St Margaret of Antioch

The pulpit! (Though I was given a smaller lectern because of microphones)

Tonight I preached the sermon at the Patronal Festival of one of my local churches, St Margaret of Antioch - which includes the Anglican Chaplaincy to the Universities of Liverpool.

I gave a feminist, rape culture, privilege and entitlement reading of the hagiography of St Margaret:

Jesus said ‘if you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you.’ (A quote from the gospel reading).

It’s a statement that has, over the centuries, attracted a certain amount of unhealthy obsession with trying to live in a way that’s uncontaminated by ‘the world’, as if that were possible. 

But it makes perfect and immediate sense if you translate world as worldview. Jesus was killed for his challenge to an imperialistic, hierarchical worldview - and the story of  St Margaret, shows her too being tortured and killed for articulating a very different worldview that a man who was a member of the ruling elite found too challenging.

There are a lot of people – or perhaps a few people and a lot of bots, on social media – who go out of their way to find and persecute those who challenge their worldview. 

Racists, who jumped all over the Black Lives Matter hashtag the other year, insisting that All Lives Matter and thus seeking to rewrite those protesting the disregard for black lives as selfish and limited in their concern. 

White Supremacists – and/or possibly Russian bots, who knows – who go out of their way to find anyone commenting critically on Donald Trump, and shower them with hate speech. Male Supremacists who go out of their way to find anyone tweeting feminist sentiments, or indeed any woman daring to speak out in public who seems to be getting attention, and attempt to shut them down by challenging their right to speak, questioning their credentials, and in the last resort telling them that they should be raped and murdered.

The technology might be new, but abuse, rape culture, male privilege, and the violent sense of entitlement of those with privilege is sadly nothing new at all.  Both our readings today, for this feast of a martyr, show the Bible at its most realistic about the cost of speaking out into a violent and oppressive culture. It’s the right thing to do, but it is certainly costly.

The story of Margaret of Antioch speaks directly into the patriarchal culture of privileged entitlement and violence.

Margaret may or may not have even existed, but her story was one of the most popular told of the saints in medieval times. She was one of the three saints that Joan of Arc believed had spoken to her, and was considered the most powerful saint for women in childbirth to pray to.

Stories that circulate and take on a life of their own are always fascinating to a historian, and if Margaret didn’t exist then I find her story even more fascinating.

I think it was Terry Pratchett who said that some stories, if they don’t exist, just have to be written. The medieval stories of the saints – hagiographies - are perhaps best understood as in this category. Stories are important – they form and challenge worldviews, they show us possibilities. What matters in hagiography, as in fairy tales, isn’t that they tell us whether or not dragons exist – its that they tell us that dragons can be defeated.

So what is it about Margaret’s story that means  that it was worth making up, or worth retelling, and that made it so enduringly powerful for hundreds of years?

It seems to me that her story’s power is precisely that it speaks into rape culture, a culture of privileged male entitlement, a culture in which the male gaze is privileged and women are routinely dismissed as weak, feeble and unworthy of a public voice.

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Margaret’s story starts by telling us that she was sent by her noble father, a pagan priest, to a Christian wetnurse. her mother died, perhaps in childbirth or perhaps sometime in her infancy, as Margaret remains with the wetnurse to be brought up, and is baptized. On hearing this her father disowns her, and she remains in the foster care of her nurse.

We then fast forward to her when she is 15 years old. Then, according to the legend, ‘On a certain day, when she was fifteen years of age, and kept the sheep of her nurse with other maidens, the provost Olybrius passed by the way whereas she was, and considered in her so great beauty and fairness, that anon he burned in her love, and sent his servants and bade them take her and bring her to him. For if she be free I shall take her to my wife, and if she be bond, I shall make her my concubine.’ (From the medieval 'Golden Legend')

This is where Margaret’s story begins to be clearly about the male gaze and privileged male entitlement. Olybrius is the provost. He is in a privileged position as a man and a member of the ruling elite. He sees this teenage girl, lusts after her, and assumes that he can therefore have her. The only question in his mind is on what terms he will have her, and this is framed simply as a question of class.

