About "Mary"

 Funny thing about the oldest known manuscript of John's Gospel.  The scribe who wrote down what we now call Papyrus Bodmer II, or more lovingly P66, seems to have been a careless type, prone to screw-ups and self-corrections, as many as 450 of them.  One such self-correction -- if that is what it is -- appears at 11:1, where the words "There was a certain sick man, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and of Mary his sister" have been corrected to the more familiar "... the village of Mary and of Martha her sister."

Looking at the manuscript, a reader can actually see where the iota has been scratched out and a theta added as a superscript, changing marias to marthas.

The question is whether this is just one more of a sloppy scribe's errors, as is commonly assumed, or whether it may be one small part of a larger strategy, to add Martha to a story in which she did not originally appear.

The latter thesis is is argued by Elizabeth Schrader Polczer in her paper ,"Was Martha of Bethany Added to the Fourth Gospel in the Second Century," in Harvard Theological Review 110:3 (2107), pp. 360-392.  You can hear her non-technical, and very entertaining, discussion of the idea in a recent (2024) podcast with Dave Roos and Helen Bond, at Biblical Time Machine.

Polczer's argument does not by any means hang on this single cut-and-paste. She looks at a range of manuscript witnesses to John, notably Codex Alexandrinus, but also many other, both Greek and early Latin, and finds that Martha's presence is "unstable." Sometimes she appears in John 11 & 12, sometimes she does not; sometimes the grammar suggests one sister, sometimes two.  So persistent is the confusion that traces can be found in Tyndale and even first printing of the KJV.

Her suggestion is that the earliest scribes faced a dilemma of some sort.  Perhaps there was an earlier text of John in circulation, which did not feature Martha, or which featured her isn a smaller role. and they felt a need either to bring her in or to enhance her position.  Indeed, source critics, such as Bultmann, Fortna, and many others, have often suggested something like this, but without much reference to the textual history.

But if such an ur-John existed, why add or magnify Martha?  Merely to identify John's Mary the sister of Lazarus with Luke's Mary the sister of Martha?  Or to make a theological point by doing so?

We won't hold you in suspense.  Polczer suggests, tentatively, that the objective was to separate in readers' minds the Mary of John 11 and the Mary of John 20, "where one woman named Mary also cries and speaks with Jesus at another tomb."  In other words, she proposes a more-or-less concerted effort to reduce the prominence of Mary Magdalene in the Fourth Gospel. If so, this was ultimately accomplished "by dividing one woman into three," that is, into Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and Martha.

("But wait," you cry.  "Bethany is one town, and Magdala another.  How can she come from both?"  Briefly, there is, and always has been, a strong case that John's epithet "called Magdalene" refers not to a particular village, but to a nickname derived from the Aramaic migdal, or "tower." As Cephas and the Boanerges testify, Jesus liked to give his followers nicknames.)

If this is true, what was the theological objective of the Magdalene-minimizers?  Polczer's paper stops short of a clear proposal, although in the podcast she and the hosts engage in some banter about the Peter-o-philes, meaning Christians who wanted to depict Peter as the primary heir to Jesus' authority.  That such a faction existed in the early Church is clear, although offhand we can't think of evidence for it as early as 200 CE, the rough date of P66.

None of this is certain, but Polczer has many sources, and her thesis is interesting.  It does indeed suggest a possibility to which we were exposed, in a passing comment by a seminary professor many years ago, that the New Testament as we have received it shows signs of selective editing around the ministries of certain critical figures -- Peter and Paul, obviously, but also John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene.

Nearer, My God: The Unitarian, Anglican & Lutheran Versions

 First published in 1840, "Nearer My God to Thee" quickly became a beloved hymn on both sides of the Atlantic -- and in the middle as well, if those stories about the Titanic are true.

