Contentment vs fact

For lunch on Sunday, I made "Israeli Salad" (and the accompanying cocktail) from Zahav.  This was a deliberate choice on a number of levels: 1) it's summer, and tomatoes and cucumbers are in season, and delicious and 2) Saturday was mostly spent running around and all I could really manage to eat was potato chips, rice snacks, and a bowl of cereal, so I was feeling kind of carb-heavy.

Now, #2 is entirely silly.  Eating vegetables for lunch was kind of an act of "cleansing" which doesn't work.  The idea that some foods rid your body of other foods is entirely unscientific, except for the possible exception of insoluble fiber.  I know this is a nonsense idea.  But psychologically, it feels satisfying to eat vegetables to make up for eating lots of carbs.

And I am wondering if this psychological sense of contentment, of something that feels satisfying in the face of facts, is partly what is going on in this election season.  I mean, when majorities of Trump's supporters don't even believe half of what he is saying, facts are obviously not what is carrying the day.  It feels good (for them) to hear someone saying what he is saying.  It feels scary to know that black people, brown people, non-English-speaking people, and women are gaining power in society, power that had previously been reserved for white, English-native men.  Even if they have never actually seen these effects, they know they're out there.  It's not the actual disenfranchisement as much as the fear of it.

I'm not really sure what can be done about it, though.  In pastoral care and counseling classes, we are taught that feelings are neither right nor wrong, and that one of the first steps to dialogue is validating the other person's feelings, regardless of whether the other party thinks they are "valid" or "fair."  But when those feelings and emotions lead to real harm, to hatred and violence, validating them may not be the way to begin.  Where do you go when you've validated vitriolic hatred?  Not even that the hatred is valid, but that the person feeling it has good reason to.  That is what people are doing when they point to the hollowing of the middle class, wage stagnation, and the disappearance of jobs that don't demand a college education.  But for all the analysis of the validation, no solution is offered to get the people who are hating to stop hating.  Value systems aren't easily changed after generations.

And even educated, informed people can act contrary to fact and their own knowledge.

Swinging hips and feminism.

Taking a break from academic and theological reflections to engage in something I haven't done in a long time: film theory.  With Freud!

I spent last weekend with my sister, so she decided we must watch Frozen together.

I hadn't seen it since it was out in theatres, but of course I've read about it since then.  And there seems to be an undercurrent of frustrated feminism with the animation accompanying Elsa's "Let It Go" ballad.  A lot of that frustration hangs on Elsa's "makeover" in which her skin is suddenly revealed and she swings her hips when she changes her hair and dress.

I can understand that.  There's too much sexualisation of women's bodies out there, and it's depressing to see yet another woman get the "sexy treatment."  And yes, a lot of what is put forward as "expressing a woman's sexuality" is, in fact, expressing sexiness, that is, catering to male sexuality by becoming an object of desire, leaving the subjective gaze male.

But I think, ironically with the help of Sigmund Freud, that Elsa's makeover might not be as bad as it seems. 

"Let It Go" is undeniably a claim to power.  Elsa, catastrophically facing the fact that suppression is not control, gives in and really learns to control her ice powers for the first time by freeing and expressing them.  She is overjoyed to finally claim and use her power.  And let's not forget that this comes on her coronation day; she is not only claiming magical power, but also political power.  She is the Snow Queen.

In Freudian theory, female power is always sexual (ok, in Freudian theory, everything is sexual).  The womb, and even more so, the vagina, are tied to death, or the fear of death for men.  Male power is penetration.  When Elsa makes herself over, she is claiming her political power, her magical power, and her sexual power.  And here is the thing: she is claiming them for herself.  She has left everyone behind and wants to remain alone.  She is not remaking herself for a man.  Slightly later, one of her icicles very nearly penetrates a man who has come to kill her.  Elsa's new hair and dress are for her, and for her alone.  She even remains uncoupled at the end of the story.  I think it's also worth noting that she's striding forward aggressively when the makeover happens, not sitting back on a couch and winking in a come-hither manner.  And the men in the story are terrified of her.

