This is (roughly) the text of the sermon Brian preached on June 22nd. It covers the challenge of being a man in 2025 that lets men be authentically themselves without turning back the clock on progress women have made over the last 200+ years. The audio of the sermon, as it was preached can be heard here.
Text: Galatians 3:23-29, Luke 15:11-20
The question of Christian masculinity is… problematic
It touches on a number of sensitive issues, include women’s rights, the social justice issues faced by women historically, and the justice issues women still face today. The question, “how can I be a good man, or woman?” in today’s context also brings up questions like, “what does it mean to be a man, at all?” drawing us into not only feminist theologies, but also queer theologies.
That said, I will be focussing on feminism and masculine identity issues today, but there is a reason I’m doing this sermon during pride month. If we seek justice for some, but not all, then it’s not really justice. And as we’ll see, there are old, biblically based answers to some of today’s questions that might surprise you.
A bit of history is necessary to understand the challenge men face today.
The move toward justice for women began in the late 1700s in what is now called First Wave Feminism. It started with access to education and quickly moved into suffrage. It was aligned with abolitionists trying to end slavery. White women were allowed to vote in Canada starting in 1918, with steady progress from there.
Second Wave Feminism starts around that same period, peaking in the 60s and sees the movement break out into different groups. Liberal feminists are concerned with equality and opportunity. This would be the equal pay for equal work crowd. They might say we’ve made progress, but we’re not there yet.
Then there’s the liberation feminists who still see a world largely run by men who are screwing it up. Masculine men running the world for their benefit, and at the expense of minorities, women, other countries, what ever it takes to get ahead. The book I’m taking this information from (Religion & Popular Culture, Chris Klassen) calls this group “radical feminism”, but I’m not sure that’s how they would call themselves. Maybe they would. “Overthrowing the patriarchy” is a pretty radical move, and they do tend to view men, or at least traditional masculinity as “the problem.”
There are other groups, cultural feminism, and socialist feminism, anti-racist feminism, but it’s the space between liberal and radical where things start to fall apart. This is an oversimplification it’s still useful. On the one hand, radical feminists would argue that the very category “woman” is a tool of the patriarchy used to oppress women and needs to go. On the other hand, liberal feminists need the category “woman” to rally around so they can seek justice… equal pay for example.
Both groups, whether they realized it or not, were saying the category “woman” is a social construct whose definition can be changed, or removed, the same way we removed the category slave. Both groups, therefore, are deconstructing what it means to be a woman, but are not reconstructing in the same direction. All the while, no one is even deconstructing what it means to be a man. Some are trying to deconstruct the patriarchy, but that’s not the same thing.
So, what did it mean to be a man?
I’m pretty sure I screwed up my Google search results for the next several months trying to verify this, check my assumptions. I searched, and searched, and most of what I found was liberal voices complaining about how rigid conservatives are, and conservative voices complaining about how permissive liberals are. I’ve waded through the mess so you don’t have to… you’re welcome.
The short traditional answer is men and women have different by traits which make each better suited to certain roles. Men were understood to be assertive, competitive, and natural leaders. Women were understood to be nurturing, empathetic, and cooperative. Male roles were earning an income, protecting the family, and teaching discipline… with discipline if needed and without emotion, it’s no good if dad cries while strapping you. Female roles were to manage the household, raise the children, and support the husband both domestically and emotionally… essentially feeling for her husband what he cannot feel for himself.
The idea that men work while women play house is what feminism was trying to change. It kept women in a state of dependence on men that was rife with abuse. The question that each generation has been struggling with since the late 1700s is, how do we correct for abusive dependence in a way that is consistent with the faith in God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit that we proclaim?
There are two broad categories of questions we might ask to fill this out. The first is biological, the second is social. The interesting thing, from my point of view as a Christian and a preacher, is that scripture doesn’t really have a lot to offer on this. Psalm 103:13 for example, “As a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion for those who fear him.” Compassion is good then, but it’s not terribly specific. Proverbs 4:1-9 tells children to listen to their father’s instruction, because his father taught him to seek wisdom… which is female in Hebrew. Proverbs 20:7 teaches us that a righteous man walks in his integrity… again, not very specific and could just as easily apply to women. Compassion and integrity are good for everyone after all.
The two main bits of specific advice are from Paul. In Ephesians 6, he tells fathers not to provoke their children but to teach them discipline. In Colossians 3:19, he tells husbands to love their wives and never treat them harshly… right after telling wives to be subject to their husbands. A somewhat cleaner and more balanced telling than what we see in some of his other letters.
