these observations is that the Church needs to recognize how it is unduly ostracizing those who want to follow Christ and see the necessity of including biblical gender equality in faithful discipleship. Let’s dedicate ourselves to really looking at the Jesus of Scripture, observing his actions and all the nuances of the Gospel accounts with great awe and wonder and worship, praying that we may gain new insight into the Good News he came to share and make real among all of us. How many more sisters and brothers will go “post-Christian” before we match step with Jesus on the issues that he thought were important?
In all, I am thankful for Stenberg’s reminder (via his email correspondent “Stubby”) that in whatever place along this gender debate continuum we stand, we should not “let your battle with your enemies remove yourself from the good news of God’s wreckless [sic] love, a love that sweeps away all of our idols.”