Traditionally, the destabilizing, powerful, single female character is domesticated at the end of a story by marriage (or by death if it's a tragedy).  Having threatened the destruction of family and/or nation, she is reabsorbed into its structure and penetrated by her new husband (e.g. Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, or Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings). 

Yes, Frozen is a film.  Yes, Elsa remains on screen, a spectacle for the male gaze.  But in the context of the film itself, she is the opposite of the faux-feminist sexiness; she has claimed power for herself, she remains unpenetrated and uncoupled.  She does not need a man to make her happy or to perform for.  Instead of marriage, her instability is domesticated in the story by having her take up her proper position as queen, guided by a ruler's love for her people and country (this being traditional story conventions, Classical and Medieval "divine right of kings" stuff here,  not my personal opinion).

There's a debate over whether it's really appropriate to use Freudian theory to analyze texts, and I agree that sometimes it's used inappropriately.  But Elsa's song and makeover are just so perfectly explained by it and ironically rescued as indeed feminist by it that I just couldn't help myself.  Suppression, female power, female sexuality, male fear of death, penetration, it's all there. 

Now.  You can certainly debate the appropriateness of having an adult character with adult sexuality set as a role model for pre-pubescent girls.  But I think the message of Elsa's makeover isn't quite as anti-feminist or domesticating as it might seem.  In claiming her power, Elsa removes herself from male power and defies the male gaze.

Including tradition.

So many things I could have blogged about this week. 

But I'm going to take on something that I should have written last week that is still bugging me.

I haven't been to church in over a year.  Part of that is that I've been very, very hurt by a church in the past, part of that is that I've moved 3 times and I'm not in a place with weak public transportation, and part of it is that I don't really know how to go to church anymore if I'm not staff.  And yet one more factor is that I am, as my blog says, quite eclectic in my theology, and it's hard to find a place where I'm comfortable. 

One of those eclecticisms is that I'm both traditionalist and progressive.  I love a lot of the classic hymns of Christianity, but I don't love a lot of the masculine language they contain.  Last week, I woke up from a dream with the hymn "Be Thou My Vision" stuck in my head.  This is a lovely hymn with 2 quite problematic lines.  The first appears in the second verse:

Thou my true Father and I thy true son

And the second is the first line of the third verse:

Riches I heed not nor man's empty praise

 The last church I attended was a moderately conservative Episcopal church, and I remembered that in the hymnal, that second line had been changed to

Riches I heed not nor vain, empty praise

which I think is nice, and works.  But I couldn't remember what the other line had been.

And that line has bothered me for a long time.  I know "man" has been used for "human" for a long time, and while I don't like it, I can kind of at least slide myself into it when I sing a traditional hymn.  But I can't be a son.  "Sons" maybe I can sort of include myself in because I know it's a clumsy translation in the Bible from בני b'nei or παιδός paidos (both of which, yes, can mean "sons" but they also stand in those languages generally for "children" especially in Hebrew which doesn't have another word for "children").  But "I thy true son" just doesn't work in my head.  And it was driven home strongly several years ago when the hymn was sung as a solo by one of the women on our music team.  She had a gorgeous voice, mezzo-soprano-ish, and that line just sounded utterly ludicrous when she sang it.  And it's funny because that community usually changed the pointless masculine language to inclusive language when it could.

I think the problem is the next line.  You see, the usual arrangement of this hymn is in rhyming couplets.  So it goes:

Thou my true Father and I thy true son
Thou with me dwelling and I with thee one

This also makes sense in the context of the original hymn, which was composed and sung by Irish monks.  They were all male, and they had dedicated their lives to a kind of life that centers around God and worship.  But as much as I might long for unity with God, I'm not a monk and I cannot really be a "true son."  I'm not so great with rhyme and rhythm language, and I couldn't think of a way to alter those two lines to keep the meter and rhyme.  "Child" really doesn't work - what in the world could it rhyme with?

