Episode 327 - Amy Peeler

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to that Makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us. That makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day. Okay, so I feel like this is. People who listen to the podcast know. One of my favorite groups of people to talk to for the podcast are professors. I love professors and journalists for different reasons. I am speaking to A professor today, Dr. Amy Peeler, who is not my professor, but I am feeling very much like a student in this situation. So thank you so much, Amy for coming on the show today. [00:01:10] Speaker B: Oh, so glad to be here. And yeah, I love professors too. This is. I was, as a college student, I was like, I want to be that people. So I think so. [00:01:18] Speaker A: It's so much fun. And I, what I usually say is like, I'm not too concerned about like what we ask or what we talk about because I, I'm thinking about this in the context. My husband plays guitar and so I say like, I'm like, I feel like if I just give you something you can riff for a little bit. Which is why I love, I love talking to professors. I'm like, let me just, we'll just put in a key and then we'll just let you riff. So I'm hoping that happens today because I admit that I am, I'm feeling a little bit like, can I keep up in this conversation? So I'm going to try and ask some decent questions that I feel like I had as a student kind of reading this and then we'll see where it goes. So let's first start. I keep saying, reading this, reading this. We're talking about Amy Piller's book, Women and the Gender of God and Amy, this book. When was this book released? [00:02:05] Speaker B: So it came out in October of 22. So we're right at a three year mark. [00:02:11] Speaker A: Okay. [00:02:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:12] Speaker A: I remember when this book came out, it was all over my feeds. The kids would say it was on my fyp, right. Or it was all over. The algorithm picked up that this would be something that I would be interested in and I let it be. I was like, I can't do it. I just, I heard so. And people that I respect and people whose opinions I really value, people who I think are just high rate scholars and theologians, and they're reading this, they're like, raving about it. And I'm like, yeah, I can't do it. There was something in it that felt very intimidating to me theologically, but I think also socially, I just was unsure. And. And as a student, I probably, if we think back three years, I probably was not. I just kind of had a lot of theology coming at me, and I. [00:03:05] Speaker B: Think I was just like, I don't. [00:03:07] Speaker A: Really know what to do, how to parse this, but I will say fast forward. I saw you in a virtual setting, casual virtual setting, with some things that you were doing with Fuller. And I was like, okay, I think I can revisit this. I really think so. And I have to tell you, my focus of study has changed. And so in my PhD where I am right in this very moment, I don't get to read as much theology as I used to and as I like to. And I. We're in kind of a transition season in our family, and I sat down in the mornings to read this book in my comfy chair, and it felt so good. I was like, this, this theology, this. It just felt amazing. So I just want to first thank you for your work in this. This was a, in my, you know, kind of, in my humble opinion, an amazingly solid work of theology that was enjoyable to read. So thank you for that. [00:04:05] Speaker B: Thank you. That, that is high praise. That is. That means a great deal. Solid and enjoyable. That was what I hoped for. And so if that was achieved for you, I'm incredibly grateful. [00:04:16] Speaker A: It was achieve for me. I also just love a footnote. [00:04:20] Speaker B: And I. I've got a few. [00:04:22] Speaker A: I've got a few footnotes. I had footnotes that made me laugh. Footnotes that made me intrigued. I love a footnote more than an endnote. And so I really enjoyed this. For folks who love footnotes, this is a great footnoted book. But I want to. I want to dig into. There might be folks out there who are like, even by the title, or maybe it's been in there for you page, right? And they're like, women in the gender of God. No, thank you. Gender of God? No, thank you. [00:04:50] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:04:51] Speaker A: That's going to be tough, but I guess we should just dive in. I really would love for you to say a few words about. We'll get into the meat of this in a moment, but, like, why this matters practically, like the implications of. Of how we think about the gender of God. [00:05:13] Speaker B: Right. [00:05:13] Speaker A: Of how not just we think about women, but also thinking about women and Men and our interactions like this isn't just some sort of like, lofty theoretical theological head exercise. Like the. The topics that you tackle in this book have real world implications, and they have for centuries, and they continue to have real world implications for how we interact with one another, how we interact with, I would say, ourselves and with God. So talk to us about the practical implications of these topics. [00:05:49] Speaker B: That's a wonderful question. And it makes me recall that when I was writing this, which took a great amount of time at my dissertation defense, which was in 2011, they kind of ask, what might you want to do next? And I basically articulated this project, and then it doesn't come to fruition until 2022. So that's more than a decade of thought and work. And in the