Welcome to Between The Stools Maundy Thursday watchnight with Jesus and Anne Boleyn, the prism through whom we’ll be seeing the Easter story this year. There won’t be many words but there will be a little music.
We’re following a history theme this year and have spent Lent with the wives of Henry VIII. I saved Anne B until last. There is a parallel between Jesus and Anne’s swiftly organised arrests, sham trials and deaths – along with others. And the others matter too. We don’t know the men with Jesus’ names but Anne died with her brother George, Francis Weston, Mark Smeaton, William Brereton and Henry Norris.
Those in precarious power abuse it against those who bring a new order which threatens theirs – not by military might, but words. I am not saying that Anne is Jesus (I did wonder about who else’s spirit she embodies), but she and several others we have or will speak of can also be included in our watchnight… Mary Stuart, Jane Grey, Katherine Howard, Elizabeth Barton The Nun of Kent, and our Magdalene Sunday lady. This isn’t about depressing ourselves or dwelling on horror. I actually wish to speak against that, and the vlogger who criticised a television channel for not showing a gory execution. What value is there in wallowing in such details and making the cast and crew re-enact it, and us as viewers enter their energy?
Tonight, I want us to be like Job’s comforters – at the start of that book we explored in January – just sitting quietly and being with one who is suffering and faces great trials. I want us to hold hands with, pray with, presence with. I’m not asking you to go over the details of what will happen to Anne and Jesus tomorrow. I am asking you to think on their lives, and where tomorrow’s act will send them (Heaven), and what became of their story after that. We will take that up in Sunday’s sermon.
I also want us to sit with those who are suffering, afraid, and face the end of their lives. That could be you. Do reach out to me if that’s the case (to betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk). Let us reach out – and energy knows no bounds – and hold those, pray with them, to take away fear and discomfort.
After our long silence, with short snatches of music, I will play you a full song, then have a few more words to comfort and send us out in hope
I felt Jesus, Anne and the others say: sit with us because we’d like to sit with you so you feel the loving presence of God and those that have gone before
This song is by Katy Rose; she’s set to music Anne Boleyn’s final poem which she wrote on the eve of her death. I will speak again after briefly
O Death Rock Me Asleep (you heard flashes of the Tudor style music, seemingly anonymous (or by Jordan), published in 1611, transcribed Arnold Dolmetsch in 1898, performed by Rosemary Standley & Helstroffer’s Band, Lumina Vocal Emsemble, Anna Dennis & Voices of Music….note this version misses out several verses below.)
O Death, rock me asleep, Bring me to quiet rest, Let pass my weary guiltless ghost Out of my careful breast. Toll on, thou passing bell; Ring out my doleful knell; Let thy sound my death tell Death doth draw nigh; There is no remedy.
My pains who can express? Alas, they are so strong; My dolour will not suffer strength My life for to prolong. Toll on, thou passing bell; Ring out my doleful knell; Let thy sound my death tell. Death doth draw nigh; There is no remedy.
Alone in prison strong I wait my destiny. Woe worth this cruel hap that I Should taste this misery! Toll on, thou passing bell; Ring out my doleful knell; Let thy sound my death tell. Death doth draw nigh; There is no remedy.
Farewell, my pleasures past, Welcome, my present pain! I feel my torments so increase That life cannot remain. Cease now, thou passing bell; Rung is my doleful knell; For the sound my death doth tell. Death doth draw nigh; There is no remedy
For now I die, I die, I die. attributed to Queen Anne Boleyn d. 19th May 1536
That poem and song ends rather starkly…‘there is no remedy’. I believe there is – he came 1500 years before Anne. I think that rather than forgetting or renouncing her faith – and for that reason I query if this poem is really Anne’s – she laments that, like Jesus, this is her chosen exit strategy. She knows that won’t change, and she may have had honest human feelings about that, as he did. This was her ‘take the cup from me’ moment. But not taking the cup away was an important part of history playing out – not submitting to unstoppable fate or an ogrous potentate’s will…but choosing a life path, focussing on a spiritual perspective. Jesus and Anne knew with Mary, Katherine, Jane and Elizabeth that their end was their beginning.
What happened to them may not happen to you: we are in new times now
We we be thinking about that on Sunday evening, 8pm my time (BST)
Thank you for joining me and I hope to see you again
Please email me by the end of tomorrow if you’d like to come live
Note in the coming music the rise and change to major key in the final chords
Welcome to Between The Stools on 18th December 2022, and our festive service – literally, a festival – called Creature Christmas. This is our third year of such services.
I’ve set a precedent of the title being a single word preceding ‘Christmas’. ‘Creature’ is more alliterative than ‘animal’, and encompasses more than the living, moving oft 4 legged beings which we categorize as non-human. ‘Creature’ suggests that fish, birds and the various creepy crawlies are also included…but it is broader still: it is all things created, including us.
As I hope you’re expecting, Between The Stools does not do conventional, so there will not be a single carol here tonight, and not the usual lessons format that so many other churches as well as secular concerts will offer. Nor will their be secular festive songs, which I admit that I abhor along with the commercialisation of Christmas. This is one of the two times of the year where this community is at its most Christian; and yet this will still be very different.
I picked the theme intuitively, but I knew that it wouldn’t be a critter dress up pageant and cute toys or cartoons, although I do intend to feature some animals.
Let us pray and we shall explore more
I wondered if now was the time for an end of year community chat? Some may be joining for something seasonal, perhaps new to us, and I don’t wish to risk alienation so early on, and yet I do believe in being honest and taking risks.
I will for now cast a swift eye over this past year, and ask you to pause and do the same.
I ask you to use your inner eye, your spiritual eye. What has really been happening in the world, and what might the events be signifying? Are there ways to see those events outside of what the mainstream media is telling us? YES! I say. On my first Christmas service, which was also our first full length service, I believed us to be on the cusp of era-defining change, and that didn’t seem to come. I am bored of being told: it’s next year. But think of who has left us this year…what is being broken down, yes even through the events that are making us mad and anxious. I know that we may all have on our minds not only the places where that there has been conflict and displacement (I note which is the best known), but fears over costs and strikes. I believe that these overreaches will lead to the end of certain systems that have hitherto oppressed us. I will not make further comment on those this time except to say that I stand with those who have stood up to energy companies over their greed-induced orchestrated price hikes.
I also note that mainstream entertainment media is often showing us historical dramas about the end of eras, when those who had been the powerful few fall amidst a public awakening.
Let us take a moment, and rather than sit in fear and regret, see a pattern of hope emerging from what may seem like dark times. No, I may not know about your year as you may not know about mine – although you may know I lost my home a year ago and am not yet settled and still await justice, and that is far from all going on with me. I say that to illustrate I’m not saying this glibly from a place of ease. But as I reflected, I started to see new shoots in what had felt like very ploughed up nude earth, sitting there fallow and forgotten. I started to notice the nature nestling in those wilded bits. I started to learn to be in nature, in places that didn’t seem beautiful, that didn’t seem interesting or hopeful and to watch the seasons, and to listen.
As I write, I can hear many birds, despite the freezing weather that’s putting off some human movements, chattering in seeming delight. What might their tones mean, other than rejoicing at a newly replenished source of food? Might they carry messages…for us?
I learned that bird song soothes human nerves due to its heavenly frequency, as does whale song; avian arias are connected to the solfeggio scale which is healing.
So I’m going to play you some and invite you to consider your year…maybe you’ll want to come back to this
This is a song by the actual Birds; but I encourage seeking out solfeggio and Gregorian chants
We’ve not done liturgy before at Between The Stools – I’m not a fan – but I decided to write something like it for this time:
God of animals and us, bless and keep us as we gather and consider the theme of your birth
If we feel sadness, bring us hope and comfort
If we feel alone, bring us companions and care
If we feel anger, quell our iresome breast
If we feel confusion, irritation, disbelief, cynicism… will you help us put those aside
Fill our hearts, and give us outward signs of fullness
Give us our daily bread, and fire, and bath and give us joy
Give us peace and insight; if we await resolution, especially as the recipient of injustice, let that show itself
If we have been unjust, show us how to right the balance and be reconciled
Give us not easy, convenient restoration that masks resentment and cracks
but the deep, lasting transformative kind
Amen
SERMON
My first reaction to this theme – apart from attempting to broadcast it live from a stable – was to seek out the animals in the Christmas story. There’s Mary’s donkey that she rode to Bethlehem, the oxen in the stall with her, Joseph and the New Born One…what other animals might have been witness to that uncommon delivery suite? Sheep are present with their keepers at the angelic host spectacular…and then, a year on, those wise men, those ‘keepers of the secrets of the heavens’ on their camels.
Well, some of you may already know that not one of those critters is in the Biblical text. The only camel is in John The Baptist’s hair shirt in the next section. Jesus explicitly rides on a donkey into Jerusalem at the start of Holy Week, but we’re not told that his mum (with him inside) had any such vehicle – it’s conjecture (although interesting symmetry). Similarly, the Magi’s mode of transport is unnamed. And my New International Bible doesn’t even say the word ‘stable’ – Mary uses a manger for a crib because there is no room in the inn, so we deduce that the Holy Family is in a byre. We don’t know who or what else inhabits with them; our annual animal tableau is a fabrication as much as the knitted ones. The nearest we get to animals in the Gospel accounts – there are but two – are that shepherds watched their flocks. But my Bible doesn’t even mention the ovines by name.
(Video link at the bottom)
I could broaden to the rather meaty topic of animals in the Bible, which includes sea cows (their skin is on the ark of the covenant in Numbers 4, NIV) and in the King James version, unicorns! (Numbers 24:22). In Job we meet dinosaurs, but I’m saving him for next month. I could focus on the sheep, donkey, camel, ox that we’re so used to associating with Christmas.
As I skimmed memory and concordance for animals, some themes arose.
1) Animals are often used to point to something to assist human understanding
They are similes: ‘As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs for you…’ (Psalm 41) gazelles, goats and doves feature in The Song of Songs. The flies, frogs, cows and locusts of the Plagues of Egypt can be read as the God of Israel overcoming the corresponding Egyptian gods; they are three quarters of the symbols of the canonical evangelists; they’re in prophetic visions (Ezekiel and Revelation); they are at the punchline of parables (the rich man and the camel); disappearing doves signified the displacement of deluge; Jonah’s whale (or sea monster) made him reconsider his refusal; Balaam’s donkey saw something heavenly which his responsible human hadn’t. (Num 22). Animal sacrifices had specific meaning, but I am deeply discomforted by that subject.
2) I wondered what sort of God these animals pointed to, the God whom we celebrate entering our world at this time. A God who notices a sparrow fall, and who grants an ass the gift of speech to rebuke its owner for hitting it, but then commands slaughter of animals for his own appeasement. As I sought animal references, I was reminded of several unpalatable deeds of the God (should that have a capital G?) we’re remembering. Zechariah 9, the passage quoted by Matthew about the gentle king on a donkey, involves a God protecting his people from marauders, and destroying corrupt nations’ power on the sea (this phrasing is significant) but I baulked at some descriptions of bloody teeth and writhing in agony; the Syro-Phoenician woman calls herself a dog before a Jesus who seemed disinterested in healing her family because she’s not of the right people. And there’s the God of those aforementioned Plagues….
I just wanted to acknowledge my struggle, and say that if you too ask yourself these questions, you are not alone. I hope these are notions to explore together, especially in person when we have discussions. For now, I offer as I put in my first novel’s sequel:
that God is the sun behind our cloud of human misconception, or like the backcloth behind our stage scenery. Sometimes we frame and set Her off beautifully, and sometimes we obscure Him or get in His way. We have to discern what reveals God, and what conceals. If ever the God I’d like to believe in, the kind of being I instinctually know truly ought to be God, clashes with what I’m told about God – if God appears vengeful or punishing or excluding – then that’s not of God. So I’ve been left with a sense of love and approval of God on a deep, experiential level, even if it seems to contradict what I’m surrounded with
I hope that I might offer some insights towards resolution in this next section
Out of the Christmas story animals, I wondered about making a mini sermon on sheep: they are in Genesis 4, the first sacrifice (by one of the first children); key Old Testament figures Moses and David are shepherds, literally and figuratively; shepherds are one of two groups who are told of Jesus’s birth; John the Baptist heralds Jesus as the Lamb of God, taking away the sins of the world, thus ending the precedent set by Abel; God’s people are called straying sheep (by Isaiah 40:11, 53:6 and 1 Peter 2:25). Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd (John 10:11), asking Peter to ‘feed his lambs’ (Jn 21:15); and his final biblical appearance is in Revelation (ch5 and 14) as a slain Lamb who alone is worthy to open scrolls, and whose Book of Life (ch21) determines whether you are a sheep or a goat (Mt 25) at the Pearly Gates. One could call that a mixed metaphor… but we might see Jesus both as coming to care for us, steer us back onto the path, and change the old relationship with God.