So, as we do, I turned to the internet.  Googling "be thou my vision inclusive" doesn't, helpfully, bring up an inclusive version of the hymn, but instead a lot of people bitching about changing hymn lyrics.  Which, just, ugh. 

I don't mind traditional masculine language for God, as long as it's properly balanced by acknowledging that there is plenty of traditional feminine language for God and I do prefer if people avoid pronouns generally.  And I don't mind the "king" language, because that is rather part of God's character and what makes God God.  If God isn't ruler, no one is, and we are God's creation, so God has authority over us and the rest of creation.  I'm as pacifist as anyone, and I'm all for the church avoiding taking power and authority, but I don't mind if God has it.

But there are people out there who bitch about any change to any masculine language.  Including that referring to people.  Sometimes they claim it's about translation and respecting the original grammar, but somehow they're ok with never referring to the Spirit of God as feminine the way it is in Hebrew grammar.  So basically that argument is intellectually bankrupt.  Appeals to "original language" are just appeals to keep women from being fully included, and are no better than the Victorians leaving obscene bits untranslated "in the modesty of the original language" (which was, of course, perfectly understood by women in ancient Greece or Rome). 

One of the things that drove me away from the fringes of evangelicalism where I was and to the Episcopal Church was that I am just sick of fighting about gender.  I'm a woman (more or less), God called me to teach.  I'm not going to fight about it.  I'm just tired.  Other women are called to, and I'm glad for them.  But I'd rather be part of a community that lets me get on with doing what I'm called to do and not interested in deciding if it's ok first or not.  It reminds me of one of my professors at JTS.  He is orthodox, and JTS is conservative (which is to say, less observant and slightly more liberal).  I once asked him why he was at JTS and not YU and he said at YU, he would say something, and the class had to spend 20 minutes discussing whether what he said was heretical or not.  At JTS, they just engage in what he actually said.  I'm not interested in people debating whether I can talk or not.

It took me a while of slogging and fine-tuning the Google search, but I finally found a lovely inclusive re-phrasing:

Thou my true Father, thine own may I beThou with me dwelling and I one with thee

 Keeps the same theme and sentiment, just re-works the word order for a nice couplet.  So now I can sing this hymn again.  Thank God for community.

Can we please stop using "lady" for just about anything?

I am so sick of reading about anything "lady." "Lady parts." "Lady talk." Anything prefixed with "lady."  Also, calling women "ladies."  It's irritating in its faux sarcasm and irony.  It's also ridiculously infantilizing, especially when referring to genitals, but generally, because God forbid we should use the word "women."  Honestly, "girl" is better because at least it doesn't come with the smarm of look-at-me-I'm-so-ironic. 

What really bugs me is when I see it used with self-conscious cuteness by otherwise feminist writers.  As if there's something special and different when "ladies" do something opposed to men or mixed company.  It still has the effect of othering women and women's experiences.

Just stop.

Overt Sexism vs. Structural Sexism

Gender roles are a big source of arguments in the church today.  What women can do and how to deal with them (us) has caused deep hurt, acrimonious debates, and split churches.  As you might guess from this blog, I come down strictly on the side of full mutuality/egalitarianism.  As a woman, I have preached, taught, led a community, baptized people, served communion, and "celebrated" it, or done the initial explanation and prayer.  I have performed all these things in equal partnership with men, although I have been fairly isolated as a woman in this role because there weren't any, or only very few others.  Sometimes I feel like emailing the men I worked with in the more conservative and evangelical community and asking if anyone ever objected to me as a woman but I haven't yet and quite frankly, I don't know if they would even tell me.

It's that latter point that I'm going to explore here.  White males not telling females or non-white people that someone has objected to their role because of the lack of male-ness or white-ness is structural sexism or racism, not overt.  They think they are protecting the person.  They themselves never receive criticism because they do not fit into these socially constructed categories that have been determined to be appropriate for leadership, authority, and power.  These "protectors" are not overtly racist or sexist.  But in hiding criticism from those people who are, they are leaving their partners in work in ignorance, which increases their power over them.  They are structurally sexist or racist.  And they would never think of themselves in those terms.

