Day 217: Gender Equality and God

 DAY 217

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic    

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

pastorrobert@paxpres.org

Week Thirty-one    Saturday 17 October 2020

Gender Equality and God

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed the legal landscape for American women. In a career spanning six decades, she became the nation’s leading court advocate for gender equality, first as a civil rights litigator and then as the second woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court.” - From the current issue of a weekly news magazine.

Equality, an elusive status in some ways, in all cultures that is sometimes based on race, religion, or sexual orientation, is more often than not based on gender. As we reflect on what it means for the declaration in our founding as a nation to state that “all men are created equal,” “men” linguistically referencing the human race when this was written, we also reflect on prior and more compelling declarations by the God who has created all human beings.

The first declaration by God regarding gender equality is found in the beginning of the beginning of the creation of everything:

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, …’

So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

Male and female he created them.”

- Genesis 1:26,27

The second declaration by God regarding gender equality is found in the beginning of the beginning of the creation of the Body of Christ on earth, the church on the Day of Pentecost, a fulfillment of the prophet Joel in 2:28-29 and recorded in Acts 2:17-18:

“In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions,

your old men will dream dreams.

Even on my servants, both men and women,

I will pour out my Spirit in those days, …”

As we face a pandemic of cruel force, we watch as health care providers - both men and women - exhaust themselves in the service of others, some of them dying in the process, an equality in caring and an equality in dying of moving note. Ginsburg was right – so was and so is God.  

Reflective question: Do you believe men and women are created equal in God’s sight?

Reflective Scripture: Galatians 3:28 – “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” 

Reflective hymn:

“For Everyone Born” – Shirley Murray (1931-    )

For woman and man, a place at the table,

revising the roles, deciding the share,

With wisdom and grace, dividing the power,

for woman and man, a system that’s fair.