The question that remains with me after all these years of debate about marriage has still not been resolved, even after this year’s General Synod.
I’ve read theological opinions about marriage. I’ve debated about marriage. I’ve gone on the radio to talk about marriage. I’ve spent my time wishin’, and hoping and praying that we would change our discipline on marriage.
And still I feel as though the big question remains unresolved. Unconsidered even.
The question is this… (more…)
How about the wife of Jesus, airbrushed out of the story by later misogynist Christians? See Starbird, M “The Woman with the Alabaster Jar” and other books by her. She is an ex-Catholic who set out to refute the Holy Blood, Holy Grail story and ended by being convinced that Jesus and Mary were a married pair (and an archetype of the male/female balance principle). There’s a wonderful window in Kilmore Church, Mull. Check it out – whoever created it intended it to represent J and M as husband and wife, and M is clearly pregnant. Of course, there is no unchallengeable evidence that Jesus was married, but what I would like to ask the sceptics is why, given that He was the word made flesh and dwelt among us, is it unacceptable for Him to have been a sexual being? Why have later Christians considered sexuality, even in a loving relationship, to be something disgusting? Because they have, we are now stuck with the nasty views of the NotW brigade that sex is either an acceptable leisure activity or something gross. As Margaret Starbird points out, if we restored Mary as Jesus’ beloved consort we would be creating a much more wholesome myth!
It is a little like the arguments that might be made of the relationship between Jesus and the beloved disciple though, isn’t it? All very attractive and neat if you come from a particular point of view but not really backed up with enough evidence apart from modern presumption, presupposition and desire.
I think the arguments on Jesus being married are very far from being liberationary. Rather, they’re the natural end-point of the Evangelical mindset that homophobically (and unbiblically) divides the world into Normal Heterosexual Married types and the demonised Other. “It is better to marry than burn” might have some mysognistic readings conducive to the fundamentalist world-view, but it hardly most naturally supports the idolatarisation of particular heterosexual relationships.
If I had a pound for every time a nominal Sola Scriptura type had told me that St.Paul had to have been married (presumably because Our Lord’s asceticism and disinterest in heterosexual marriage is bad enough) then I would be a very rich man indeed 😉
Interesting post Kelvin! Had no idea that St.Mary M even had red hair Perhaps she could be reclaimed as the Patron Saint of Gingers and Other Persecuted Minorities? 🙂
Oh, her hair was red, Ryan. Flaming Red I believe.
How reginal! 😉
[This post is reposted from a previous year. No-one who has ever kept the triduum with me has ever told me that what I promised fell short of their experience]. Every year I make a promise to people. I say that if they keep the triduum with me at St Mary’s then it will change…
There’s no sermon from yesterday to upload. It is the only Sunday in the year when we have no preaching and simply let the story do the work. It is our custom on Palm Sunday to read the Passion story – that’s the story of the end of Jesus’s life from whichever gospel we have…
Great blessings upon the Rev Isaac Poobalan and St John’s Church in Aberdeen for the story that has gone global from the Scottish Episcopal Church this week. Noticing that the neighbouring mosque did not have enough room and that people were praying outside in the cold, Isaac invited them into the church and made space…
A couple of people have asked me to give details of the service of Benediction which can be used in the Scottish Episcopal Church where a couple conduct a marriage which is a legal marriage but one which is irregular under canon law. The form of service that we are talking about is this one:…
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