This Sunday I will be the guest preacher at the church I am visiting... my name even appears their website, so no getting out of it either for them or for me!  This "hit and run" form of preaching is one I don't do very often anymore, and it has demands on the preacher very different from those of preaching week in, week out, in one place.

For those who think I am very organised, maybe I should mention that I was sent the complete order of service, minus Bible reading(s) nearly three weeks ago... call to worship, responsive bits and all the hymns already chosen.  That was interesting, because rather than starting with a Bible reading or a theme and working 'outwards' to the hymns etc, I found myself working 'inwards' from the hymns to find some sort of threads and thence Bible readings that will work with them.

I don't want to give away everything, just in case anyone from that church happens to reading this stuff, but one of the ideas I am playing with involves setting alongside each other these verses (emphasis mine):

Genesis 1:27

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

and

Galatians 3:28

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

I am playing with the idea of rendering 'male and female' as 'male-and-female' (since Genesis 1 does not make any such disctinction in the animal kingdom, there must some sort of significance in noting it for humans and of course Genesis 2 et seq takes a trajectory whereby 'male-or-female' becomes increasingly significant.

Probably most of what I'm mulling won't make the cut, and probably it's not linguistically justified... but it is interesting to ponder why if male-and-female bears the image of God and is divinely decreed 'very good' in Genesis 1 that Paul, in Galatians 3, declares that in Christ 'male-and-female' is a redundant distinction.  Perhaps the term has simply become too corrupt, too divisive... and perhaps I'm just missing the point!

Much as I love preparing sermons, I am intellectually and spiritually very tired... after this week it will be good to have a longish break from it.