I wrote this talk on 5/10/20 in less than 2 hours. More like it wrote itself. I delivered it as a sermon of sorts over Zoom to my family of friends in the morning, and to my righteous doctrinal babes in the evening.
################################################################################
I know we said we’d keep things informal, but I did throw together a talk for today.
A friend of mine, Bryn, noted how most societies liken the image of woman to dainty, fresh flowers, when ironically women’s bodies are hardly like that. Being a (cis) woman involves regular bleeding. Motherhood involves leaking from glands. It’s brutal, it’s primal, and much of that mirrors the Atonement.
Likewise, much of the world prefers to see the cleaned up Jesus. Clothed in white robes, his wounds a mere stroke of the artist’s pen. I grew up in the Catholic Church, as you know, and my Mexican Jesus looks nothing like that. He is bathed in blood, thorns puncturing his scalp, mouth in agony.
How do we reconcile these opposing concepts? Bloody yet pure. Agonized, but powerful and in control.
In Alma Chapter 5 it describes two groups of people who BOTH have garments covered in blood. One is considered clean and washed still, the other is stained with the blood of those they harmed during their lifetimes. I found this interesting because we so often say the Lamb’s (Jesus Christ) blood will wash us clean and “white” but that color description is likely figurative rather than literal. In line with this, we read in Exodus Chapter 29, V 21 that Aaron and his sons were prepared to receive priesthood keys by having the ram’s blood “sprinkle[d] upon Aaron, and upon his garments, and upon his sons, and upon the garments of his sons with him: and he shall be hallowed, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons’ garments with him.”
That changes the imagery, doesn’t it? Much like how our made-for-TV version of childbirth gets replaced by the bloodbath that is labor and delivery once we get to witness or experience it for ourselves.
So why am I sharing this? Well, I thought it might make (insert that dude, we all know that dude) squirm and that’s always a goal of mine. But more important, there are two concepts here that can be life-changing, life-giving.
The first is that this cleaned up, perfectionist version of life, we get to delete it from our files. Life is messy. And this is coming from me, someone who appreciates a neat and clean home, and who keeps her label-maker close by. But what I mean is that so long as we follow what God wants us to do, we needn’t fear what things looks like on the outside. Historically, women have been examples to the world for how this is done. From the beginning, Eve was charged with original sin, when actually she was furthering God’s Plan. Rebekah deceived Isaac so that God’s chosen son would receive His blessing (and Hebrew records indicate she was at a minimum disfellowshipped for this). Mary agreed to be an unwed mother, despite how slutty that appeared. These women, these mothers, agreed to look just as stained as the wicked, because they knew their blemishes came from the Lamb of God.*
A dear friend of mine, Jill Brim, was able to work with a professor of Hebrew studies and he informed her that the verse “Be ye therefore perfect” had been cut off from its original translation, which included ‘… having had all the ordinances of salvation.” Like Aaron and his sons, the ordinances and rites remain important and true, but what we do with that power will not look “perfect” to the world. When done right it will involve dirt under the nails from hard work, spit-up on your shoulder, and a running nose from how hard you’ve cried. These human functions are charity made manifest, which is the greatest power on earth. Those who do not fully grasp the Atonement, who are not aware the Messiah has come and will return, cannot process this imagery so they must codify and even subjugate it with rites like the Mikveh, or fixate on superficial signs like Sunday best.
The second thing we gain from understanding the Atonement’s relationship with a clean show of blood is this concept of Jesus, the Hen who gathers in her chicks (Matthew 23:37, 3 Nephi 10). I had two very insightful moments with my pregnancies. When I carried my daughter, the verse about “bowels full of mercy” became illuminated in my mind and I understood bowels to mean womb. I checked this with Bro. Barron (a Jewish convert to the Church and former institute teacher) who told me that indeed the Hebrew word ramach for uterus was close to remech (as used in the original translation), meaning low, humbled, charitable. This lined up with the time when I was delivering my first born, and the words came to me that, “Jesus the Father is our language’s attempt to describe male mother.” The Mosiah chapters in the Book of Mormon spend some time on this, linking Son to Father and Father to Son. Elsewhere we see repeated “He has born our sins.”
So here we have Jesus, our male mother, and a life of charity marked by stained garments. To me, Christianity is all about these paradoxes. Of the poor becoming kings and queens. Of the persecuted being called blessed. If we put our faith in Christ we see these things for ourselves. We will receive these truths and powers not as the world giveth, and they will endow us comfort and joy, even and especially as the world around us is in chaos. It won’t be pretty, but it will be beautiful.
Amen.
*It reminds me of a quote from Elder Talmage, Be not afraid of soiling [your] hands; be not afraid of scars that may come to [if] won in earnest effort, or [won] in honest fight, but beware of scars that disfigure, that have come to you in places where you ought not have gone.”
No comments:
Post a Comment