A Holy Week Thought

'Now Mary took a pound of very costly spikenard ointment and anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair.'

This was the last week of Jesus' life and he visits the house of His great friends Lazarus, Martha and Mary at Bethany. Perhaps this was His last 'evening off', His final chance to relax and enjoy Himself privately, away from the public glare, in the company of just a few close friends. As the evening progresses, Mary decides to anoint and massage Jesus' tired feet.

Anointing and massaging with oils was much more common in Jesus' society than this practice is today - though in the hospice movement we use it frequently to engender relaxation and comfort, to communicate that a person is deeply valued and signify the hope of a healing that goes beyond mere removal of symptoms. On this night, Mary is concerned to show her love for Jesus, to help Him relax and prepare for what is obviously going to be a tough week ahead in Jerusalem. Perhaps she half senses the danger He is walking into. At any rate, she seizes this rare opportunity to demonstrate her care and concern in a very practical and personal way.

When we love someone we should seize each opportunity we have to show them that we love them. As Jesus points out, you do not know for how long you will have a person with you. Whether Mary sensed it or not, this was to be the last chance she would have to use the precious oil she had saved on Jesus before He went to the cross. Seize the moment! Do not let us take those we love for granted. Acts of love can seem extravagant and apparently wasteful at the time they are committed, yet such acts live on in our memories and warm our hearts years after they are carried out and that is their true value. As Jesus says in Luke's version of this story, 'Her action will be remembered wherever the Gospel is told.' Jesus is never recorded as saying that of fine words or preaching or a dramatic healing or a good story. When all is said and done, a simple act of love is what will be remembered as being of the greatest value.

Jesus knew and Mary perhaps half knew that her act was prophetic. 'Let her do this against the day of my burial.' When Jesus was taken down from the cross the sabbath was beginning and no work could be done. Most especially, the handling of a body was not seemly, so He could not be anointed for burial. That was why the women were going to the tomb so early on the first Easter morning - to complete the anointing of His body which they had not been able to finish on the Friday evening. Jesus interprets Mary's action as an anointing ahead of time for His own burial. Isn't it true that those who are closest to us sometimes know intuitively what we are going through? Mary couldn't have put it into words, but she knew that something deeply significant and very dangerous was about to happen to Jesus, something that would take all His courage and sap all His strength. This was the only way she could think of to say, 'I'm supporting you in this, whatever happens, I'm for you.'

This anointing represents a parting of the ways. Finally at this meal on this evening, Judas decides to oppose Jesus and betray Him - who knows why? Maybe for financial gain and status in the eyes of the ruling classes or maybe for his own complex psychological reasons. In contrast, Mary decides to side with her friend and not only 'prepare Him aforehand for His burial' but stand with Him, whatever He faces - and she does not yet know that her love will be called to witness His torture and agony on the cross. Occasionally in life there is just such a clear parting of the ways, a moment in which an irrevocable decision is taken and there is then no path back. Sometimes we cannot sit on the fence and choose both ways. Occasionally we do not get a second chance to choose. It cannot have been easy for Mary to risk the disciples' misunderstanding and disapproval, but she knew she had to do it. It must have been agonising to stand at the foot of the cross, but she knew she had to do it. Judas made his choice and once the betrayal was completed, he felt there was no way back for him. There are some acts for which self-forgiveness is profoundly elusive.

As we engage again, this year, in the re-enactment of the familiar events of Holy Week, this little narrative offers us the same choice. Will we stand aloof and critical as we hear the story of Jesus' passion? Will we treat is as something from which we are detached by historical era or disposition or analytical thought?  Or will we dare to get as involved as Mary did? Will we follow our emotions where they take us? Will we allow Jesus' death and resurrection to move us deeply, to speak into our lives and to change who we are and what we dare? 

'Christ's bursting form the spiced tomb,
His riding up the heavenly way, 
His coming at the day of doom,
I bind unto myself today.' 
St Patrick's Breastplate. 

