Just a reminder of the post I put up a couple of years ago about How to be Single at Christmas.
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering what I’m eating for Christmas dinner, let’s just say that Lidl’s promotion of Rudolph Steaks is very welcome in Praepostorial Towers.
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! 😉
The gospel reading that we have just heard comes in two paragraphs. One apparently easier on our ears and easier on our minds than the other. After all, Jesus says, ?When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens?. Well, after the week…
To Perth this morning for the first meeting of the Electoral Synod. There is a vacancy in the diocese for a new bishop and this was the first part of the process. Most of the time today was devoted to listening to what people from the congregations want from a new bishop. It made me…
I've enjoyed playing around with the Political Compass webpages. No surprises at all about the result I got when I took the test, I could have predicted it pretty accurately beforehand. However, it is interesting to think about the questions that they ask.
Yes, that was me in the swimming trunks and wellington boots trying to prevent water from coming into the Rectory.
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