midst of that hard work, at one point I found myself thinking, you know, gender, people discuss it, but what if this kind of falls off the radar of something that people care about? What if kind of the tensions between men and women become kind of passe? We move on to other issues. But near the end of the project, there's increasing attention to me too church to all this. And then I realized, you know, this is not going away. And in fact, as your listeners probably know, most often when you write a big project like this, you write the introduction last. And that was the case that. That the very end. And I was reflecting on all of this brokenness that we see particularly in the church, right, in society, okay, but we should be a people that honors the image of God and all humans. And we seem to consistently fail with regard to women, especially in spaces where I tend to exist more conservative theologically, we really seem to fail with regard to women. And a graduate professor of mine who writes wonderful works, Beverly Gaventa, continually pushed us that when we see a problem with humans, an anthropological issue, usually what's underneath the hood, the foundation that's broken is our theology. When we get God wrong, we get ourselves and others wrong. And in my exegesis of the life of Mary, my thinking, theologically that seemed ever true. Why do we keep failing with regard to women? It's not just that we don't maybe fully consider the identity of women as bearers of the image of God. That's been true throughout church history. More fundamental is that we think God is male or preferences, the masculine. And then of course, we're going to mess up with regard to women. So theology is the foundation. And so this book is very theological, it's very in depth. There are many days that my brain hurt trying to understand, trying to get the words right. But I. My point in doing this is that the young women and men who sit across from me in this office, coming into office hours, where do I fit in Christianity? Why are people being hurt? That's who I wrote the book for, to try to say, let us rightly perceive and worship God. And then from that fount of good theology, we can start to build a beautiful and healthy church. [00:08:34] Speaker A: I mean, that's. That's right on. And I'm so grateful for that connection. When we're getting something twisted anthropologically, it's probably. We can look back at the theology of that. Let's get going. Because the first thing that I want to ask you about is this. The language that you use throughout the book that was trippy almost every time for me was God the Father is not male. And so I love it. And I know that there's reason behind it. I'll say on a side note, I love to annotate. My annotations are usually not super deep, but as I was going through this, like, I said I loved how you theolog. I thought the foundations that you laid, I could see. I'm like, oh, she's building this house. It is an orderly build. And I was chatting with a friend of mine who is also a professor, and I was saying, I'm just enjoying this book so much. And I said, I love the way that she theologizes. It's just so good. And he said, she's also an excellent teacher. So that came through very much so in the book. And so every time I would annotate, I would have. Some of them just said, hmm, yeah. And then some of them said, say more. And then you would say more. And so I'm. And so there was a lot of. I'm like, okay, okay, I hear you, Amy. Say more. Say more. And so you said more. So God the Father is not male is one of those places. I'm like, okay, say more. Where I would. Might start with that is I would say my upbringing was church wise, was Southern Baptist. So conservative in almost every way that you can be conservative in the Bible Belt as a, as a woman, you. I probably don't have to spell that out for you or for listeners, what that looked like for me growing, growing up as a girl and then as a young woman. But at the same time, and I want to name this because I think it's important you name it in the book, even folks in those traditions are not claiming generally that God the Father or spirit God is Male. No, no, no one's claiming that. [00:10:35] Speaker B: No. [00:10:36] Speaker A: And. And yet he is very masculinized. And one of the footnotes that I, I lost it on, I had to read it out loud to my husband, was a quote which. Picturing God with a butcher's apron. And you know, all of that. Yes, it's very, very intense. And we've, we've seen this in other. In other things, you know, Jesus and John Wayne comes to mind, you know, some of these other, other things. So, so that's where I'd love for you to just get us started, is God the Father is not male, which we would agree with, but God the Father gets very masculinized. [00:11:12] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, exactly. And. And people who do that probably unintentionally masculinize God are not malevolent evil. Right. I'm out to kill. It really is at base a reaction to or a reflection upon our scriptures. [00:11:31] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:32] Speaker B: God is presented in dominantly masculine language, imagery. And so I think a clear play to see this is with children, right. And I've loved conversations with children's pastors. How do we rightly catechize our children not to think about God as a big dude in the sky? And I don't have a full answer to that yet, because our language just automatically our brains imagine in this way. And so it is understandable as humans that when we hear he, he, he, King, king, king, Lord, Lord, Lord, Father, Father, Father, we are going to picture, and rightly, because our God is personal, right? Not the force or something, we're going to picture a male being. And so I think holding alongside the transcendence of God is so vitally important. And that also is throughout our scriptures, that God is creator and not creation, that we are not God and God is not us. And that's actually the, the crazy, amazing, wonderful grace of the incarnation that God, who is not human, became. So. So to say that God the Father is not male, again, initially, that sounds like a language error, right? That doesn't work in English. And yet theologically, as I say early on in the book, if you give yourself just a few minutes, everybody's like, yeah, we got it. John 4. Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman. God is spirit, right? We read all of the psalms in the creation, God is creator. So this is not. This is not a controversial statement at all. And yet because of our language, we tend to imagine God is masculine and more this. And this is where maybe we get into not intentional devaluing of women, but it does end up as the end result is that we. If you ask the question, then, is God more masculine or feminine? Then there's a little bit of, oh, well, like God initiates, and God is sovereign and God is a leader. And we think that men should initiate and lead and be in control of things. And so there is this association that is, I think, a logical fallacy. Right. Like initiation, leadership, sovereignty. Those are divine qualities, and both men and women can exercise them. So it would be inappropriate to say those are masculine qualities. And then if I might introduce one more. When we have a church structure, if we only ever see male humans in leadership, we are then going to make the assumption that. Who's in charge? The men of the church. Who's really in charge? God. There's an association there as well by lack of representation of female bodies being in places of leadership and influence. But we know that God. That all humans bear God's image, male and female. God is not a sexed nor a gendered being. And yet if our language, our assumptions about gender, and in our leadership, men always win, we're going to have this problem. [00:14:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Oh, my goodness. There's so much more I want to ask of you on that. And maybe we can circle back if we end up having the time, because I want to make sure that we have space for talking about the gender. [00:14:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:50] Speaker A: Gendered nature, though, of Jesus and of Mary. [00:14:54] Speaker B: Exactly. Yes. [00:14:55] Speaker A: Those were so. Those sections were so meaningful to me, and I feel like maybe we'll do. Choose your own adventure. So choose your own adventure. Do we want to start with Jesus or do we want to start with Mary? [00:15:09] Speaker B: Maybe start with Jesus. Since we've been speaking about masculinity. [00:15:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the one thing that I. I think it's important to name and I want you to elaborate on is, yes, we're all agreeing. No one's. No one's freaking out about God the Father not being male. [00:15:26] Speaker B: Right. [00:15:27] Speaker A: I do, though, think there is a connection. You talk about it in depth and quite eloquently, though. I think there's a connection, though. We say God is not male, but wait a minute. Jesus was God. [00:15:40] Speaker B: That's exactly right. [00:15:41] Speaker A: God and God and Jesus is male. But you assert that Jesus was embodied like no other human has ever been embodied. And. And so, yeah, so if we're gonna start with Jesus, that's the. That's the one thing I would throw at you, but you don't. You don't have to catch just that ball. Say whatever you want on. On Jesus, but I do think that that's valid because then the thing that we, we're saying, yeah, yeah, I get it, God's not male. And then we're like, oh wait, what about Jesus? [00:16:12] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. So not only do we want to Christologically affirm that Jesus of Nazareth is fully God and so therefore God is male. Hence the necessity of my earlier statement, God the Father is not male. Right. That's absolutely necessary in that language equation. So Jesus is male, he is the fullness of God, right? We think of Johannine passage, if you want to see God, look at me. [00:16:39] Speaker A: Right? [00:16:39] Speaker B: And so the church has always wrestled with in what way is the incarnate Son a reflection of a non embodied God, Right. And this is hard and our minds will never fully understand that mystery of incarnation. And so this is another reason why it's understandable that people are making assumptions about the triune gods or even God the Father's maleness and masculinity because of Jesus. So as we look at Jesus, and this is careful for me to underline, I engage with scholars who have wondered if by virtue of his virginal conception or the fact that Jesus represents God who is neither male nor female, do we have kind of an intersex person. I think that's an important question in our day to at least engage with. This is one thing that people have not liked about the book is that I'm willing to read very widely and without fear. And so that's kind of a wild idea for some spaces. But I'm like, well, I'm going to press into it. I ended up not agreeing with it, but I, I know more certain I don't agree with that because I read them and I wanted to hear what they have to say. So I think exegetically and throughout the history