Been reading Indecent Theology by Marcella Althaus Reid and thinking about the nativity Luke shares. Marcella focusses on the interdisciplinary approach involving liberation theologies and queer theory. Lots of challenges to the so-called systematic theologies too. So there are some provocative things to be put about the nativity stories of Luke. And I want to ask some heretical and provocative questions... Is the nativity a queer story? There is an unwed virgin who gets pregnant, a man who becomes a dad and a divine-human baby who we seem to focus all our energies on.
How does the bible speak in its queerness?
Are Mary & Joseph the straight(forward) couple we have become familiar with? Her a humble, innocent, virgin who lays back and thinks of the salvation of the world and him who takes on someone elses son and mentions nothing of it.
How is it possible to allow the queer nativity story be itself instead of the romantic and rather decent story we control it to be in the church? To come out of the clutches of the two-point-four families of our minds? To come out of the closet and be bold enough to stand up to our questions, struggles, doubts and incredible thinking?
A young teen woman marries a, likely, much older man all because he is willing to go with Gods purposes for the whole of salvation his-story. Interesting one! Say nothing of our turning paedophiles into monsters of late but rather we accept Joseph (and Mary) with little imagination, creative thinking or expression about what on earth really went on between them. Did Joseph love young women or just the one young woman? And yes, I know it was more common then and life spans were much shorter and blah blah blah. But it is not even questioned about the acceptability of Joseph getting with a young woman-girl.
I don't want to make him (or paedophiles) into monsters. It's just that the least explored areas of the pregnancy, birth narratives & nativity are sexuality. All we say and sing is to skirt the virgin mother of God who gives birth to a baby 'veiled in flesh'. There is so little on sex and sexuality that features in sermons, prayers and reflections it is shocking how much of a sin it is!
And Mary, did she love young men, or older men perhaps. Is it vital to the story and Gods purposes she is a virgin? Physically, symbolically or otherwise!
Yes, the story and symbolism in Luke is really important but the incarnation is nothing to be sniffed at either! Bodies matter. Not only spirits and angels. But it is kind of edgy that they are given to combine in the story from Luke. The embodied god-spirit enters Mary and the enfleshed god-baby comes out of her. Somewhere there is miraculous sex, no sex or too much of an overemphasis on the spirit to do invisible things to a young woman with her consent. Not sure.
This story in Luke is nothing but queer - not in the homosexual sense of course but in the way that the story is wonderfully twisted and bent in a blessed, jam-packed with closets to come out of, of hidden things, of things occult, of things out of sight and of mind. Of forgotten voices. Mary is given to sing a song to God using other womens words from long ago whereas Zechariah (John the Baptists dad) is stunned into silence. This story in Luke is nothing but queer.
Tables are turned where a young woman speaks and an older man is silent.
Tables are turned where a saviour baby leads a revolution rather than the Baptist man sending us all into the fires of hell chooses for us.
I want to ask - why is the focus on Mary as virgin and not on Joseph as virgin too or instead?
For her 'first time' Mary and the Spirit seem to be together? Is this adultery? Is this fornication with the spirit? Does Joseph want to 'release' her from her commitment to marriage because she has had sex with another man? When Joseph is given to dream of Gods purposeful actions does he find it quite acceptable for Mary and God to have had an agreement - a meeting of minds but not a meeting of bodies? Or is Joseph of a mind to think that Mary has been 'unfaithful' to him with God like some non-Christian husbands think of 'their' wives?
Perhaps I am being unfair to God, unfaithful to the story and the characters? But there are so many things in here as givens that in our context in Wythenshawe are worth asking which go beyond the obvious pregnant unmarried teenager we sometimes hang the story on for extra poverty-glamour judgement.
We are aware God does things differently. I think we are less aware that God may turn the tables and offer us the chance to give birth to a baby-saviour every day. That's why I think we are obsessed with the baby in the manger and less keen on the baby growing in and through us - the miracle that god did with Mary, however it was, was significant not because she was a young, single woman, willing (and the church preaches we should be) but because of the queer nature of all the people involved. The miracle for me is the strangeness and oddity of the characters in the nativity cast. Spirits and angels combine with virgins, asexual men and non religious shepherds!
That's my take on a few of the threads in the story. To stick to the traditional assumptions, interpretations and offerings is to go with the flow at this time of the year. To allow the bible to speak, even out of its powerful silences, in the nativity is, in my view, with the help of Marcella, indecent, queer and much more interesting.
Painting: Nativity by Shari LeMonnier