The hymn has an interesting backstory. Its author, Sarah Fuller Flower Adams (1805-48) was a daughter of the genteel school of English leftists. Her father was a printer and editor who served time for insulting a bishop, but he was also the nephew of the wealthy and connected bankers Richard and William Fuller. Adams herself moved in circles that included the the young Browning and, far more significantly, the influential preacher William Johnson Fox.  It was an environment marked by concern for such progressive causes as opposition to Napoleon, rights for women, and concern for the working class. (After Fox left his wife for a younger model, he also became an advocate for easier divorce). 

In matters of religion, Adams was a lifelong Unitarian, although she remained attached to Fox, who was expelled from Unitarianism and wound up as what we would call today a post-Christian public intellectual. Her hymns first appeared in the hymnal of Fox's own congregation; by the 1870s, "Nearer" could be found in something like 70% of the hymnals surveyed by Hymnary.com.

Perhaps it was the aroma of Unitarianism that disquieted some more traditionally-minded churchmen to write their own versions of this popular hymn, in the same meter.

The first was by William Walsham How (1823-97), a greatly admired Anglican bishop and the author of "For All the Saints."  His version of "Nearer" appeared, placed immediately after Adams', in Godfrey Thring's 1880 A Church of England Hymn Book.  It subsequently enjoyed modest popularity; Hymnary.com finds it in some 44 hymnals all told, as opposed to a colossal 2505 for the original.

The second, of more interest to Lutherans, is by Henry Eyster Jacobs (1844-1932). If you do not know Jacobs, you really should; he is an important figure in our history, specifically as a part of the General Council Brain Trust.  The son of a Gettysburg College professor, Jacobs went on to teach at Thiel and Gettysburg before moving to the seminary at Mt Airy (LTSP, as it was; ULS/Philadelphia, as it is). He taught systematic theology and served as dean and then president, and edited several journals as well as the still-valuable Lutheran Cyclopedia of 1899, which is not to be confused with the later LCMS volume of the same title. He was a member of the Joint Committee on the Common Service. His 1905 Summary of the Christian Faith is, in his own words, an "attempt to restate the doctrines of the Christian faith upon the basis of the Lutheran Confessions" -- and a fairly approachable one at that.

Among many other things, Jacobs also taught the first course at a Lutheran seminary in the US devoted to the history and theology of worship.  It was an elective offered to especially gifted seniors.  Years ago, Gordon Lathrop described looking through Jacob's papers from that period, and coming across a note that the worship students did not seem especially gifted, save that "...young Reed shows some real promise."  One must say that Jacobs was an excellent judge of promise.

Jacobs' "Nearer" was apparently written in 1880 or thereabouts, but first published (so far as we can tell) in an 1898 hymnal, Christian Hymns: for Church, School and Home, prepared by the Norwegian Synod. It appears there, as How's does in the Thring collection, after the original, and is apparently intended as an alternative. It also appears in the 1917 Common Service Book, which you probably have sitting on a shelf in your office right now.  And that is nearly it -- in contrast even to How's 44, the Jacobs "Nearer" appears in a pitiful 12 hymnals, the last of these in 1926.

The historicals thus introduced, we come to the big question:  Why was an alternative to Adams ever felt to be needed?

This chart (if you can make it out) shows the three hymns in question:

The Adams hymn is Biblical, a reference to Jacob's dream in Genesis 28, but not deeply or narrowly so.  The narrator desires to be like one of the angels on the ladder, alternately stepping or flying toward heaven.  A cross has been inserted, perhaps as a the reality of which the ladder was a type.  We can charitably assume that this is the Cross of Christ, rather than a metaphor for the narrator's own difficulties. The details of how the narrator will draw near to God are left vague, but the desire comes through strongly. It is hard to discern anything especially Unitarian about it, nor for that matter any hint of the author's social concern.  It is rather a fine example of the hymnody that seeks in God a path out of suffering and darkness.

How brings to this same search some more explicit ideas, albeit not original ones.  The "cross" in question is the one borne by a disciple (Mark 8:34 etc), and while bearing it we are called to pray, to follow Jesus through suffering, and to await his eventual return and a place in his eternal mansions.   One struggles to find any distinctively Anglican doctrine here, but where doctrine is concerned that is in itself a distinctively Anglican characteristic.  While the language is lovely, we will say that the sentiment seems a bit trite, basically the old and rightly-mocked depiction of God's promise as "pie in the sky when you die."