of the chur, Jesus is a male, right? He's circumcised. And nobody like bats an eye about this. And that means that we have to think about virginal conception as a mystery at the end of the day. But he is male. But I also don't think it is controversial at all to say that he is a male conceived like no other. That's simply a different way of saying I believe in virginal conception, which is part of Christian creeds, right? Or if you have a conservative doctrine of scripture, Matthew and Luke are very clear. Jesus was virginally conceived. For me though, that was a doorway to thinking in ways I had never thought before. So much of Christian faith says yes, we're unified in Christ. Fully agree, we could go to places like Galatians 3. And yet that unifying in Christ is typically perceived as spiritual. And that's correct. In Christ we're spiritual. And yet I've been taught that Christianity is vigorously embodied, right? We say that creation is good. We say that creation is the Son incarnates in material, is resurrected, we will be resurrected. We do things with little pieces of bread and wine and water on our bodies like we're very material faith. And so if that's true, doesn't that also remain true for Jesus himself? So, yes, male and female are included in him spiritually. But look at his body, a male body that by God's pre decision that flesh and blood and DNA and bones are all drawn from Mary alone with the mystery of the Holy Spirit. But she is his single tether to humanity, her and her alone. And so I have then experienced as a woman thinking about my participation in Christ not only at the level of my spirit, but somehow at the level of my body. And that seems most coherent for how we understand materiality in Christian faith. And it allows me then to say to my brothers in Christ, I participate in Christ in a different way than you do bodily, but I participate alongside of you and not less than. For if Christ is male only and he's like everybody else, then men say, hey, I'm like Jesus in a way that you're not. I can say, yes, that's true. But then I say, I contribute to Jesus's embodiment in a way that you do not, or my sex contributes in a way that you do not. And so there is, dare I say, complementarity in how men and women both point to the Incarnation. [00:20:26] Speaker A: Okay, so thank you. My mind is spinning again, thinking about some of these things that I've read in light of what you've reiterated here. I. I remember vividly, I was in middle school probably, and I was chatting with one of my close friends, and she said something about Mary looking like Jesus or Jesus looking like Mary. And how I received the tradition, the teaching of the tradition I was in, embodiment in general was not a focus. [00:21:02] Speaker B: Right. [00:21:02] Speaker A: You know, we could say a lot. There was purity culture back then. You know, there's all these things where bodies were not really. I didn't. I didn't receive this teaching that bodies were good necessarily or that they were that important. You know, there was kind of this like, you know, you're at a funeral and it's, oh, that's just a shell. That's not really the person, this kind of thing. So it's kind of like, oh, this body gets kind of thrown away. It's disposable in some kind of way is, you know, kind of how I received it. And so I questioned her. And. And because it's like Jesus. Yes. Virginally conceived, grown inside of Mary. Okay. But really, I think the way that I thought about it was just kind of like he just popped out of nowhere. You know, like, it's like, okay, but he. He's so other. Like, yeah, yeah, sure. Mary, like, took him to the temple and stuff. But, like, he just kind of. He just kind of popped out of nowhere. Right. [00:21:51] Speaker B: So well said. [00:21:52] Speaker A: And so I love the way that you talk about the relationship between Mary from conception through her interactions with Jesus as a mother to him as a young son, as a baby, as a grown woman and man, child, grown, adult man. And how she interacted with him ministerially. And all of that was so wonderful and fascinating to me. And one of the ways that I would say, one of the phrases that I read that kind of stuck with me here is kind of pulling some of these things together. But God calls, or Jesus calls God father, in part because he has a mother. [00:22:38] Speaker B: That's right. Yes. [00:22:39] Speaker A: He has a mother in Mary. And I will say just in closing, before I let you. You take over the Mary portion here, is that as a woman, there are few texts that I have read, few commentary really, on. On Mary, that I felt more affirmed as a woman. Reading. Reading this, I felt a little grieved that in my Protestant traditions, we haven't had as much focus on Mary as. As our Catholic brothers and sisters have. You know, she gets a lot of focus and attention. And I. After reading your book, I think rightfully so, we see a lot of focus and attention on Mary in that tradition. But Mary's connection to Jesus felt. I haven't ever seen it as. As meaningful as I do here. So I'm wondering if you can elaborate on that connection. [00:23:39] Speaker B: But. [00:23:40] Speaker A: But also just Mary's femaleness. