Holy Family
(Initially written for the series When Women Preach. If you’d like to hear it in my voice go to https://australianwomenpreach.com.au/)
Luke 2:22-30
Marian Free
In the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver. Amen.
The Book of Common Prayer provided the liturgical resources for the world-wide Anglican Church up until 1975. It included a rite called the Churching of Women (latterly known as Thanksgiving after the Birth of a Child.) This rite is based on Leviticus 12:2-8 which refers to the purification of women after childbirth. It is worth quoting the text in full as it lies behind the gospel set for today; “If a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be ceremonially unclean seven days; as at the time of her menstruation, she shall be unclean. On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Her time of blood purification shall be thirty-three days; she shall not touch any holy thing, or come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purification are completed. If she bears a female child, she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her menstruation; her time of blood purification shall be sixty-six days. When the days of her purification are completed, whether for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting a lamb in its first year for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering.”
Though the Anglican service does not use the language of purification, it was known colloquially as “the rite for the purification of women” and, in some parts of Australia was still practiced in the 1960’s. I can still remember someone telling me of the humiliation that she felt at having to undergo the ritual, the sense of degradation that came from an understanding that somehow her God given body, the body that had given life to another, was considered impure by the church community in which she worshipped.
It was not only birth that was considered to render a woman unclean. In Old Testament times and, in some contemporary cultures, menstruation was/is viewed as a source of impurity that required women to separate themselves from their community during the time of their period. This is also based on Leviticus which tells us that anyone who touches a menstruating woman will be unclean until evening. {And} The woman herself is considered to be unclean for seven days. And anyone who touches her, or who touches something that she has touched in that time is likewise thought to be unclean.
In the church, attitudes to women’s bleeding have varied through the centuries, but Leviticus 12 continued to influence the opinions of some. For example, in the seventh century, Bishop Theodore of Canterbury stated that: “During the time of menstruation women should not enter into church or receive communion.”
While this sounds archaic to modern ears, it was one of the reasons that women continued to be excluded from the sanctuary. In living memory, flower arrangers, had to leave their vases on the sanctuary steps so that they could be put into place by a male churchgoer. (This was true whether they were menstruating at the time or not). (And) As recently as the 1980’s a bishop (who was very much in favour of the ordination or women), shared with me that he had a lingering (if irrational) sense of discomfort that a priest who might be menstruating could be presiding at Holy Communion.
In our day and age, it seems an extraordinary idea that menstrual blood could be seen to render a woman unclean, that the source of all human life could be understood as a cause for impurity and that the act of birth could likewise render a woman impure.
In today’s gospel, Mary and Joseph bring themselves to do that which is required by the Torah (Lev 12). There is so much detail in these verses – the offering of the doves, Simeon’s gratitude, Anna’s excitement, Simeon’s song and prophecy – that it is easy to overlook why the couple are there – for Mary to undergo a process of purification – and that after having given birth to God’s very self. (A detail balanced only by fact that God did not consider a woman’s body an unworthy vessel for the Saviour of the world.)
Sadly, there has developed in Christendom a distrust of the body which is seen as the origin of desire, passion and sin. Our relationship with our bodies is complex. Without our bodies we do not exist, but bodies can be weak, frail, and broken. They do not always perform as we would wish. Bodies come with physical needs and our natural bodily functions cannot always be controlled and are often experienced as a source of inconvenience, discomfort, or embarrassment.
Mary’s body is the reason that the family go to the Temple, but hers is not the only body. In this short vignette, we have infant bodies and aged bodies, fertile bodies and infertile bodies, female bodies and male bodies, bodies losing their functionality and bodies that have yet to learn how to self-regulate. Jesus’ body is small, vulnerable, and dependent. Mary’s body is young and strong and fertile and unclean. Anna’s is long past the time of being able to bear children yet is still filled with life and energy. Simeon is ready to abandon his body in death but before he does, he takes the embodied God into his arms.
For all their frailty and inconvenience, it is our bodies that give us existence and it is “the body with its appetites, its pleasures and all its various functions that God has chosen to make his love known among us”.[1] God’s very self did not despise the human body but chose to inhabit it and to share in all its fullness, in all the messiness of human existence: “he became like his brothers and sisters in every respect.” (Hebrews 2:14-18)
However we try to sanitise our scriptures, however we try to separate our physical bodies from the life of the spirit, we cannot ignore the fact that the gospels themselves are earthy and bodily. From Jesus’ bloody, violent, and messy birth, to his bloody, violent and messy death the Incarnation is proof positive that holiness and bodilness cannot be separated, that our bodies are not to be despised but to be treasured as the place in which God did and does make God’s home.
Jesus’ birth, Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, Jesus’ life and death, and even his scarred resurrection body, are all evidence that Jesus fully embraced the human condition – that God in Jesus was vulnerable and in control, weak and strong, sorrowful and joyful – “like us in every respect”.
Our bodies, our frail, imperfect bodies are God’s interface with the world. Our bodies, our very human bodies, were and are the dwelling place of God for whom no task is too mundane, no activity too ordinary, no function unspeakable and no part impure.
“Let us glorify God in our bodies.”
{In 2011, Colleen Fulmer uploaded this song to You Tube
We are the body of Christ,
birthing, feeding,
touching, weeping.
We are the body of Christ,
mending, bleeding,
healing, dancing,
Glorify God in our bodies.
Dance with God in our lives.
Colleen Fulmer, 2011
[1] (The. Message Devotional Bible: featuring notes and reflections from Eugene H. Peterson, (Colorado Springs, CO: Nav Press, 2018) 3563, Kindle.
Swallowsrest 