Unsurprisingly, Jacobs is by far the most explicitly doctrinal of the poets.  His opening thesis is that nearness to God is achieved through "word and sacrament," familiar Lutheran language for the ministry of the Church, identified here with divine grace and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  This is rooted in God's eternal love, which predates the Creation, and in Christ's Incarnation, which is God's entrance into the created world. There is a nod to one particular atonement theory, and an invitation to the Trinity itself to make a home among the People of God.  The final stanza argues that the assurance of salvation obviates any fear of death, a questionable idea without which the hymn would have been better.

To answer our own question, it is hard to say just why How felt a need to reconsider the Adams original.  Perhaps he felt it was insufficiently clear about how "nearness to God" could be achieved, and wanted to make an argument for discipleship. 

The case is easier with Jacobs:  the professor of systematic theology seems to have wanted a hymn that approached "nearness" in a ... systematic fashion. Some readers may find this a trifle stale, but we don't think it harms the poetry.  On the contrary, it turns the image of "nearness to God" into a story, which is quite a good thing in a hymn.  And  unlike either of the others, Jacobs' version makes it clear that this nearness is achieved not by human effort, but by God's own work in Christ.

We weren't sure when we started this post, but now we are:  the Henry Eyster Jacobs "Neaer, My God to Thee" is a solid hymn, that deserves to be used from time to time in Lutheran churches.

Easter Sermon Hints from Gregory the Great

 Holy Week having begun, many readers of the Egg (if only there were many such readers!) may be busy with printing bulletins, recruiting acolytes, arguing with cantors, and otherwise preparing for the Paschal Solemnity in ways other than prayer and study.  If so, there is some danger that such hypothetical readers might enter the pulpit come Sunday a tad unprepared.

Never fear.  Pope St. Gregory the Great has your back.

In his Homily 25, which is (mostly) concerned with St. John's account of the Resurrection, Gregory comments on some detail upon the Lord's appearance to Mary Magdalene.  It is all worth reading, including the fascinating and grotesque interpretation of Job 41:1.  In one lovely and much less grotesque passage, Gregory says:

"Mary Magdalene came and made known to [Jesus'] disciples, 'I have seen the Lord, and he said these things to me.'" See, how the sin of the human race was removed where it began. In paradise a woman was the cause of death for a man (Gen. 3:6); coming from the sepulchre a woman proclaimed life to men. Mary related the words of the one who restored her to life; Eve had related the words of the serpent who brought death.  It is as if the Lord was telling the human race, not by words but by actions, "Receive the draught of life from the hand of the one who offered you the drink of death."

The Christ-as-new-Adam typology is well known, as is its counterpart in Mary-Eve typology -- but of course the Mary in that usage is normally the BVM (surely, you recall the palindromic Ave/Eva from so many Annunciation paintings). We cannot remember seeing this blog's patroness recruited to make the same point.

The typology is rife with problems, not least the danger of a misogynistic reading.  Still, Gregory's image of the Apostle to the Apostles as the one who delivers the "draught of life" to her comrades is a powerful one, and raises Mary Magdalene to a stature more often afforded the Lord's mother.  (It is almost as if Gregory is apologizing for his great mistake, of officially identifying his subject as a prostitute).

A preacher might also find use for the pairing of Eden and the Empty Tomb as loci for life and death.

