What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Passion Sunday Sermon

    In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

    I realised yesterday before I wrote this sermon that I have no idea what spikenard smells like.

    That it is basically an essential oil derived from the root of a plant related to Valerion which grows in the Himalayas was fairly easy to establish. But what does it smell like.

    And what does Christianity smell like, for that matter.

    This woman, Mary of Bethany appears in two significant places in the gospels and in both stories, smell is one of the most important features. Firstly she is there when Lazarus is raised from the grave – with the fear of the stench of his rotten body a distinctive and memorable part of the story. And now she pours her perfume on another body – a living body. For she anoints Jesus with her spikenard and wipes his feet with her hair. And her actions are in strong distinction from her sister who serves the meal.

    There are so many questions to ask of this gospel reading. Who was she? Why did she do what she did.

    And what does spikenard smell like? And why do we read this right now, on Passion Sunday when by tradition and habit our thoughts turn towards the cross.

    I decided yesterday afternoon that the most fundamental thing I needed to know was what spikenard smells like.

    (It is amazing what a preacher is prepared to do in order to put off actually writing the sermon).

    I came to the conclusion that the West End was the perfect place to buy spikenard – if you can’t buy it round here, where can you buy it.

    Well, an hour trudging around in rain soon proved to me that it is probably pretty hard to come by anywhere. Health Food shopkeepers shook their heads. Herbalists gazed at me with regret. Even the woman in the esoteric crystal shop up on Queen Margaret Drive admitted to her sadness that spikenard was not something she could help me with. (And she seemed to have answers to problems I’d never even thought of).

    I came wearily home. And I turned to the internet. And quickly I found some information. I managed to get a description. I found it on an aromatherapy website, so as any of the many medics in the congregation will affirm, it must be 100% true.

    It said… (more…)

5 responses to “St Strumpet?”

  1. Mary Brown Avatar
    Mary Brown

    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!

    Reply
    1. kelvin Avatar
      kelvin

      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.

      Reply
  2. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    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? 🙂

    Reply
    1. kelvin Avatar
      kelvin

      Oh, her hair was red, Ryan. Flaming Red I believe.

      Reply
  3. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    How reginal! 😉

    Reply

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