A short reflection on Good Friday

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Christ laid down his life for us while we were still sinners. But Christ did not only die. Christ let himself be tortured, beaten, nailed to a tree - and in doing so He took on our wounds. Through the cross God carries our wounds eternally. As Jesus tells us at the Last Judgement, Christ became our wounded. Christ says to us I am the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner. And all of these among us are held in the holes in the Resurrected Jesus’ hands and feet and side. 

It is how we treat these wounds that matters. As many religious have observed, in the Beatitudes Christ not only blesses, but instructs us to be the poor, the mourners, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted. And how can our hearts not mourn all the walking wounded in whom we find Christ? How can we not be humbled by God’s own humility in becoming them? How can we not redistribute our wealth in light of this as the Christians did in the book of Acts? How can we not seek the peace of Christ for the afflicted Christ among us? How can we not risk persecution in loving as abjectly as Christ has? For it is abject love that we see upon the cross today.               

Some thoughts about gender as social construct that I wanted to get down on paper before I forget.

That gender is a social construct does not mean you can just dismiss it. Gender is not a material reality like the body, this is true. But material reality isn't the only reality. Social constructs can shape material reality. For example the social practice of footwear can and has changed foot structure. In our society’s very individualist view of things, there isn’t an allowance for the fact that social pressures and assumptions do define the borders of how we are or can be. Gender has power and force and is not easily thrown off.  It is true that without coming to the understanding that gender is a social construct, I wouldn’t have found the psychological strength to transition. Prior to that understanding, however, I have battled with my personal gender one way or another for the whole of my life. Now I specify my personal gender here because of course that is not the only way gender is used oppressively. Of course there is the oppression of gender supremacy, but for now I want to focus on oppression rooted in what gender is thought to be.

I have found that there are at least four different categories of social pressures and assumptions concerning what gender is:

1. Gender expression: clothing, hair, make-up, affectations, etc.
2. Gender roles: Mother, Father, Truck Driver, Nurse (ways in which our society assigns gender to activities or interpersonal relationships)
3. Gender “norms”: Ways in which we gender personal qualities; emotional vs stoic, good with math, nurturing, etc.
4. Gender identity: Your own personal resonance (or lack thereof) with gender.

Prior to understanding gender as a social construct, it became clear to me that categories 1, 2 & 3 were not determined by the binary sex one was assigned at birth. That people who never questioned their gender identity could and did challenge expectations of their expression, roles, and assumed norms. This clarity was no doubt informed by being a teenager during the second wave of feminism. And the enforcement of these first three categories was oppressive. However the fourth category, that of personal identity, that WAS “biologically” determined (under the prevalent misunderstanding of biology as limited to binary sex categories.)

And yet, that was my primary struggle. Expression was never all that important to me. Roles were more of an issue, but due to privilege that was given to me because it was assumed I was male, most roles could be worked around (except motherhood, but that’s a whole essay in and of itself.) Norms were more challenging. Initially, as far back as first grade, it was clear to me that my personality, the qualities I possessed were much more like those our society considers normative for women than men - that they would be more acceptable if I had been “born a girl” (the language I had at the time.) For the longest time, I thought that if these “norms” were challenged enough, if our culture could allow for “both” genders to be who they were inside, that would be enough.

Sometime in college it finally occurred to me that there was something deeper going on. It wasn’t simply a matter of acceptance of qualities I had, it was something else. It had to do with an interiority, a sense of self, what mattered to me within myself, what I found valuable about me, and even deeper what resonated with something that wasn’t even conscious. Trouble was, I didn’t have the words for this something else. What I did know instinctively was that if my primary and secondary sexual characteristics were different, this something else would be recognized in some manner. And that absolute lack of recognition I felt was oppressive.

So when finally, the social construct understanding came to me, it allowed for me to see that gender identity itself was something other than one’s sexual characteristics, and I could finally admit out loud that I was transsexual. It was freedom, it felt like an escape from oppression. It allowed me to embrace my interior gender. The thing is, I now understand on some level that what I refer to as my interior gender is something that is still bound by social constructs. Transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, agender, gender fluid, non-binary, these are all cultural understandings that exist because of the social constructs of gender in our society. In a different culture, in a different time and place, none of these terms would make any sense at all. To assert any of these terms is not a dismissal of social constructs, not an escape from them, but rather attempts to create new constructs that better fit the experience of those oppressed by the limits of the prevalent social constructs.