As a bonus, a very tired preacher looking for inspiration on Quasimodo Geniti, these days called Easter 2, might borrow from the stirring conclusion to the same homily:

Let us find evils distasteful, even if we have experienced them. Almighty God freely forgets that we have been guilty; he is ready to count our repentance as innocence. If we have become dirtied after the water of salvation, let us be born again from our tears. Accordingly, we must listen to the voice of our first pastor: Like newborn children, desire milk ((1 Peter 2:2). Return, little children, to the bosom of your mother, the the eternal Wisdom. Drink from the bountiful breasts of the lovingkindness of God. Weep for your past misdeeds; shun those that avoid what lies ahead. Our Redeemer will solace our fleeting sorrows with eternal joy -- he who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

These references to God's breasts, while they may seem a little mischievous to contemporary congregations, were common enough in the Middle Ages, as Carolyn Walker Bynum has shown, and continued to be so at least into John Donne's time.  Easter may not be the best time to marshal defensive citations in proud array, but remember that they exist.

The Two Christianities

 It often seems that there are two different religions called "Christianity."  

One of them is stern, hierarchical, dogmatic to the point of fanaticism.  It possesses both Catholic and Evangelical forms, marked by differences of style as well as by mutual animosity, but sharing equally in contempt for women, in sexual and financial scandals, in a culture of coverups and an intense resistance to internal criticism, much less external review.  This religion divides into cult-like subcommunities in which children are scarred for life, left with gaping wounds in their sense of self which render the church and its ministries unbearable to them. In the public square, its adherents have sought and often attained positions of considerable power, at least in the United States, from which they conspire to impose their theological judgments and apodictic moralities even on those who profess different faiths or none at all. 

This is the Christianity reported daily in the media, both traditional and social.  It is quite real.  I encounter its refugees often, and have occasionally brushed up against its adherents and apparatus. But I must also say that it seems strange to me, genuinely foreign, and when I encounter it, I feel not a like a compatriot in the same heavenly commonwealth, but like an anthropologist attempting to puzzle out the cultural peculiarities of a people utterly different from himself.

This is because I was raised, and have lived my life, in the second "Christianity." This religion is superficially similar to the first.  It shares the same sacred texts and, for the most part, the same metaphysical tenets. It also comes in Catholic and Evangelical flavors, as well as more exotic mixtures called Orthodoxy and Mainline Protestantism, as yet undiscovered by the mass media but dimly remembered by those of a certain great age.

I often hear people who are familiar only with the first Christianity wish that there were a second.  "If only," they sigh, "there were a Christianity that valued women; that did not make gay people hide in closets shaped like the organ bench; that saw the beauty of science as a means of understanding the Creation; that welcomed dialogue with other faiths; that  wrestled honestly with the moral complexity of abortion and warfare; that critiqued itself and remained humble when others challenged it; that was not merely capable of change, but desired to change."

In fact, such a Christianity does exist, not merely as a movement within the first (although that too), but as a distinct, organized group of churches.  It is more or less what is meant by the term "Mainline Protestantism," although large swaths of the Roman Catholic world share in its character as well.

Mind you, the second Christianity is far from perfect. For half a century or more, much of it has embraced women in leadership with nearly the same passive-aggressive mixture of adulation and resentment it has long offered to men. (More recently, it has extended gay and trans people an equally awkward, stiff-armed side-hug.)  It talks, almost incessantly, about the need to create a more just society, while steadfastly failing to accrue or exercise the actual power required to do so. It is by no means immune to missteps and even scandal, the chief difference being that, rather than rushing to denial, its adherents are the first to point the finger at each other, demanding personal repentance and institutional reform.  Its ministers are each others' harshest critics, and its official organs are quick to exclude -- like Caesar his proverbial wife -- any who have faltered or even been rumored to falter.

Imperfect?  Yes, indeed. Much of this blog's seventeen-year tenure has been devoted to documenting the imperfections. But the fact is that the second Christianity -- mainline, moderate, ecumenically open and socially engaged -- offers precisely what people complain that they find lacking in the church they see in the news.

Each time I hear a friend wish that Christianity were different, I cough a little, probably too little, and mutter something like, "Have you considered Lutheranism?  Or Episcopalianism?  Presbyterianism? The United Church of Christ? American Baptist Convention? Watched some videos by Richard Rohr, or read an essay by Anne Lamott?"