Here, Margaret’s story shines a light on what we now call intersectionality – the ways in which different types of privilege and oppression interact with each other. Margaret is vulnerable on grounds of gender, age and class. She is a woman, so this privileged man assumes he can possess her simply because he desires her. She is a relatively young woman, a girl on the cusp of womanhood. Would he have desired her if she had been older? Is his anger against her when she resists his advances the greater because he assumes her youth gives her no right to agency? 

And at this point in her story, the provost is unsure of her caste, her status. This has no bearing on his assumption of the right to possess where his gaze falls, but it does affect the social norms regarding the terms on which he will possess her. If she’s free, he’ll marry her, if a slave, he’ll make her his mistress. Both terms of course are socially sanctioned euphemisms for rape, as there is no question of consent or lack of consent in Olybrius’ mind. His privileged male gaze has fallen on her, he desires her, therefore he has sent his servants to get her and fully intends to rape her, either with or without the social label of marriage.

The story goes on to relate how he asks Margaret her social status, her name and her religion. When she tells him, he is disgusted that she is a Christian, and demands that she recant.  Instead she has a spirited theological discussion with him, which angers him so much that he has her tortured.

The story goes into great detail about the various tortures to which she is subject, and there are two particularly interesting details.

 First, those watching say how distressed they are that she has lost so much beauty for her unbelief in the pagan Gods. Even at this stage, her story is being constructed by the male gaze. To the onlookers, the main negative of her torture is that she is becoming less attractive to the male gaze. over perhaps they intend to add another, mental torture to the physical ones that she is undergoing. Margaret robustly rejects this,  instead linking her suffering with salvation. That is, the story explicitly rejects the construction of female identity and value as being based on our beauty in the eye of the male beholder. For the Christian, Margaret tells us, our identity and value is found in our baptismal identity, not in pleasing the male gaze.  

So one message of the story is that the male gaze is not the last word, and that it doesn’t always get what it wants. Privileged male entitlement is trumped by our ability to determine for ourselves to follow Christ – and even by the ability of young girls to do this. That must have been quite a powerful message for young girls to hear.

The second detail that I find particularly interesting in Margaret’s story comes when the provost turns his face away because he can’t stand the sight of so much blood, whilst Margaret is theologizing her sufferings. She is shown as much stronger than him, not simply spiritually but physically as well. Later in the story she suffers another round of torture, with a multi-staged execution scene, constructed explicitly to be as painful as possible, and we are told that people marvelled that so tender a maiden could endure so many torments. That is, they marvelled that she was so strong that she wasn’t dead yet, or hadn’t fainted away.

Margaret is presented as almost supernaturally strong, and yet throughout the story, despite other supernatural moments when she defeats the devil in the form of both a man and a dragon, there is no magical element described in her resilience to torture. She is simply presented as a very tough girl, able to cope with argue her faith in the face of such violence and such physical pain that the provost can’t look.

I suspect that this element of her story is why she was presented as someone to pray to in the pangs of childbirth. This is literally a story of how women can cope with pain that men shudder at the sight of and often can’t bear to watch. Margaret’s story,  in a way that seems culturally rather alien to us, is a story of female resilience to pain and inherent strength, and would have been very valuable as a reassurance to young girls enduring labour for the first time. Modern midwifery wisdom has rediscovered the truth that simply knowing that one can survive the pain of childbirth actually reduces the pain that is experienced.

But its also a story about how male domination,  patriarchy and rape culture is essentially violent. People like the classicist Professor Mary Beard in our own culture receive death threats and are on the receiving end of violent rape threats, for being a woman who speaks her knowledge, her wisdom and her espertise in the public square without conforming to the norms of the male gaze. Margaret’s story is similar. She does not conform to the expected norms of her gender and age. She is meant to be an attractive, weak, possession, and yet she argues back. When the provost jeers at her for having a God who was crucified, she interrogates the sources of his knowledge and then instructs him from her superior knowledge. Women weren’t meant to do that, and especially not young, attractive women. She is tortured not simply for being a Christian, not even for rejecting the provost ( the story never actually explicitly says that she does) – she is tortured, very clearly, for being a woman who has a mind of her own and dares to speak it.

And when we look at Margaret’s story, it is shockingly clear that the violence unleashed against her is not about desire per se but about sadism, the violent wish for domination at all costs. One minute the provost is claiming to love her, having seen her, the next he unleashes the most shockingly sadistic series of tortures, torture upon torture, all the while claiming, as abusers always do, that the violence is her own fault due to her obstinacy.

