10.21.2018       Talia Raymond

Jacob, perhaps the Bible’s first gender non-conformist: This is most evident in the comparisons made between he and his brother, Esau. Esau is hairy, Jacob is smooth; Esau is favored by his father, Jacob by his mother. Esau is a hunter, Jacob is “a peaceful man, living in tents,” which were the traditionally female spaces in Israelite culture. Jacob does not conform to the standards of Israelite masculinity. Jacob also tricked his brother and father in order to obtain the birthright of the eldest and his father’s blessing, establishing himself as ruler over his family. Jacob then spends a prolonged time abroad, marrying twice, fathering thirteen children, and establishing great wealth. The story we read today is part of Jacob’s homecoming story. Understandably nervous about his brother, Esau the big, hairy hunter’s reaction upon his return, Jacob sends his possessions and his family to go before him. In essence, Jacob stripped himself of everything he had acquired and accomplished that identified him as a man in their culture, and it is in this situation of bareness that we find Jacob in today’s story.

Jacob is alone and wrestles a man: no introductions, no violent, inciting dialogue – just wrestling. Jacob wrestles this man all night, refusing to give up or give in until a blessing emerges from the encounter. Jacob becomes transformed, becomes a new name, Israel. This encounter is a story of becoming a whole person, and there is something definitely queer about this story.

Many interpreters of this text have guessed at the identity of this man – is Jacob wrestling himself, his inner demons and turmoil over self-identity? Is it the divine, an angel of God sent to give Jacob a hip-nudge in the right direction? Or is it a literal man that Jacob encounters and wrestles a blessing out of? We don’t know and for today, perhaps it doesn’t really matter. Jacob wrestles, desperately, and is transformed by it. What we do know is that the Hebrew word usually translated as “and there wrestled” should not be understood in terms of wrestling like the Olympic sport or even violent fighting. Wrestling in this translation, is a play on the name of the river Jabbok at which Jacob and the man meet, and it means twisting. Whatever the man and Jacob were doing during the night, it was intimate – twisting together.

Somehow, this twisting together enabled Jacob to become whole, to leave the trappings and the performance of Jacob behind, and go home, identified in a new, authentic way, as Israel.

Simon Hallonsten wrote that this encounter had such a significance for Jacob, that even as the stranger demands to be let go as dawn is breaking, Jacob refuses to limit their encounter to the secrecy of night. Instead, Jacob extends their relationship into the light of day by asking for the man’s blessing. This request displays Jacob’s desire not to limit their male/male wrestling/twisting to the brevity of their nightly meeting but to have the other extend into him, to imprint him permanently. But instead of revealing his identity to Jacob, the stranger renames Jacob to Israel with the remark that Jacob had “striven with God and with men and prevailed” During his time abroad Jacob acquires the signs of masculinity in the form of wives, children, and wealth. However, before he can reenter the land of his ancestors, he strips himself bare, leaving him vulnerable and alone. It is in the place outside of the controls of established norms and expectations that a different performance becomes possible. The twisting of self, the exhaustion and physical strain results in a blessing, a new sense of self and identity. Israel is formed outside the boundaries of established conventions. This transformation is not a punishment from God, it is a transformation into wholeness. The person Israel lives on — more fully than ever, outside the boundaries of the society’s construction of gender. The Rabbi Jay Michaelson once wrote: If the Bible is our guide, then God’s design for gender is a gigantic rainbow of variation, not a black-and-white conformity with biological sex.

Remember Deborah the Judge, who performed a male societal role. Remember the beautiful, musical young David and his relationship with Jonathan. Remember the Apostle Paul, who rebelled against the most fundamental gender role of his time, fathering children, by becoming celibate. Likewise the pairs of female emissaries in the New Testament, Tryphaina and Tryphosa and Euhodia and Syntyche, who preached the gospel in ways usually reserved for men. On and on and on, the Bible presents heroic characters who vary from normative gender roles.

The human experience is diverse. For some, finding an identity within the constructed norms of that experience is hard, and requires some wrestling. We know that gender is something that is constructed by society – it changes with the passage of time (think about what it meant to be a man, woman, or transgender at the time your grandparents were coming into adulthood), it also varies in different parts of the world. Some cultures define 3 genders, others 6 or 2. What is considered feminine in one culture may be considered masculine in another. However, just because gender is constructed by society, that doesn’t mean that it’s not real. Think about money for a moment, there is no inherent value in the green paper, instead we all buy into the idea that it is valuable. It is a social construction, but also very real – it’s life-or-death real, and so is gender. Gender is one of the fundamental ways that we are taught to see the world, and how the world is taught to see us. It’s infused in our names and how we talk about others, we are segregated and discriminated against based on our gender, and wrong labels can cause us to fear ourselves and stop our becoming. Gay and straight could never encompass the diversity of sexualities that exist in the spectrum of humanity. In the same way, man and woman could never encompass the diversity of gender expression and identity that exist in humanity. It never has, no matter how hard we twist ourselves into knots.

