What is in Kelvin's Head?

Was Jesus nice to women?

28/03/2014

I’ve been thinking about that gospel reading that we had on Sunday all week.

Here at St Mary’s I read the central part of the reading, the dialogue with the woman at the well as a dialogue between my voice and that of a female member of the congregation. You learn new things by the way you perform scripture. I found myself feeling more uncomfortable reading the words of Jesus to a woman who was standing there responding than I would had I just read the whole of the gospel out in my own voice.

‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’
‘I have no husband.’
‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’

How did it feel to be on the receiving end of that?

It made me wonder whether again whether Jesus was nice to women and how I can know.

There is a view that is fairly common that Jesus was better than most men at the time because he spoke to women and the culture he lived in was not one in which women and men could normally converse. This is a relatively common reading of Jesus’s dealings with women, particularly by liberals.

I would parrot that view were it not for a conference I went on a few years ago when a feminist orthodox Jewish scholar made the case that this is an antisemitic reading of scripture and that Jewish culture then as now was one in which men and women could converse, do business and make friends. Imagining a world which is particularly negative for women and placing an imagined Jesus in the middle of it who seems to have more liberal values is a way of denegrating the culture and sociological surroundings that he had.

That gospel reading does provide some fuel for this negative reading of Jewish culture of the time with the line:

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’

However, one can counter that by saying – well, John’s gospel is the most uneasy of the gospels when it comes to affirming the Jewish tradition that Jesus came out of. Perhaps this is an early Christian slur against Jewish life alongside a lot of other negative language about “the Jews” in that gospel.

It often strikes me that we want to believe in a Jesus who was nice and who by implication will like us and like our own mores, presumptions and even peccadillos.

Scripture doesn’t always help us to maintain that view.

Was Jesus nice to women? Can you answer this in the affirmative without denegrating the culture he came from?

And for a side discussion – what are the issues around giving this picture to children to illustrate the tale?

Jesus, women

11 responses to “We should be wary of declaring martyrs”

Eamonn

08/04/2015

Agree totally. I find myself in a comparable position vis-à-vis the mass canonisations of the ‘martyrs’ of the Spanish Civil War, which assume that all those worthy of commemoration were on the same side.

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Michael Russell

08/04/2015

Anyone killed for professing their faith is a martyr. ISIS is an equal opportunity martyring machine. The various faith communities targeted, including Islamic ones, should build common ground to dismember ISIS. I simply fail to see the point in quibbling about who is a real martyr and who is not.

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1. Kelvin
  
  08/04/2015
  
  Is it your view that someone is a martyr for Christianity because they cannot recite a verse from the Qur’an?
  
  It seems to me that whilst some men and women of violence are being claimed to be martyrs if they should be shot by law enforcement agencies whilst pursuing paths of terror that there’s a huge amount to be gained by determining who is a martyr and who isn’t.
  
  Reply
  1. Bro David
    
    08/04/2015
    
    Not being able to explain a quranic verse was merely a way of discerning if someone was not Muslim. However, is it not just as great a presumption to think they weren’t martyrs, as to think that they were.
    
    The early church seemed to accept that all who were crucified or sent to the lions for their Christianity were martyrs. Perhaps not all did so as a statement of faith, but were nominal Christians caught up with the rest. But the church didn’t seem obliged to footnote who didn’t qualify.
    
    I’m not sure that I understand why your are hesitant. It seems a quibble. I don’t think anyone is leaning toward canonization here, just speaking of them as a whole.
    
    Reply
Jo

08/04/2015

The SEC still keeps the feast of Charles, King and Martyr. I don’t think we get to be too narrow in defining who is or isn’t a martyr.

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1. Kelvin
  
  09/04/2015
  
  Actually, Jo – that’s not quite right. The SEC keeps the commemoration of “Charles I, King, 1649”
  
  There’s no mention of him being a martyr in the calendar (and the current calendar superseded and replaced the one in the prayer book). There are plenty of people who are named as martyrs such as Agnes the week before Charles or indeed “Charles Mackenzie of Central Africa, Bishop, Missionary, Martyr, 1862” the very day after Charles.
  
  It would appear that rather careful thought was given to whether to describe Charles as a martyr and though he is included in the calendar (not least for founding one of our dioceses) any notion of martyrdom is absent.
  
  Reply
  1. Jo
    
    09/04/2015
    
    Thanks for the correction, I hadn’t realised there was that detail of difference between the SEC and CofE.
    
    Reply
Father David

10/04/2015

Of course, King Charles was a Martyr and is commemorated as such on January 31st each year. The trouble is that Anglicans have no real mechanism for declaring people to be saints or martyrs. Having referred to two recent horrific incidents on the African continent where Christians were slaughtered simply for being Christians, I wonder what the Provost of Glasgow thinks about the Ugandan Martyrs of the 19th century and would you personally regard them to be martyrs? As you know 23 Anglicans and 22 Roman Catholics were killed by the Kabaka for refusing to submit to King Mwanga’s corporal intimacies. The Roman Catholics were beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1964 but what of our Anglican Ugandan brothers – where they equally to be regarded as martyrs, or would you deny them that honorific title?

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1. Kelvin
  
  10/04/2015
  
  The Scottish Episcopal Calendar is again very clear: “Charles Lwanga and his companions, 1886, Janani Luwum, Bishop, 1977, Martyrs of Uganda”
  
  I have no idea why anyone would say that the SEC has no means of declaring someone to be a martyr. Not only do we have such a mechanism, we use it.
  
  Reply
Father David

10/04/2015

It would be interesting to know how this mechanism works in the SEC in deciding who is eligible to join the noble army of martyrs? Bishop Edward King of Lincoln is widely regarded as a saint South of the Border. I think it was Archbishop Lang who was asked how it was decided that Bishop King had reached sainthood status and the answer was that he was given a Collect, Epistle and Gospel to commemorate his saint’s day – 8th March, the day of his Heavenly Birthday.

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Harry Campbell

19/04/2015

“We strongly condemn such atrocities, whether they are Ethiopians are not,” the Ethiopian communications minister Redwan Hussein told AFP.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/19/isis-video-purports-to-show-massacre-of-two-groups-of-ethiopian-christians

What a shame the Archbishop couldn’t have said something similarly inclusive about the victims of the Kenyan massacre, and all such massacres, without caring about what their religion affiliation may or may not have been.

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