Rev. Reed Lee Pedersen's
The first part of the title is very easy to explain. If God is all things and above all things then we cannot assign God a gender. To give God a gender would be to mark God incomplete. In the bible the pronoun ‘He’ or ‘Him’ is used many times to describe God. Hebrew and Greek are gendered languages, so God’s masculinity when using those pronouns is grammatical not biological. It is kind of like how pizza is given a masculine pronoun in French (le pizza), but you would not say that pizza is male. Pizza is an it. To the parentheses part of the title (I do love me some parentheses), a colleague of mine introduced me to, “The Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation”. The creators of this English translation of the bible sought to remove the unnecessary male dominated language of the bible so that all people were welcomed into the story of God and God’s people. Upon reading a review of “The Inclusive Bible” and reading through the ELCA’s recent draft on Women and Justice I was reminded of a nice little trinket of knowledge from Hebrew language class: Adam was a genderless earth creature. This is how you have probably seen this passage from Genesis: “then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) Looking back to the Hebrew and recognizing that Adam is not actually a proper noun in this context many current interpretations take a more distinct route which does not disclose a man being created first: “then Yahweh God formed the earth creature [ha ‘a dam] dust from the earth [ha ‘a dam] and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life, and the earth creature [ha ‘a dam] became a living being” (Genesis 2:7)[1] It is not until Genesis 2:22 that God takes from the rib of the earth creature and creates another one and assigns them both gender. Why is this important? Women have been treated as “less than” on individual, political, social, institutional and even religious levels. By realizing that God is genderless and not assigning the male gender to being the first created human being we open up the image of God to include more than just those with a penis. Instead of looking to a single man as the image of God (BTW in Gen 1 God says this in response to both man and woman), let us take a step back and see the whole of humanity in all its diversity (race, sex, gender identity, etc.) as the image of God. When we do this, our knowledge and viewpoint of God moves towards a more all-powerful and all-encompassing God that Christians claim to believe in. Points to Ponder:
Dear God you created us all in Your image. Give us the strength to see Your image in one another and to fight against institutions and individuals that demean and belittle on the basis of gender or sex. Let the body of Christ flourish in its entirety. Amen. [1] Draft Social Statement on Women and Justice. ELCA: Pg. 12-13.
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AuthorPastor Reed is a first call pastor at Augustana Lutheran Church in Andover, Illinois. Archives
July 2019
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