Years ago, I was teaching a small group of older children about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We were discussing Paul’s statement in Galatians, “There is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
I could see distress in one young man’s eyes as he raised his hand and pleaded with me, “Can you please stop staying it doesn’t matter what ‘sex’ you are in God’s family?”
You see, I had overemphasized the word “sex” several times referring to the gender of a person in the body of Christ. My mistake. We agreed I would use the word “gender” from then on and he was content. I had to work very hard not to laugh at myself or my young friend then and there because he was very sincere in his request.
Julia Goldie Day
Two decades ago, we both gained some wisdom and experience we both lacked. Together we stumbled upon something that made us better Christ followers. It may have been purely because my friend was uncomfortable with me saying the word “sex” loudly at church, but we changed our language, nonetheless. He learned a pastor could listen to a 12-year old’s feedback; I learned perhaps “gender” was a better word.
“Gender” became part of my lexicon.
Trump orders
On the day of the inauguration Jan. 20, President Donald J. Trump signed executive orders requiring the government to recognize only two sexes, male and female. This order requires the term “sex” to be used instead of “gender,” and all official documents must designate the “correct” biological sex of the individual.
Evidently President Trump has not sat at the feet of a 12-year-old at church.
From the order: “Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety and well-being.”
“The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system,” it complains. “Basing federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale and trust in government itself.”
“We have seen this coming for quite some time.”
We have seen this coming for quite some time. In 2022, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee asked a simple but loaded question in the Supreme Court justice confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson. Well into hour 13 of questioning the nominee, Blackburn asked the judge to define the word “woman.”
“What is a woman?” she asked.
Jackson answered simply, “I can’t.”
Blackburn seemed frustrated, “You can’t?”
Jackson replied: “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”
Jackson went on to clarify that it is her job to interpret the law, not to create definitions. Blackburn blasted the judge for not giving her a straight answer.
What is a woman, indeed?
Resurrection window at Church of the Resurrection, Leawood, Kan. The window measures 94’ by 37’ and is broken up in 161 – 4’ x 5’ panels. The design concept, defined by Pastor Adam Hamilton, focuses on a garden theme. The central feature is the Christ figure in the middle of the window, the left illustrates the Garden of Eden and on the right is the Garden of Revelations. The galaxy on the upper left side represents God the Father and the dove on the right symbolizes the Holy Spirit. More than 100 figures are portrayed in the window from Adam and Eve to Billy Graham and Martin Luther King.
Biblical perspective
“Woman” is all over the Scriptures, starting in the beginning, in the garden with the Creator God and man. She is there. We can open our Bibles and point to the word “woman” in many different contexts, Old and New Testaments. At times we are told the given name for a woman, but sometimes the woman is unnamed. “Woman’ is not defined per se, but we have much to learn from her regardless.
One of my favorite examples of an unnamed woman in the Scriptures is from the Song of Songs, which I discovered as an adolescent in Bible drill class, not too much older than my young friend I told you about when I learned to use the word gender. I was enamored by the beautiful language in Song of Songs that somehow I never heard in a sermon or Bible study. This poetic language is mostly spoken by a strong woman, unnamed but honored in the text. Her voice and personhood are valued and lifted up. Read the words of her lover describing this woman from chapter 4:
A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
a garden locked, a fountain sealed …
a garden fountain, a well of living water,
and flowing streams from Lebanon.
Song of Songs enthralls me to this day. There is something about the voice of a strong woman who knows exactly how she feels. She compels me to listen, she beckons me to look deeper for other women’s voices I may have missed. I see echoes of her in the deep wells to come.
“There is something about the voice of a strong woman who knows exactly how she feels.”
With an executive action crucial enough for release on day one of the new administration titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” I turn yet again to the well of Scripture for a female voice, an unnamed woman and ask Blackburn’s question, “What is a woman?”
In John’s Gospel, Jesus meets an unnamed woman at a well and speaks with her of Living Water. Unnamed women are more of a norm than not with this Gospel writer, a pattern. We even see named women called “woman” instead of their names. Jesus calls his mother, Mary, “woman” as he speaks to her before changing the water into wine at the wedding feast. He calls Mary Magdalene “woman” at the tomb before she recognizes him, mistaking him for the gardener.