I am tempted to take a least expected creature – snake – whom we hear of in traditional carol services’ first reading. I like that those 9 lessons set up Jesus from the beginning of the Bible and humanity, showing why he was needed, and the regular reminders of his coming. It’s usual to understand that Jesus is the seed of woman who will crush the snake’s head. Thus Jesus’s first mention is in a poetic, misogynistic curse at the end of the Garden of Eden. Like many, I questioned the real meaning of this rich passage, which so vaguely alludes to Mary and the coming of the Messiah. However, I did think that Jesus is indeed in the story, but in a different sort of cryptic way. I once wondered if the antihero of Genesis 3 was Jesus’ first appearance. The reason for that astonishing assertion – and it’s not mine alone – is that the Hebrew for the said snake is nachash, ‘shining one’, recalling the archenemy Lucifer, son of the morning (Isaiah 14:12). But it’s also used about the snake held aloft in Numbers 21 to cure the people of snake bite; ‘snake’ also can be rendered from ‘burning one’ which has the same Hebrew root as the angelic seraphim. Jesus refers to that snake story in John 3:14, likening himself to that healing image lifted up to rescue the people. Note that this comes in his speech to Nicodemus, just before that famous verse which is called The Bible In A Nutshell, specifically teaching that God sent his Son (assumed to be the speaker) to believe and have life…
Hence, I saw the Garden Snake not as diabolical temptation but divine call to adventure, upgrading from a walk in the park/garden to the whole human experience: taking the red pill.
I am less certain about my article now; I am aware that the call to adventure can seem callous when so much of earthly existence involves suffering. Theologically, the Serpent seems to oppose God and is cursed by him, set against this coming Seed that will crush him. Could Jesus really be the problem and solution? Is he here to give us enlightenment or salvation, or are they snakily entwined?
To understand our joy at Jesus’ coming, and what he is here to do, we must understand the need for him. I found myself fascinated but my head spinning with more ideas than I can do justice to tonight. That thread between a shining or burning being is worth pursuing. Let me offer a snippet, to be taken up further another time, and to inspire your own research.
What I will say – and I might have called this Heretical Christmas – is that I no longer accept the Garden of Eden story of traditional teaching. I’ve long been aware that the text does not name Satan in any form in it. I’ve also wondered: what is so wrong about the Serpent’s question? It’s true! Why did God forbid Adam and Eve to eat from one tree, and why do we accept his curses and banishment as just? Where is the real temptation and sin? Does God wish to remove moral autonomy and knowledge from us, on pain of punishment?
Who is this god? I refer you to my quote above; and I have three possible strands:
2) that God too has needed to evolve (as Ilia Delio suggested);
3) or that the writers and translators have fashioned a god in their own immature understanding
I have since read New Age writings based on ancient Sumeria which states that there are other worldly beings of reptilian form which are not benign. Like the Cathars, there was the belief in two gods, and one wasn’t good. Immediately I am resisting the notion that God the Creator isn’t good, and that the God I experientially know is not the one who made all things. But I do feel that there is something in this: that there is a High King Of Heaven, and under deities. The biblical text uses Elohim which is plural and Yahweh, the Holy Name. In the NIV, Elohim is rendered God, and Yahweh (or Jehovah) is Lord.
So which are we meeting here…and in other difficult passages? Is the Serpent one of these deities, or Annunki, trying to scupper Yahweh’s garden? Is it true that his temptation was a fruit of flesh? Are there dual bloodlines being set up here? (I am mindful of the Serpent Seed theory and its critique).
Gnostic Kabbalists believe the serpent to be our kundalini or life energy, and link serpent to archangel Samael. They see the serpent as an inner force, not outer being.
Without a thorough knowledge of Hebrew, I think it’s very hard to really grasp this multilayered story…and so I’d like to move on to other biblical serpents.
Whilst acknowledging the parallels between Jesus’ birth and mission and Moses, it strikes me that the miracle God chose for Moses and Aaron to demonstrate His power to Pharaoh was a staff turning into a snake (Exodus 3 and 7). This links the shepherding (the word that ‘pastor’ comes from) and this very different beast. A staff rescues and pulls back; it is for walking, beating a way…a serpent resembles a stick, although it writhes and has life and curls, whilst a stick is fairly straight and static. Is there a symbolic nexus in this alchemy? I believe that such motifs need contemplating.
The release from oppression seems very pertinent and to us, not just those historic periods.
I see something in the prophecies about the same few nations being vanquished; that God hears his people’s cry; that rulers and people who oppress receive their comeuppance: just as Herod did for killing the newborns to obliterate Jesus, Pharaoh and his people suffered plagues that corresponded to their infanticide (the Nile, dumping ground of the baby’s bodies turning red; the slaying of their firstborn, as pointed out by Rabbi David Fohrman).
Does the serpent bookend like the Lamb? Revelation features a shining being, One like the Son of Man (ch1), and also the Dragon (ch12), which is a form of serpent; and the Beast of ch13, 17… which brings back the woman and child with a beast from Eden, and my favourite, ch18….the Fall of Babylon. It is a kingdom that is still with us, and I believe we are witnessing its fall. The city which ends the Bible is also shiny, full of precious stones and a light from God. The sea which is no longer present is a metaphorical legal term for oppression and waters which wiped away oppressors.
Yet I can’t quite round off glibly that Rev 22 is an all round happy ending (it also precludes dogs from heaven!!) OF COURSE OUR BELOVED PETS ARE THERE
What I would like to leave you with is the hope of the new kingdom, or queendom, coming, and we can truly say:
Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory Of The Coming Of The Lord.
I believe that Jesus witnessed that Garden and was prepared as it unfolded; he has been, accomplished his mission, and will come again
a pause
I felt the need to spend time with animals and see what they wanted to say
how God might speak through them
lower beings in one way, but
higher in others
our mirror
showing unconditional love
knowing us better than we know ourselves
This is what we learn from creatures this Christmas
I also wish to speak for animal justice; that I see them as equal beings that many of us haven’t truly understood; that humans can oppress other species in the mistaken belief that we rule them, and that they must work for us – or at least not be a nuisance, or forfeit their existence. We cannot call ourselves enlightened until we stop treating animals in inhumane ways…there is irony in the phrase, since animals treat us better than we treat them.
I have a short video, for us to contemplate all I’ve said.
Before I show it, I would like to wish you all a blessed Christmas
and to invite you to join me again on January 8th which will be on Elvis and Job
Thank you for joining me, and Good Night
Pictures and music by me (the piece is called King of All Time)
This began with a video which I made today – enjoy the sounds of nature which are healing, and the sun rising. I found a tomb and placed a (not very well) folded cloth. (I can’t help but think of Lolly Willowes!)
I was aiming for the Kate Winslet on bow of the Titanic look
We’ve been following a Titanic theme this year, throughout Lent, and culminating in this, Holy Week. Last week my book was launched on the day that Titanic left Southampton, 110 years ago; we’ve followed her journey into the Atlantic, sitting up with her as she sank in real time into the small hours of Friday. So many Titanic stories end there, or shortly after you may just see weary wet survivors clamber aboard the Carpathia, or perhaps even reach the dock at New York, but I’m aware of only one aftermath story, and one – other than my own – which takes us further into the lives of those who survived – and investigated justice for those who didn’t.
I’ve been saying all weekend – for we met on Friday and Saturday – and during Lent, that the end of the story and this series was not 220am on 15th; nor tomorrow night as the Carpathia reaches New York with 700 unexpected extra passengers; nor even when the inquests end – I have my own. Titanic’s story is a longer one than the usual retelling, and it continues, just as Jesus’ story did not end at 3pm on Friday.
I’m going to start with a prayer and then I’m going to tell it to you.
You’ll be used to many names in the cast – Second Officer Lightoller, hero of A Night To Remember; villainous Ismay who pushed the ship to go too fast and then took women’s places in the lifeboat; the sequence of events from noon on 10th April 1912, curiously missing much of the voyage – some stories start on the night of the sinking. All the movies I’ve seen – and I do believe I’ve seen most that have ever been made, from silent shorts made within a month of the event, to censored foreign propaganda – spend half or more of their length on the sinking: some narratives let it take three quarters of the running time. You’ll perhaps know the ice warnings, the words allegedly spoken from crow’s nest and bridge, in cabins and control rooms – even down the minute of when lifeboats left. But it’s a merely five day tale, repeating many motifs enough to make us think that they must be fact. Here is my version:
Long before Lightoller, or even J Bruce Ismay, begins the story of transatlantic trade via passenger ships. Around the time of Darwin and Jane Eyre, in the 1840s, the notion of more luxurious – and class divided – sea crossings began, with a joined up train connection. I was able to understand this better via visiting Bristol, the city proud of its contemporary resident, IK Brunel, whose ships were the Titanics of his day. Bigger than what had gone before, the iron, triple screw steamer SS Great Britain had a grand dining room and a salon for classy passengers heading for the States. She too came a cropper on her maiden voyage – not even making it out of the Bristol channel – but continued a long international career from her rival port.
I have visited several other British ship building ports, such as Newcastle and Liverpool, and it helped prepare me to critically engage with Belfast’s Titanic Quarter. I understood the pride that these cities have in their produce and legacy, and the angling of public information. They weren’t going to criticise their sometimes extant ship yards any more than Bristol was going to tell you that the SS Great Britain floundered so early on and mostly worked from Liverpool.
That is hint number one about the materials and museums. Then there is the politics of the time: the Anglo-Irish struggle so entwined with the building of Titanic.
I now saw that the building was more than just backstory – it was essential plot.
I didn’t know about the coal strike for many years. It was such an important factor, so why wasn’t it in books and films? How did Titanic manage to obtain enough coal for such a huge ship to travel a long distance, when other competitors did not? And why had the Californian, a passenger ship, gone out into the ocean with no passengers, only a cargo of wool, at this time?
Why wasn’t international relations made more prevalent in retellings? Why wasn’t the naval connection talked about?
And why wasn’t JP Morgan in these stories? I have seen him once, a small part.
I wonder if many start to feel that the usual story doesn’t make sense; I note that the ‘shocking new evidence’ documentaries weren’t very shocking, but seemed to posit a new narrative that tried to satisfy the restlessness. The coal bunker fire and weak metal theory does not satisfy me.
Some people feel that the Gospels narrative of the resurrection doesn’t satisfy. No, I’m not about to offer a liberal, rational, science and fact only critique, for I absolutely believe in miracles and the unlimited power of God. For me, the resurrection is literal and true on all levels. What doesn’t work for me is some of the telling, jumping between Peter and Mary… rather than unco-ordinated fictions to explain the birth of a nonconforming movement, I think it shows that some cutting and pasting has been done to make new heroes of the story and minimalise the most central person after Jesus himself: Mary. In fact the account of this morning is full of Maries.
I wonder if one could draw a parallel between Peter the disciple and Officer Lightoller: men who had the story retold to frame themselves as main characters and enduring figures of honour. I realise that the notion might offend Petrine fans – namely, the established churches – and any relatives of Lightoller, but not to be able to speak this is also offensive, especially when other figures are vilified and underrepresented – like those Maries.
I hope it won’t seem vain and inappropriate to mention my novel in all this. For it has something kindred to tonight’s theme: that death is not the end. The Titanic sinks halfway into The Jury In My Mind; unlike many films, the denouement is not the demise of the ship, with perhaps a brief coda.
Similarily, the Gospel stories do not end with the death of Jesus. Yes, I am aware of the current scholarship about Mark’s stark end, the ‘In Night and Ice’ of the Gospels, and that something seems to be tacked on. Even if the original did end suddenly, that may be about an unfinished, interrupted manuscript – not that it was the end of the story. I can think of reasons why it would suit those who opposed Jesus and a miraculous, positive end to his ministry. But Jesus had another 6 weeks on Earth, and we believe that he lives on, not just in spirit, as we all do, but as God. The story of Christianity as a distinct religion is only beginning at the historical source for this weekend’s celebrations; and Jesus’ teachings live on and have shaped two millennia. But for me, he is more than a teacher and healer.
I think that both the Titanic and the story of Jesus were watershed moments in history which can be understood on many levels. They didn’t happen to just occur early in a new century around changes in leadership; these events showed that a new era was here, and a breaking down of the old inflated structures of power with their gates and guards to privilege and boon.
