A Savior should listen to his mother

Mined from the notebooks Monday, May 13, 2019. Posted Tuesday afternoon, May 21.

Took Mrs M and Ken up to mass yesterday morning [Mother’s Day] for my weekly dose of contact holiness. I didn’t go into the church, of course. While Mrs M and Ken kept the sabbath by going to church, I made a pilgrimage to McDonald’s for a sacramental cup of coffee and to make use of the WiFi. Oliver stayed home. He and I are the house heathens. Ken is questing and mass gives him an hour to contemplate and meditate on existential questions in familiar surroundings. Mrs M, tho’ she’s no Catholic anymore---not a devout one, at any rate---finds comfort, focus, and a steadying nostalgia in the prayers, hymns, and bible stores she grew up with. I feel guilty I didn’t join them. I should have. It was Mother’s Day after all. I should have been with Mrs M for the blessing of the mothers. I could have put up with all that Catholic-ing for an hour for her sake.

When I picked them up after mass, I gave them my usual quiz. What was the gospel? What were the readings? They don’t have to answer with chapter and verse. Just the gist. I remember enough from my altar boying days to name that scripture in one sentence. I’ve given up asking them about the sermon. They never remember it. Simple reason for that. The sermons aren’t memorable. Neither of the priests at our parish is in the same league as a raconteur and performance artist as the pastor at Mom Mannion’s church up north.

Yesterday the First Reading was from the Acts of the Apostles. Chapter 13, Verses 14 and 43-52. Second Reading was from the Book of Revelation. 7: 9, 14b-17. (I had to look up the citations.) The Gospel was not John 2:1-11. It was John 10: 27-30. As far as I recall, it never is John 2:1-11 on Mother’s Day. It should be. It could be. Priests are allowed some discretion when it comes to choosing the readings. John 2:1-11 is the perfect Mother’s Day gospel. It’s the story of the Wedding at Cana.

On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; Jesus also was invited to the marriage, with his disciples. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”  And Jesus said to her, “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”  Now six stone jars were standing there, for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the steward of the feast.” So they took it. When the steward of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

I’ve always loved this story. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud when it was read at mass when I was an altar boy. It’s the only moment of pure comedy in the New Testament. I still get a kick out of imagining the look Mary must have given Jesus when he said, “Woman, my hour has not yet come” and how she didn’t even respond, just turned to the servants and told them to follow his instructions, knowing that despite his irritation he would do what his mother wanted.

The painting up top is by a Baroque artist named Gaetano Gandolfi. Yeah, I never heard of him either.

I like this painting for its own sake. It’s a bit too pretty and mannered. The figures are too classical and heroic to be comic But I like its color, its brightness, the dynamism, the composition, and the characterizations of the people around the table. I especially like Gandolfi’s take on the gospel story. I like the mixture of exasperation and amusement in Jesus’ expression. I like the way Mary’s smiling at having caused it. To me, Gandolfi’s captured what I imagine must have been the basis of their relationship---love, patience, respect, and humor.

By the time Gandolfi painted his version in 1766 there was a centuries-old tradition of using bible stories as an excuse to paint genre paintings. The theme of these is the wedding as a social gathering of all sorts and conditions. In many instances, the guests and the servants were the main characters acting out their own little stories and Mary and Jesus were just sort of there, often far in the background, centering the scene but not adding to the action. The miracle hadn’t begun yet. The greatest of these is Veronese’s. My favorite is Tintorello’s.

Vernonese’s is gigantic.

Thirty two and a half feet wide, twenty-two and a quarter high. Takes up a whole wall in the Louvre. You can spend hours looking at it---watching it, in a way, moving from left to right and enjoying each character grouping as though it’s a scene in a play.

Tintoretto’s is less impressive and dynamic. Which is partly why I like it better. The comedy is gentler and I think that’s more in keeping with the gospel.

 At first glance, it’s simply a pretty picture of a cheerful if not particularly exuberant wedding reception. The 16th Century equivalent of an accidentally professional looking cell phone photo. But it’s deceptive. You can imagine the newlyweds looking at it a few anniversaries down the line and saying “Oh, there’s cousin Kate. I forgot she was able to make it.” Then they look closer. But who are those waitresses in the front they rated so much attention?  Why didn’t Uncle Jake wait until they got out of the way?” And viewing the painting you might ask yourself the same thing.