Pause for Thought

Two of the most shocking things I have read for a while appeared in the newspapers this week. The first was a report of Justin Welby's speech while attending a conference on violence in Oklahoma in which he asserts that, because expanding laws to allow gay marriage in line with the rights of other citizens in western countries has allegedly produced a backlash of violence in Africa, the church should be cautious about how it proceeds to accept the practice. The second was a report in the Independent that Mulayam Singh Yadav, the head of India's socialist party, and his colleague Abu Azmi had appeared to say, in separate speeches, that rape was just a common mistake that boys make and that if a man is to suffer the death penalty for rape (as he may do under Islamic law) the woman should also be executed as she is in some way guilty too. I had to read the latter article three times to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding it. 

Both these stories, if true as reported, stunned me. At first sight they don't have much in common but actually they both show a disregard for the basic theological principle that all people are equally valuable in the sight of God. They show a distancing and objectification of the human plight of the gay or female person by those who are not of that orientation or gender and an overlooking of the God-implanted expectation of women and gay people not to be treated with flagrant injustice and not to have their need for justice sacrificed for them  by others in the service of those in positions of power who see violence as acceptable and necessary in controlling others. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the fight against slavery was massively prolonged by arguments that caution should be exercised by campaigners due to the plight of slaves who had not yet been freed and those who were free but could not earn a living. How many other slaves suffered horribly and died as a result? The only way to begin to remove an evil is to name it fairly and squarely as an evil and to commit resources to re-educate people where ever the evil occurs. To collude with those who persecute others over the existence of phenomena like gay orientation or the destruction of a woman's control over her own body and mind is never going to lead anywhere other than to the spread of violence and attitudes that deny some of God's people (in fact more than half the human race) a full and safe place in society.

I am not convinced that it is possible to connect gay rights in the West to the withdrawal of access to aid from populations in Africa or the use of violence against Christians quite as straight forwardly as the Archbishop suggests. I do understand that there are connections which will have some terrible consequences, but my experience of African culture is that it is far, far more complex than many of the more theologically conservative African church leaders like to portray it. Cause and effect are difficult to identify and predict. Loyalties are very subtly layered. Just as in the West, you find expressions of gay life styles all over the place including in African Islamic and Christian societies. It's obviously much harder for people to be open about it, but the idea that African society is overwhelmingly anti-gay is not correct - ask any health care worker. Unfortunately it is true that those who oppose expressions of gay orientation implacably are in positions of power and also under huge and complex pressure from their peers to conform to this view of sexuality. While the Archbishop is right in making sure that we are aware of the serious consequences the change in the law will have and reminding us that we must take responsibility to work in partnership to help those affected, it seems to me wrong headed to argue that, even were the Church of England to be minded, through its legal processes, to accept the principle of gay marriage, we must actively postpone moving in that direction because we are held under threat by the leaders of parts of other churches. I would also point out that when many of the women of Africa have repeatedly said that, for the Church of England to ordain women priests and bishops would greatly help them in their struggle towards equality, this plea has fallen on deaf ears. There seems to be a certain inconsistency here.

As for the leaders of the Indian SP, I can only say that if I were a woman in India I would be very, very fearful should anyone who holds such opinions come to power. Their remarks, even if partially retracted, show what feminists would call a profoundly unconscientized view of the relationship between the sexes. They call to mind the so- called texts of terror in the Old Testament such as Judges 19 and they remind us, horrifically and graphically, that for many women today, even in democracies, their daily life is subject to barbaric attitudes and customs that have no place in the twenty first century, but which are deeply ingrained in the collective subconscious. 

Canon Mark Oakley, in a letter to the Guardian (8th April), suggests that the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury work together toward the decriminalising of homosexuality in the Commonwealth and globally. Unrealistic as this may sound, it points to the heart of the matter. Until the leaders of the major churches screw up their courage to set their faces against all persecution, oppression and exclusion on grounds of gender and sexual orientation, the churches will continue to be major players in such oppression and to collude tacitly with the actions of those who use violence to support it.