You might feel that there is one way in which the Titanic and Easter can’t be compared: given my repeated assertion that Jesus is supernatural and actually rose again, soon after, isn’t it wrong to link him with a ship full of souls who did not rise? Yes, there is a film and book called Raise The Titanic – but that is about the wreck, not the lives of 1500 people; and it seems, after 110 years of corrosion on the deep dark ocean floor, and being in two parts, that bringing the Titanic up may be impossibl; although the English warship The Mary Rose was brought out of the water four centuries later, there might be questions about the ethics or such an action. This starts to step away from my point: not a discussion of salvaging vs grave robbing, public purse vs public interest, but in the question of why some people die and some are saved. Does God impose his will on us? Is there any consent on our part, and can that ever be fair, or helpful? Are there deeper levels of greater good being served, and is there any deeper levels of consciousness? I will no more than peek through the door tonight on that although it receives some discussion in my book, mostly from a microcosmic view. I think that suffering is a service topic – if not a recurring series – that I would like to return to freshly.
Cameron’s Titanic movie had the motif of a butterfly – someone unfurling after their time inside into fullness of life. That is as true of Jesus as it is of Kate Winslet’s character – and it can be true of us, too.
I want to close with the statement that the narratives of now, then, and then are linked and part of a greater plan. And that God’s plan will always overcome whatever schemes are afoot. We are again at such a turning point, and we can be a part of building that new kingdom.
My friend, teacher and author Lauri Lumby, said that we are an Easter people – not a Lent or a Good Friday one, as so many actually live. I have said that today is the fulcrum of our faith – but it is also the fulfilment of it, and it continues to be in new layers.
Thank you for listening and being here.
I play you out with my Titanic piece: hear the waves at th end, not of a doomed ship, but from the perspective of one having let go and rising aabove
Titanic blogging will continue, more sporadically, througut the year
as I will on other topics
Our next service is on May 8th about friendship – same time (8pm GMT+1)
Do introduce yourself or reach out to me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk
Goodnight, and Easter blessings to you all!
I’m not sure I should end with a book plug, so I won’t read this out but if you’re interested and kind enough to support my book, it’s here The Launch of The Jury In My Mind
This night is Easter Eve; I was surprised that it is celebrated as much as Easter morn in some churches who are busy transforming darkness into light, burning braziers in and outside their edifices, proclaiming the risen Lord at least nine hours too early.
At Between the Stools, Jesus rises at dawn – tomorrow, GMT+1.
But I do want to think about fire: not the fire of new life just yet, but two other kinds, not seen and celebrated.
By tradition, today Jesus descended into Hell, as per the Petrine epistle (that makes me think of school science dishes and a character in the cartoon, The Land Time Forgot). This is a forgotten place, the underworld, traditionally underground and without daylight or beauty, a place of torment and suffering without relief, whose only light is from its eternal inferno.
Peter writes – I don’t know how he knew this, did Jesus tell him? – that Jesus descended into Hell to preach. I recall, 20 years ago, hearing John Inge say at Ely cathedral that Jesus was looking for his friend Judas. That always moved me: but it assumes that Judas went to Hell. I thought about Judas last year on Spy Wednesday, and wondered aloud if Judas was who we’re encouraged to think he was, and perhaps that he was not in a place of punishment.
This year, we’ve been following a Titanic theme with Between The Stools. There is a set of people on the Titanic who were in a forgotten, unseen place of darkness fire and heat, forever toiling. These are known as firemen – not the emergency service kind with hoses, but the men who kept those hungry fires burning each day so that these great ships could run.
From A Night To Remember
This job was around 70 years earlier, on the SS Great Britain, when steam power was new. Had the much vaunted IK Brunel thought about what kind of day those men would have when he designed those engines? Did Titanic’s engineer Thomas Andrews, who Violet Jessop tells us was caring about ship staff? The men worked four hour shifts – I’m relieved it was no longer – but the intensity of shovelling every few moments, bending, lifting, pushing heavy coal into a hot greedy mouth must have been back breaking as well as sweat inducing. There was a simulation at Southampton’s SeaCity museum; being interested in the great boilers, I gladly essayed but soon tired after barely a minute. The SS Great Britain guidebook tells us that the stokers came up after a shift, desperate for cool – regardless of the outside temperature. The Nomadic’s guidebook – that’s the tender ship to the Titanic – says it took 36 hours to build sufficient pressure to run. Hence, her engines were started well before the voyage and weren’t stopped. How did that work for her big sister during a coal strike, whose engines were the size of small cranes?
When criticised for not driving into danger when the iceberg appeared, I read a casual statement that most of the ship would have been saved, just the crew at the front would have been sacrificed – that word again, as we thought of yesterday. I was surprised that 71 firemen from Titanic survived, for being so far down in the ship, out of sight, close to where the iceberg struck: I feared that one element or another would claim these undervalued men, hidden from the sight of grand passengers.
In movies, we see these men in passing: they are the people onto whom the deluge pours in. We gauge by their actions what state of the sinking we are up to. We see them dive under the closing watertight doors – which I think is artistic license; they stand in deepening water, commanded to keep the leviathan running, putting themselves at risk. Only once have I seen a film that focusses on these men and gives them names.
Many corporations and structures and lucrative schemes involve someone at the bottom, working unseen, to give those on top what they want. This is literally seen aboard the Titanic.
Easter is a time to recall that nowhere is beyond God’s care or knowledge, or ability to reach.
It is time to bring out the unappreciated – as the pandemic did – and celebrate their importance; to rethink the roles we ask others to do to run our own enterprises, and for people to stand up to the unfair tasks and masters they are given.
Easter is a time of subverting power.
In recent weeks, a spiritual sister, Stana Warren, has often mentioned Dante’s Inferno in our gatherings, relating our themes to those in this classic story. It has made me want to re-engage with this work, and to see if it illuminates other narratives as well as world events. I can’t do it justice this time, but I sense that it will work on Titanic as well as the Easter story, for both are true but also deeply symbolic.
Although in real time, Jesus and the Titanic are in a dark place at the moment, we too will be lighting a kind of fire, and remembering those who died – especially those firemen but also of course Jesus. This is the eternal flame – not of suffering and being trapped, but of hope, and rising.
It’s our birthday: Easter marks the beginning of Between the Stools, one year ago.
I planned to mark this date but didn’t know it would fall on this day in Holy Week. In the story of Jesus, Wednesday isn’t mentioned, but Catholic tradition calls it ‘Spy Wednesday’, when Judas Iscariot agrees to betray Jesus. As I did table turning in a previous year, I wanted to focus on a different day in Holy Week.
This is a positive view of Judas, a radical one, and sometimes, a personal one. I realised that this theme allowed me to express what I had already hoped to – at the end of this piece.
The horror of Holy Week isn’t that Judas’ actions led to the arrest, trial, and horrible execution of Jesus, his friend and master. It is that a friend and follower gave Jesus away.
I suspect that we all have experience of betrayal. Not necessarily of being dobbed in, or with life threatening consequences, but of the aberration of our trust. Perhaps it’s the heartbreak at the core of betrayal which is more commonly experienced. It could be lying, or stealing; it could be the breaching of our understanding in a relationship. I thought you loved me. I thought you were my friend. I thought I and my secrets were safe with you. I thought you were supporting me. I thought we were committed to… I thought I mattered to you. Betrayal can be broad. It means that someone you thought was onside, isn’t. They’ve left. They’ve put something or someone else first. In Judas’s case, it was a temporary new loyalty to the chief priests in exchange for money. We may not understand what motivated the person who hurt us – just as I don’t see why, from the biblical gospel narratives, why Judas behaved as he did. In fact, the narratives don’t really tie up. I knew that I needed to seek deeper and wider for answers.
As I did, I could see several strands to take, which flowed away from each other.
Even if Jesus had escaped, or vanquished his foes (I love that phrase) – which of course, he did – or if he had won the trial, or been rescued, Judas’ part would have been the same.
In law, the conspiracy to commit is as seen as badly as actually carrying out a crime. The plotting doesn’t have to come to fruition. Judas was a cog in the wheel – he didn’t hammer in a nail. But his cog turned others – without him, the machinations towards Jesus’ death could not have turned.
Judas seemed to understand this – at least, in Matthew’s gospel. Judas didn’t need arrest, conviction and courts to tell him what he’d done. He didn’t wait for revenge or to be found out. Although he returned the money, he decided that the price he had to pay back for the silver he acquired was his own life. And as his friend was hung up to die, so was he. Notice that Judas died first, without finding out if his cog had turned the machine all the way.
I think on our attitude towards those who commit terrible things and when we are tempted to say: they deserve death. What does this say about us? This will form the topic of my June service; but I want us to think on our need for punishment. What of restoration rather than revenge? Is what Judas did forgivable?
I am sad that Judas wasn’t reinstated and redeemed, but I believe he was forgiven.
Is anything beyond God’s love? Of course not.
Perhaps the truth is – does it seem to be beyond ours?
I was moved by John Inge’s sermon at Ely Cathedral: that the harrowing of hell was Jesus looking for his friend Judas. But that assumes the existence of hell, and that Judas went there. Note that this tradition comes from one of Peter’s epistles.
Compare Judas with Peter: Jesus says that Satan is interested in both of them, but whereas Peter will be sifted as wheat and come through, it would be better for Judas not to be born. Peter was reinstated publicly, given the keys, made first bishop and has many churches named after him. The fewer churches called St Jude are dedicated to the other disciple of that name, who wrote a miserable little letter beloved of harsh tract writers, and is patron of the police. Judas Iscariot isn’t patron of anything and I’ve never come across anything dedicated to him… although I have heard him channelled by new agers. I’ll come back to that. I will also come back to the Biblical narratives and how skewed they are towards Peter, and how little we hear of Judas.
I want to take a moment to consider the end of Judas’ life. I believe it wasn’t the only thing he could have done – if he did take his own life, as we’ll see.
I’m probably going to do a full service or even series on suicide. I am writing a novel on it.
I feel very strongly about it, and have deep concerns about the ‘prevention’ movement and how indicating feeling like this can entrap into a dangerous mental health system with its limited perspectives and understanding and amelioration. Prevention is a broken system that wants to fix by control rather than love, listening, attention…giving a life worth living.
I want to say to anyone listening who may be considering this:
There is always another way; it is never the must-do life path; we are meant to overcome the obstacle that makes us feel so hopeless.
I know of someone who died less than a year ago who was tempted to take their life. He had been involved in Vietnam. When he realised what he had been part of orchestrating, he felt so sickened with himself and the suffering he caused, and the cause he had furthered, that he wanted to die. He planned to in such a way that would speak out against the system he had worked for. But then he felt that his greater challenge was to keep living in the knowledge of what he had done, and to expose the system. This he did for some decades.
Paul in the Bible could have taken his life over the persecutions he presided over as Saul. He had been part of executing believers. Instead, he worked with the very movement that he had tried to stamp out.
I would like to pray for those feeling suicidal and those bereaved from suicide.
————–
I want to spend time on the biblical account of Judas. He is not the only one of that name: a twin disciple and brother of Jesus are also so-monikered. There are 5 Judases in the New Testament. But this is the Judas we’re most aware of, even if we don’t know the Bible well.
We only have the calling story of about half of the disciples. In every synoptic gospel, we are told that a core 12 were picked from among Jesus’ followers, after these named ones, and some chapters after Jesus has begun his ministry. It is here that Judas’ name appears in a list – always at the end. He is one of the few in Jesus’ life who has a surname – Iscariot – and in John, we know his father’s name (Simon). But in each list, and in John 6 (the ‘to whom shall we go?’ speech) Judas’s name is appended with the fact that he was the betrayer, even though this is early in the narrative. John calls him a devil. Like Miss Jean Brodie, we are told of the perfidy of the protagonist, long before it arises in the plot.
Three of the gospels are silent about Judas until Holy Week. John gives us a little anecdote in an incident which all the others record: when Jesus is anointed by a ‘sinful’ woman, on the Friday before Good Friday – although Luke seems to tell the same story much earlier, in ch 8 (his Holy Week starts in ch 22) and John seems to change the host. The disciples grumble against the woman’s waste of expensive perfume en masse. Their dialogue is rarely given to individuals, except Peter. John tells us that the remark is Judas’s. John also says that Judas is the money bag keeper, but that he helps himself to it. John – or the writer of the gospel bearing that name – claims to have an insight into Judas’ heart. Interesting that the supposedly last gospel to be written, long after the events it tells, is the one who has retained a window into a man’s soul. John says that Judas doesn’t complain about the expense because he cared about the poor, but (somewhat irrationally) because he is a thief. John reminds us that Judas is the betrayer-to-be. John does not have the next piece.