What are those waitresses doing there? Why are they and Cousin Kate and the bridesmaid next to her the only characters painted in enough detail that we can see them as the most distinct characters at the table? Then the light dawns---and that’s a pun, by the way: Tintoretto wasn’t painting them for their sake. He was painting the jugs next to them and this was his way of downplaying that fact. From them, then, our eye is drawn down the table by the light shining down from the clerestory windows to Jesus and Mary, who are talking quietly---”Woman, my hour has not come,” he’s whispering---and then back again to the jugs. What we’re seeing without at first seeing it is the miracle happening!

Jan Steen did a funny one I get a kick out of. Jan Steen was a comic artist. A caricature artist. You could even call him a cartoonist.  In his, Jesus is at work changing the water into wine and Mary is looking on approvingly but you have to search for them in the crowd of grotesques. It's like a scene out of "The Canterbury Tales" or "The Decameron" or a Robert Altman film.

Gandolfi was working in that tradition. There are stories going on around Jesus and Mary. The bride and groom are in the forefront at the left. The groom is listening---with a wan smile of forced politeness---to an old man I take to be his new father-in-law. At first glance, I read them as stock characters in a sitcom, with the old man giving his new son-in-law advice on how best to treat his daughter, with a subtle or not so subtle hint that the kid better treat her right or else. Over on the right a bridesmaid is giving the eye to the shirtless and ripped servant. On the opposite side of the table, on Mary’s left, is a young couple. She’s apparently looking attentively at Jesus but maybe she’s pretending not to be listening as the young man whispers sweet nothings in her ear---the truly interesting thing here, though, is that he’s dark-skinned, darker even than the servant in the forefront serving a glass of wine to the bride. That’s how I read them at first, at any rate. Then the dismaying likelihood that the figure I took for a young woman is in fact a young man and something far different than a flirtation is going on.

All the other figures except Mary seated on that side of the table are male. There are eleven of them not including Jesus and the figure on Mary’s left. (If you’re counting, there’s one peeking over the groom’s shoulder.) According to the gospel, Jesus’ disciples were at the wedding. If the figure is male, he’s likely meant to be one of twelve. The Twelve. John, probably: John being the youngest apostle and traditionally portrayed as beardless. His being seated next to Mary is indicative, as well. At the Crucifixion, Jesus appointed him Mary’s surrogate son and her his mother. (Following that example, the bearded man on Jesus’ right would be his right-hand man Peter then.)  And look at the clothes. John is dressed like the other beardless young man over to Jesus’ right. Looks like him too. If the young man on Mary’s left is supposed to be John, that would make the one on Jesus’ right John’s brother James. What this means is that the dark-skinned whisperer is another one of the apostles and I’ll leave it to you to guess who that might be and work out the racial implications of that. We’re still a long way from “Jesus Christ, Superstar”. The devil may not be as black as he’s painted, but in Gondolfi’s day painting Judas as black would have have made more than an allegorical point.

But the important and viewable fact is that Jesus and Mary are at the center of the action and, unlike in other paintings of its kind, they’re in action. Jesus is gesturing to the steward and the servants to get the jars of water ready. Mary is smiling approvingly as if to say, “He’s such a good boy.” What I really like, though, is that Gandolfi has painted Jesus as a very young man.

The gospel story takes place at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He’s already gathered disciples and called his apostles. So he’s thirty. But in the painting he looks a good ten years younger, if not more, and I wonder if Gandolfi did it to make a point about Jesus’ humanity. Jesus would always have listened to his mother, no matter what his age (Well, except that time when he was twelve.), but I imagine he did it with less patience and filial respect when he was a teenager. Whatever else he was, and who his father was, he was his mother’s son, and that couldn’t have been easy for either of them. How do you go about raising a savior? How do you keep your patience with a mere mortal cramping your style even if she is your mother?