Being an Open and Affirming church by definition means that all “sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions” are welcome in the full life and ministry of this congregation. It means that we know that coming out of the closet is hard and scary. It means that we understand that having to ask someone to use gender-neutral pronouns or a different name for them is scary and hard. It also means that we don’t get to complain that getting used to different or new names and pronouns is scary or hard for us, because it’s not about us, it’s about being life-affirming of the person who is transforming. Professor Dumbledore once said, “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” If we, the supportive community create obstacles to self-identity through our own failure to listen and understand, then we are helping to perpetuate fear and violence towards people who are simply asking to be seen and respected as their authentic selves.

At the end of the passage this morning, Jacob has wrestled so passionately that he has caused himself physical harm – (and we know that physical changes, both self-affirming and self-harming can come with gender wrestling) – Jacob has refused to give up the fight until he emerges with a blessed identity. But, Israel, the new, whole person, is still alone and afraid in the desert. There is still a brother to see the next day. Will this Israel person be accepted?

The text says:
“Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.” Israel says to Esau: “for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God—since you have received me with such favour.” Acceptance and love is what Esau gave to his sibling and Israel called that acceptance and love “seeing the face of God.” We recognize and affirm the dignity of every human being when we respect their profound sense of self-understanding – we are called to listen, rather than dictate. We are called to open ourselves to the truth, not to our opinions. Love, after all, rejoices with the truth.

Being an ONA congregation means that we say together to one another and the beautiful spectrum of creation: I see you, I hear you, I believe you, and I will support you. You have already wrestled with the angel of naming, you won’t have to wrestle with us. You already have the blessing and the love of God, of course you have the blessing and love of your church family. May it be so today and all of our days, may we run to meet each other, embracing and weeping with joy, for we know that only through our diversity can we truly see and truly be the face of God.

Pride Sunday           Kristen Stone

Dear ones,

I have avoided writing this reflection all week because words have seemed too hard. I am really, really delicate about this. Forgot-how-to-write delicate. Plain words and guttural stops only.

Not only have I been preparing to speak in church today, pride Sunday but also I have been preparing to have top surgery, tomorrow at 8am.

Realizing that i am transgender has been a strange process, and one fraught with— of all things— embarrassment. If you know me, you know I’m a writer and a social worker. The two things I do, broadly speaking are describe things with words, and holding space for people’s insight and self-acceptance.

Yet somehow, for years, i hid from myself the fact that I wasn’t, in fact, a woman, and not allowed myself to think, for YEARS, that perhaps i might be happier living in a different body, perhaps it is possible to feel something other than this— causes me pain, and shame.

Dang, though, this is a deep wound. Wound tight. I’ve always been wound tight, a nervous overachiever. A smart girl. Tried to let my brain outrun by body, my feelings. writing this, I feel a powerful tension in my lower rib cage, my diaphragm. To imagine speaking these words, even in a place I love, to the people I consider my community, is so, so hard.

I don’t think I want to be a man, but sometimes I wonder if I would, if men as a group were….different. It’s not exactly a team i would be stoked to join. Sometimes I think it’s enough to just let off some of the pressure, making these slow, meaningful changes to my body.

Now, I rub testosterone gel onto my shoulders or butt every evening and have done so for 8 months and nine days. Not like I’m counting. Of course I’m counting.

I don’t always know what to say about my gender, at the same time as part of me wants to talk about nothing else. Sometimes it’s scary not having words, not knowing what to say. That was my identity for the longest time: being smart, being articulate, knowing things.

I am not sure how to write or talk about any of this. The longing and the joy. You are getting free, a friend tells me, smiling, and I feel a lightness thru my upper body— all those years I thought I wanted one thing it was actually something else. I thought I wanted bigger muscles or different pants.

Earlier this summer, Talia read from the gospel of Thomas and connected it to Harry Potter. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but here’s what has stuck with me:

When you know yourselves, then you will be truly known, and you will understand you are children of the Holy Spirit. What you look forward to has already come, but you do not realize it yet. There is nothing hidden that will not be made manifest.

I hope and pray this is true. I hope and pray for patience. It is an odd position, to make one’s life work a combination of describing things in painstaking detail, and nurturing self-acceptance and personal insight in others, and then to have completely overlooked— or misfiled— this data about one’s self. But, alas, we can never have all the facts. There is no such thing as all the facts. Either way we must proceed with grace into the chaos.