Somewhat suddenly, in a tiny scene soon after, we are told that Judas agrees to betray Jesus. This is the event of today, Wednesday of Holy Week. Jesus predicts his betrayal to his disciples; concurrently, Matthew reports that the priests are plotting against him. We don’t fully know why, from that passage. Matthew and Mark say that the priests don’t want it to be in what will become Holy Week, which was an important Jewish festival, because they fear that the many pilgrims in Jerusalem will cause a riot. Yet, this is just when they do carry out the plot. Luke also mentions finding a crowd-free time, although not it being the Feast.
As with Anne Boleyn, when created, the execution of the plot is swift. This is even faster.
Then Judas, without any apparent reference to these priests, whom he seems not to know, goes to them voluntarily and makes a bargain for 30 pieces of silver. Matthew has him ask the priests: what will you give me? Mark and Luke suggest that the offering is from the priests, which Judas accepts. We’re told he begins watching for a time to hand Jesus over – which comes in less than 48 hours.
At the Last Supper on the next evening, that time comes. It’s strange to me that this story, made in all Christian denominations as a key, if not weekly, part of their worship, has two other elements which do not seem appropriate to the instigation of a sacrament. In Luke, there’s the argument about who’s the greatest; and in all gospels, there’s the betrayal. The Take Eat, This is My Body/Blood broken/shed for you lines come after Jesus randomly says again, ‘I tell you the truth (a kind of formula statement), one of you will betray me.’
Now, why do that? This puts fear and division among the disciples, who didn’t react when they were told a day or two ago. Is it because Jesus adds ‘woe to that man’ (Mt & Lk)? Now they ask, ‘surely not I?’ Peter is given voice for all – that he would die rather than desert, and the others agree. In John, Peter’s preferential treatment goes down a peg. Peter asks Jesus via the narrating disciple, the one who leans on Jesus’ bosom – is that John, Mary, or Lazarus? Peter needs to go via this intimate to get the question answered. In Matthew, Jesus states that it is Judas – to all the others? They don’t react. In Matthew, the bread dipping sign has already happened, but not in Mark; in John, Jesus then offers the bread to Judas.The NIV study notes suggest that this act of food sharing – a sign of friendship and safety – is not only doubly treacherous, but that Judas is given a chance not to betray Jesus. The bread is not mentioned in Luke: Jesus says that ‘the hand of he is with mine on the table’. In Matthew, Jesus calls Judas ‘friend’ – and to do what he came for (26:50). Only in John does Judas exit the Last Supper, and Jesus says to him: “Do what you must quickly.”
That’s the most curious and interesting line.
Otherwise, we don’t know that Judas has left the group. His absence from only 12 people isn’t noted, although his re-entry is the absolute catalyst for the fulfilment of Jesus’ ministry.
Every gospel tells us about the ensuing trip to the garden to keep watch, and then Judas appearing, just on cue, with an armed band of men to take Jesus. In the synoptics, Judas kisses Jesus; but in John, Jesus asks the band who they want; they say his name, and Jesus confirms that is him. So no kiss of identification needed.
This strikes me as odd – isn’t Jesus well known? He just rode into town on a donkey, feted by palms. He’s spoken to a couple of thousand at a time. His public works frightens the chief priests enough to kill him on false charges, but they don’t actually know who he is?
Each time Judas does something, or Jesus predicts what he’ll do, the gospels quote the Old Testament scripture which it fulfils.
In Mark and Luke, we don’t hear of Judas again. John leaves him with his own leaving, and the multi-layered line: ‘and it was night.’ But in Matthew 27, we have an important scene. Note that like Easter Sunday, it begins with the words ‘early in the morning.’ Is there a hint in v3 – ‘on seeing that Jesus was condemned’ – that Judas hoped the plan would be foiled? Seized with remorse, he returns to the priests and returns the money, saying that he has sinned, for the blood of an innocent man is on him. So Judas proclaims Jesus innocent, before Pilate does, and assumes the outcome of Jesus’ capture – his death. The priests, who are the really wicked people in the story, tell Judas that it is his responsibility, not theirs – even though they are the ones who plotted, willingly employed Judas to help them find Jesus, and paid a handsome sum for his services. It’s they that will try him on false charges and execute Jesus, knowing that his real threat is to their institutional power, not any guilt of a true crime. Heresy doesn’t just have to be theological, as we’re well aware.
Judas throws the money in the temple and leaves. The priests say that they legally can’t put it in the treasury as it’s blood money – is that for the blood of Jesus or the blood of Judas? So they buy a field to bury foreigners in, Matthew tells us, formerly known as the Potter’s Field; but the end of the Judas story causes it to be rechristened to the Field of Blood – which readers some decades on are meant to recognise. For this is where Judas takes his life. It seems clear that for Matthew Judas, felt compunction and his self murder was a punishment for what he did to Jesus. Matthew offers no comment, save a scriptural quote which appears to be a mismash of more than one chapter but also prophet.
Judas appears in one other biblical book – the Acts of the Apostles. As with the gospels, Peter takes a suspiciously central stage. In the first chapter, they pick a new disciple to make the numbers up, and Peter gives a speech to explain how the vacancy arose. He begins by saying that in Judas Iscariot, Scripture was fulfilled. Judas was one of them, a fellow on their mission – which sounds generous. Peter doesn’t call Judas a betrayer, but states that he ‘served as a guide for those who arrested Jesus.’ Peter’s take on the death of Judas is different. He says that with the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field, later known as Field of Blood – whereas Matthew says that the priests bought it with the money Judas chucked back at them. Peter offers an unnecessarily graphic description of Judas’ death. A commentator said that this death is in the style of those who displease God. As written, it’s a mysterious death. One does not fall in a field ‘headlong’ and burst open… No other party is mentioned… but I wonder if it is divine retribution, or revenge of another. Judas is allowed no remorse in Acts; no returning money, no returning to the priests, no statement of Christ’s innocence.
There is one other factor: the role and relationship of Satan and Judas. We’re twice told that Satan entered him: in Luke, it is prior to Judas’s offering himself to the high priests – this appears to be the reason for his doing so. In John, it’s at the Last Supper. For Satan to enter him at the moment of bread dipping suggests that Satan and he are separate. It also suggests that Judas needed diabolical possession to accomplish his deed – but he had initiated going to the priests without satanic assistance. Was it Satan who motivated Judas to go back to the priests with the money? Was it Satan who convicted Judas of Jesus’ innocence, or did Judas do that despite the possession? Was it Satan who brought about Judas’ demise?
I am not saying that suicide is satanically motivated.
But then I discovered something new about Judas.
I was already noting parallels between Judas and Mary Magdalene, the only two intimates of Jesus to have surnames, which are meant to pertain to where they’re from, but others suggest that they are titles because of what they did. They get negative one line intros – Mary was possessed, Judas a traitor – and are almost silent until Holy Week, when their contribution to the Christian story is so great that they can’t be omitted. They’ve been given bad press, but they also have a recently discovered non-canonical gospel each. These are often called Gnostic, perhaps wrongly, and are fragmentary and very different from the four books in the established Bible, or much of its general tone.
In these gospels, Mary and Judas share something else: that their stories and relationship with Jesus are quite different from how Matthew, Mark, Luke and John portray him; his message to Mary and Judas clashes with the words of Paul, James and Peter.
Lauri Ann Lumby has a different take on Judas in her novel: Song of the Beloved: The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Like others, she has sought to make him other – his black curly hair and accent singling him out amongst the disciples. But for her, his otherness doesn’t motivate or explain his treachery – it is more the explanation of the treachery done to him via the false accounts of him.
Both Maries are channelled by New Age people, as is Jesus, and I’ve even seen a Saul. But never Peter, or the other disciples… except Judas.
Judas Iskariot is channelled in another language, and I’ve read the English translations by the Era of Light website. Judas looks like Jesus but with shorter hair in the graphic, dressed in white with a green cloak thrown over his shoulder, holding a staff and something gold to his chest. He’s smiling warmly, as a man comfortable with himself, and showing great love. ‘Great love’ is how Judas signs off his messages. He is positive and wise. One message implies that his earthly role was quite different to how the Bible portrays him, but also quite knowing, conscious, necessary… and that his soul is basically good.
I have also read that Judas didn’t take his life.
It is clear to me that understanding Judas needs to be on a higher level, beyond the surface narrative that we’re presented.
Contrary to biblical accounts, in some sense, Judas and Jesus were close. They had meetings alone which therefore no other could retell. They had soul business, radical to the accepted beliefs of the world and the extant dominant religious group. There was a deep understanding of message and mission.
Jesus had a destiny to fulfil. He had scriptural prophecies to fulfil. Some today would call this a soul contract. Judas had one with Jesus. Jesus needed to be betrayed by someone he loved. It is a brave and strong and advanced soul who takes on such a role.
In the gospels, Judas never tells Jesus of his regret or asks for his forgiveness. Could he have done so on another level? I have come to understand that we can communicate in an otherworldly way, whether someone is speaking to us, whether we know how to contact them, or is even still in this world. And that we can have our most profound conversations that way.
I’ve come to believe in soul… I prefer agreements, rather than the harsh legalistic binding of the word ‘contract’. But I have always believed in the pre-existence of our souls, and their posthumous continuation. I think we work out a sketch plan before we come to Earth about what our soul lessons will be, who we’ll interact with, what we’ll teach and be taught in return, and what we’ll accomplish, as in fulfil rather than the Georgian drawing room sense.
Judas and Jesus had a profound plan for their lives. Judas agreed to be the person that ‘killed the man that clothed’* the spirit of Jesus, the Son of God, to fulfil that vital fulcrum in the history of humans and God. [*The Gospel of Judas]
When we are betrayed, or suffer any other kind of heartbreak, I think we’re likely to have chosen that on some level as part of our growth plan. Not consciously – and it doesn’t absolve those who hurt us from what their earthly selves do to us, nor us to them. Last Easter, I quoted Cassady Cayne who said that we are here to expand the expression of love. Our love can grow with its sifting as wheat, with the people who challenge us via posing the opposite to that which we are used to, or who we seem to be. They can be propellers to check our complacency, impellors to show up that which impairs our system, ladders which appear as snakes.
I think that many in our personal lives are catalysts and adjuncts. They take on a mantle, play a part to assist us bring out the best in us. Rather than a life plan imposed on us by God, we create it together, with God and the other souls. Like a screenplay, it can be altered – even on the day of shooting, and the cast members are always welcome to improvise. There are other plot possibilities – as I’m learning with my own. Yet I think we do come back to where we are supposed to be.
I am thinking of one who has been my greatest teacher. She has expanded my expression of love and taught me that I have more expanding to do. I am not likening anyone to Judas… but I don’t see Judas in the traditional sense any more. I see him as a brave soul with an extraordinary part at an extraordinary time, a person whose written words are few, whose real role we have to look beyond the page to understand.
So did Jesus love Judas? Yes. He called him friend, even at the moment of his treachery. I think he may have loved him as much as anyone, and yes, I believe that Jesus’ spirit went looking for Judas. I hope he found him and was reconciled. I think that they are working together now, towards the same God-given purpose.
And we can love our Judases, as on some deep soul level, I think they love us. Maybe the way they’re showing it is to fulfil that learning agreement, effected only by their apparent betrayal, withdrawal… Maybe they need our love the most, especially when they don’t yet consciously understand, when they too are not fully free.
I love mine and begin to understand the wonderful higher path that their role is leading me to. Today, I show gratitude for that.
I’ll be back at Sundown on Friday (7.12pm) and 8pm on Sunday – don’t forget we’ve put our clocks forward 1 hr here
Pray with me at home at dawn on Easter morn, your time (more after Friday’s short service)
One of my pictures – painted especially – for you to reflect on during my piece, which is my systematic theology in music
Introducing Elspeth and Between The Stools, and a prayer
Music to meditate to with pictures – all pictures and music are my own (c)
CometMelancholiaSirius, the Morning StarSolar System with BetelgeuseDeath as an Act of Creation (from the film The Fountain)
THE SERMON: 1
I planned this service for last year, inspired by the repeating images of planets in the BBC’s Nativity. I wanted to do a different kind of service – so there’s no traditional carols or readings here. A service away from the obvious and into the epic. I had no idea then how cosmic this Christmas of 2020 would be…
I was brought up with contradictory feelings about outer space. As a child, it was fine to have such an interest – in fact my first music was Holst’s The Planets suite. But I became aware of astrology – to be carefully marked from astronomy – and this was a devilish, sinful, erroneous pseudo science to be avoided. Yet, I have to say, for all those about to quote the Bible at me, that the Star of Bethlehem is literally star of the show – after Jesus of course, and perhaps Mary and Joseph – in this story. We only hear of it in one gospel, Matthew, but it’s captured our imaginations. Secular trees are often topped with stars. Carol sheets are adorned with them. This bright, bright star has a particular shape, a kind of cross-like four axis – is that any accident? The Magi were prescient with their gifts, including myrrh…but the Magi will get their day on epiphany. What I’m trying to set up here, before we go into a musical reflection, is that heavenly bodies are very much part of this heavenly story. Some of you will already be comfortable with that and you’ll be celebrating the Solstice tomorrow as much as Christmas. Some of you may actually be celebrating something other than Christmas – I’m aware that it’s Yule and Hanukkah too. But despite my faith’s broad apron, I make no apologies for this being a service about Christmas, the Christian festival; but I also have no qualms about celebrating Solstice, and about talking about the planets in this service.
