[Pentecost+18] (un)dressing God

Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."

So God created humankind in God's image,
in the image of God I AM created them;
male and female I AM created them.

-Genesis 1:26-27 (NRSV, alt.)

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The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus."

-Luke 1:30-31 (NRSV)

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Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

-Luke 13:34 (NRSV)

Molly closed her sermon with imagining undressing God sufficient that we could touch God skin-to-skin.

This felt deeply erotic to me and got me thinking about bodily intimacy, about how the particularities of our lover's body are deeply important and at the same time that doesn't mean those particularities need never change (you still love this person, and their body, even as their body changes).

We've been talking at Bible study in recent weeks about recognizing the face of Jesus and about names for Jesus. This Sunday's sermon about undressing God -- about using gendered markers as signposts along the way deeper into the mystery that is God but discarding the ones that function as barriers for us -- continues that conversation.

I am deeply, deeply committed to the conviction that we are each created in the image and likeness of God. But I don't love the gender binary of the Genesis passage. There are people who identify as neither male nor female (or for whom those labels do not name the fulness of their gender identity), and I fiercely believe that they, too, are created in the image and likeness of God. (And please don't tell me that the text refers to the biological "fact" of "male" and "female" -- among other reasons, because that erases intersex people.)

When we talked about the parable of the Good Samaritan in Bible study in July, people wondered things like, "When the robbed and beaten person woke up and found out what had happened, how did they feel about having been rescued by a Samaritan? Did this change their perspective on Samaritans as a whole?" And they raised these questions as if they were questions that had answers. That's the power of a good story.

The Creation narratives are good stories.

What the authors of this passage were saying was that all people are created in God's image -- that it is not just men, not just Jews, not just the able-bodied, not just the prosperous, but everyone.

Molly's sermon was titled "Undressing God," but in the Incarnation, God dresses Godself in flesh.

Our first text from Luke names the particularity of the Incarnation.

A woman named Mary will give birth to a child, a child she will experience as a son, and she will name that child Jesus.

This is the dress God chooses in this moment -- a first-century Galilean Jew, one who is circumcised on the eighth day, one who is named Jesus (or Joshua, or Yeshua).

Our second text from Luke reminds us that this is not the whole of the story.

Jesus likens Jesuself to a mother hen, longing to gather Jerusalem under her wing.

Jesus is not always what we would expect. Jesus is forever subverting the expectations of everyone else by not being overthrowing the Roman Empire with force and establishing a divine monarchy, but that's not the only subversion of expectations Jesus enacts.

Jesus was born into a particular time and a particular place. We are reminded of this every time our Bibles have glosses explaining an unfamiliar idiom or an unfamiliar reference. But the Jesus story is also one which was captured the hearts and imaginations of people for two millennia. We tell and retell the stories, making them new again each time.

Molly said:

God is lots of things that we are not. It's important that God be some things we are not, for God to be God. And it's important that God not only be things we are not, so we can draw close to God, and God can draw close to us.

Maybe the reason God gave Godself so many names is because we are created in the image of God, which is to say we won't be put in boxes any more than God will, and we're so different, all of us, but we're the same in that we all need God, but maybe have different ways of getting back to the red sequin sparkly heart of God, getting close to God.

For some of you Higher Power or Great Mystery is right, but for others of us those names are too slippery and cold. We want to know God as personal and a person, and so we tuck ourselves under our Mother's wing as Her little chicks, or stand behind the strength and immensity of our Father.

Words are just the things we use to grab hold of God, and maybe once we find a word that works for us, we can let go of the word and just hold tight to God instead.

What names for God help you draw close to God? Are there names for God you wish you could reclaim?

As always, you're invited to comment anonymously/pseudonymously if you prefer.