SAINTS PROSTITUTES AND BAD BRANDING

As a divorcee, a single mother, successful business woman and an adored only child brought up to believe I was a genius, I was soooo switched off by the church’s branding of biblical women. The tendency to place them in three categories – temptresses, saints and prostitutes.

There I was, 50 years old, voraciously reading and studying the Scriptures for the first time and sans the influence of Sunday School or decades of paternalistic preaching from the pulpit. It didn’t take long to pitch my tent in the Mary camp – having enjoyed domestic help all my life, there was no way I could identify with Martha.



However, as I looked to the Scriptures for inspiration I knew I wanted to do more than learn. My activist genes were kicking in. I was impressed by the likes of Rahab who hid two spies from the king’s men among the stalks of flax which were used for her rope-making business. I was inspired by Deborah the judge and gobsmacked by Jael who hammered and a tent peg through Sisera's temples and into the ground while he slept.

(Batwoman eat your heart out.)


Mary tame?
I still fume at how Mary, mother of Jesus, has been tamed by Church. Was she really a doe-eyed humble teacher’s pet with an electric light behind her head?



Or a feisty female who raised her kids in a village which would have called her first child a bastard. All this at a time when honour was everything and she was still a teenager. We get a glimpse of the Yiddishe mama at the wedding of Cana. As in ‘Boychick make wine.’

She’s there for her boy throughout the crucifixion and then mothers his disciples. Dare I suggest that she played a meaningful role in the Early Church, along with other women so often overlooked? Still in her late forties was she just a frail granny for young John to look after?

We insult women as much by presenting them as floppy saints as assuming, without evidence, that they were temptresses and prostitutes.

Just as David and Peter were complex humans so were the biblical women. The point is, they leaned in and made a difference.

The Magdalene conspiracy
It was in one of my New Testament assignments that I stumbled on the massive gender discrimination perpetrated by Church against Mary Magdalene.

It continues. Only last week I asked my congregation what she did for a living. Yes, you’ve guessed it. A prostitute! Who says? All I have ever found in the bible is the fact that Jesus chased seven devils out of her. And Luke 8:1-3 tells of how she, along with several other women supported Jesus’ travelling ministry from their resources.

She’s a main player during and after the crucifixion. She’s mentioned in all four gospels but none say she is a lady of the night. If she was, so what?

St Augustine, despite his weird ideas about marriage and sex, declared her the ‘apostle to the apostles.’ No matter what she was before she met Jesus, let’s acknowledge her leadership role.

Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox but let’s give the woman a break. Seems our Catholic cousins are just as remiss. There’s a great blog by Phyllis Zagano, a senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic studies, http://ncronline.org/blogs/just-catholic/what-would-mary-magdalene-do

First apostle?
While we’re at it, I’d like to see ‘the woman at the well’ honoured as an apostle, the definition being ‘an early follower of Jesus who carried the Christian message into the world’.

By the way, does anyone ever notice that Jesus doesn’t instruct her to leave her lover?

Although I jump ahead in my story I must mention the sage advice I received from Archishop Njongogonkulu Ndungane when I was placed in a Sowetan parish while training for the diaconate. ‘Whatever you do, don’t get on the wrong side of the Mother’s Union in your parish.’



August is Women’s month in South Africa. We honour the 20 000 women who marched on the Union Buildings in 1956 to protest against the abhorrent Pass Laws of our apartheid regime. It is also the month when we beat our breasts about gender inequality.

The month comes. The month goes.

IS GOD A FACEBOOK HOAX?

If there is one thing we Christians excel at it’s shaping God to our own purposes. 

We did it in the Crusades as we pillaged Asian cities, massacred Jews and Muslims and appropriated foreign property. We did it when we colonised ‘heathen’ lands, carrying a bible in one hand and a gun in the other. We did it when we kept quiet as our Jewish friends were sent to concentration camps and we did it when racial discrimination was legalised in South Africa.  

We manufacture a God who sees it all from our point of view and, when everything goes pear-shaped, we remould him, assuming our right to redemption and forgiveness. But we seldom make amends. 

I suspect that the worst shaping of God is not in cataclysmic historical events but in the daily detail of our lives. In what the nuns used to call our “besetting sins.”  It is also in the way we use religion.

Looking back on my previous blogs I realise I seem to have hurtled down the Anglican path at a great and fairly uncomplicated pace. Alpha, a spiritual director, an Open Door Retreat, Eucharist on Wednesdays and Sundays, two modules towards a theology degree, new Christian friends. (There must be a Brownie badge for all this). 

They should have put me on a TV so I could declare “I’ve found Jesus.” 

Fact is, I hadn’t really.

As an A type personality I am very competitive and self-critical. I’m always setting goals, my life lacks balance and I have to watch my blood pressure. Besides, you may remember, I’d emerged as an ENTJ on the Enneagram scale – a not so likeable ‘Commander’.

What I was doing, to a large extent, was jumping though the hoops and revelling in the spiritual and intellectual exercises - striving for A’s in my assignments.  I was also finding comfort in the close to Catholic ritual – my childhood comfort blanket and the God I was shaping was a mirror image of me and my opinions.