This is a story about how abusive men lash out in violence, about how the male language of love and desire can be used to mask a sadistic desire to hurt and possess and destroy. I

We still need stories of women’s strength, wisdom, faith and resilience. 

We need stories that remind us that  the treatment of people as possessions to be trafficked by force and seized at will by those with economic or military power is unacceptable. 

We need stories that challenge the idea that rape is about sex, and lay bare the fact that it is about violence, domination and oppression.

We need stories that reassure us that though we may not be privileged, though we may feel, look and indeed be on the wrong end of various isms – such as sexism, racism, or ageism – our identity and value is not constituted by those abusive worldviews, but by our baptismal identity in Christ.

So tell these stories to each other often. 

If the stories you need don’t exist, invent them.

Tell the stories that dream into being the world you want to be part of.

Amen.

 

Encouragement for Churches: 4 Points On Welcoming Children

I woke up this morning with a feeling of immense gratitude for the welcome I had received in churches as a child. I've no idea whence or why this feeling washed over me today, but there it was.

I wasn't a 'practicing Christian' as a child. I wouldn't have said I had a faith even when I was going to church pre-about 12 or 13. I left at that age when I was having confirmation classes and decided I didn't believe a word of it (only to have to eat my words when I had a conversion experience at university - closely followed by feeling called to ordination).

So what was that welcome that I suddenly felt so grateful for today? As I analysed it, I realised it was made up of some very small things indeed - and that those were hugely encouraging for our practice today. Small things that we do can have a huge impact years later, an impact that we'll never know about. Here are some of the things that, looking back, were important to me, and that might be important for those we are doing them for now:

1. My baptism - and specifically, my baptism certificate. I don't remember this, obviously, as I was only about 6 weeks old at the time. My parents weren't religious, so presumably this was a fairly conventional service for a random local couple coming to celebrate their new baby. The kind that its all too easy for churches to feel used by, as they never see them again.

True, I don't think Panshanger United Church ever saw my parents or I again - if only because we moved 18 months later, before my sisters were born. But they gave us a baptism certificate, and that was stuck, by my mum, into my baby book. Now I don't know if you have a baby book, or looked much at it as a child, but I remember reading through mine regularly - as indeed my daughter does now. Mine had blank pages for adding pictures drawn by the child on each birthday, so at least annually it came out for my latest artwork.

So from an early age, I read and re-read my baptism certificate alongside the account of my first tooth, first words and favourite foods. I read the promises that had been made by my godparents that were referred to, and the blessing prayer that was there for me. It didn't convert me, but it was certainly something that I knew was part of my identity from an early age. (I remember when I became a Christian, I had a very strong sense of reclaiming my baptismal identity, which really took me by surprise!).

Practical point to take away? The baptism certificate you give a family might be really, really important. Get a nice one, bearing in mind what it will say to a 5 or 6 year old child reading it for themselves. Suggest they put it in their baby book.


2. Brownies in the church and church hall. Again, we often think of the 'user groups' that use our church buildings as useful payers of rent, maybe as part of our useful service to the community, but not necessarily as part of our mission and outreach.

But when I think back to churches of my childhood, attending brownies weekly in the church and church hall is one of my key memories. And whilst it wasn't about religion (there may or may not have been church parade at that point - I don't remember it though), we did meet not just in the church hall, but also in the church itself. And that gave a very physical sense of welcome.

My six, I remember, met behind the back row of pews on the left hand side of the church. The pews, the altar rail, the organ - all the accoutrements of church architecture - have never felt alien to me, because from an early age they were a space that I was welcomed into and felt a sense of genuine participation in - even ownership of  'my' corner.

Practical point to take away? Let groups use not just the church hall but the church itself. Just being in the space is important.

3. Bellringing. When I was 9, we moved from the outskirts of London to a little village in Lincolnshire. Our house was right next to the church and churchyard, and bell ringing practice on a Friday night was loud! On the principle that rather than have to listen to it, it would be better to be doing it, I turned up at the tower one night. They welcomed me in, taught me the ropes, and inducted me into the rather beautiful mathematical patterns of change ringing. There was never a hint of being patronised. I left when I left the church - to my 13 year old logic, it was inconsistent to call people to worship that I didn't believe in (boy was I an angry teenage atheist!), and they were lovely about that, too.