This year, I discovered solfeggio and healing sounds. Sounds for otherworldly, epic. I have these on my instrument. I even have sound called Jupiter – sad Jupiter, although he’s meant to be bringer of jollity. I think that this year, the by-passing of Jupiter is about joy. I’m going to play some sounds for us to reflect on whilst we look at pictures of planets I made and think of the epic nature of the Christological Christmas event. [Note: I don’t claim that these are healing or tuned to solfeggio frequencies – I hope that other pieces will be]
In my upbringing, the main attraction was always the sermon, and I make no apologies for mine being evangelical length. I’d also have time for discussion in many of my services, but those parts won’t ever be recorded, and nor will anyone who comes, unless they volunteer to lead and choose to be. There will possibly be more music – the shape of the services is fluid, although they will be unlike established ones, and I won’t be using liturgy. So the services will actually be a little longer and there’ll be a chance to mingle and get to know each other.
It’s horrific that worship has been so restricted and interrupted this year; that Easter didn’t really happen, and that carol services are being held far apart with masks, and you’re expected to leave straight away without socialising. No mulled wine and minced pies! And no singing! I must say that I’m disgusted at this, and at churches for complying without seeming to challenge. If you want to hear more about why I feel that, please read my open letter to Christians which is on the top of my blog, underneath this service. I have much to say about the events of this year and also the systems to be broken down – for they’re crumbling – and what we should do instead. Note that I don’t say ‘replace them’.
[And if you’re interested in why I left the C of E, read here… there are follow up posts]
When we meet next year – and I do hope we’ll meet again – the world will be very different. In a good way. Many of the familiar structures, including church, will not be recognisable.
I’m inviting you to get settled for Cosmic Christmas – the sermon.
It’ll be epic in its scope and snaky in its logic. Prepare yourself….
Karl Barth, the German theologian of the last century, was another who spoke out against the established churches of his land during the Nazi years. For that alone, he feels relevant; but for the rest of tonight, I wish to focus on cosmology, although it will necessarily involve some demonology. Barth changed his theology quite drastically throughout his life, ending up in neo-orthodoxy. As an undergraduate – I am now an overgraduate! – I came across Karl often, so that I feel I want to be on first name terms.
All this surname business links to deeper imbalances I’ll bring up another time, so I’m resisting it here. In his tertiary theological period, he wrote a huge multi-volume Church Dogmatics. Interestingly, Karl did not start his systematic theology with creation, as is standard; he began with Jesus. Although Christians divide their Bible into two testaments, for the two covenants God made with his people, for Karl, Jesus is the only covenant that God made with humans.
I now don’t agree with Karl Barth on many things, but I am interested in his unconventional starting point, which makes sense to me. Like many, I see Jesus as being queued up from that Garden moment – hence we sometimes have a Genesis reading in carol services. Here began the Matrix, and here the seed of our Neo was born. That movie of 20 years ago starring Keanu Reeves feels very apt this year, and the phrase ‘taking the red pill’ has entered popular culture, often standing for those groups who are awake to the Matrix and the need to break free of it. When I saw it at the cinema, one of my companions was less impressed by this dark, stylised action thriller: “Why didn’t he take the blue pill, and we could all have gone hum [Norfolk for ‘home’]”. Indeed, comedian JP Sears has made a sketch this year about Blue Pill people – those who choose to carry on doing what they always did, believing the illusion, even though it is clearly harmful, and trying to pretend that there is no illusion. For them, the blue pill is the safe option.
I used to think that Jesus was actually present in the Garden of Eden, and his first line was ‘hath God said?’ It was on the premise that snake – who is never named as anything but… Snake, is also translatable as The Shining One, the Wise One; and Jesus likened himself to the story of the Children of Israel receiving their first homeopathic healing from snake bite by gazing upon a serpent lifted up. That word for shining was used again. Was he not therefore catalyst and cure? Whereas no lightning struck when I published that blog post, I am revising my view a little.
But I did see that moment as the invitation to stop walking in the park, or garden, and begin an adventure. Humans could drift around in a state of unknowing, or experience it all – the dramas of the human experience. So yes, I believed – unlike Barth – in an upward Fall, to gain more than was lost after Jesus’ act of salvation, not a mere restitution.
But then I felt: look at all that suffering we’ve all been through. Look at the horrors that some have endured. Call this an invitation? What was so bad about the blue pill? And was the Matrix already there, or didn’t that moment create it? Is God playing with us, like in the book of Job, seeing if we can be tempted out of relationship with him, and to find out just what our breaking point is? I felt like CS Lewis said of God after he lost his wife, Joy. Are we rats in your celestial laboratory, Lord? Do you enjoy ‘teaching’ us through pain? A state you invented, along with the frailty of our bodies, the intensity of our emotions, the delicate balance of our natural world…which makes our demise so easy.
And then, you supposedly gave us free will, but that means that we have the capacity for the greatest horrors, of greed, violence, control… and its ultimate expression: enslavement.
I am starting to see how much we are enslaved, and that some familiar Bible verses about our state are not, as ancient too influential teachers have said, about human’s intrinsic sinful nature, but about the way the world operates.
Was this operating system already present in the Garden? Is the Garden literal, you’re wondering, and do I believe it is? Yes and no, I say. There is certainly rich allegory here – I did a whole course over 2 terms on just these chapters. There is much more, especially if one starts to explore Jewish mystical interpretations, and be aware that there are not dissimilar stories in other ancient cultures, including that tree – or rather, the pair of them.
Did God not want us to know the difference between good and evil? Were we innocent, and therefore good, or just ignorant? Isn’t this God who walked with us – for we are encouraged to see ourselves in that first pair – somewhat of a controlling nanny of a God, like our rulers are being to us now? Moral complexities are not something that we are to get involved in. We are told ‘don’t share, not true’ and expected not to need a discussion or evidence – just compliance.
Usually, this story is seen as ‘we couldn’t even keep God’s first commandment’ and thus that our disobedience, our rebellion, required God to send his own Son into this world that so drastically fell in that one act – the eating of the apple, and then lying and hiding – that cosmology was changed in that one moment.
I want to think about that: how precarious our environment, our relationship of walking with the Lord in the cool of the day. All this trouble to create a world, to especially make us in His own image – Their own image – note the plural – and then, it seems five minutes of not yet being recorded time later, and we’re sinning, being cursed and expelled.
And says the apostle but not very saintly Paul, we all died in Adam in that moment: all of us since became sinners, unfit for that perfect garden and walking with the Lord in such intimacy and also plain sight. Just as Adam and Eve felt the need to hide their bodies, now so did God, from us; when he later appeared to Moses, the patriarch law receiver had to turn so that he may not look on God; and traditional Jews will not even name Him.
It’s often seen as brilliant original theology for that early church planter and letter writer to have seen Jesus as a second Adam, the inverse image of the fallen first; the refraction of those squash your painting together and make a two sided butterfly picture. The dark, abysmally human Adam, as prototype to us all, is now mirrored by the perfect Spotless Lamb of God, taking our sins like a scape goat, ending the need for animal sacrifice to appease an angry God, so holy that it’s OK for him to get that angry about our sin and demand that others of his creation are slain to make it alright again.
But I am going to challenge Paul. I am aware that the Bible is a collection edited at a meeting that had we chaired, we might have decided differently. Typically of the ruling class, a few got to speak for the many, and that council of Nicea chose but excluded certain texts to make up the ‘true’ canon of scripture, which even the established church argues over, for some books they left out – the Apocrypha – appear in some Bibles, and the myriad of translations leaves even greater queries.
I am a strong advocate of discernment, of using my intuition and letting my God speak to me: Lord, is this really you? Was this just how a new, word spreading believer entrenched in Jewish and judicial ways understood you, or is this what you would like us to know of you for all time? Was your will really done in Nicea for once and for all, or are other forces at work in keeping us from your true message? Could it really have got so distorted? And why question now?
Forces are at work, absolutely, in keeping us from truth on so many levels. Yes, God’s message could – and has – got badly twisted along its 2000 years journey since Jesus – and the thousands before that, to the Jewish people. And there’s a reason that so much is being questioned, so much coming up for release at this extraordinary watershed. It’s why Mary Magdalene is being rediscovered so powerfully, and why others are speaking of the need for the reclamation of the divine feminine.
On a course I’m taking about Mary’s gospel, one of our group said that Christianity was ultimately unappealing to her because half of God seemed missing, at least in the mainstream telling. We are told that our world is made up of male and female and that these opposite complementary energies are needed to create life: but that God our Creator is only male. He’s 3-in-1, sounding like modern advertising and convenience devices than a godhead, but none of the Trinity are women.
Of course, there’s plenty of Mother in God. She’s Mamma Chook to her chicks, the Shekinah Glory pillar of leading and protection is female, Wisdom is a Woman, and so is the Holy Spirit. In this city, a woman 647 years ago saw that God is indeed our Mother – we call Julian ‘mother’ too. But some of us don’t realise this, in either sense of ‘realise’, and if we do, it’s a buried side note. No wonder that some find more succour and connection in faiths where there are multiple gods. I’ve been wondering about the personas of the Old Testament, and the uneven and ungodly behaviour of God and the different names – as I discussed in June. I’m not alone in this enquiry.
Yes, Jesus, who we think about each December, was a male child – I’ve not heard that disputed. He did have a human MOTHER – note that it was the father’s role that was done angelically, and he had a close companion in the other Mary – Magdalene, the tower of enlightenment. And he had other women friends and followers, as well as a band of brothers. I like to think that Jesus had a developed divine feminine side as well as being divinely masculine – and we’ve seen some of the worst distortions of both those this year.
And I believe that Jesus was planned at the start. Who was he? The pre-existence of Christ was an essay question that I chose not to answer, but it’s a common conundrum. Was Jesus present in any way at the garden (or was that Lucifer and just who is – and isn’t – this Devil character? I’ll be asking that in the New Year). Surely he [Jesus] is the serpentine head crusher of Genesis 3; is he Melchizedek, mentioned in Hebrews 7, the great High Priest? Was he Enoch, who ascended to be with God without dying? And when will he be back?
Lots of us are turning our eyes to the skies and to the Book of Revelation at this time, and I think rightly so. Is the Lamb going to appear imminently? What is this Great Conjunction of tomorrow, when our two largest planets move as close as they’ve been in 800 years in this sign? Was there a strange conjunction in Adam and Eve’s time? We’re aware of a great astrological event – or a miraculous sign – when Jesus was born. Out of the attempts to answer what that Star might have been, I like the observation that if it was another Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter (and possibly Mars too) that it rose in the time of Leo, the sign of Israel and kings, or at the time (my truth telling Sunday) that the end of the Flood was celebrated by Jews. [see 1996 article by Craig Chester]
This was another covenant that God had, and yes, it’s the first rainbow – a symbol stolen this year, not just from the LGBT community, but as one NHS worker too afraid to name themselves said, stolen because it’s been used to create fear and hide what’s really happening. I will let you read that testimony in the Off Guardian yourself, but I have heard others like it. My applause is for those whistleblowers and those who refused to be swept into that flood of fear and sweep others into it.
I’ve long had an issue with the Flood – not the possibility of it actually happening, for I am aware of those who say it’s scientifically supported, the prevalence of a similar story in all ancient cultures, and the oddness of alternative reasons for why the dinosaurs died so suddenly and fossils created. My issue is: why did God do that to his own creation? Five chapters after creating us, he’s planning on destroying us all – animals too. Not only has he flushed us out of the garden hardly ere he put us there, but now, he’s intent on not just letting us become perishable, but making us perish.
And what was this crime, what were these people doing that was so awful? Why was God grieved he’d made us all, save Noah and his family? We’re not told. And yet so many crimes of and against humanity have been committed since – and are being done now – but isn’t this one, perpetrated by God? Who will hold him to account?!
