Mother's Day, 2009 [i]
By Charles Rush & Leanne Simmons
May 10, 2009
Mark 14: 3-9
[ Audio
(mp3, 4.4Mb) ]
ther's Day is the well intended product of a Ms. Anna Jarvis, a pious woman from West Virginia, who wanted to do something special for her Mother. It was a nice gesture but somewhere between the Greeting Card business and the floral business, and then the restaurateurs, it got bumped into a whole other category of a mega-consumer hyper-celebration, to the point that it is starting to feel like a way to buy one's way out of guilt for a short while.
At the same
time, as our little video so wonderfully illustrates, it seems like the actual
vocation of Motherhood is taking on more and more of a frantic pace. So, I give
us this passage from the gospel of Mark this morning. Hear now the word of God.
(Mark 14:3-9) And while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,
as he sat at table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of ointment of pure
nard, very costly, and she broke it and poured it over his head. But there were
some who said to themselves indignantly, ‘Why was the ointment thus wasted? For
this ointment might have been sold and given to the poor'. And they reproached
her. But Jesus said, ‘Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She hasdone a
beautiful thing for me. For you will always have the poor with you, and
whenever you can, you will do good for them; but you will not always have me.
She has done what she could… And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is
preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
But we have no
name. So nothing ever is told in memory of her. And who is this woman? Other accounts
portray her as a weeping, humble, grateful woman crouching low in submission at
the feet of the Master, but not Mark. There is no weeping in this posture, no
groveling, no posture of shame. There are no references that she is a sinner
that would allow us to dismiss her with a display of diminishing gratitude.
Actually she is strength and purpose,
dignity and self-assurance as she moves toward Jesus and does this one act
of hospitality.
She is, in
fact, the powerful initiator of the only positive human action towards Jesus
during passion week. She has no voice and acts with compassionate adoration.
The disciples, who have loud voices, will sleep as Jesus is arrested and
interrogated. They will flee and fail to speak on his behalf when the opportunity
presents itself. She alone, a nameless woman, has taken the situation in hand
to do a good thing for him… she comes unexpectedly from the corners of
anonymity where she has waited in silence for her opportunity to move into the
inner circle.
She has no voice…
She is, as so many scholars have pointed out, every woman. Anthropological studies analyzing modes of expression
across cultures have pointed out how different females use of voice is from the
use of voice by men. Culture does indeed teach us how to articulate as men and
women, and in the past women's expressions are often culturally demeaned as
trivial, flighty or insignificant.”
But in the Book
Gender at the Crossroads Susan Gal suggests that in many cultures,
women's silence is a misnomer. Indeed, women have their own genre of
expression, in which they are far more likely than men to express themselves in
symbolic gestures which are frankly the tools of resistance and subversion. Her
studies explore the myth of female muteness: many women may not speak, or may
find their words trivialized, but they are far from silent. In that, the woman
in our story, may indeed by ‘Every Woman', particularly in traditional
societies, even our own only a generation ago.
Every woman who
was ever trained to be silent and polite- like so many women who hesitate to
ask or offer an answer in class and finally become tired of waiting to be asked
and uninvited-, the woman in our story decides to make her opinions known.
She is ‘every
woman' who in silence and obedience has held the family secret tight and who
finally move forward to speak the truth so that the next generation will not
have to live a lie.
She is ‘every
woman' who has ever experienced the frustration of being incapable or fearful
of articulating thoughts and feelings because her social world has not given
her permission or freedom to be expressive- but who finds a way to express
herself because she believes her life has a point and that she has plenty to
offer.
She is ‘every
woman' who refuses to remain silent and passive- neither victimized, nor the
continual object of pity- intimidated or overly polite. She is every woman who
is willing to risk the insulting stares of the eyes around her in order to do
that which should be done. And in an act of graceful
subversion, this woman comes and in anoints Jesus in a simple act of
feminine defiance.
In the culture
of Rome, every person knew she had stepped out of her culturally sanctioned
place and because they couldn't deny the grace and beauty of what she had done-
they began a pseudo-rational ethical debate that had the effect of diminishing
the value of her feminine judgment, even if they weren't consciously aware that
this is what they were doing. This expensive perfume could have been sold and
the money used for the poor, if this woman had only thought this whole thing
through and operated along more rational long-term guidelines. It has the
effect of diminishing her expression and ultimately demeaning her as a person.
Equally
important, Jesus' words upend the value system that would keep her in her
place. Jesus says, “Leave her alone, she has done what she could”. A simple, poignant release that so many
people need to hear. It is not a back handed compliment like ‘you're awful
smart for being someone so pretty' as one of my uncles might have said.
