Fr. Richard Rohr gets it right …
I love getting Richard’s daily emails … a recent one went like this:
Question of the day:
Why did God choose to become incarnate
in the body of a man?
The “sacred feminine” is in many ways a rediscovery of Jesus’ spirit, a reemergence of a well-suppressed truth, an eventual political upheaval, a certain reform of our hearing of the Gospel and someday perhaps the very structures of the churches—and all proceeding from a deep knowing in the feminine womb, the exact place from which we received Christ for the first time.
The feminist insight explains a vast majority of Jesus’ teaching and style, a male acting very differently in an almost totally patriarchal Jewish society. Like Mary, the Church also has somehow “treasured these things in her heart” (Luke 2:19), but only in time will they be ready to come forth, like Jesus from her womb.
Jesus would never have broken through as a genuinely new revelation if he had acted nonviolently inside of a feminine body. It would not have been revolutionary or a challenge—because we expect and demand that women be patient, nurturing, forgiving, healing, self-effacing, and self-sacrificing. Women are expected to be nonviolent in a violent male society. But we are still not prepared for males or institutions or nations to act nonviolently, even in the church. That is why God had to become incarnate for us in the body of a man. Jesus had a male body but a very feminine soul, which was genuinely new. Unfortunately, we basically rejected most of Jesus’ teachings and style as impractical and unreasonable in the pyramidal “real world” of church and state.
Adapted from Simplicity, pp.130-131
Even if you’re somewhat uncomfortable with generalizations about masculine and feminine traits, as I am, Richard’s main insight – on Jesus’ role in overturning Roman-style dominating/conquering/violent masculinity and providing a very different model – is a truly important one, especially in light of the fusion of patriarchal/dominating/pugilistic-masculinity that is so deeply embedded and celebrated in many religious circles, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever.