A good example of structural sexism is going on in the tech world right now.  This story, if largely true as told (do note that GitHub has so far refused to comment), is not an example of much overt sexism.  But it is full of structural sexism.  What it more is, however, is the story of immature people in circumstances they can't deal with, and boundless egos.  Both of these things, by the way, are very common in "the startup culture."

My husband said I should blog about it because he didn't see any sexism at all in the story until I pointed it out to him.  So I am. And I'm putting it on this blog because a lot of the same structural sexism in the GitHub story is replicated in the church.

First let's point out the only overtly sexist action in the story: the rockstar programmer refusing to be romantically rejected and the company not calling him out on it.  His sexual ego has been hurt and he punishes the woman who hurt him, and the other men don't really see a problem with this.

This, by the way, is one of the key assumptions of "rape culture."  If you are attracted to someone, there is this expectation that this objectified person has some kind of obligation to attempt to reciprocate the attraction or allow you to gratify it.  They do not.  If attraction is not mutual, then it just isn't.  Rejection hurts, go have a beer with a good friend and cry on their shoulder (this advice is for both you men and women), talk it over with your therapist, and deal.  There is no obligation put on the object of your attraction, except maybe to be polite in rejection and acknowledge the pain they are causing.

Anyway.  First point of structural sexism:  wife of founder has a role in the company, but it is undefined and she is not formally employed by the company.  This ought to sound familiar to anyone who has ever run into "the pastor's wife."  This is sexism, pure and simple.  Because of her relationship and gender, she is excluded from a formal role in her husband's company, but is still expected to "support" him.  It's also the decision of a bad manager:  never, ever allow someone to have an undefined and unofficial role in your company.

Second point:  the unofficial wife (ok, that's not quite what I meant :) is sent to deal with the unhappy female employee over drinks.  Would the founder have sent his wife to deal with a male employee over drinks?  I'm going to guess there's a 95% chance that he wouldn't, not even if the male employee was gay (although he might have.  There's a reason discussion about women often overlaps with discussions about queer people).  But he sends a woman to deal with a woman.  This is structural sexism because it treats women differently from men based on assumptions about gender stereotypes. 

This is a big point in the story.  The female programmer is treated the way she is partly because the people involved obviously have no idea how to handle any kind of internal dispute, and partly because of her gender.  Assumptions about how to manager her are being dictated by gender, not by her or anyone else's role in the company.  When I pointed this out to my husband, he said now he could see the sexism.  He had not seen anything but bad management and a clash of egos until I pointed these aspects out to him.

But he's right, it's also a tale of egos.  This programmer thought she could "fix GitHub."  That has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with ego.  Her ego is identical to the men's egos in this story and they are clashing.  In a culture that rewards the biggest ego, the best self-seller, the loudest voice, situations like this are inevitable.  The sexism is in how this programmer specifically was dealt with.

It's wrong to say this is a story about sexism only.  But it's equally wrong to say she was not treated in a sexist manner simply because there is barely any overt sexism.  Structural discrimination is just as damaging as overt discrimination, and it's made even worse because it's invisible to the people it benefits even when they disagree and would never condone overt discrimination.

ASGW Sleepy Hollow (ep 9)

Sleepy Hollow episode 10 airs tonight.  Only 3 more left!  I wonder if I'll manage to watch season 2.  This is the first season of TV since... I dunno, TNG that I have managed to watch a show every week.  I think it has something to do with the fact that the episodes are online, so I can watch them even when I'm away or forgetful.

Episode 9 was mostly about developing the various charactes' backstories.  For one, I so called it: Ichabod and Katrina had a baby.  A son, specifically, which will probably be important later on.  There was also some slight development in Abbie's story too, but not a whole lot.  Surprisingly, the captain got his fair share as well; we met his ex-wife and daughter for the first time, and his daughter was given some significant screen time.

