The Passion of Mary
Can you imagine a churchgoing Christian - of any description - pouring expensive perfume over a holy man or holy woman’s feet, then wiping it off with their hair?
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (John 12:1-3)
For the past three years, I have been deeply attracted to Quaker Christianity. While it is hard - though not impossible - to imagine a modern liberal Quaker behaving as Mary did, early Quakers regularly engaged in religiously-inspired, transgressive behaviour. They shunned “programmed worship” - such as pre-written prayers, hymns, and set rituals. They were the original pronoun warriors: adopting the informal “thee” and “thou”, over the more formal, respectful “thy” and “thine”, to affirm the equality of all in God’s sight. They regularly stood up and disrupted the Vicar’s sermon, often proclaiming “on whose authority do you (dost thou) speak?”
The latter barbed comment was a quote. George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, famously preached the following words in an impromptu sermon at the Anglican Church at Ulverston, Cumbria:
You say Christ says this, and the Apostles say that. But what can you [thou] say? *
Fox insisted that every serious seeker needed to be silent and turn inward:
Stay inside. And when they say ‘Look here’ or ‘Look there is Christ’, don’t go out there, for Christ is inside you. And those who try to seduce you and draw your minds away from the teaching inside you are opposed to Christ. For the portion is inside, the light of God is inside, and the pearl is inside, though hidden. **
My heart leapt for joy when I first read these words. Don’t rely on second-hand experience - find out for yourself! Christianity testifies to a God that is (amongst other things) indwelling Spirit (Wisdom 12:1; John 1:3-4; Colossians 1:15-17); that teaches and guides directly (Jeremiah 31:33, John 14:26, John 16:12-15). Most of us, of course, need serious preparation for such encounter. As Jesus said to his followers: ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” (John 16:12).
Entering the spiritual world - which most certainly exists - is full of risk and potential hazards. We can become overwhelmed, confused, bedevilled, and tormented, or, perhaps worse still, inflated, forceful, and grandiose. Fox might have dispensed with official creeds and established church rhythms and customs, but they fed him continuously as a child (his parents were devout churchgoers) and supported an extraordinary, intimate knowledge of the Bible, and a radical loyalty to Christ. Often, secular moderns don’t have this ground or resource - and safety - to support inner journeying. Even ‘good Christians’, unused to such directness and intensity, can end up ‘grease-spots on the floor’ (as Father Thomas Keating, the founder of Centering Prayer, often warned). I can certainly, painfully, attest to that.
Perhaps one of the early Quakers’ most transgressive forms, which would embarrass their later brothers and sisters, was the practice of “going naked as a sign”:
On 17 July 1652, in the chapel of Whitehall Palace in Westminster, while Peter Sterry was preaching a sermon on the resurrection in front of a congregation composed of Oliver Cromwell (whose chaplain Sterry was) and various republican dignitaries and soldiers, a woman appeared “stark naked”. According to several witnesses, she called out, “Resurrection, I am ready for thee”, before being removed by the guards and causing considerable disturbance. Her name has not been recorded and she was not apparently arrested. A pamphlet written by David Brown, a Scottish Presbyterian, described her as a determined woman aged about thirty, sober in her language. This brief description in no way intended to present her in a favourable light, but rather to suggest that her appearance in this “whore’s posture”, while obviously “mocking” the preacher in the pulpit, in a place not only sacred but also politically prestigious, had a meaning that only her formal arrest would have been able to establish....The Whitehall happening was just one of the first in a long series of prophetic and protest displays by both men and women who went naked in public places (sacred and profane), and it was prolonged in New England, accompanying the emergence and development of the Quaker movement. ***
What was the unnamed woman’s intentions? What is she signifying with her shocking - or shockingly simple - appearance? What does she mean by Resurrection, I am ready for thee (and note the informal pronoun)? And how does this contrast with - and protest - the sermon, the gathering, the royal ‘sacred place’, and the labelling of her as a “whore’?
My friend, Derek, is also a believer in “naked as a sign”. Nudity without painful self-consciousness is akin to our original state, Derek argues - Adam and Eve before ‘the fall’. Eventually, through Christ, we’ll be restored to Eden - stripped of our pretensions, defences, and estrangement from God. We’ll be naked and won’t feel ashamed.
Resurrection, I am ready for you.
Is this what Mary is saying as well?
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References:
* Rex Ambler, Truth of the heart: An anthology of George Fox (2001).
** Ambler, Truth of the heart.
*** Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, “‘Naked as a sign’: How the Quakers invented nudity as a protest” in Clio. Women, Gender, History (2021), retrieved from https://shs.cairn.info/journal-clio-women-gender-history-2021-2-page-75?lang=en
Image at top of page: Mary wiping Jesus’ feet, unknown painting/icon.