Celebrating Margaret Spufford: A Reflection for Holy Week

Margaret Spufford, the eminent historian, died in March. She was an academic of note and, as an historian, wrote three books for which she is well known: Contrasting Communities (a fascinating study of three Fenland villages in the seventeenth century), Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth Century England (which showed that basic education and the ability to read was more widespread in the seventeenth century than previously thought) and The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapman and Their Wares in the Seventeenth Century (about the itinerant pedlars who sold reading matter.) She was passionate about her area of scholarship and made a significant and original contribution to our understanding of the seventeenth century. She was also a Christian thinker, a Benedictine oblate and the mother of a daughter born with the rare genetic condition, cystinosis. She herself suffered a great deal of ill health throughout her life accompanied, at times, by excruciating bone pain.  Andrew Brown, in the Guardian, says, 'She was a woman quite like a saint' see Margaret Spufford loved truth, loved people, loved to laugh

Published Cambridge University ~Press

I first came across her writing when I was a staff nurse at Addenbrooke's hospital, looking after haematology patients, some of whom were undergoing bone marrow transplants. Things have improved a great deal since then but, back in the 1980's, these patients suffered a lot. One of them described the total body irradiation that, of necessity, preceded the transplant as causing a 'pain beyond pain that takes you to an indescribable, eery, twilight place.' That was the prelude to the transplant. Once the patient had been given the new cells, we waited in trepidation: infection was one great danger and also the dreaded onset of what is called 'graft versus host disease' which occurs when, instead of the patient's body rejecting the transplanted cells, the transplant rejects the host body. In the case of a bone marrow transplant, this can involve cells all over the body. The mother of one of our youngest patients was reading Margaret Spufford's book Celebration. She introduced me to it one morning over breakfast following a draining night's vigil. I found it an amazing book. I can't say that it spoke to me then of hope - the overall impression it left was rather one of darkness. But somehow the darkness was richer and kinder and inhabited by people who shared these places of dereliction. It was fundamentally honest and, as always, the telling of truth illuminates the way for others.

It is the story of Spufford's daughter, Bridget. From the first year of her life, she endured an illness which caused her a great deal of pain and fear. The book tells the story of how both she and her immediate family found a way to live with Bridget's suffering that allowed for meaningful life to emerge, indeed a life that reached moments of profound joy and creativity. It's probably one of the most realistic descriptions of living with pain and what that does to you that I have ever read. She finds no easy answers, no relief for periods of suffering, no place to go to avoid the inevitable repeated return of the pain; yet she finds a way of being and a purposefulness that allow her and Bridget, not only to live their lives, but to be imaginative, hopeful, amazingly productive and to enjoy times of relative remission. There is never any sense, though, that the good times somehow 'make up' for the bad times or that they make the bad times easier to bear. That is false and those who have endured great pain recognise the merest whiff of this kind of falsity. Spufford's thesis is that your pain makes you who you are and shapes your life but not that it is of itself good; quite the reverse: extreme pain is a form of evil and we deny this at our peril. You cannot make something that is an evil into a good, you can only live your life as if the evil will ultimately not extinguish the good. These are the tiny daily moments of resurrection. 

Published Cambridge University Press

It's not a book to 'cheer you up'. I think that those who have not actually suffered great pain are often a little disappointed by it. Certainly anyone who is looking for answers will be. But those who have suffered a great deal find in the reading of it the recognition and comfort of truth telling. I suffered from endometriosis which causes excruciating abdominal pain such that you would gladly accept anything to put you out of the pain while it lasts. Doctors scratch their heads and disagree about the diagnosis while prescribing drugs that scarcely begin to touch the pain. It has to be one of the very few conditions that make the menopause a cause for celebration! Spufford's book helped me, not because it gave me any answers or solutions for all this pointless pain, but because it demonstrated that someone else could live their life with bouts of untreatable pain and make practical sense of a life blighted by it. At no point does she make light of pain or deny its ability to corrode and destroy, but she demonstrates a way of being that allows you to live through and round the pain to great effect. She shows how a personality can develop and flourish in spite of the constant debilitating set backs. You need this kind of faith to live through prolonged pain and also to be present to those who suffer pain. I will be for ever grateful for the resource her thinking became for me over the years both in helping me live through my own pain and in nursing others. 