There was also my other life: my clients as well as a social and family circle that just wasn’t into religion.

There must have been a whole choir of angels groaning on my behalf.

Yes, I’d incorporated a spiritual dimension into my life. Much as I would have had I taken yoga seriously but I kid you and myself if I lay claim to a personal relationship with God at that stage. I was far more tuned into the adage “God helps those who help themselves”, than to total submission.

I still thank God for my exceptional Spiritual Director.  Trained by Fr Gerard Hughes, author of God of Surprises, she, never criticised, always gently questioned and very wisely suggested a three day retreat at a local Anglican Convent.  

My retreat director was a wonderful monk, Father Andrew Norton. He belonged to the Community of the Resurrection monastery across the road. 

Besides being wise and practical, he was a diabetic who loved to gobble the fluffy jam scones the sisters served for tea.

Deeply committed to the training and the supervision of Spiritual Directors, he was also responsible for introducing the Open Door Retreat in South African Anglican circles.  He was just what I needed at that stage.  Instead of gentle encouraging pats on the back he got me to take a long hard look at myself and at the Church. Fr Andrew was a realist not a romantic.  It was he who warned how deeply Church can hurt. He was right.

One of the exercises he gave me is one I still value and slip into today. I was directed to slowly walk around the beautiful convent garden five times. Each time focusing on one of my five senses – sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste.  Thanking God for what they had meant to me since birth and using them to appreciate the garden. It is a great way to meditate on the Creator and Creation.

The gateway to the beautiful convent garden

My Damascus Road moment was my meditation on my sense of sight – what it had meant to me since birth. On the walk I inspected an old tree, its shape, its leaves rustling in the breeze. Becoming aware of birds among its top branches, the sunlight peeping through. The bark was rough. I moved closer, the tiniest insects came into focus. And then it happened. As I peeped behind a fairly loose piece of bark I spotted a cocoon and watched spell-bound as a butterfly slowly emerged.

Now decades later, I can still draw on that wondrous image when I’m stressed or distressed. It draws me into the mystery of God the power of faith. That moment when you choose red or black and place your bet on a roulette table. You don’t have all the answers but you are willing to take a chance. It was the day I met the ‘God of Surprises’.

I wish I could tell you that I’ve never had a moments doubt since that meditation in the convent garden. But it is a compass point for me when I feel lost, in those moments when I wonder if God isn’t on a par with those awful Facebook hoaxes.

Have you had a defining moment in your faith journey?

NEVER CONFUSE CHURCH WITH GOD

So there I was, hurtling along my somewhat unusual spiritual journey. As I wrestled with concepts like unconditional grace and a Hollywood heaven (I’m still pondering that one) I was also learning not to romanticise the Church.

                                                     I'm still not certain what heaven is

Time was an issue. I was juggling a busy PR practice, participating in a nine-week Open Door Retreat, seeing my Spiritual Director, attending political meetings and keeping half an eye out for a decent man in my life. (It didn’t help that the sexiest guy in the choir was gay.)

Meanwhile, it was beginning to dawn on my caring friends that my ‘passing phase’ wasn’t as fleeting as they’d expected it to be. Their warnings not to give the church all my money were becoming more forceful. A reasonable concern since their only information about religion tended to be news items about TV evangelists with feet of clay. 

They were just being protective because my business was doing pretty well – 20 employees and clients that included the Lesotho Government. I was driving my fourth Merc and holidaying overseas every year. Those were what I now refer to as the ‘RODs’ (rich old days). 

Looking back, one of the biggest God-incidences was that retreat.

Probably because it was the first to be conducted at my parish the other six participants were all part of its leadership – lay ministers and council members.

A key element of any Open Door retreat is that each week you share your thoughts, angsts and experiences in absolute trust – a bit like a spiritual alcoholics anonymous. 

The level of honesty and self-appraisal was impressive. Surprise, surprise, those church heavies also had crises of faith. They were, by their own admission, imperfect at best. 

It was a wake-up call. Church wasn’t an exclusive club for saints, mostly just people trying their best.

At another level, Carl Jung’s theory of a human collective unconscious was working for me. It made belief in God a lot easier and helped me understand the importance of traditions and how symbols can trigger worship.

I was beginning to appreciate that seeking God is a never ending journey, that religion is not the destination. It’s a vehicle. And, just as some people are into Mercs and others give their Toyota’s names, so there are different religious strokes for different folks. 

Anglicanism was beginning to work for me. A nice mix of the high and hazy and less formal worship. Instead of being asked to shelve my brain I was encouraged to approach the bible with a healthy dose of suspicion.

Of course by then reality was kicking in. I was learning how people are hurt by the Church and how very human priests are. There was more. During the retreat coffee break I listened to in-house concerns about issues that ranged from rampant male chauvinism, particularly among priests, to whether tithing should come before or after tax. 

It was the beginnings of my understanding that one should never confuse the people-driven Church with God.