No this has a
quality of rebuke to it. It sounds more like, ‘You discount this woman's gift,
but she was gracious in a way that none of my powerful hosts were.' It sounds a
little more like, ‘at least someone did something.'
Jesus says,
‘The poor you will have with you always- plenty of opportunities to serve if
you are really serious about that… Jesus is addressing a bunch of men that are
looking to do the minimum that is required from them, lifting up the actions of
a woman who did as much as she could do in this situation. Her actions suggest
that she thinks she has enough and when you live your life and act in ways that
communicate to others ‘I have enough', you really are rich spiritually
speaking.
This morning, I
want to lift up the touching poignancy of that line, ‘she has done what she could'. It speaks to that quadrant of the
mind of women- Mother's and Aunts especially- that quadrant of your mind where
the tape runs when no one is around that whatever you are doing, it is not
enough. So often, that tape seems to kick in when we are in the presence of our
extended families. It is a primordial tape from childhood that comes back at
the oddest times. It sounds something like this poem that was written for Rosemary
Reuther's little volume ‘Womanguide', more than a decade ago.
It is not enough
Said her father
That you get all A's each quarter
Play Mozart for your kinfolk
Win star-firsts in contests
You must come home on your wedding night.
It is not enough
Said her mother
That you
Smile at Auntie Lockwook
Take cookies to the neighbors
Keep quiet while I'm napping
You must
Cure my asthma
It is not enough said her husband
That you
Write letters to my parents
Fix pumpkin pie and pastry
Forget your name is Bauer.
You must always
You must never.
It is not enough said her children
That you
Make us female brownies
Tend our friend and puppies
You must
Let us kill you.
It is not enough
Said her Minister
That you
Teach the second grader
Change the cloths and the candles
Kneel prostrate at the altar
As long as there are starving children in the world
You must
Not eat without guilt.
It is not enough
Said her counselor
That you struggle with those demons
Integrate your childhood
Leave when the time is over
You must
Stop crying
Clarify your poetic symbols
And you must not
feel
That you are not
enough.
I give up she said
I am not enough
And she laid down into the deep blue pocket
Of night
To wait for death.
She waited and finally
Her heart exploded
Her beating stopped
They came with the stretcher
Took her clothes off
Covered her with linen
And went away
And they left her locked
In the deep blue pocket tomb.
The voice said
You are enough
Naked
Crying
Bleeding
Nameless
Starving
Sinful
You are enough
And the third day
She sat up
Asked for milk and crackers
Took a ritual bath with angels
Dressed herself with wings
And flew away.
So may every
woman that has a loop of this tape playing in their heads whether they want to
have it playing or not, hear now the gracious words of Jesus. In a world of
minimal performers, you have done what you could and it is enough.
And when you
come to the end of your strength, when you are out of patience as well as will,
when you think to yourself “I am only one person and I cannot do one more
thing”- remember that you did not come to that point because you are weak,
incompetent, frail- but because you pushed your strengths to the limit while
everyone else sat down to watch the Simpson's.
To every woman
who has tried to balance a career and raise beautiful children. To every woman
that tried to attend graduate school and maintain deep relationships with those
that she loves.
And to every
woman who has succeeded in a career but failed in marriage who can't get beyond
that nagging self-doubt that somehow she is less than enough as a woman.
To every
anorexic who has ever tried to squeeze the size 9 body into a size 5 dress
because she can never be thin enough or be worthy of being love enough.
And to every
survivor of abusive families who did what had to be done get through it and
can't shake the anxiety over compromises she made choosing between three bad
options.
To every woman
that keeps a frantic pace for reasons she can't entirely understand and would
just like 5 minutes peace.
Jesus has a
word for you when those tapes kick in and start to wear down the fabric of your
soul. Hear now that word of grace and acceptance, “Leave her alone - she has done
what she could”.
[i]
I found this sermon in a box of things from 20 years ago that my Mother
recently gave me as she prepared to move. The text was plain. Typing it into
the computer, I realized that it wasn't one of mine, simply by the voice that
it presumed. I realized that it must have been written by Leanne Simmons when
we served together at a small church in Princeton. Leanne went on to write an
important dissertation utilizing her feminist research from this period. I called
her to ask permission to edit the sermon and re-work it slightly for a
different context. So this is a collaborative work and a pleasure to combine
efforts with her again a couple decades later.
[ii]
For a performance of "The Mom Song" on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX6flpUweIQ
© 2009
Charles Rush.
All rights reserved.