Because -- and here's my point -- the second Christianity (which is arguably older than the first) exists.  It does not often make the news, and it has certainly seen days of greater prosperity, but it exists.  It is sitting right where it always has, on the main street of most downtowns, going about the business of loving God and a neighbor.  You might visit, sometime, and see if it isn't what you wanted all along.

We have coffee.

For Kings and For All That Are in Authority

Strolling about our idyllic small town last Saturday, dragging an Impressionable Child, we could not help but notice a pair of dueling political signs, one for a Republican candidate and another for his Democratic opponent.  Both signs were extremely large, perhaps 5x7 feet, and mounted a yard or two back from the curb.  They faced each other across the street.

One of them -- the blue one -- had been defaced.  Somebody had spray-painted "FJB," a blunt and crude dismissal of America's incumbent president.

Fr. Anon and Impressionable Child clucked our tongues. We wondered just how unhinged a person needed to have been to resort to trespass and vandalism of private property in order to express a political opinion that was implicit in the very large sign fifteen feet away.  We also shook our heads sadly at the vulgarity, which, while a perfectly understandable result of intense passion, is also ... awfully vulgar as signage goes. All in all, we concluded, this particular vandal brought shame rather than honor to his or her cause.

Days later, the Father and Child were driving through the same small town, and found ourselves behind a black SUV decorated with a yet-more-vulgar expression of the same sentiment.  It read "Fuck Joe and the Hoe [sic]," an idea so foreign to our own way of thinking that we took several seconds even to glean its import.  We took several seconds longer to grasp that the verb was spelled out using guns.  Just like this:

Classy, eh?

In the years 2015-206, we recall a great deal of conversation about whether America was home to an outright Fascist movement.  We drew great comfort from an expert on the history of such movements who argued that although many of our compatriots had begun to express crude ethno-nationalist sentiments, with an ideology that actually scorned facts in favor of feelings, and in its worst case extended even to purposeful cruelty toward the marginalized, nonetheless they had not displayed the true hallmark of 30s-style Fascism, a belief in the redemptive power of political violence to purify a nation.  

 This, of course, was prior to the Epiphany Riot of 6 January 2021.  

It is now pretty clear that the old vision of democracy as a respectful dialogue between Americans who disagree about policy but still regard one another as compatriots and even friends -- the relationship often claimed for President Reagan and Speaker O'Neill -- is a thing of the past.  Mob-style threats are now the sort of thing we put on bumper stickers, and political violence is no longer a tool of the extreme fringe.

We could go on about this sad state of affairs, especially to note that the imagery of violence is not distributed equally among parties (the unvandalized yard sign featured a crosshairs, ostensibly because the commander once captained submarines, but still ...).  But it is more pertinent to our vocation to consider the deep challenges presented to such a culture by this coming Sunday's Bible readings.

Like much of the Bible, the passages for Lectionary 25 C of the RCL (also known as Proper 20, or the 25th Sunday in Ordinary) deal with questions of public morality -- what it means (for Israel) to be a God-pleasing people, or (for Christians) to be a God-pleasing people who live as citizens of a pagan polity.  Parenthetically, we may note, the past few years have taught us to see themes like this -- the question of civic righteousness, or more bluntly of the church and politics -- as the driving force of much of the Bible.  Personal morality and spiritual health, while real concerns, seem distinctly secondary.  This perspective, of course, challenges another well-known set of interpretive assumptions.

Anyhoo.  In Sunday's lessons, Amos -- one of the prophets most concerned with the treatment of the poor as a marker of the nation's holiness -- lambastes as usual those who place their commercial goals over their religious commitments, who take advantage of the poor, and who deny them even their traditional right to freely collect the remainders of the harvest. This has many possible applications to life in our second Gilded Age, with its unspeakable accumulation of wealth in the loftiest percentiles. 