This, if I may digress a bit, is why Sleepy Hollow rocks and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D doesn't.  Sleepy Hollow takes the time to put a kid on screen and give her her own monologue to establish her voice and backstory.  And she's just a supporting character, with no promise she'll ever even come back. Agents is so caught up in explaining the McGuffin of the week that we still don't know who the 6 top-billed characters are, and since we don't know, we don't care.  The only episode of Agents that really did any character-building was the one where Simmons got the alien flu.  Even Coulson explaining how Melinda May got the nickname "the cavalry" doesn't give us any insight into her character.  She's still a cipher, like everyone else on the show.

Anyway, nothing really objectionable in ep 9 for Sleepy Hollow except for the main antagonist.  Why does an Ancient Near Eastern god whose main characteristic is worship involving child sacrifice have a servant made of tree roots from deciduous North America?  I'm waiting to see if there is ever a connection between Molech's worship and Ichabod's and Katrina's child, but I'm not holding my breath.  There was no indication of it in the episode.

Ok, maybe, maybe you could draw something from Abbie's line, "As soon as your son was born, the creature attacked," but that sounds more like the baby is some kind of mystic key (hey, he's the child of a witch, right?), not that Molech needs more child sacrifice.

Speaking of Katrina, one nitpicky bit:  Why is the letter Ichabod wrote to her in case he was killed on the battlefield folded up and hidden in a book when she was right there when he died to cast the spell that kept him alive? preserved? in some kind of magical stasis? for 200+ years?

Also, after the first episode where Ichabod met her, Katrina has looked and dressed nothing like an 18th century Quaker.  I think I already addressed that as Katrina Van Tassel, a Dutch woman in rural New York, she shouldn't be a Quaker at all.  Oh I didn't?  Well, she shouldn't. Quakers were British and largely centered around Philadelphia.  They could have made her Mennonite, which would have fit better, actually.  Mennonites were/are pacifists, like the Quakers, and the Plain Mennonites grew out of the German immigrants, not the Dutch.  So it wouldn't have been out of place for her to wear those fancy dresses and jewelry.  Also, Quakers were disowned if they married non-Quakers, and Abraham was obviously not a Quaker. 

See?  I should be hired as a TV/movie research assistant.

life and death.

update:  i'm glad to say that the doctors in El Salvador have figured out a way around the ridiculous decision of the court and have given the woman a cesarean section to remove the fetus.  it is worth pointing out here that the fetus was developing without a brain or most of a skull, so it was not a viable pregnancy to begin with.

the supreme court had said

"the rights of the mother cannot take precedence over those of the unborn child or vice versa, and that there is an absolute bar to authorising an abortion" under the Salvadoran constitution.

if forcing a woman to continue a non-viable pregnancy that may kill her is not giving the unborn child precedence over the mother, then i have no idea what is.

let's be clear here.  pregnancy kills women.  not all women, and not all the time, but it does.  and somehow, people have decided that the appropriate Christian moral and ethical response is to let 2 people die instead of 1.

i'm not sure i recognize that Christianity.

original post:

ok, so i am going to wade into a fairly controversial topic, but it's been bugging me.

in several countries, abortion is 100% illegal.  these bans are usually supported by religious people, especially Christians and the Roman Catholic Church.

the problem is, in my perhaps not-so-humble opinion, that these bans are actually making things worse.

they are done with the express defense of the life of the fetus.  life must be protected because it is a gift from God goes the logic.  and i do agree with that statement.  life must be protected because it is a gift from God.  and further, all human beings are created in the image of God, which makes all human beings, even fetuses suspected of having severe defects, inherently valuable and worth protecting.  i am a pacifist in the Anabaptist tradition; i do not believe in killing humans even in self defense, and i do not believe there is any such thing as a "just war."  if i buy meat, i try to buy meat from places that treat their animals well and slaughter them with a minimum of suffering.

however, i refuse to identify myself as "pro-life" in the "abortion debate."  this is because so often, the "pro-life" stance devalues the life and image-of-God-bearing body of the woman who is pregnant.  the fetus, potentially viable or not, is given priority over the life and physical and mental health and well-being of the woman in almost every case.