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. I love how you've articulated this. We must have grown up very similarly. I also grew up SBC in Oklahoma City, like in the 90s. [00:23:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:54] Speaker B: So we were neighbors. [00:23:55] Speaker A: I was Southern Oklahoma, for sure. [00:23:57] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. Okay. We really. We got it. We gotta chat offline here. And I think actually what you're saying, you know, Jesus just kind of popped onto the scene. Like, in church history, we would call that Docetism. This is a heresy. I'm not calling you a heretic. Right. Nor myself. But, like, we grew up In a way that there was something really lacking. And I always say maybe my pastors were talking about it and I missed it, I don't know. But it clearly was lacking that if we don't have a tether to the fact that Jesus is, is actually human, then the whole salvation project dissolves. So, and, and I won't trace the church history about that, but that is absolutely docetism. And so even in the early church, when they are debating like how do we talk about Mary? What. What is going on here? It's never about her. It's always, have we rightly understood Jesus? And if we. And maybe this is a slightly different equation than I laid out earlier. But if we don't get her right, if she is not present, but, but we also don't want to elevate her too high. But if she does not present, our Christology is going to become docetic. We're not going to have the right Christology. So she is necessary by God's design and free choice. So a bit about Mary's embodiment, right? This is maybe the other side of the coin of what I was just saying. Jesus is male, but by God's free choice comes from the body of a woman alone. That has become very profound as I think about more about embodiment and for me in chapter two, thinking about Jewish laws. And I wanted to be really respectful of Judaism because as you probably know, there are moves made in Christian theology that say, oh, look at Judaism, they hate women, it's awful. And then Jesus comes on the scene and like he's nice to women, which is a form of kind of Marcianism of like, let's leave the Old Testament and just have the New. So it was very important for me to not make that argument. So I looked at Jewish laws. Women's bodies are considered impure. That's not like they're evil or simple. They're just can't be close to the holy. Largely because we bleed a lot, right? Menstruation as well as bleeding, that happens after a baby. You couldn't come to the temple then really reflecting on the incarnation, this is God embodied. And what does God not just allow but encourage and leave space for Mary as a woman? Mary, that if this birth is normal, which I think it is, our Catholic brothers and sisters would have a different position. But if this birth is normal, she is bleeding. And so in this state of impurity, what is she doing? She's holding God. That her womb becomes like the ark of the covenant, the space of the Most holiest thing that has ever existed in creation, the body of God. There, Alexis, that's. There's. There's not a day that goes by at church, and this has been now for years because I've been working on this for a long time, that I don't have this, this deep gut level sense that my body is welcome, that my body is not second class or impure or on the outside. I think that has radical implications for how we think about ministry. But just personally, I will say right, as we grow up in our cultures, especially in ours, maybe purity culture. You're a threat, right? You're dirty, you're not allowed. You're not good enough. That goes all the way back to Aristotle, right? Women are just messed up, you know, if you were born a male, you were good. If you were born a female, that means something went wrong. And God says that is not true. Both creation, I have created you good. And even more, I have decided to enter the world through you. And not just through you, if I might. When I first started studying this, I too kind of imagined Mary was like a vessel that Jesus zoomed through. But as I started reading the early church fathers, they are intransigent. That, that cannot be true. Because if he has created kind of creation next Hilo, like humanity that comes from nowhere, he doesn't do any good for us. He has to come from our humanity. And God chose that Mary would provide that humanity. And so then she becomes again the anchor, the tether, the entry point, the one who provided her own body to create the body of God. [00:28:13] Speaker A: I just, I'm so grateful for that, Amy. It is, it is, is. It's a struggle to kind of overcome that. You know, I. I remember hearing things growing up. Like you said, it goes back to Aristotle. This is not anything new, you know, but I recall even being, you know, things being preached. Like, just look at nature. If you look at nature, every, every animal, the birds, the animals, the ones who are the representation of what that animal should be. Really, what they said was the beautiful are the male ones. Look at the male peacock, right? It. It's the one with the beautiful feathers. Look at the lion, it's the one with the mane. Look at all of this. And so in humanity, this is what I've. This is also true. The male body is how it is supposed to be. But then you look at the women and you see, look, they've got these fat deposits. Look at their breasts, look at their hips. Look at their, you know, all of these things. They don't have this. This leanness, you know, kind of all this. And the masculine was elevated to. This is the. This is what the form looks like in its perfection. And then a woman, you know, like these other female creatures in nature and otherwise is this secondary kind of, you know, creature. And, and it, It's a lot to recover from, you know, centuries of not just this Christian culture that promotes that, but also, as you mentioned, some of these auxiliary cultures that have affected Christianity and