God is very different from us, and he wants in.

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/042919.cfm
Acts 4:23-31
John 3:1-8

I’m going to switch the order of two points made by Jesus in John, chapter 3, verses 1 through 8. That is, being “born from above,” and what being filled with the Holy Spirit means.

But first, in attempting to describe the Holy Spirit “in us,” I want to set the stage for a discussion about how different God is from us, while at the same time stressing how like God we are designed to be. I will begin with identifying God as a person using the masculine pronoun.

Out of concern for victimized feminists who desire to hear a feminine pronoun which defines God, while at the same time having disregard for rabid misogynists who insist that God is masculine in all three persons (which I don’t want to do) — adding also deference to Martin Buber who wrote that God is person (a Thou, not an It) — I must, unfortunately, throw in the towel (quitting in the first round) in a fight to use anything other than a masculine pronoun. Why? I am incapable at adopting any of the thirty gender-neutral pronouns (see them here) to define God. And, God describes himself as male. Oh dear.

In typical life-preserver flail I grasp at whatever anyone watching out for my safety throws my way. I grasp onto Father God and Son of God and begin floating, simply grateful that Jesus told us to pray to Our Father. I don’t mind, really, if someone wants to call God “She.” We’re born male and female, woman and man, because as joined together we best image the creator God in community, as God told us in Genesis. So, go ahead. My head spins when I try it. It’s difficult to do.

Here’s my dilemma. I don’t think God is confined to gender, so gender can't be the issue of God's personality. Plus, God is not gender neutral either. In this arena we are not like God, then. Our human joining together as male and female is all about gender. 

How about in our relationships, then? Being celibate and single is perfectly OK. So, in effect, being joined as male and female does not make us more like God, nor does not joining together make us closer to God. We’re gender based, and God is not, and that's a blatant limitation of ours. It's beautiful, but not complete. We can join in creation by joining together, and that’s amazing. But, it doesn’t really make us more like God than anyone else. It's just how God made us.

This is not a digression. My discussion of gender stands as parenthetical, a somewhat necessary background filler, to point out that the Holy Spirit — whom Jesus says is the only way to “see” the Kingdom of God — has no gender, has personhood (is not an It), and is complete. Jesus is male, so Jesus has a gender. And, Jesus is complete. His Father may sound like he has a gender, but I don’t think so. Obviously, the father is complete. 

This is a tricky subject, but a good way to bring up the unknown thing about God that we actually know a little bit about but cannot understand. We know God transcends creation because he existed before creation itself. In creation he defined the living world as male and female. When God joined creation, in the second person as separate from Father and Spirit (Oh, how odd this sounds), he came as a son, a male. Jesus, then, explained that we should look upon God as Father. 

And that's the end of God for world-based people. For women (and men) this sounds limiting. With God there are no limits. Until God places himself within a limited creation, that is. Whether male or female, because Jesus is divine, he transcends gender. There is no limitation in Jesus' nature, other than now God is fully human as well as God; it’s just in our hearing that we see gender in God.

Rather than fight this reality, we must go with it. This is the way we should also operate with the Holy Spirit. We should not place upon God our design ideas, and our misgivings, as requirements to see God by how creation exists. Gender is just one example of how we end up designing God, rather than seeing how God has designed us. 

So, why bring up gender? Because, God is not gender or gender neutral, but we are. He has used gender to exemplify what his intimacy looks like in us. Our existence does not mean that God must be both male and female, or that the particulars of God must be calculated on some gender scale — male (Father), male (Jesus), and maybe female (Holy Spirit). We are the created ones, not God. Some of us got born with mixed genders (actually most of us have a rather fixed gender conglomeration). Gender, in whatever composition we have it, confirms our created nature. None of us have the full compendium of God parts. No one can have God’s parts. We can only allow God to fill us up, to bring his part to us. This is both true and highly frustrating to deal with.

I’m still not digressing, by the way. Just getting to scriptures in a round about way.

We’re so different from God, and yet unique as each person. The one thing that completes us, though, has nothing to do with us at all. It’s not each other that we need, or another that we must have as a soulmate (though both of those things are abjectly and differently necessary/unnecessary for each of us). God completes us. He literally enters into us and that’s how he make us like Him. It’s the one part of God, complete in Himself, the fullness of God in the Holy Spirit, that we must allow to be-come, to come into, to dwell within, us. God makes us complete through His Holy Spirit, and that’s what Jesus tells us.

Consequently, for gender reasons, I will temporarily now resort to capitalize God as He, Him, His, and Himself, in all three persons. It’s antiquated, not required, obtuse and obvious at the same time. It's important, though, to see God as different, even as he is like us. It points out the difficulty in seeing God with our gender tendered brains.

Jesus is male. Jesus is descriptive. Our Father, He said. Jesus was a man human. There’s all those pithy, while mind-blowing, even-handed gender fairness scripture scenes where Jesus treats men and women the same. But His gang of 12 were all testosterone, robe draped, bearded, men. In construct, that’s the guys/pal group. In the orchestrated concert of creation, however, within Jesus' tight circle there are four different women named Mary, women sinners, women saints, women murderers, and women prophets. He allowed women to touch Him, wash Him, challenge Him, subdue Him, order Him, update Him, and find Him. 

This is not the important point. The point is that Jesus joined creation at its gender core. He was present before creation, as in Jesus existed outside of time and space (which is a conundrum for the ages). Then, He joined us. And, not for just 33 or so years. He’s still one of us, as we are and will be. Jesus will always be human. That’s not just commitment. That’s the initial part of the important point, which is having God come into us. God came into creation as a brother, and as our King. He, then, sent His Holy Spirit to come into our hearts, our beings. He became one of us in order that we can become with Him.

“Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

This point made by Jesus says that the Holy Spirit, who is indwelling in us, marks us. That re-birth, a next birth, injects us with Himself. When we are born again, indwelled by God, His Spirit lives within us and changes our bodily functions to see, hear, taste, and feel the Kingdom. We become more like God as we allow the Spirit to “blow where it wills.” We no longer live on our own. We live within the will of God.

This indwelling isn’t the goal, really. It is the catalyst. It is the beginning of a new life. It’s a plane taking off from the tarmac, leaving earth. It's a new life, reborn, because we’ve been indwelled with God Himself. The Kingdom in active presence, a living relationship to God with all of reborn creation, is the goal. That’s why the first point made by Jesus must be reiterated at the end of this discussion. We must be born “from above” in order to see the Kingdom. 

Jesus answered and said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Our creation-based concerns regarding gender and fairness and powers do not matter. They make a difference, perhaps, but not to envisioning the Kingdom of God. If we imagine that our created selves mark the construct of God, then we miss the true image of God as a creator who wants to join us. The Kingdom is where our new beings belong.

God constructed us. Then, God joined us. He did it the hard way. The same way we did. And, He exited the same way we will. Yet, in His resurrection, and subsequent sending of His Holy Spirit, He changed our perspective on Kingdom. He's not just coming back, he's restoring everything to Himself. This is not the Kingdom, though it reflects what we will one day become. Once indwelling takes place in little snippets, blinks of light, that reveal to us the Kingdom of God in fullness.

God will complete us. He's already started.