"It is probably not the occasion for high statements of theology, but I'm sure you'd be disappointed if I didn't add something, given it's been the subject of comment over the years in which I've led this party. But to the great God and creator of us all, I thank him - or her - as well."
It was an emotion-filled moment of high drama. And the soon-to-be-departing Prime Minister did something that's rather difficult to do in Australia today. I don't mean shedding a tear in public. I mean trying to take the question of God seriously in front of the press.
Whatever you think of Kevin Rudd's leadership, I think his attempt to give public thanks to "the great God and creator of us all" was remarkable and praiseworthy. Interestingly except for what he said at the end of the sentence about God's gender, no one in the press seemed to have noticed it or remarked upon it. All the summaries that merely followed up his speech conveniently exorcised out the theological reference.
Of course, as I listened to it, I could sense Mr Rudd's embarrassment. I don't think he meant to add the qualifier at the end: "or her". Perhaps he was trying to make a theological point about the use of gendered language for God. But perhaps it was the subtle, perhaps unconscious influence of the fact that the Prime Minister about to replace him and new leader of the Labor Party was indeed a her.
I have observed in myself, and I have seen in others, the same undoing of serious statements about God, often through an embarrassment at the intensity or seriousness of what is being said.
I occasionally find it in people who lead our services too. Even in church being serious about God can create a pressure, an intensity that needs to be broken with a throwaway line or a qualification.
Rudd's words led to a serious misunderstanding. Rejoicing next day in the number of women at the top of the nation's leadership the Sydney Morning Herald trumpeted, "Rudd declares that God was a goddess, too"
Of course Kevin Rudd was saying nothing of the sort. But it shows how easy it is to say something quite counterproductive out of good intentions.
God does not have a gender in the ordinary sense of that word. God is certainly not a sexual being with a sex. However, efforts to make that point by changing from "he" to "she" , or equivocating with "he or she" make the problem worse. It introduces univocal sexual or gendered language into description of God.
Although the use of masculine language is mandated by Scripture and by the words of Christ, we know that it is used in some sense analogously of God. We are not asserting that God is male, as opposed to female. But when we add "or she" we are unwittingly changing the "he" to mean "and not she" and the "she" to mean "and not he". And so God is now either of one gender or another. He/she is either male or female.
But God is not a being who is either one or the other. He is not a being at all in the normal sense.
The unfortunate result of such language as "he or she" is to turn God into just another big person out there, perhaps the biggest of all beings, of one gender or another. This is, of course, not the living God who is not the biggest anything out there. Attempts to overcome the problem by talking about God as "she" can destroy the Christian doctrine of God. All you may end up with God as a goddess.
Kevin Rudd is, like all of us, a man of remarkable contradictions.
He is man who used regularly to allow himself to do press conferences coming out of a church. And he is a man who has been quoted swearing rather violently in front of the press and others in relation to frustrations.
But he is also a man who sought, maybe falteringly, to mention the great unmentionable. The realities of the great God and creator of us all.