back and back and forth. So when I read Mary and I. And I read, I jotted down one of the phrases towards the end of the book that God chose to have a mother. [00:30:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:07] Speaker A: But as you say, it is not just women who are mothers or women who are capable of motherhood, who are valued in the eyes of God. So I'm wondering if you can. If you can extend that a bit more to. To women. Yeah, to women more generally. [00:30:27] Speaker B: Yes, yes, thank you for naming that. And really, there are two poles here that must always be held together when we're discussing Mary. What I've said first, the. The. The divine honor put upon female embodiment. And I actually think even embodime doing some work in Galatians. And it's been really powerful to see that there. Paul talks about himself as the one who gives birth to Christ and then calls all of the church to give birth to Christ in some ways all women, whether we have biological or foster or adopted children or none at all. Our bodies, by virtue of God's construction, are bodies that have the capacity to hold life. And so that is across the board. There is something about our embodiment that testifies to the goodness of God. Now, that being said, it was vitally important, and I knew this from reading in Marian theology, that Mary has often been flattened to her womb alone. Right. She matters because she gave birth to Jesus. And simply scripture absolutely rejects that, the fullness of her ministry. Hence the last chapter in which I trace, as you've just named. Right. She uses her emotions and her will. She teaches him influences, proclaim. She's a prophet, she's a preacher. If God has said, this woman's body will be utilized for the story of creation like no other woman's body. And she agrees to it. She says, yep, I want that, then it is a telltale sign of how God works with all women to say, you're not just your body. It is what is most important about you is your faith. And that faith is going to manifest in a variety of giftings and calls and expressions. And so she Becomes the template for the kind of both and life of. Yes. You might be called to be a mother or mother Lee. And you're called to be bold and gritty and. And loud. She is not Sometimes the kind of gender stereotype of Mary is that she's meek and mild and diminutive. You know, just whatever. I'm like, have these people read the New Testament? Because she is a powerhouse as a young woman. Right. An oppressed Jewish woman. Ain't no one gonna tell her what not to do. And there is a power there that I don't think the tradition has been fully appreciative. And maybe it's a moment in which secular feminism throughout the ages has said, hey, women can actually have leadership and power. That now we go back to our texts, seeing that in ways that maybe we had forgotten for a time. Yeah. [00:33:02] Speaker A: I wasn't sure if I was gonna ask you to do this, but I think that we do have time. I would love one of the places in the book that along these lines that was the most meaningful to me was reading on your commentary on Jesus and Mary at Jesus First Miracle at the wedding at Cana. If you. If you would talk about that, I will say your. Your. Your depiction of Mary and even what you just said. I have, you know, the illustration that the. One of the sisters made of Eve right behind me. [00:33:39] Speaker B: Okay. Yes, yes, yes. [00:33:40] Speaker A: So I have Scott Erickson also, like, re. Re. Did that one in a. In a black and white. And so I have that one in my office as well. And it has. The meaning of that for me has. Has shifted and changed. And even in reading this book, this. This pregnant belly of hers just feels different when I see. When I see this illustration. But in part because I'm seeing her more how you've described her than kind of as something that someone that this happened to. And that. That is a different discussion as well that you talk about in the book and you named it just now that she said. [00:34:16] Speaker B: Yes. That's right. [00:34:17] Speaker A: She said yes to this. And even though none of us who are parents know who, we don't know what we're saying yes to when. That's right. [00:34:24] Speaker B: That's right. [00:34:25] Speaker A: The very beginning. And certainly my kids aren't 30 yet, but I'm sure she did not fully anticipate what was happening. But. Sorry. All of that to segue. But then she gets this grown man. [00:34:36] Speaker B: Yes. [00:34:37] Speaker A: Who she is still interacting with in this very beautiful relational way. And. And they're there at this party together. [00:34:44] Speaker B: Yes. It's such a powerful Story. And the fun thing about this text for me is that goodness, I don't know, probably 10 years ago, I was simply asked to preach at a different church. And this was a lectionary text text. And I think God in goodness allowed me to discover some things there that then over time developed. So the striking thing to me really is her creativity and persistence. So she goes and presents this problem. They don't have wine, and Jesus resists her. And that's a hard text to me. What is it to me and to you, woman? It's not yet my hour. It sounds very harsh. There's more. [00:35:18] Speaker A: The woman that you just said. [00:35:19] Speaker B: Right, exactly. And. But actually, I mean, that's. I think we can kind of get through that by recognizing that that's the most frequent term that Jesus used to talk to all females. So it's not dismissive. I think I'm convinced that those who say John is so symbolic, he really is actually evoking a lot of the Eve