this has been especially brought to my attention with several news stories recently.  in august 2012, a pregnant teen in the Dominican Republic was denied chemotherapy because it might kill her fetus.  she died and so did the baby.

in Ireland, a woman was denied medical treatment due to internal bleeding while she was in the process of miscarrying because the fetus was technically still alive.  she died and so did the baby.

now in El Salvador, a woman has been denied the ability to terminate a life-threatening pregnancy.  i am hoping and praying that this does not end in 2 more deaths.

that is the problem in all these cases.  the fierce determination to protect the life of a fetus has lead to not one, but two deaths.  somehow, the logic of protecting life because it is a gift from God is leading to the logic that it is better that two people die than one.

i don't get this.  it seems to me to be a blindness, a devaluing of all women by saying it's better that their life be ended along with their unborn child's.  why are 2 deaths better than 1?  how is this defensible for a Christian?  i do not understand.

the ending of a child's life is always a tragedy.  i do not deny that.  but the ending of two lives is, it would seem, even more of a tragedy.  i fully support the medical option for terminating a pregnancy when the mother's life is obviously at stake.  also, as the survivor of sexual assault and as someone who lives with depression, i will not restrict this to just physical health in extremis.  in all of these cases, the fetus was going to die anyway.  it does not make it better, it does not protect life any more to doom the mother to death as well.

if Christians really want to be taken seriously in "the abortion debate" and really do care about protecting life, then i believe this is not only the only logical position to take, but also the only spiritually responsible one as well.  women are not lesser humans, and we are not baby factories.  we are bearers of the image of God, valuable and loved, and i cannot see how any Christian can say it is better to take a chance on two lives than end a potential life to definitely protect a life.

radical hospitality.

i know i just preached, but since i didn't preach at all january and february, i guess i have some making up to do :) what actually happened was the rector was coordinating a diocesan retreat yesterday and they had a drama at the later, more popular service, so i volunteered to write a sermon for the small early service, which is where i've been preaching about once a month for the past year.

and the passage was John 12:1-8 which is one of my favourite gospel passages out of all of them.

Radical Hospitality

Did everyone see the media frenzy back in the fall about the whole “Jesus’ wife” thing? A scholar at Harvard discovered an ancient papyrus fragment from Egypt that had the words “Jesus said, ‘my wife...’” written on it. The whole thing was hard to miss... It was on CNN, ABC, NBC, all the news stations. People were speculating and commenting. Even the Vatican came out with a strong statement accusing it of being a modern forgery.

The whole thing got me thinking, you know, why is this such a frenzy? Why are the mass media, companies with budgets in the millions of dollars, spending so much time and energy on a little fragment of papyrus, a couple inches square, and an obscure researcher at Harvard working in the incredibly obscure field known as “papyrology”? You know, the down-to-brass-tacks practical question of what makes them think they’re going to get their money back from this story?

Let’s face it: Christianity is big news. And not only things that appear to question orthodox Christian belief like this papyrus. The media frenzy and circus around the election of the new Pope is pretty much identical. Pope Francis gave an audience just yesterday to 6900 reporters and media staff. Almost seven thousand men and women came to hear the Pope, not to receive spiritual guidance or wisdom, but because it’s their job, and they are getting paid to send news of this man all over the world.

But what struck me as almost funny about the coverage of that little papyrus was the superficiality of it. As I said, papyrology is a pretty obscure field, and you really can’t expect journalists to dig into the nuances and details of this field that they report on maybe once or twice in five years. But it wasn’t only papyrology that got a superficial coverage, it was Christianity itself. No one, at least that I saw, bothered to talk about early Coptic Christianity in Egypt, the community that probably created the papyrus. Is it because this is also an obscure branch of Christianity, or is it because this community is currently being threatened by the new Islamist government in Egypt, and contemporary politics are too much of a hot potato to be in a story about Jesus and his wife?