Why didn’t God send Jesus then, to Noah’s world? Why wait perhaps 4000 years – late in time, Hark the Herald writer Wesley thought. Why destroy it instead? Especially if you believe that Jesus was planned all along. And why not destroy us? Has God changed since the Flood days? How did Jesus coming to Earth and dying sort this problem out, and just what is this problem of evil?
There are many sermons worth of material in these questions, and yes, I’ll be preaching them, and yes the material will overlap.
But I believe that Flood is very relevant to now.
I’m going to take a wee break and I’ll tell you why that boat is part of a Cosmic Christmas service, and why it matters.
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MUSIC
Note the pink light and single band and the shape made by the overlapping planets (thanks to Louisa for the idea for the latter)
Sermon Part 2
So: why am I weaving in Creation and the Flood to the Atonement at Christmas? Because we need to understand why Jesus came, and also about his coming again.
And I’ve had some very surprising news to assimilate this year. You’ll hear more in the next sermon, and others. One is something that may make the more Christian among you seek refuge in the hills. It’s not mainstream theology or anthropology, but it isn’t just me either. When I first read this notion six years ago, I wanted to dismiss it. Too weird, too ridiculous, too uncomfortable. It was the last that got to me. I was already a believer in some kind of matrix, but this….? If that’s fully taking the red pill, I’ll hold out just now.
But this year especially, some things have begun converging – things that I was already cognizant of. I had come to believe in the presence of an unseen controlling group, for though I have not knowingly encountered one, like the missing source Q in biblical criticism’s synoptic problem (what problem?. Moving on…) I had come to posit their existence by the shape of the evidence around it. Something, someone, a group of someones, was doing something very evil to this world. Was I to resurrect my belief in Satan and his band of banshees, prowling like a roaring lion – or was he a snake after all? Seems like snakes are not far out…
I oddly retained just one superhero artefact from my youth: a Superman annual of 1982.
Yes, the second movie released at that time was very much hinting at a Father sends his only Son to show us the way… we have a great capacity for love…. but need some help…
But I’m not doing a Superman comparison this sermon. I love to mix in popular culture – often much more than I have here. I said that I’d stick to Jesus this time. I didn’t say that what I said would satisfy the Westminster Catechism, or Confession of Faith.
This annual had a story by Joe Pasko “Race to the End of Time” where Superman and The Flash meet aliens who have been warring across the universe for so many centuries, that they’ve forgotten the cause of the war. They’re semi human, more like mean gnomes, and they’ve got scales. I hated this tale as a child, where Superman is told that these races impregnated our world with the exhaust from their living spacecraft.
God is my Father, I thought passionately. And I still do. And my Mother. Not these tight costumed big eared things, technologically advanced but capable of much cruelty and chaos – and seeming little concerned about what their pursuits do to the earth. Battle and power is glory in itself for them.
That God made me ‘fearfully and wonderfully’ and deliberately – is essential. That the God who made me came into his own creation incognito, born as we are, feeling as we do, teaching, and then giving his life for us before returning to Glory – this it what makes the Christmas message, the Christian message, good and wondrous news.
I recalled this Superman story recently and read it again. No, it doesn’t bear the names I was expecting, but this ridiculous and unbiblical story – or so I thought – is borne out in other sources. I don’t mean historical ones – not that science and history, especially as we do them, are necessarily more true. But others were saying similar things about the way our world came to be, what the Flood really was, who is ruling – or trying to rule us.
And I’ve started to see Jesus differently, not buying us back, not atoning for our sins through sacrifice, not even as I put it on my website, saving us from our own anger, not God’s. But what was this problem that God dealt with so drastically at the Flood?
And why did God need to intervene in human history with his own son?
And – why is He going to do it again?
I was directed to read the start of Genesis 6, the beginning of the Flood story. The Nephilim, the giants, the sons of God who mated with the daughters of men. This, I am told, is They. The real THEY – The Hierachy Enslaving You. Here are your real baddies. These powerful people were so great and so troublesome that God had to think how to get rid of them – quick. So no sending Jonahs to preach to these Ninevites; no haggling with God a la Abraham to spare more people. Although in the Quran, Noah does preach and his large scale vessel brings attention – mostly negative – these beings aren’t given an opportunity for mercy. God clearly wanted the extant other creatures to survive, hence his 2 by 2 (or 7 – for sacrifices had already begun) policy. We’re also not told what the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah are – certainly not homosexuality, as we’d understand it, but something truly dark.
I’m starting to get a picture of what both might be – for they happen still.
I’ve also heard that the Flood might be caused by one of the alternative, lesser gods; or that rather than a divine punishment, it was caused by planets coming near, or atomic explosions; and that the world created in Genesis 1 was in fact a remodelling of a burnt out globe destroyed by the greedy overreaching of a careless people. This how many see the story of Atlantis – not as myth, but history, and that we are heading in a similar way…
Speaking of advanced civilizations which burned out, I’m noting that Babylon appears in the Bible a few times; Babel, the first story after the Flood, is based on its name, which means ‘confusion’. We read that Lucifer, king of Babylon, fell from heaven. This is often seen as Satan’s backstory. Some argue that no, it’s a real king; now I think: this really connects to the essence of evil. The Babylonian empire was a time of slavery for the children of Israel, a time which inspired the famous Psalm 137, ‘By the Rivers of Babylon’, where slaves yearn about their homeland and singing the Lord’s song in a strange land. (Hear the divine mmms and steel drums of Boney M’s 1978 hit).
Babylon is like Rome in that way – the oppression that Jews hoped that their Messiah would end. And Jesus did come whilst Judea was under Roman rule, and he predicted the fall of their great temple (note it was the Jewish temple, not Rome itself) although both came and he precipitated neither.
In the end book of the Bible, popularly thought to be about end times, Babylon appears again… and this is significant. Babylon is a dinosaur-like beast, like the encounters that Job has that modern scholars – even the evangelicals who compiled the NIV – mocked, for humans did not share with dinosaurs. Thus the behemoth and leviathan must be elephants and crocodiles, says the study notes.
But could much of what we think we know be wrong?
How do dragons and behemoths relate to Jesus? What am I really trying to say here?
That I believe that other species may have had a hand in human history and may live among us? That although I’m not sure I still believe in a literal Devil, that there are dark forces who God and the angels and we must battle, and we’re soon facing the ultimate cosmic crusade, here in our skies, even on our earth? Might I be one of those people who believes in reptile aliens who have been enslaving us since the Babylonian era, and that the Bible makes hints about this, and that this year’s events will reveal and ruin this forever? Am I saying that I not only think that Christ’s coming was written in the stars, but that the stars again are converging to show…a second coming? The second coming? That Jesus was born at the start of the Piscean era, and now it’s the Age of Aquarius? And you bet I believe those mysterious monoliths appearing are the work of extra terrestrials. Look at the picture in the poster. Yes, it’s the Earth being bombarded with long straight bits of light, and I had those in mind. I think we’ll start seeing what they do tomorrow…
Aren’t I going to feel stupid if I’m wrong? Didn’t those who said the world would end eight years ago feel like muppets? Well, something did happen in 2012, and New Agers tell me that that was the beginning of the Era of Change, Light, Peace. This is its culmination. People laughed at Noah, who was making something conspicuous. I also like that film “Evan Almighty” where God asks a newsreader – not even a believer – to build another ark. When there appears to be no rain, his wife says: Maybe it’s a flood of consciousness. [She actually says awareness and knowledge – still relevant].
And this will be – in the first instance. Remember what happens next in that movie?
But there will be other levels of flooding: light and love.
And doors will burst open, dams will burst, and we’ll see what’s been hiding under the surface for so long. It and they will have nowhere to hide.
Will Jesus return? Is this angel train time? I hope it’s something tangible, but this is an exciting time. And Jesus is definitely at the heart of it. He’s not working alone. I think he is calling on his angels from the realms of glory, but he’s also calling on us to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, the opening of eyes, the release of prisoners (including from mass house arrest and from under masks). I think there’ll be some new captives instead… and God will be doing some judging, but I’ll leave that part of His work for another time.
I’m nearly done now. Thank you for being with me, and listening, especially if this has been very far from your own beliefs, and there’s been a lot to take in.
I want to send you out in joy, in hope, in confidence. Whatever you’re being told your Christmas, your 2021 and beyond will be like, I want to proclaim that something profoundly different, profoundly new is here. This is its eve. Can you feel it? A friend once said that this – Christmas – is the time that God intervened and changed history.
I think he’s going to do it again. And we are witnesses and co-workers.
I’m not going to wish you a happy Christmas, and certainly not a merry one. I will wish you a brave one, a surprising, and extraordinary one… and I think there will be joy. I pray for you all, especially if you think that joy is impossible for you. Our God specialises in overturning ‘impossible’ prognoses and diagnoses. He also specialises in healing and making all things new. He is not only being birthed – he is birthing.
Jesus didn’t come to make us good, he came to make us free – and we are free!
I pray that you will experience Jesus this Christmas. I think you may have a job not to…
OUTRO: ‘Behold I am making all things new’
Vortex: Lauri Ann Lumby says that black holes suck in matter and then create something new out of it
I’ll be back on 10th January, same time, same place, for Epiphany
Between The Stools now has a video channel set up on Brighteon – a trailer is coming soon
This week I saw two new films, each featuring a Fiennes brother, about a Roman tribune (senior soldier) who encounters Jesus at the end of his life.
I bet I’m one of few to have seen both, because Risen, starring Joseph Fiennes, hardly got any theatrical release. In my city, only one cinema had it, for one week, only twice a day at awkward times, pulling it before the Easter weekend it is all about. Thus its low audience numbers were self fulfilled. And it’s gone before, like the disciples at the tomb, I could go and tell anyone else to come and see it.
I am also one of the few drawing a comparison between these films, because the subtitle of the film within film, Hail Caesar, is not mentioned in any cinema brochure I’ve read. Along with other inaccuracies, it is called “a sword and sandal” epic. But there’s no sword fights and no George Clooney is not Caesar – he encounters a more paradoxical alien leader. There’s a scene where the religious leaders whom the studio is trying to placate discuss the nature of the incarnation (interesting for Jewish film makers), a beautiful closing speech at the foot of the cross (for which scene the crucified actors received “hardship pay”) and confusingly, a section featuring Saul of Tarsus with a title card “Divine Intervention to Be Inserted”.
Risen also consulted with Christians to avoid upsets, and likewise, found them happy – though I was not at the depiction of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. This is not in the Bible and even Catholics – who pretended she was – have officially un-tarted her now. Hasn’t the writers heard of even the Di Vinci Code and who Mary is believed to be by many? She’s Jesus’ no 2, covered up by Peter ‘I want the Keys just for Me’ and friends.
Both films had powerful and profound moments, but the tones were very different. Hail Caesar was often funny, though most of my laughs were at the points described above; the studio debacles often did little for me. I am not a proponent of the multiple storyline and so I wished we spent more time with Rome and Jerusalem, and less (or none) in aquariums, deserts, drawing rooms and bars filled with sailors who sang about the lack of dames at sea, but by their antics (some dance moves were suggestive of a number just before 70) they were not sorry. Not all the characters really fitted together, and were by some rather conspicuous sewing.
Risen had no humour and was for the first part often brutal, opening as a high budget and adrenaline thriller, just incase you thought this was for church halls. I think it is a film for church halls, though not for families or sensitive people of any age. The usually doe eyed, gentle and sensitive Joseph Fiennes is harsh, interrogative and even murderous as Tribune Clavius. I found it hard to watch him being so unjust and bullying. He is one of a few well known actors in the film, such as Peter Firth from Spooks as Pilate, who pushes Clavius to find Jesus’ missing body because Pilate fears the next tier of the chain – his emperor.
The brutality in the Coen’s film – some of which was verbal threat – was from film studio producer Eddie Mannix, fixer of any legal and publicity embarrassments. I hated Eddie (Josh Brolin) for hitting Baird (that’s Clooney) and silencing his communist sympathies. Eddie becomes the tribune, the old kind of God – telling people what to do, what to think, and what they can know; judging by narrow standards, being non-negotiable and using perceived virtue to guide those in his care; and of course, money.
Both tribunes alter at the experience of Jesus, yet Joseph’s conversion feels more like a Christian Union mission film. I am trying to work out why. Did the disciples seem too spacey and squeaky good? Was I angry that they never fought back? Was it the snippets of their sermons on the beach? But wouldn’t frightened, crushed followers feel exonerated and empowered and impervious to threat if they thought their leader was truly alive again?