narrative in these addresses. But maybe that's a slightly different conversation. But Jesus is basically saying, look, it's not time for me to reveal myself, and if I get entangled with this family, then, you know, it's about time for me to go and do my ministry. I can't kind of get in a tit for tat. I do something for you, you do something for me. So he has good reasons. But what she does next is not pester him. Well, on one hand, she doesn't be like, oh, okay, you said no, sure, I'll just draw back. But neither does she, like, oh, well, please. Annoying, like, keep. All she does is go to the servants and say, you see that fellow over there? Go to him and. And ask him what would you like him to do? We'll do anything. And so she leaves it very like she's keeping the issue. She's pressing it, but she's also respecting that Jes say to the servants anything he wanted he could say, have a good day. But because she's persistent, what ends up happening is that both Jesus maintains his commitment to anonymity. By the end, the bridegroom nor the master of the banquet don't know what's happened. So Jesus can go on and do his ministry. But the need has been met. And so her number one trust that he's the person that can solve problems. Right. This is the first time she appears in the scene. In John, we don't have a birth narrative. And yet John is assuming or knows that she knows he's a person that can do something miraculous. And then her insistence that, hey, meet these people needs. Right. Yes, you can remain anonymous, but you can also solve the problem. As I reflect just a tiny bit in the book that became for me a picture of prayer. Why do we pray? God's going to do God's will. But yet we pray, and in persistence. Because in God's economy, it's not a zero sum game. Either God's will or our. It could be by our attentiveness. Yes, whatever. God's will is going to be done. But in our persistence and trust also, our needs are met. I recognize that's not what Kana is teaching, but theologically, the conversation between the one who is God and the one who has a need I think does teach us something about intercession. [00:37:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. I. Yeah, I'm so appreciative. Thank you so much for that. Gosh, Amy, like I said, there were. I just had so many, so many notes inside of this. I, I wonder if before, before I ask you to kind of say one last thing. I've got one last kind of big question, and that's to. To wrap back around to the beginning of this where we said there's something going on anthropologically that is not right and it's affecting us. It's, it's, it's. We can probably trace it back to theology. Let's flip that around now and say, if we're understanding these things differently. [00:38:31] Speaker B: Yes. [00:38:31] Speaker A: Now then how does that affect how we interact with our own embodiment? Like, how can this theology, this theological understanding. Because we've seen the implications of it. When it's twisted. [00:38:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:45] Speaker A: How can, how can the implications come back now and affect our embodiment, our anthropological interactions in the reverse. [00:38:54] Speaker B: Yes. So if we rightly agree with scripture and tradition that God is spirit and that men and women bear God's image, if we rightly assent to Christ's maleness via virginal conception, then I think we both men and women, and I love this question because though the book is women in the gender of God, my heart is that. That everyone can come to this text and perceive their honor in God's eyes. And I think then what ends up happening is, as I've articulated, women are able to let go of, God willing, that sense of being second class or less than. No God has, I think, designed human biology so that the incarnation can happen. Right. Like, this is my kind of like incarnation anyway. God was always going to dwell among us and hence set up human biology so that this could happen. And so our embodiment as women was always meant to testify to God. And then our brothers and husbands and sons look at their maleness, not as some kind of superiority. And I think that's so helpful, because if one views yourself as superior, either you go on a power trip and you become a dictator and an oppressor, or you continuously feel like you're falling short of that standard and you actually hate yourself because you know you're not it. And so our brothers, I think, are freed to see their honor, but also, and this goes back to the creation narrative, their need for us. And we then see the need for our brothers. This is where my work has been moving as I go into Paul. And I love how you put this question, because in women, in the gender of God, I'm trying to align our theology correctly by attending to the incarnation. How does that work out? I think the Pauline community show us that. And my conviction is, when he is speaking to the churches, he's rather adamant that there needs to be visible and bodily and verbal participation of both men and women. Because if your church is going to look like creation, you have to have men and women present and serving together. If your church is going to look like the Incarnation, you have to have men and women serving together. If it is the body of Christ, it better look like the body of Jesus Christ. So I think we are both innately, personally, we know our honor, creation, and incarnation, and then we see our need for each other. The cool thing about my life is that my ecclesial situation has shifted quite radically because of this book. That's a story for a different day. But