And no one, again, at least that I saw, ever commented about one of the names for the church in the Bible itself. Do you know what the church is called in the New Testament? Yeah, it’s called Christ’s bride. The author of Ephesians compares the relationship of a husband and wife with Jesus and the church. In fact, he gets so enraptured with his metaphor that he actually has to stop halfway through this exalted rhetoric to comment “oh wait, but I am talking about Christ and the church.” At the end of the visions in the book of Revelation, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’” They invite everyone to “take the water of life as a gift.” This image seems to parallel the visions in Isaiah of Israel welcoming the nations to Jerusalem to worship the one God of Israel, with the church as the inviting bride.

Is it so surprising, then, that we might find an ancient writing from a tradition that scholars know was heavily mystical, where Jesus refers to his wife? A professor last semester, who has his Ph.D. in papyrology suggested just that: that this fragment might not be written about a human wife for Jesus, but it might have been written to encourage the church as the bride of Christ. Especially considering that the rest of the sentence has been torn off the papyrus fragment, we really have no idea. Even the Harvard researcher who made the discovery was cautious, commenting that this proves nothing one way or the other about the historical, human Jesus. Her voice did tend to be downed out, however, by the excitement!

But the other thing that struck me in the coverage is that whenever anyone goes searching the gospels fro a wife for Jesus, the inevitably latch on to Mary Magdalene. And it makes me wonder, why not this Mary in our gospel passage today? She is not Mary Magdalene, but Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.

Imagine the scene. There is a banquet. People are reclining on couches. They are probably all getting ready for the Passover which will start in a few days. Maybe they are talking about the trip to Jerusalem, tensions with the Roman military occupiers, gossiping about the priests in Jerusalem. Maybe Martha is encouraging them to eat up all the bread, because you cannot have anything with yeast in the house during Passover. Lazarus and his family may have been giving the banquet to thank Jesus for raising him from the dead. And in the middle of the dinner, Mary, the sister of the host, in fact probably one of the hosts herself, comes in, breaks a stone jar of perfume over Jesus’ feet, and then unveils her hair and wipes his feet with it.

Do you know how intimate an act that is? She is touching, caressing him. She has unveiled her hair in the presence of all the guests, especially all the unrelated men in her house, and she is wiping the feet of her rabbi with it. A woman’s hair in the Middle East is a symbol of her sexuality. It is no coincidence that, even at its most minimal, the Islamic hijab covers a woman’s hair, or that observant orthodox Jewish women cover their hair so that after they are married, no man sees their hair but their husband.

And what is the objection to her act? It is not, as it is in a slightly different version in Luke, that the woman is sexually impure. There is no comment on her sexuality at all. And it is not the objection about status which Peter gives in the very next chapter when Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. Much has been made in commentaries about Jesus washing feet that it was a slave’s job. But that is not the objection here. Instead what Judas objects to is the financial impropriety of her act. Not even Mary’s brother comments at the way she is opening herself and her family up for accusations of dishonor. No, all anyone seems to care about is the waste of money.

The financial equivalent is actually quite hard to work out in this case. A denarius was a silver coin of the Roman Empire, and it was what a daily laborer would get paid. These are like the people who are hired to work in the vineyards, in Jesus’ parables. There was no middle class as we think of it in the Roman Empire, so to call something like this “minimum wage” would be misleading. It would be enough to keep a family on. So something more like a construction contractor’s yearly income, maybe. According to the U.S. government, that would be something around $35,000. Mary pours $35,000 worth of perfume on Jesus’ feet.

So when I think about the intimacy and the extravagance of this event, not just the financial extravagance but also the personal risk involved, do I think this Mary was Jesus’ wife?

No, not really. For one, this is the only hint of any kind of relationship between these two. For another, we don’t know if her brother and sister berated her in private afterwards. For a third reason, I think this extravagance can be explained by the fact that just in the previous chapter, Jesus raised her brother from the dead. This does not seem an unrealistic response of gratitude to me. Her family is already giving a dinner for Jesus and all his disciples. We can surmise both from the apparent size of the party to the fact that the family owned a jar of perfume worth that much money that they were very wealthy. It is even possible that the nard had been meant for Lazarus, and when Jesus raised him from the dead, the siblings decided to anoint Jesus with it out of gratitude. I think, though, that we can rule out that they expected Mary to wipe Jesus’ feet with her hair. That was her own offering, her own sacrifice of her dignity and honor for Jesus’ sake.