Sermon for The Fourth Sunday in Advent

The mother of the Prince of Peace is speaking some pretty revolutionary words in our Gospel tonight. That often gets glossed over when we hear Mary spoken of as the woman who says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” But I’d like to remind us tonight just how radical and rebellious living from out of the peace of God actually is.

I’m really not sure where the idea of Mary being meek and mild came from. I understand its usefulness from a certain point of view. The meek and mild myth is certainly emphasized by patriarchal & misogynistic systems, because it’s dangerous to have a female role model as feisty as Mary actually is.

And she’s not just feisty in the political diatribe we call the Magnificat. She’s just as strong headed in the story about the wedding at Cana. Mary doesn’t even listen to Jesus but just orders the wine steward to talk to Jesus in that motherly way of assuming her child will do what she wants.

Mary is the servant of the Lord. But subservience and submission to God should not be confused with subservience and submission to another human being – no matter what Paul might have said. I mean, I really don’t think Mary saying yes to Gabriel without first consulting her husband fits the common interpretation of Paul’s words in Ephesians. It seems both liberal and conservative interpret Paul’s words this way they just have different relationships to it.

Mary has a strong sense of self. The Magnificat echoes Hannah’s song, so here is Mary identifying herself with a figure from Scripture. This is hardly a meek or mild thing to do. It would seem in the eyes of her culture even more audacious than Jesus claiming he is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy when He begins His ministry.

It’s also important to note that Mary speaks of what God HAS done, not what God will shortly do. God has chosen the lowest of the low in the furthest reaches of the Global Empire to bring about the incarnation. God has already scattered the proud, brought down the powerful and lifted up the lowly in choosing a Nazorean woman to bear the incarnation. The hungry are filled with God’s very self!

To put Jesus’ human origin in relationship to Rome in a modern context; Just imagine some Chamorro kid from Guam showing up in Washington DC with a horde of poverty-stricken, quasi-legal followers proclaiming himself the messiah, or on an equal level to God. That would be well received, don’t you think?

The analogy would be more accurate to say Jesus showed up in Honolulu, because Jesus never went to Rome, but you get my point I think. Not meek, not mild, rather humble of origin and gentle in His power.

In fact the English word meek, which we do read as one of the blessed qualities in the Beatitudes, doesn’t have the same meaning as the original Greek. The Greek word indicates gentleness in how one uses their strength. The Greek does not imply weakness as the English does.

Meek and mild as subservient to the status quo is a complete misunderstanding of what peace actually is. To live a truly peaceful life is genuinely counter cultural. It flies in the face of a violent culture that solves its problems with violence.

Our culture of violence is the modern version of the sin offerings the author of Hebrews speaks of – though these sacrifices are made so we can go on sinning. Violence is a scapegoat offering on the altars of revenge, racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc. and the scapegoats ARE the people who are being sinned against… or the people who stand up for them.

It is the prince of peace who offered His body in order to abolish this. Living the life of peace God asks of us is not meek, nor mild. And it will not be well received. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Mississippi civil rights workers, St. Steven, all the apostles except John, and more were crucified. This is the harsh truth of living out of peace and love.

The harsh truth of how the world receives peace, though, is not what ultimately concerns us. A greater reality, a greater Kingdom is available to us. This is the Kingdom that is both/and; both breaking in and yet to come. It is from this reality that we find the strength of God. We are heirs to that strength, a strength that must be wielded gently, without exploiting power, wealth or status. Power, wealth and Status are not God’s will for us. That’s what one makes sin sacrifices for.

Mary understood this, this is what she is saying, not that Rome will fall, but that God has made Rome irrelevant. Empire is the antithesis of the Kingdom of Heaven. For the one true King of all will soon be born in the most humble of circumstances. And He is the one we follow. “For now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.”

Readings:

Micah 5:2-5a

Psalm 80:1-7     

Hebrews 10:5-10        

Luke 1:39-55