The UK press loved it.  ‘Hysteria!’  ‘Heresy!’  The Express, Daily Mail and others gushed:

‘Worshippers left “in tears” as Cambridge dean claims Jesus was transgender.’

What was it all about?

Michael Banner, Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, had backed a ‘sermon’ which had been ‘preached’ at Evensong on November 20th, 2022, by research fellow Joshua Heath.

The full text of the sermon doesn’t appear to be widely available, but Joshua Heath evidently based his talk on a 1993 book entitled ‘Christs’, which includes some depictions of Jesus on the cross and observed that in some of these the wound in our Lord’s side ‘takes on a decidedly vaginal appearance’.

Heath showed three depictions of the crucifixion, including Jean Malouel’s 1400 work Pietà and Henri Maccheroni’s 1990 work “Christs”.

Heath’s concluding remarks are reported to have been:

‘In Christ’s simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body.’

Unsurprisingly, these thoughts led to some disquiet among the congregation, and criticism after the event.

In response, Dean Banner came to Heath’s defence, and said he thought the theories were “legitimate” and “provid[e] us with ways of thinking about issues around transgender questions today.”

Dean Banner added that he would not invite a speaker who would ‘deliberately seek to shock or offend.’

So, supposing that Heath did not ‘deliberately’ set out to be shocking or offensive, he did it unintentionally, ignorantly, stupidly.

Another spokesperson from Trinity College said Heath’s sermon “explored the nature of religious art” and was “in keeping with open debate and dialogue at the University of Cambridge.”

Others rushed to Heath’s defence.  Candida Moss, for example, claims that:

‘The ruckus, which seems to have obscured many details of the sermon and turned an art history talk into grand heresy, seems to avoid one critical point: there is a long Christian tradition of reinterpreting the body of Jesus so that it speaks to a more inclusive community.’

Maccheroni is, apparently, an artist with a particular interest in the vulva, so we are supposed to be unsurprised that it finds its way into a depiction of the crucifixion.

Moreover, erotically suggestive representations of Christ’s wound can be found in medieval art and literature (if you look hard enough).

The fourteenth century Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg includes an image of the wound of Christ that looks curiously suggestive, to some observers.

And some modern art scholars find sexualised and feminised aspects of the wounds of Jesus in the thought and experience of mystics such as Catherine of Sienna and Teresa of Avila.

In the 1300s Julian of Norwich wrote that “Jesus…is our true mother”.

Moravian theology in the 18th and 19th century likened the wounds of Christ to a womb, which births the church and offers a warm and safe refuge for the soul.

The idea that Heath’s lecture was ‘heretical’ would not then, it is claimed, ring true for medieval mystics or Moravian theologians.  It was, in Bonner’s words, a “legitimate” exposition of a respected and relatively mainstream artistic tradition.

Heath’s focus, apparently, was on the incarnation:

‘Christ is representative of all humanity, his saving work embraces all people, insofar as his body is sexualized in both masculine and feminine terms.’

Candida Moss argues that:

‘using the body of Jesus to do inclusive theological work is a two-thousand-year-old project. The whole premise of the incarnation is one of shapeshifting (Jesus takes on the “form” of an enslaved person in Phil. 2:6-7 and he alters his “form” at the Transfiguration). In the second century apocryphal acts of the apostles his age (Acts of Peter 20–21), size (Acts of Peter 20), beauty (Acts of Peter 20), and skin texture (Acts of John 89) all change. In one story he can walk without footprints. He can even appear in different forms to different people at the same time. Thus, in the Acts of John he is, to John, a handsome and cheerful-looking young man, and to James he is a child. John later sees him as “bald-headed but with a thick flowing beard” while James beholds “a young man whose beard was just beginning.” This is a polymorphous Jesus. If people want to get upset about augmenting the body of Jesus for later political or ideological purposes, then perhaps they could start with the ubiquitous whitewashing this southwest asian man receives in European artistic tradition?’

But these examples – especially the two plucked from Scripture – do not offer any warrant for an artist or speaker to  make arbitrary connections between one aspect of Jesus’ physical body (in this case, a wound caused by a spear) and  some aspect of our own embodied lives that the artist or speaker has an opinion about.

Candida Moss’s represents the knee-jerk reactions of some (who, in their ‘hysteria’ label Heath and others like him ‘heretics’, ‘depraved libertines’ and ‘perverse sickos’) as if there could be no alternative, more reasonable critique.  In her view, it seems that there are just two groups of people: the reasonable (who support what Heath was trying to do), and the unreasonable (whose reaction is as ignorant as it is hysterical).

Setting ‘hysterical’ reactions to one side, it’s still worth asking whether we ought to be ‘shocked’ by Heath’s message.  I think we would be living in a very depraved world indeed if we had lost the capability to be shocked one in a while.  But, after a career in nursing, I’m not easily shocked – at least, not by talking about, or seeing, bits of the body that are normally (and rightly) kept private.

Turning now to a much more critical evaluation of Heath’s sermon, Joanna Pedder makes a number of points:

Likening a wound to a vagina is simply offensive to women.

Finding erotic symbolism in Jesus’ wounds is perverse, whether it is done in the name of ‘art’ or not.

To then extrapolate from all this to suggest that Jesus was, or that Jesus identifies with, transgender people is speculation, pure and simple.

Such speculations can have no bearing on Christian doctrine.  None at all.

Pedder links the unrestrained imaginations of those whom Heath admires with the postmodern assumption that there is no metanarrative: each person may, and should, construct his or her own personal narrative.  And if that means attaching a new meaning to (say) the wounds of Christ then no-one else may adjudicate on its truthfulness.  ‘This is my truth; tell me yours’.

But the Christian faith offers – no, insists on – an overarching story, within which a person is not free to invent his or her own ‘truth’.  ‘God made me’ says Scripture and the creeds.  And so I cannot create either myself or the world I inhabit.  I can only pretend to do so.

Echoing Abigail Favale, Pedder urges us to return to creation:

‘In Genesis 1, God creates the world ex nihilo. There is a pronouncement of his goodness, that there is purpose and order. Therefore, there is no need for us to manipulate language in order to ascribe dignity to all of humanity’s existence — it is universal and spoken by God. In Genesis 2 God creates Adam, but recognises his need for company so creates Eve, who is both alike and different. Like Favale says, sexual difference is made deliberate in God’s design: it is not one of subjugation but of complementarity and cooperation.’

But let me make a very simple point about Heath’s ‘sermon’.  Even if it shocked no-one.  Even if the congregation sat there and lapped up ever image and word.  Even if every known mystic and artist could be invoked in support.

Whatever else it might be,

That is not what I call preaching.