Practical point to take away? Let kids join in actual things, not just kids things.

4. Reading the lessons in church. Because this was Lincolnshire in the early 1980s, there was nothing to do on Sundays, and I mean nothing. My family didn't even have a television. So I started going to the church that was 50 yards from our back gate, if not every week, a fair bit, from the age of 10 to 13. Often it was just my sisters and I (for a while they sang in the small choir -see bellringing. They particularly enjoyed singing and being paid for weddings!). One of my hobbies at the time was drama and public speaking, and someone at the church obviously either knew this, or took the trouble to ask, because they asked me if I'd like to read the lessons. It was really lovely to be asked to do something that was relevant to who I was and the particular skills and interests that I had. Well done, St Guthlac's in Fishtoft!

So that's the practical point to take away - find out about the actual children you have, and what they enjoy and are good at, and let them use their skills.

None of these things are hard. You're probably doing all of them already. And that's the point I want to make - keep doing them, be encouraged, and don't be downhearted when those children leave and you never see them again.
Sandra Miller, talking about the Christenings Project, makes the point that the family and all the guests attending a baptism probably won't come back to your church. But do a good job, and you may well be one of three or four occasions that person has gone to church that year, and they may well end up going to a completely different church again - if not that year, maybe decades later.

Trust that the seeds you are sowing might grow a lot later.

Silent Eucharist

A Silent Eucharist? But....how?

When I posted on twitter last week that I was doing a Silent Eucharist at St Brides on Sunday, to start our June series on Holy Communion, that was the question I was asked. How does that work, exactly? So -  here is what we did!

If you googel Silent Eucharist you'll come up with various rites for completely silent services. The rubrics (Anglican for 'instructions'!) are generally printed in a service sheet, and people read them as they go along. We didn't quite do that, though we used bits and pieces inspired by some of those.

But our themes are as much preaching themes as anything else, and this had been billed as a sermon series, so we did have a sermon! And we had three hymns. Other than that, it was mainly silent, built around a semi-mimed Eucharistic prayer to which I had been introduced by a methodist clergywoman (whose name I can sadly no longer recall, and I've long since lost the handwritten instructions she gave me) at a retreat years ago.

So this is what we did:

Introduction, during which I explained what was going to happen. I explained that when the Tibetan singing bowl was struck, they were to look in the order of service for what was the next thing to read or do.

Then we stood to sing a first hymn - singing together is important, I think. And practically, I had thought there would be the kids with us, and we could all sing together before they went off to the FISH group. (In practice, all our regular children except my two were off as three key parents were ill!).

Then the bowl was struck, and the first instruction people read was to take the stone (these had been given out with the hymn books and order of service) and hold it in your hand, feeling its weight.
The service sheet said:

Feeling the weight of all that is wrong in life in the stone which we hold, we acknowledge our sin before God.

Passing the stone to the table, it is placed in a bowl and water is poured over the stones.

That done, the bowl was struck again and people read:

We hold our empty hands open to receive forgiveness. 

 After a pause, the bowl was struck again. Then the reading was printed in the order of service, with the instruction to read it through several times and ask God to reveal its hidden depths to you.

There was then another silence - which I held long enough for me to read the passage 4 or 5 times. Then the bowl was struck, and our speaker then gave some input (described in the order of service as Food for Thought). (This was Jonathan Clatworthy and he gave a brilliant talk on the reception history of communion - maybe he will blog that!).

There was another silence for reflection, and then we sang another hymn and had a time of silent prayer, with the option to light candles.

When the bowl was struck again, it was time for a silent peace - bowing to one another, making eye contact! People surprisingly really enjoyed this.

Then came the Eucharistic prayer. Everyone was asked (in the introduction) to gather around the front of the altar - they were reminded of this at this point by the celebrant - me - making an expansive 'come and gather round' gesture!

The Eucharistic prayer:

First, I leafed through the first few pages of the Bible, slowly. Then I slowly let the pages flick past, all through the Old  Testament, stopping at the ribbon that marked the beginning of Matthew's gospel. I put the Bible down on the altar, put a finger on the page and paused.

Then I got the bread (a loaf is needed, not a wafer. In our case, a gluten free pitta bread), and wrapped it in a lavabo cloth. Picking it up like a baby, I rocked it in my arms. 

