Jesus "Transgenders Himself" When He Washes His Disciples' Feet?????

During an August 2021 panel discussion on "Queer Theology," Reverend Simon Woodman of London's Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church asserts that Jesus Christ "transgenders himself" in several gospel narratives, including the washing on his disciples' feet.

—TRANSCRIPT—

If we think of Jesus as the one who reveals God, I was really struck by Angela [Sheard] saying earlier that God is queer. And I think as humans we have a tendency to construct God in our own image rather than to recognize that we are made in the image of God. And therefore, the dominant expression of humanity ends up writing itself onto God and making that God.

And I think in the story of Jesus, the stories of Jesus' life, we find that being broken down in some quite radical ways, which is then having the knock-on effect of altering the way we understand who God is in relation to humanity.

So I think Jesus transgenders himself on a number of occasions. I think you know, just a little phrase, that Jesus is lamenting over Jerusalem, longing to gather Jerusalem as a mother hen gathers her chicks.

And I think if you look at the foot washing from John's gospel, foot washing elsewhere, in both Old and New Testament, it's consistently done by women. And yet Jesus takes that on. People often cast that as being the servant's role. It was the woman's role. And Jesus does it and becomes the woman at that point.

And I think, you know, we've observed that he's unmarried, he's childless, he defies gender and sexual norms of his day. He's known for associating with those whose own sexual history or gender identity may be ambiguous.

So I think in Jesus we've got a revelation of God as encompassing far more than what historically and, recently at least, Christians have tended to construct God as being. And I think there's a bit of an antidote to heteronormative idolatry in in the story of Jesus.

Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xNLLC3pdxU