And what is Jesus’ response? Does he protect her sexual honor? No again. He simply accepts her sacrifice and protects her from criticism of her financial decision. “Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’”

Many scholars see an echo of Deuteronomy 15:11 in Jesus’ reply here, so like a good seminary student, like a good preacher, I went and looked it up. And indeed, the two comments are remarkably similar. But what was even more interesting was the context of Deuteronomy 15. Deuteronomy 15:11 comments that there will always be poor in the land, but the chapter is not about the poor, but it is about the Sabbath year. Every seventh year, ancient Israel was supposed to cancel everyone’s debts. Deuteronomy chapter 15 is mostly concerned with laying down the procedure for loans to be cancelled from repayment. 15:11 comes at the end of an instruction not to take the proximity of the Sabbath year into account when making a loan. “Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, 'The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,' and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing.”

God turns our economic practices on their heads. The Israelites are instructed to give loans, not only without consideration of interest income, but even without consideration of ever being paid back! Mary’s personal risk in this story takes it even further. Not only does she give extravagantly financially, but she also gives extravagantly of her own dignity, personal status, and sexual reputation.

Every week, when the gospel passage is read here, we affirm that it is the gospel of the Lord. And we praise Christ for giving us his gospel. This is a gospel that calls us to an uncomfortable, a radically uncomfortable re-ordering of the way things work. The gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to extravagant hospitality and extravagant personal and financial risk without any consideration of what we might “get back,” or even, in some cases, what consequences we might suffer. Mary could not know that Jesus would defend her, although she surely knew that someone would object to her actions. And she did it anyway.

May our own risks and gifts be made, not with the risk-reward, “how am I going to make my money back” calculations, but with obedience to the gospel and such love of our rabbi and our Lord.

Amen.

fleeing to canterbury.

so. i am joining the episcopal church on sunday.

there are a number of reasons for doing this, but the primary one is ordination. the episcopal church ordains women, no questions asked. i don't have to justify myself. i don't have to defend my "call" (well, any more than anyone else seeking ordination). put simply, i don't have to fight. they will ordain me and let me teach and preach and not bat an eyelash.

i know there are many women who go back to the american evangelical church and fight. they push their way into meetings and committees and church leadership teams. they serve quietly, asking ever so often if the men up there have decided to take a look at the issue again. i could do that. but i'm not a very good politician, and i'd rather be in a place where i can actually use my talents rather than have to spend half my time convincing people to let me do so.

another key reason is that i'm currently plugged into an episcopal church for my internship, and they have been very supportive of sending me on for ordination. if i didn't do this, i would have to wait until next summer and find a new church and start all over again. am i rushing in too fast? probably. but that doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong.

and, in the end, i love the anglican tradition and liturgy. except the whole state church thing, but it's a disestablished church here, so that's ok. i like Thomas Cranmer and Elizabeth I and John Donne and C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers. and i even like Anselm. plus the anglican church can draw on celtic spirituality almost natively. and they're not a reformed tradition. there's a place for art and music and beauty and poetry. the episcopal church, and even the anglican church is centered on worship, not doctrine. they are the via media; they encompass a range of beliefs and are not fixated on doctrinal or idealogical purity. they even have a peace movement and support conscientious objection.

i guess i'll have to baptize babies if i even enter parish ministry, which i think is silly, but there's a good chance i'll only ever be an associate and hopefully spend more time getting a ph.d. and being a professor. but this is the thing: i've discovered that, generally in the church, in order to teach, you have to be ordained. i don't want to be anything but an associate pastor/priest and a professor; i don't think i would be a good primary pastor for any church. but if i want to teach, being able to say i am "an ordained episcopal priest" can only help.