I placed the bread carefully down on the altar, and slowly turned the pages of the gospel. About midway I looked up, smiled, and included everyone in a wide arm gesture of welcome and acceptance. Turning the pages again I stopped at the crucifixion. I touched the page, paused, then lifted the bread high and tore it in two.

I then placed a large wine glass on the altar, and opened a bottle of wine.

From quite a height, carefully and slowly, I poured the wine into the glass. As it reached the top, I didn't stop, but kept steadily pouring. The wine brimmed over, and as the flow kept going, poured over the sides of the glass and began to stain the altar cloth (I should say I'd replaced the altar cloth with a thick and doubled tablecloth of my own that I knew would wash out!). I kept pouring until the bottle was empty, and held it there for a few seconds so that the last drips weren't wasted.

Then I took the bread, ate it, and passed it to the person next to me, with a gesture to do the same. And then the cup. The bread and wine were passed around the room, everyone either helping themselves or offering them to the next person.

When everyone had finished, they went back to their seats, and the bowl was struck. This directed people to their order of service, where they read that they were to mentally recall as much of the Lord's Prayer as they could.

Finally, we stood to sing our last song, and for the blessing and dismissal.

I'd only done this before in small groups, not on a Sunday morning, and it was AMAZING! The quality of the conversation and reflection afterwards also bowled me over.

Highly recommended, if you have an adventurous congregation who are up for it!

Book Review: 'Phoebe' by Paula Gooder

Paula Gooder's book 'Phoebe'

Paula Gooder, Phoebe: A Story, Hodder & Stoughton, 2018

Phoebe is somewhere between a historical novel, an exceptionally good interactive museum guide, and an adult’s version of the children’s TV series The Storykeepers, full of daring young Christians braving the culture around them to pass on the stories and letters that they have been entrusted with.

The book consists of two parts. First comes the main body of the book, the fictional story of Phoebe in Rome. She has travelled there from Corinth with a task from Paul and a secret mission of her own.  It’s not exactly a novel - though it has much of the narrative arc of one, and is as much of a page-turner. It's a fictional account of what life as an early Christian would have been like, told through the eyes of Phoebe, the deacon mentioned by Paul in Romans 16. It’s an engrossing story, and Gooder's profound scholarship is lightly and effectively incorporated.

In telling this story, although it is fictional, Gooder draws on her own considerable scholarship, both biblical and historical. The second part consists of historical notes, referencing and explaining some of the details and the evidence behind the artistic licence taken in the story.

One of the episodes that stands out most for me is when Phoebe first encounters the Roman Christians telling the stories about Jesus that have been handed down among them. She is astonished – in Corinth, we’re told, they argued about theology with passion and vigour, but she has never come across this kind of corporate storytelling before. That was an entirely new insight for me into the variety of the early Christian experience. 

Similarly, later in the book Peter visits Rome, and tells them a story they hadn’t heard before – that of his betrayal of Jesus before cock crow, and then his forgiveness by Jesus at the lakeside. The way in which Gooder describes the hearers of this story incorporating this new insight, this new detail, into their faith – and its impact on one main character, who feels himself to be beyond forgiveness - is electrifying. Its a very effective and thought-provoking dramatisation of how the early Christians received the content of their faith as a continuing process of revelation rather than as a package deal.

We also see how different groups with the Roman church react to aspects of the letter Phoebe carries – Paul’s ‘Letter to the Romans’ - which causes as much consternation as interest! The tension between the Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus on certain points is sympathetically portrayed, and Gooder succeeds in winning our empathy on all sides.

Gooder also deftly handles the question of different attitudes to women. Nobody in the book is opposed to Phoebe’s presence as Paul’s deputy. But there are sparks of tension as the wisdom of women preaching – and thus risking attracting unwelcome attention or persecution to the whole group – is debated. Phoebe’s own back-story is a moving and all-too-real one of human trafficking and the vulnerabilities of young women – in which Roman society seems both impossibly distant from, and yet eerily close to, our own. 

I read this book in two sittings, and came away feeling almost as if I had just heard some of the stories about Jesus for the first time - as if I was having to make a really difficult decision about whether to risk following this new way - as if it mattered. There's a freshness and urgency to the story that captures something of what it must have been like to be hearing all this for the first time. 

Highly recommended.