Spufford's approach to suffering reminds me of Job's story. In the Book of Job, we are introduced to someone else beset by pain - physical, social, spiritual. In this case the story sets the situation up in terms of Satan persuading God to allow Job to be tested. Will his faith hold? What we learn from the 42 chapters that follow is that the philosopher's approach to suffering is useless. To ask the question 'why?' does not move the sufferer on one jot and, in fact, increases their mental anguish and leads to self pity and outrage at the injustice of their situation. Job ultimately breaks through to a place where the 'how', 'how can I live my life?' takes centre stage. For Job this involves a total surrender to the fact that he is God's creature and will not understand the counsels and ways of the creator. The key for Job is, I think, the point at which he begins to realise that faith to accept what life brings and live or perhaps simply to exist God-wards does not have to be corroded by the experiences that have been thrown at him: that decision rests with him. This is the point from which bitterness and outrage begin to fall away; this is the seedbed of the human spirit's ability to choose to respond more affirmatively to good than to evil. It isn't quite hope, but it is vigour, it is life in spite all the odds, it is resurrection. As Spufford showed so clearly in her book and, much more, in her life this is the place from which meaning and celebration emanate. 

A wonderful woman who joins the company of those who have influenced my life very much for good. Deo gratias   

Violence Against Women

Violence against women is something that pervades many cultures. From India to Bosnia, Riwanda and Congo to South Africa, Sierra Leone to Afghanistan, in Papua New Guinea and the USA and Britain too - there is no continent that is not affected by this pernicious evil. A recent press release from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime draws attention to the extent to which women suffer as victims of domestic abuse.
'Almost half a million people (437,000) across the world lost their lives in 2012 as a result of intentional homicide, according to a new study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Launching the Global Study on Homicide 2013 in London, Jean-Luc Lemahieu, Director for Policy Analysis and Public Affairs, said: "Too many lives are being tragically cut short, too many families and communities left shattered." Globally, some 80% of homicide victims and 95% of perpetrators are men. Almost 15% of all homicides stem from domestic violence, however, and the overwhelming majority of domestic violence fatalities are women. "Home can be the most dangerous place for a woman," said Mr Lemahleu.'

Homicide and domestic violence are the tip of the iceberg. Sexual violence used to humiliate and control communities in war and the practice of Female Genital Mutilation touch the lives of staggering numbers of women. The Church Times this week features stories about the extent to which sexual violence against women is used as a weapon of war. The numbers of women who have suffered rape (some of them babies, others over 70) in war torn parts of Africa is highlighted in a graphic article by Tim Wyatt, First the Rape. Then the Stigma.  A 2012 report suggests that, in South Africa, over 50% of women can expect to be raped in their lifetime. The Today programme on Radio 4 has this week carried interviews with women in India who are working to change cultural perceptions of women and attitudes among men, following the horrific gang rapes in Delhi and Mumbai. Woman's Hour has recently highlighted the fact that not a single prosecution has taken place in the the UK despite laws to prevent FGM.  

William Hague and Angelina Jolie will be co-charing a Global Summit looking for ways to end Sexual Violence in London this summer. The summit, which will take place on 13th and 14th June, will concentrate on four areas for action, aiming

• to improve investigations/documentation of sexual violence in conflict;
• to provide greater support and assistance and reparation for survivors, including child survivors, of sexual violence;
• to ensure sexual and gender based violence responses and the promotion of gender equality are fully integrated in all peace and security efforts, including security and justice sector reform; and
• to improve international strategic co-ordination.

The Church Times has just put out a list of organisations working to help victims of sexual violence and change the cultures in which it is normative:
www.restoredrelationships.org/
www.wewillspeakout.org/about/
www.christianaid.org.uk/whatwedo/in-focus/gender/africa.aspx
www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/sexual-violence-in-conflict    

I can do no more than invite readers to look at these sites and to consider whether there is any way that you could give your support to some of the projects and ventures outlined.