The Coen brothers leave us, as so many Jesus films and plays, with him on the cross – yet for George’s tribune, even then, it is enough to change him. The makers of Risen (and Waterworld) let us see Jesus to the end of his earthly life (I was going to say, off the premises), but the ascension is more of a disappearance into the sunset – ET had a more memorable and convincing take off. They obviously didn’t have the budget to show us what the guards at the tomb saw either – shame as modern film is wonderful for bringing such stories to us visually.
The Coen’s Jesus is a back of a rather strawberry blond head and a pair of feet on a maximum comfort cross. Risen features Cliff Curtis – is this the first Maori Christ? – whose face has have the expected unnerving quality, but his less conventional Messiah looks and Tears For Fears hairstyle also slightly beguile and unsettle. However, he behaved like we like to think of Jesus – in the imaginary last miracle where he truly saw and loved the person he healed.
What was hardest for me was reconciling the kind of Jesus we want to believe in – like this – to the one who actually appears to be in the gospel. I’ve been at a study group where we heard that one writer thinks that Jesus snorts in fury at his healees; a Jesus whose first line in John’s gospel is a snap at would-be followers; a Jesus who is incredibly rude to that Gentile lady seeking healing for her son… Commentators let him off by saying, he must have meant…ah, but really he knew… Is this disciples and early church fathers scribbling in, or…? I’ve written an article on this before. I nearly entitled it “Going off Jesus.” It doesn’t affect my relationship with God, but this is the central person who makes Christians distinct. So where does that take me…?
It’s a search I continue. Meanwhile, I found these films as worthwhile as any church service and yet not exclusive of those not seeking a spiritual message this Easter.
Yes, the author is that Sylvia Browne, the psychic, who is also a Gnostic Christian and church founder. This leads to my first issue. The miracles in the Gospels are a bit far fetched, Sylvia says. Feeding of thousands? More like a few hundred or less. Rising from the dead? No, a faked faint with feeble as possible whippings and beatings and cleverly aimed nails so that the Lord could recover in the tomb and then sneak off to travel and minister and die happily in France with his family at the age of 84.
So – Jesus can’t rise from the dead or do miracles, but Sylvia can see the future and receive messages and pictures from her personal discarnate spirit. We’re asked to accept her beyond the rational gifts, but not those of someone somewhat more established and revered?
The tone of this piece matches the one that Sylvia often writes in. Occasionally, she’ll give interesting, more scholarly insights, such as when and how the cult of the Virgin Mary really gathered speed, with statements that sound like informed research. Then she’ll say: Jesus revealed himself to his French friends by “letting the cat out of the bag”. So much for the Messianic Secret! She makes oft use of the lazy “a lot” and calls many other psychics “nuts”. Worse still, these ‘nutters’ might become occultist, which she abhors – no reason.
Her view is that Jesus was crucified for preaching a loving, forgiving God…. interesting, but not expanded. We don’t get many quotes from the Gnostic gospels that her views depend on – least of all, discussions of their translations and authenticity.
Although badly told, she does rationalise her version of Easter. Everyone was in the trick – there’s no outcast, self murdering Judas; Joseph of Arimathea and of course his beloved Marys all knew. Even Pontius Pilate was malleable with a bribe. She explains this is why Jesus was crucified so close to the Sabbath, when no dead bodies were allowed left hanging so he could be on the cross for minimal time, not have his legs broken, and be snuck off to a powerful man’s tomb ready for revival and escape. The vinegar on a stick was opium to help him bear the pain and lose consciousness. The Noli Me Tangere moment on Easter Morn was – don’t touch, my wounds still hurt. Then Jesus shows his earthly wounds – for what spirit has them, she asks (hasn’t she heard of ghosts appearing with the last known body?). And then Jesus becomes master of disguise, does a bit of globe trotting, including America (how could he miss you out) and then retires to Languedoc as “David”.
For anyone of a non Gnostic bent, Jesus’ faked death is shocking on many levels. Traditional theology is that Jesus’ death is the telos of his mission; Christmas matters because of Easter, and those teachings are mere aperitif to the main course – his passion.
If it’s true that as Lynn Picknett gleefully states in her book on Magdalene, that there have been a spate of dying and rising gods, then Jesus needs to do something extraordinary – and that would mean a bodily resurrection after an actual, bodily death.
To me and many Christians, Jesus’ subversion of death and overcoming it on the cross is essential.
Many Christians see the unthinkable emotional as well as bodily suffering as a sign of Jesus’ love for them – that he wanted to bring us back to God so much that he would endure this for us. Julian of Norwich would not get along with Sylvia Browne!
My understanding of the Cross is different to mainstream Christianity, but this view is spreading: I believe not in penal substitution, appeasing an angry God’s thirst for blood to pay off an insurmountable debt of sin. The cross is about saying God is nothing to do with this world of violence, punishment, payback and worldly might. I love Hildegard of Bingen’s view of sin (as told by Ilia Delio) as being the exile of unrelatedness and the refusal to grow. I wonder if every personal block to God and each other, including what we would consider acts of evil, is covered by that definition. Sin is what stops us from living authentically.
But all Christians can agree that Jesus did something unique and essential for the human/God interface, and that he overcame death – our greatest fear and enemy. Sin in all its forms and definitions has been dealt with – that exile is over, that impediment is removed and light, not evil, now prevails. So a few pokes and a opium-fuelled doze with fictitious angels as alibis for the bribed tomb guards misses the whole point.
If Jesus preached a loving forgiving God, it would be more powerful to demonstrate him.
Sylvia says Jesus needed to get crucified to fulfil his Chart – but she obviously misses off most of the reading, for its not in minimal suffering and a ‘sham resurrection’ (her phrase) that his destiny is fulfilled. How could Jesus say “It is FINISHED”, “It is accomplished”, or better still – “Consummatum”, all things brought together, if he did not complete his mission? And why would Jesus commend his Spirit to his Father and feel forsaken if he only had a half death? And dissembling is breaking one of the Decalogue.
I struggle to see why Sylvia refers to Jesus as Lord, although I am intrigued to look again at his sayings – the ones she upholds – and see if Jesus is Lord enough through just them.
There’s also something wrong with the family narrative – that of the Marys and Jesus travelling, of Jesus being a husband and dad, of his favouritism for Mary Magdalene over the disciples, and his and both Marys’ royal lineage. No overshadowing from the Most High is needed in this conception, and there’s no assumption into heaven – just retirement to the Essene community with its celestial nickname and a boringly ordinary death of old age.
The childhood friend bride feels uncomfortable from a personal relationships view: so Jesus couldn’t meet someone later in his life, and she had to come from the right sort of background to be suitable. It felt like the sort of fairy tale I’d like to see die out.
Like Shakespeare, Jesus’ appeal comes from his ordinary, non conventionally educated background. I abhor the notion that neither Will of Stratford nor Jesus of Nazareth could possibly be who we think without blue blood and academic training. That says, only the aristocracy are worthy of admiration; only official learning is true knowledge, and worst – that class and feudalism rule: just what I thought God wasn’t about.
Jesus is meant to come from King David’s line but he was born to a carpenter, to people too poor to get lodgings, but had to sleep and deliver a baby in a stable.
Why would Mary his mother sing the magnificat about the powerful and poor being switched if she was royal and rich herself?
And to cast the harlot’s mantle off Magdalene, we have to give her ermine.
Sylvia argues that Jewish men, especially those called Rabbi, were always married. It would controvert the Genesis command to multiply if a man did not have children, she says. But how easy is it to generalise about beliefs and practices? We know people who break the mould. I love that Jesus does everything topsy turvy and unexpected. We value money and property – he doesn’t appear to have any. He lives in a commune and travels – we value rootedness and stability. We don’t read of his ordination in the established religion – he simply preaches, al fresco often (it avoids room hire and permissions). His teaching and his death and resurrection are revolutionary, in the literal sense of turning over, as he does to tables of those misusing money and places of worship. He breaks the Sabbath to heal. He talks to a Samaritan woman. He puts spit in a blind man’s eyes. He assumes temple authority. Jesus’ non conforming to the ‘go forth and multiply’ custom says that humans are not defined by procreation.
Sylvia’s argument that the wedding at Cana must be Jesus’ own initially has more credence. For, she says, how else could he be expected to worry about the shortage of wine and ask servants to do things? Why would his mother bring this concern to Jesus if he weren’t the groom?
In the previous chapter of John’s gospel (the only one to tell the story), Jesus is called Rabbi, before we have heard him speak or do anything. It is the next – ‘third’ – day that Jesus is ‘invited’ to the wedding, with his mother and disciples, implying them as equal guests. When his mother draws the wine shortage to Jesus’ attention, he says, ‘Dear woman, why do you involve me? My time is not yet come’. Jesus sounds surprised, as if this wedding isn’t his concern. The servants obey Jesus because Mary asked them to – why is not explained. The bridegroom is mentioned, but not named, and so is the master of the banquet, to whom the transformed water is presented. I don’t think therefore that the case for this being Jesus’ wedding, with Mary M, who we’ve not met yet, is very compelling.
Many people are comforted that their Lord is single. We don’t have a physical description of him (Sylvia does, via her spirit guide, Francine!). He was Robert Powell-esque (star of the TV series Jesus of Nazareth) and Mary his mother curvy and dark (at least one of the three had the right ethnicity for a Jew). Magdalene was red haired! More Anne of Avonlea than Mary of Magdala! (Avonlea… that’s a whole other thought….) People have appropriated Jesus to their circumstances – a black Christ so African people feel closer to him, and European depictions made Jesus brown or red haired and light eyed and skinned. It’s been suggested that Jesus might be gay with the disciple whom Jesus loved (and his mates Mary, Martha and Lazarus a ‘queer’ family). But we don’t know if Jesus was married. We don’t know his sexuality, if any. We don’t know if he had children. But it means that mystique allows us to feel close to him, whatever our skin colour or family situation.
If Jesus was single and not a father, that those of us without spouse or offspring can feel that the most special earth dweller was like us; if he could be complete without parenthood and partnering, that we can too.
There’s also a massive issue with the divine and their mortal creatures having an affair – it’s one of those off bounds parings like teacher/pupil, prison officers/inmate, and counsellors/clients and adults with minors. We’re not equal, there’s a power imbalance.
Unless you believe that Jesus isn’t divine or that we are. Many think that Mary Magdalene’s surname isn’t where she’s from but her title, like Mahatma Gandhi or Lord – she’s spiritually special. So maybe not such an odd coupling?
But then there’s the favouritism issue. I heard a sermon state that Jacob’s obvious preference for his technicoloured dreaming son was bad parenting. If Jesus behaved likewise, I can sympathise with the disciples who complained of Jesus’ constant petting and partiality, and can see why arguments arose after Jesus left them.
I’d like to think that the Son of Man, let alone God, had more maturity and sensitivity, and left a better example.
*
Sylvia’s arguments do not become more bolstered by evidence or reasoning. She often refers to scholars, but gives few names – save Karen L King and Elaine Pagels. She states her view of history as fact, supported by vague research – but this is a common complaint I have with nonfiction.
A later chapter has little to do with the Marys and more about tolerant beliefs. I do support Sylvia here, for in her crude offhand way, she says – let love and acceptance be the heart of living and let us not judge, let alone persecute or silence those with other beliefs. She sees the canonising of the Bible as a deliberate attempt at political control and mind steering, leaving out the best and truest parts of the Bible and editing the four chosen gospels to focus on Peter as leader and downgrade both Marys, and the message of love.
Sylvia mentions Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and its backlash with some admiration. Unsurprisingly, she also references the Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln book, which her view agrees with to some extent. She calls the 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ “somewhat weird” and offers a warning to viewers. She seems unaware that Scorsese’s film is based on Nikos Kazantzaki’s novel. And that its point is, that unlike her Jesus, coming down from the cross before living peacefully with his wife was a temptation to refuse. The film ends with Christ on the cross, choosing to continue his torment unto death to fulfil his mission. Hence this controversial story is more orthodox than Sylvia and books on the holy grail and bloodlines.
A brief word on that line: The offspring of Jesus would be at least demi gods, and that would be dangerous. And why is a bloodline so vital? Sounds like the feudal notion of purity of blood, of position by family not merit, and permanent exclusion for those not in the clan. But the whole message of Jesus is: God is widening the net (was it ever really so narrow?). Not by birth and heritage, but by belief are you included in God’s kingdom. I wonder if the Age of Aquarius is about moving beyond a particular set of beliefs to be seen as inheritor of God’s relationship – and beyond legalistic words about ownership.
