Frail humanity’s solitary boast

Oxford Cathedral this morning, to celebrate Lady Day with trustees, office holders and members of the Mothers Union from around the diocese. MU works in 78 countries around the world, has 3·6 million members, and a representative to the United Nations Commission on the status of women. People seemed refreshingly focused on others and open to accepting them as they are, strengthening marriages by networking women all over the world, and a few men. The emphasis is on bringing about a world where God’s love is shown in loving, stable, respectful relationships.

The view from the pulpit in Christ Church is interesting (above). I took as our text for the annunciation a notion first planted in my mind at a Berkshire nativity play a few years ago by the seven year old who had landed the part of Mary — “everybody knows it’s much easier to be an angel than a virgin.”

And, as daffodils begin to bloom in these parts, a slightly off the wall but powerful poem by Carol Ann Duffy, based on Max Ernst’s painting of 1926, The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus before Three Witnesses:

The Virgin Punishing the Infant

He spoke early. Not the goo goo goo of infancy,
but I am God. Joseph kept away, carving himself
a silent Pinocchio out in the workshed. He said
he was a simple man and hadn't dreamed of this.

She grew anxious in that second year, would stare
at stars saying Gabriel, Gabriel. Your guess.
The village gossiped in the sun. The child was solitary,
his wide and solemn eyes could fill your head.

After he walked, our normal children crawled. Our wives
were first resentful, then superior. Mary's child
would bring her sorrow ... better far to have a son
who gurgled nonsense at your breast. Googoo. Googoo.

But I am God. We heard him through the window,
heard the smacks which made us peep. What we saw
was commonplace enough. But afterwards, we wondered
why the infant did not cry, why the Mother did.

Swizzfigglingly Gloriumptious Madonna

or, Dial M for... Matilda. Whilst scouring Britain for Lovely Things to share with the world, I encountered this pottery madonna in a Leicestershire Church. It’s only a mobile phone shot, but she’s got lovely eyes, and I particularly like the “I surrender” posture of our Lord, along with the added spermatazoa in the background.

This could be the loveliest naïve devotional object in England... unless you know better.

It was certainly an interesting backdrop for discussions about female bishops.

Grace in Action

I celebrated at Burnham Abbey yesterday. The Gospel was the first 17 verses of Matthew’s gospel — a genealogy, locating Jesus in the real world. This catalogue of great and good men contains four women — all dodgy. The men carry the name, the women bear grace. God uses even their immoral acts to move the story on. Michael Goulder wrote a poem describing this phenomenon, to help us think it through. What God really did in Christ is far more than what moralstic Pelagians may think he should have done!

Exceedingly odd is the means by which God
Has provided our path to the heavenly shore-
Of the girls from whose line the true light was to shine
There was one an adulteress and one was a whore:
There was Tamar who bore-what we all should deplore
A fine pair of twins to her father-in-law,
And Rahab the harlot, her sins were as scarlet,
As red as the thread that she hung from the door;
Yet alone of her nation she came to salvation
And lived to be mother of Boaz of yore-
And he married Ruth, a Gentile uncouth,
In a manner quite counter to biblical lore.
And of her did spring blessed David the King,
Who walked on his palace one evening and saw
The wife of Uriah, from whom he did sire
A baby that died-oh, and princes a score:
And a mother unmarried it was too that carried
God's Son, and him laid in a manger of straw,
That the moral might wait at the heavenly gate
While the sinners and publicans go in before,
Who have not earned their place, but received it by grace,
And have found them a righteousness not of the law.