where I am and now is being able to serve in a place where men and women serve together. And so I don't know it just in my head and theory, and I think that's what Paul talks about. I am living it every day. And I will say it is a whole lot of fun. And I feel sorry for people who don't get to live this out. So, like, I have a lab, and the lab is amazing. [00:41:53] Speaker A: I love it. I love it. I was actually. I'm so glad that you. That you brought that up, because for our last kind of, as we close out, I was going to ask you to switch hats from professor to pastor. Yeah, yeah. If you could just. If you could swap them out. I know that they're interchangeable in a lot of ways. There's a lot of overlap. But I'm wondering if you could, as a pastor, speak to listeners who might have shared some of my hesitations coming into this book, coming into some of these topics, because as you mentioned, you started working at it in 2011, 2022. Things had really not gone down but ramped up. And then here we sit near the end of 2025, and I would say it's even more pronounced now than it was three years ago when the book came out. And so this is one of the those topics that can feel a lot of different ways for a lot of different people. It can feel heavy, it can feel intimidating, it can feel joyful, it can feel, you know, any number of ways. So I'm wondering if, if for those who may have had hesitations. [00:43:09] Speaker B: Sure. [00:43:10] Speaker A: Pastorally, what would your encouragement be whether they pick this up or just choose to read widely otherwise on some of these topics. Theologically. [00:43:20] Speaker B: Yeah. May I say first, even for you to introduce and say, speak as a pastor, I've been ordained since 2016, but when people would pose questions like that, it felt like an ill fitting suit. Like if you put on your dad's suit and you know it doesn't fit and it looks silly. Through studying Mary, through the living, of the publication of this book, I wear that mantle now with confidence in a way that I never have. And so even my ears are like, like I am a pastor and I'm not embarrassed by it or feel inadequate to it. It is my call. And I think she has taught me the way that with humility and yet deep confidence, you own God's call. So for me to speak as a pastor is, is quite profound actually to do so though. And I. There's two fields of people that I imagine being hesitant. One, maybe the title seems off putting. Like I'm going to say things that seem at odds with classic orthodox Christianity that my intent with the title. And I think once someone reads it, they're like, yeah, this book is about women and it's about how we think about God's gender. Like, but that was a little naivete on my thought. You throw the word gender in something and people lose their mind. So maybe I'll, I'll. I have no idea what the second book is going to be called, but I'll try to pick something that doesn't set people off in the wrong direction. So I like what you said at the beginning. I believe in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In fact, I would privilege the language of fatherhood for God. I'm not taking away from that because I think when we say God is Father, we are invoking the Incarnation. So if you're a Little bit nervous. How radical of a radical feminist is she? Maybe I'm just as radical as Jesus that women are valued, but I want to and do stay within scripture and tradition. I think my book is completely within the authority of the Bible. And really all I ever imagine that I'm doing is exegeting the Nicene Creed, right. Born of the Virgin Mary. I just needed a few hundred pages to say that the creed does it in one line. So that might be one side, there might be another side who just feels so weary by the world. Right? In 2022, women were in a hard place. How. How is it possible that in our country in particular, women are even more attacked and devalued? How could it have gotten worse? But yet here we are. And so if one feels weary, I just can't take this up again. I would never press or impose, but my. My recommendation would be one way to kind of turn off the noise and the heaviness and the despair of our cultural moment is to get back to Jesus. I love reflecting on women who write and who have been hurt, especially by the church, but then say as the disciples did, who else has the words of life? Who else honors all humans, women included, as our Lord Jesus Christ? And so my encouragement would be, if you are feeling battle weary, come back to Jesus and I at the end of the day. I hope my book makes you more in awe of his goodness. And so it might be more of a comfort than you imagine. It's not kind of a hard hitting, let's go through all these things, the hard stuff, and maybe skip some chapters because there's some hard. There's some hard section. But those places where the first sentence of the book is, is it God values women? And as controversial as that has proven to be in some spaces, it's true. And if you need to hear that again, this might be a place where you can rediscover it. [00:46:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much. I will say it was that place for me and so I'm very truly grateful. Again, this book, it's an older title, but it is one that I am treasuring right now. Women and the Gender of God by Amy Peeler. Amy, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing this time with me today. [00:47:17] Speaker B: What a joy. Thank you. [00:47:20] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite favorite podcast listening app. You can also Visit [email protected]. [00:47:57] Speaker B: Sam.