The Lord's parable concerning the dishonest servant is more complex, and especially its awkward first  summary -- "make friends by means of dishonest wealth."  But it is possible to find here a hint that Christians cannot stand aloof from public life in order to preserve some notional purity of soul (as might be inferred from the suspiciously tacked-on sounding second summary, about not being able to serve God and Mammon).  Rather, this line of thought might go, we are called to engage -- as Christians, so charitably! -- in the gritty and unpleasant business of actual public business, however that is defined.

But in the context of America's deeply divided polity, it is the Epistle for the day, from 1 Timothy, that seems most challenging.

Much of the New Testament envisions an inevitably hostile relationship between the followers of Jesus and the civil authorities in whose dominions they exist.  This is certainly apparent in the Lord's warning about "those who are persecuted for my sake," and in stories like those of St. Stephen and St. Paul.  It is, at least according to some schools, the entire point of the Revelation.

It is an academic commonplace that some of the lattermost documents, of which I take 1 Timothy to be an example, suggest a deliberate effort to accommodate Christian communities to the reality of life in an un-Christian world.  The notorious household codes (e.g., Eph. 5:22-6:9) seem to mute, if not emasculate, the countercultural message of the older tradition.  A movement that once taught followers to leave -- even "hate" -- their parents, now encourages filial piety of a perfectly conventional sort.  A movement that once declared "there is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female," now seems surprisingly invested in head coverings, hair styles, and obedience according to pagan social norms.  And a movement that once envisioned confrontation with Empire as an apocalyptic battle now encourages its followers to avoid persecution by performing the social rituals of "good citizenship."

This often seems despicable on its face -- ersatz "Paul" selling out his echt eponym! -- but it is more than that.  After fifteen centuries of hegemony in the West, Christianity and culture have so thoroughly influenced each other that their values can be distinguished only by an act of historical study.  That is our context, and it is much like the one sought by the author of 1 Timothy.  This writer wants Christians to be good, socially-acceptable Romans.  Doing so may well have seemed a matter of life and death, individually and for their movement.

So, long story short, we are urged to "pray for kings and all in authority."  And these prayers are to be "supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings."  Through most of the last half-millennium, this was unexceptionable; Anglicans have contentedly prayed until recently for "our most gracious Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth," and have now effortlessly exchanged that formula for her less popular but equally royal son.

But for Americans living in the era of "FJB" graffiti, this may well seem to be impossible, or impossibly distasteful.  In our own recent experience, we have had one assisting minister ask permission to omit the name of the then-sitting president from the weekly intercessions, on the grounds that he simply could not utter the name in prayer.  From there, it is a short albeit significant jump to crude and threatening denunciations of "Joe and the Ho[e]." 

It is is such a context -- in which one's own deepest values seem sharply at odds with those of the civil realm and its leadership -- that the instruction of 1 Timothy 2:1ff seems most powerful.  You don't like your leaders? You think their pagan values threaten you and those you love? You may be right!  And guess what?  Too freaking bad, says the pseudonymous author.  They are still your leaders, and if God does not bless them then you and the people around you are in even worse trouble.  As Lutherans might say, it is often difficult to discern God at work in the Kingdom of the Left Hand -- but it is still God's Hand.

In our time of profound political anger and unrest, this message is worth considering seriously, not least while standing in the pulpit.  Hatred for our leaders -- including some of the very bad leaders who have held office in recent years -- is still hatred, which is a questionable emotion at best.  And it is still hatred for our leaders, meaning the people who -- whether we believe they are capable of doing so or not -- have been called to govern the nation of which we are citizens.  While we are not called to pray for the imposition any particular policy (and thank heaven we are not!), that is separable from our call to pray even for those who promote it, if they hold legitimate civil authority.

We may well pray that God change their hearts; that God improve their moral character; that God reveal to them a new path in life leading to a period of monastic silence and seclusion.  What Christians must not do is cease to pray for our leaders, with love and hope, and in pursuit of a national life marked by "quietness, peace, godliness and dignity." To abandon this practice, especially at a time when carrying it our may be emotionally challenging, is to abandon hope for better times, and to assist in driving the sword more deeply into the heart of our divided nation.