It was a relief to get to the end of The Two Marys, but there’s an odd appendix – the tenets of the Novus Spiritus (why the Latin?), Sylvia’s own church. Twenty two statements in semi religious language – a few thous chucked in, not of the Buber variety; anti war, pro defence; the rejection of book of Revelation. I cannot see the appendix’s relevance to the book’s subject, unless it is another juxtaposition to suggest she too is a messenger of a new spiritual movement for this newly dawning age. Is she letting a cat out of the bag?
Sylvia seems to regularly hint of her own specialness – she compares Magdalene’s loss of her husband and mentor to the loss of her psychic grandmother. In the first chapter called Powerful Women (note Sylvia’s gender) she says, I’m not putting myself near our Lord, but I know how busy travelling and teaching can be and how it feels to be crucified by the press.
Despite the book’s title and my original intent to write this about Magdalene day, Sylvia’s focus is less on either Mary. Neither are divine for Sylvia, for whom, this is really Jesus’ story, bookended by a close maternal relationship. Mary Magdalene just propounded her husband’s ideas. This is not so empowering for women or Mary.
Sylvia’s shockingly unorthodox view of Christ isn’t compatible with her own world view. Gnostics have a more positive view of humans, yet Sylvia believes that humans are flawed and in need of enlightening. But even if we don’t need traditional salvation, death does need overcoming, I think, and Sylvia’s Jesus doesn’t do that – his exit strategy is somewhat tepid compared with the rising and ascension of the gospels. And for Jesus to half die is worse – for it doesn’t signify or accomplish anything. Sylvia doesn’t ‘bother’ with much of the Bible, especially the first part, though she does imply she understands that Jesus preached a new understanding of God, but on whose previous heritage we do not need to dwell.
Her chief source of knowledge is Francine, who isn’t introduced as her guide is familiar to her readers in previous books. Francine seems slipped in at will and at difficult parts of Sylvia’s depiction as her incontrovertible proof. Sylvia seems to just know – which as a modern Gnostic (not one of those ancient dualists with all the rules), would be entirely consistent. I too believe in inner knowing over empiricism, but I also know I need to be able to present an argument too. Intellectually, she’s not convincing, and her writing style is often flavourless and flippant and not focussed. Thus I’m not a follower.
It has given me ideas to follow: my disappointment with Jesus and the royal line of David, and to re-read the gospels to ask – how special are Jesus’ teachings and is he portrayed as God? And what of my original Mary Magdalene quest?
These are all likely to appear on my blog another time.
These are three of the main thoughts I have after reviewing this film 19 years after its release, when it quickly became and stayed a favourite film.
Criticisms slipped in, but then I realised that what I thought were faults were actually hints of a different reading.
It is easy to see how beautiful, wise, good Guinevere wins the hearts of two men. But I never felt either really deserved her or were right for her. I also had trouble seeing the love between her and Arthur. I note Guinevere lost her father within the year and has only older men as companions – such as Oswald who keeps calling her “child” (far more bearable in Cold Comfort Farm), in Jacob, and then Arthur. Her mum isn’t mentioned, and nor are siblings. Ladies in waiting are given non speaking roles, and are a minimal presence. I hate Freudian missing parent theories, but Guinevere’s love for Arthur does seem to be similar to the love she may’ve felt for her late Dad: a deferent and quiet passion, unafraid but not quite equal, and not a sexual love. When Arthur greets his bride on the hill over Camelot, he arranges a military show to make an entrance, though it is not a public event (a grand debut was in Connery’s contract, but it undermines the relationship). They do not rush to greet each other, even though she’s suffered an attack en route, but he debonairly takes her hand as one would a political ally or dance partner. When they speak about their marriage the next day, there’s no physical contact until Guinevere gets out his scratch on his hand. Even when she is rescued from Malagant’s lair, the embrace there could almost be converted to beloved child and father. We never see a love scene or any other passionate kiss. At his death bed, I fail to see the look of love that Arthur notes is missing; this is again a daughterly sorrow at yet another older man leaving her.
Note he speaks of the love of Guinevere as sweetness, not passion, not a soulmate.
I felt we needed more to believe in this marriage, supposedly a love match, but I wonder if it is meant to be a will (not heart) powered steady devotion – a paraphrase of what she says to Arthur when she is discovered with Lancelot.
Lancelot appeals to the physical, courageous side of otherwise intense and sensible Guinevere, who’s already having to run kingdoms on her own as Lady of Lyonnesse. Guinevere, who wishes to live and die there (so having a great sense of settling), has been born into duty, no doubt with finery – though she says he’s taught not to put faith in it. Here comes a man without home or finery, a man who speaks his desires – but doesn’t act until the lady asks – ie gives not only her permission but initiates. He is not the body man of Lehman and Hunt’s sex obsessed essay on Titanic – the contrast is less crude than a physical macho hunk, for Lancelot is polite (compared with Mr Turner in my next post) and unthreatening. He doesn’t care about hierarchy and I think that’s what shocks Guinevere at the first rescue as much as his implication that he’d like a sexual thank you: because for him, pretty women are no better if they’re dairy maids or ladies, and he doesn’t care about monetary rewards. He’s not suddenly deferential when he learns who she is – why should saving a lady be more gratifying for him? Once I stopped expecting Lancelot to be a particular kind of man, I accepted him better.
Guinevere, like Rose in Titanic, is an action heroine. When we first see her, she’s playing a vigorous football game – foreshadowing Jennifer Elhe’s Elizabeth Bennet which came out in the UK a few months later – who is also corporeal and enjoys physical exercise (particularly under Andrew Davies interpretation). Guinevere doesn’t wield an axe like Rose, but she does escape being hacked The Shining style by one into her carriage. Like an agile Western hero, she grips unseen to the running boards and throws her world be assassin off the careering carriage, before leaping and rolling from it, then lying low and making a well judged sprint. She kills a man with a crossbow at short range. Later, she rides a spirited horse considered unsuitable for a lady by the king’s horseman, without a lady saddle; she throws a kidnapper off the boat; she has the nous to put a scrap of her dress on a tree as a breadcrumb trail to her rescuers; she twirls on a bridge over an abyss, she leaps over a waterfall and swims in the rapids.
But in all those examples, Guinevere swaps from Grace Kelly in Rear Window – remaining feminine but active – to distressed damsel. I note a powerful man – not a generic enemy – is in her presence each time. When Lancelot first appears, she’s gasping and afraid as the Malagant minion holds her. In Malagant’s slate mine palace, she is silent and compliant, again shivering as he undresses her and pushes her across the bridge to the oubliette with the slightest arm touch. And when Malagant attacks at the end, she rushes to Arthur’s bedside and never takes up a sword. But in front of Arthur and the knights of the round table, she does stand up verbally to Malagant when he attends a council meeting.
Now I’m coming to explain one of my themes. I see two Marys in Guinevere – Magdalene and The Virgin. Guinevere’s virginity is never mentioned but is prized, and there’s care for her never to even kiss Lancelot while she’s engaged (meaning that Arthur has the first experience with her) and for only a kiss to happen at Lancelot’s leaving – novel tie-in author Elizabeth Chadwick points out that such a kiss was only stopped becoming an act of love by Arthur’s interruption. Arthur, like Jesus, sees adultery of the heart as an equal sin. I see two readings of this story as allegory – one of the future, the other, the past.
As a wise spiritual ruler with a specially picked band of men, Arthur can feel Christlike. Guinevere could be his Mary Magdalene, but his relationship with her is more like mother son (or father and daughter) – linking to the other Mary of the gospels. Mary Magdalene is the naughty Mary, but some understand her to be the Kingdom’s co-creator, the enlightened one, not just the reformed demoniac/prostitute of tradition. Mary Magdalene might be the other side of Guinevere, the side who is drawn to the nomad (which Jesus was) who unlike foxes and eagles, does not have anywhere to lay his head.
But she’s also the one the villagers turn to for succour after two attacks from evil – firstly on bended knee, calling her Lady; and secondly for physical comfort after the forces of good save them – thus her Mary the Mother analogy is heightened.
Malagant is a Lucifer – once the highest of the elect, who left after a quarrel about supremacy and now seeks to terrify all Arthur’s people – a row, like in the Bible, which is never explained. I would like to have seen the “tyrant” speech of Malagant developed. In a way calm, kind Arthur is a tyrant, as is the portrayal of many monotheist’s God. Love me, and I’ll love you – cross me and there’s public judgement and death. You can only come into my kingdom by invitation, as Lancelot finds out (a bit like Calvinist theology). Arthurian god has a tempter, and both he and Malagant speak of the Law as the ultimate justice; Malagant claims he is the law, while Arthur points to something greater than himself, which is also potentially manipulative. Serving God, a country, a family or band of brothers raises the stakes and makes heavier the responsibility. The brotherhood/leadership dichotomy is a topic for another time, but I note these politically leading knights are not elected, they’re all military, and there’s no ladies – and despite having no head or foot, the round table does accommodate not only a king but a first knight.
And Camelot is the Kingdom, the heavenly city, built from his father’s legacy, a place, says director Jerry Zucker that we all want to live. Thus this neo Jerusalem is a place to aspire to, and not get cast out of for bad behaviour, or else you’re in the subterranean has-been of Malagant’s world. But it’s not just Jesus who is building a kingdom – there’s a currently earthly realm, like Camelot, which is built on ideals and ideas. Like a church, it’s not the stones themselves, but the people and dream that lives on – good job, for this fortress proves to be as robust as the cheese stall in its likeness that we see on the run the gauntlet day. That place is America. So the Disney castle look of Camelot makes sense – if it is intended: the American romanticisation of a medieval mythological ideal, the appropriation of a history they don’t have. Note the French renaissance windows: this is a new birth.
And Arthur’s existence is unproven, and so imaginations can set to work, inventing architectural details and costumes (is it coincidence that Arthur’s knights wear Star Trek like garb?). Saxons didn’t build cities so the only walls and gates around would be ex Roman – again, a great empire imposing itself, sophisticated on one hand, brutal and rash on another. Much like Arthur. His trial of Guinevere and Lancelot says – my personal hurts are a matter of state. I humiliate these people and call it an act against the realm, and I’m telling you – mess with mine or be unfaithful, and you’ll die.
Who the faithful are is my final point: the triangle is not the shape I’d assumed. Arthur is in love, but not with Guinevere. He has fallen for Arthur in a courtly ideal of unconsummated deep love that I call man love – not exactly gay (it’s so feeble that Hollywood is still not good at dealing with that in its mainstream films – yes Brokeback Mountain but think of Troy!). They couldn’t have been lovers or it alters the offence of Arthur’s discovery the love of Guinevere and Lancelot, whose “innocence” (ie lack of physical love) is important.
Arthur waits patiently for his wife to answer him and to formally marry him, but he rushes Lancelot onto his council with wedding like vows, preceded by a night of prayer and purification. This is man marriage. The scene when Arthur slips into Lancelot’s chamber and touches his bare back holds back from homoeroticism but I think the point is implied. Why, when Arthur discovers the near affair, is Arthur aggressive to Lancelot but composed with Guinevere? Because his love for Lancelot is the greater. He twice speaks of loving Lancelot to his face – “I don’t love people in slices” and “I loved you, I trusted you!”
Note Lancelot’s lack of aggression or even justification; he defers to his love, offering to die for him. In another Jesus paraphrase, Arthur brings up the theme that to die for another is the highest love (which can also be manipulative, it’s how any leader has got men to go to war) – and now Lancelot will give his life to serve his master and the kingdom.
And in Arthur’s last scene, he needs to make up to his two loves as much as they need to placate his rent heart over the discovery that the triangle does indeed have three sides. To prove the third one is most powerful, contrast Arthur’s goodbye to Guinevere to his send off to Lancelot. Arthur asks for his sword – not a phallic symbol, but as a shiny almost magical object throughout the film, to bestow a highest honour on a beloved friend. They hold hands and Arthur not only implies his blessing on Lancelot and Guinevere, he gives Lancelot the greatest privileges he can – being First Knight isn’t just political and military (I hope he doesn’t reign Camelot with only sword skill, and not state craft), it’s saying, You are my main man, I love you.
Mark Adam’s synopsis in Movie Locations of Britain started me on this road when he describes the film as Guinevere coming between Arthur and Lancelot (p151). I think he’s correct as both US and UK film covers have the two men as large and Guinevere in the background in the middle; and on the British cover, the picture of Guinevere is inside the sword, dividing them. So the courtly love here is Arthur’s for his knight; the nation state with universally applicable ideas is America, and this is the tale of taming the wanderer to become part of society rewarded by romantic love, brotherhood and knighthood – but does Lancelot lose something in becoming part of Camelot?
I look forward to getting the region 1 DVD and seeing if the extras support this, or whether this is my reading; but I enjoyed the film far more since seeing all this in it.
Elspeth R - A skewed world view 