The rest of what we find in scripture is either what we hear in Galatians, that God does not make distinctions between men and women. Or in case studies of men behaving well, or badly, in historical accounts or the parable that we heard in Luke. Most of which seem to support either the liberal or radical feminist point of view, and none of which deal with the biological side except Adam and Eve. More importantly, many of the role models we might look to in scripture, King David, Moses, Peter, or Paul are either damaged or living in a cultural reality so far from our own that we cannot simply apply their life lessons to our own life. Marital advice from King David and his eight wives, plus concubines? Or Paul, who famously advised everyone to be single like him?
If gender is a human trait, how do other cultures process it?
I was beginning to chase my tail on this, nothing was pointing to anything, so I broadened my search. Every culture has people with genders, so what other examples do we have? There are north American natives who focus on roles over biology with three genders: male, female, and both or two-spirit. There are several other cultures who have done this as well. Then there’s India with three genders including the hijra, which is basically trans people. But I just spent a bunch of time reading conservative concepts of gender and I began to wonder if they really had three genders or if it was the same two genders, men and women, with exceptions or space for the people who don’t fit neatly into those categories.
With that in mind, I went back to the Judeo/Christian tradition to ask about the exceptions. One exception is the saris, which is the Hebrew word for eunuch. They fail to develop as expected in puberty, and are called saris hamah, or “become infertile” and called saris adam. The Talmud, which is basically a more complete explanation of Biblical Jewish case law, describes how such a person is not properly a man under the law. He would not be allowed into the temple, which is for men only. If he was made a eunuch, saris adam, even by accident, he would be forced to divorce his wife because he’s no longer a man under the law. This is why Phillip’s baptism of a eunuch in Acts 8 is so significant.
Turns out, there are seven named genders in the Talmud: male, female (obviously), saris hamah (genetic) and saris adam (surgical) which we just covered, aylonit which literally means “ram like woman” and is the female version of saris hamah and would include women with Turner syndrome, androgynos which we now call intersex or both, and tumtum which we call asexual or neither. Modern feminists would disagree with how they were treated, but conservatives should note that the Jewish culture that Jesus grew up in acknowledged their existence and provided guidance on their social and religious contributions and obligations.
It turns out, gender has always been a complicated thing.
The Jewish people handled it by having rules and sticking to them. So ladies, if you want to go back to being submissive to your husbands, we can reinstitute those gender-based roles. Probably best not to jump right into that, though. Tommy and Charles are the only other men on the St Thomas board right now and I don’t think we can run this place without your leadership, even though that’s a masculine trait…
So, we can’t go back without taking away the hard-earned rights women deserve. What does forward look like? Because I’m a man, I’ve got the beard and male pattern baldness to prove it. But Melissa and I also just came to an agreement about Ryland. He’ll stay with me in September because that’s what’s best for Ryland right now. It was the same with Joshua: it was never questioned that I could be both breadwinner and caregiver because I am no more limited by my facial hair than women are by their lack thereof. No assumptions, just what’s best for the kids.
I believe the pattern we can move forward with is based on the far eastern concept of yin-yang. It refers to a mountain, one side lit by the sun and the other side in darkness. As the sun moves, so does the shadow, but it’s never full darkness. Even on the lit side, there are shadows cast by trees and rocks. The mountain is complete within itself even though it is lit, in part, and shade, in part. This led philosophers to think less of firm categories, like light and dark, and more about tendencies. Men tend to be more assertive, competitive, and willing to lead. But every man also follows in cooperation. Women tend to be more nurturing, empathetic, and cooperative. But every woman also leads with assertion.
It’s the rigidity that causes problems. It’s forcing a couple to divorce because of an unfortunate workplace accident. It’s forcing a woman out of competitive sports because she’s “ram like”. It’s a woman leading a company, or a country, without questioning her femineity. And it’s a man like me raising my kids, because that’s who I am. In the 1700s, that would be queer as the day is long, but it’s not.
That said, I believe there are only two genders, two arch-types, Adam and Eve. But, somewhere along the way, we got so completely stuck in our roles that we forgot there were always exceptions. Cracks in the categories that give space for the infinite possible shapes that God creates in us. Each of us a mountain created in God’s image, a grandeur so large that it can never be fully lit, not even by the sun, the full range of us casting our own shadows in ever-changing complexity.
Maybe my beard defines me, in part, but it doesn’t limit me, and it doesn’t limit you either. God made us to complex for that. Thanks be to God. Amen.