“Woman” is not a bad word. It is not an insult. It is a very good word that takes us all the way back to the garden, to when God created man and woman in God’s own image. “Woman” should make us think of God speaking life into being, of God calling the creation of people very good, of Eve whom God blessed and calls mother of all the living. Jesus is alerting us with the use of the word “woman” that God has been present with us all along. We are reminded of the faithful promises of God, not to forget that man and woman, Adam and Eve, all of us, can be reborn.
The birth of Jesus with shepherds, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48387.
Born of a woman
Moreover, Jesus himself is woman-born, as Wilda C. Gafny has told us. If you contemplate the vernacular so often used, “Son of God” and “Son of Man,” it does not truly reflect reality, because Jesus was born of God and of a woman, human born from the line of Mary of Nazareth, “woman born” is much more accurate.
Because we believe in the virginal conception of Jesus, and we understand biology in a way ancient people could not, we can value the theological implications of proclaiming Jesus as woman-born. We should eagerly add these words to our lexicon.
What is a woman? Woman is very good; woman even describes who Jesus is.
The Trump administration wants us to believe women must be defended, women must need the protection of men in authority. What they obfuscate with their pearl clutching is that the patriarchal gender hierarchy must be defended, and women must be kept in their place, submissive to men along with anyone else who does not fit in their boxes and gender norms.
“Woman” needs no defense; she is good and strong and whole.
In a feeble effort to define us all at the moment of conception as either female, a person belonging to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell (note: this is referring to the egg or ovum), or male, a person belonging to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell (note: this is referring to the sperm), the administration has wrongly defined the biological process of reproductive cells in the fetus.
“The administration has wrongly defined the biological process of reproductive cells in the fetus.”
At this point the fetus, a tiny bundle of cells, would only be capable of producing large reproductive cells. The small reproductive cell, the sperm, cannot be produced until much later, in puberty.
In effect, by executive order, the Trump administration has defined all United States citizens as being of female sex and thus women or girls.
What is a woman they ask? Gender is fluid.
Woman as remarkable
Sadly, in our relationship with Scripture, we seldom have defined woman as remarkable. It is our great sin.
Even rarer still have we understood the woman at the well as remarkable. Yet somehow, she perceives the true nature of Jesus after an afternoon conversation at a well about living water in contrast to the male disciples who do not seem to understand who Jesus truly is.
In fact, this woman is lauded as a model disciple, and a woman is the one of the first to share the good news. Not only has Jesus revealed his true self to her and she has believed, but Jesus has also deliberately and quite openly broken boundaries. He is not concerned about tradition or rules or rumors, but about sharing his essence, his living water offered freely without condition to her.
“A woman said these words over and above a man from a pulpit with gentleness and love. It was very good.”
Ashley Marivittori Gorman says, “Here is the Bride that Christ is interested in: the one who went through so many grooms that failed her, the one no one wants to talk to, the lowly and unexpected. Not the most impressive, rather the overlooked and misunderstood. Not the self-righteous and smug, rather the dejected and ostracized. This is exactly who the woman at the well represents. She’s us.”
The day after the inauguration, at a prayer service at Washington National Cathedral, the president heard in part these words from the Episcopal bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, “Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you, and as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
A woman said these words over and above a man from a pulpit with gentleness and love. It was very good.
I also appreciated a womanist inaugural sermon shared by Eboni Marshall Turman: “Go to Hell, Satan” — Revelation 20:7-10 — “There is no mercy here.”
We are woman even if the president is incapable of mercy or basic decency. Jesus has no tolerance for such evil. Perhaps the women proclaiming speak for others to hear. What will we learn from each other? How can we lift each other up? How will the diverse and strong voices of women be celebrated? Will our strong voices join in dissent?
Jesus calls us “woman” because she is all of us, we are her — the living water flowing from the mouths of believers.
Jesus calls us “woman,” calls us living water and calls us by our preferred names and pronouns because Jesus treats us with respect, with love. The shepherd calls us by name, and we recognize his voice, for we are loved with a great love.
Julia Goldie Day is an ordained minister within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and lives in Memphis, Tenn. She is a painter and proud mother to Jasper, Barak and Jillian. Learn more at her website or follow her on socials @JuliaGoldieDay.
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