I imagine that Mary always had the upper hand. They were Jewish, after all. Portraying Jesus as very young would be a way to emphasize that. Her having the upper hand, that is. Not their Jewishness. Gandolfi was from the North of Italy---Bologna---and he depicted them as blond and pale as his neighbors and family likely were. Two hundred and fifty odd years later, plenty of us still haven’t gotten it into our heads that Jesus wasn’t white.

Just as an aside: Like I said, until I started poking around the web looking for a painting to go with this post, I’d never heard of Gondolfi and hadn’t ever seen this painting and it took me by surprise. Jesus is just pointing out is instructions to the steward, but at first glance, I thought he was doing the movie magician thing with his hand and zapping the water into wine, like a young, blond, tousle-haired Doctor Strange or...a young Jedi of our acquaintance.

He does look a little like Hayden Christensen in “Revenge of the Sith”, don’t you think? I can imagine a scene like this taking place on Tatooine if Qui-gon had never stumbled upon him and he’d been left at home to be raised by his mother.

Think about it.

When we meet him in “The Phantom Menace”, it’s just the two of them, and he’s already the man of the house. Shmi isn’t in the position or of the temperament to provide much in the way of discipline. She’s not as strong as Mary and there was no Joseph in her and Anakin’s life. As far as we know, no angel appeared to warn her of an impending divine rape and what that’s going to mean for the child she’ll raise. So he’d been a source of continual surprise and confusion as he grew up and his powers developed. What would have happened if Qui-gon hadn’t interfered?

She was already spoiling her brilliant and headstrong son. Maybe it would have worked out. Maybe it would have been better for him if he’d been raised by his indulgent but good-hearted mother than by the overly demanding and alternately cavalier and neglectful Obi-wan. Anakin might have figured things out on his own. Rey did, and she had only hope and vague memories of her mother and father to guide her and rely on. But Anakin at ten is already too cocksure of himself. And he’s already gathered disciples. They’re more like a team with him as quarterback, so far. But that could change as they all mature into adolescence and young adulthood. Would he have been drawn to the light or the dark side or would he have stayed outside the Force or founded his own religion?

I’m not just spitballing here. For me, this raises a question about the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert that’s troubled me since I was a kid. The question isn’t what if Jesus had given in to Satan’s temptations. The question is what would I do if faced with similar temptations myself?

Not if. When.

The proof that Jesus is human is that he’s tempted. The proof that he’s the savior---the Chosen One---is that he resists.

Something to keep in mind when thinking about the stories of Anakin and Luke.

But whatever Anakin’s course, there would have been times when Shmi asked him to the equivalent of turning water into wine and he’d have resented her asking.

Back to subject at hand…

In the course of my Googling for pictures I came across articles,essays, blog posts, and commentary on the the Wedding at Cana. The gospel story, most of them. A few on particular paintings.  Some I skimmed, a couple I read all the way through. Most were on the question of Mary’s theological importance. Catholics and Protestants have been debating this for centuries, with Protestants contending she was just an ordinary woman and Catholics exalting her as something more than a saint. This leads into debating the importance of the story of the Wedding at Cana and Mary’s role in it. The Protestants would have her just there. The focus is on the miracle, Jesus’ first, and therefore the beginning of his ministry, and that’s all the story is about. The Catholics see her as the catalyst. It’s through her intercession that the miracle takes place and Jesus begins his work. He tells her his time has not yet come, and she makes it clear that it has and it’s at her instigation. This elevates her to an almost divine plane, and that’s what the story is about. It’s the founding myth of the Catholic cult of Mary as the Mother of God.

I don’t recall ever thinking about it in that way. If the nuns made that point in religious ed I don’t remember it. Maybe there was a sermon I tuned out. To me the story has always been important because it’s a funny one showing both Mary and Jesus at their most human.

Which reminds me of my favorite Jesus and Mary joke. Well, it’s the only Jesus and Mary joke I know, but it’s still a good joke.

So, Jesus is out and about in Jerusalem, going about his preaching and miracle working, when a woman comes running towards him followed by an angry crowd with stones in their hands. She’s an adulteress and the crowd intends to stone her according to the law and for the sadistic fun of it. Jesus gets in front of the woman and stops the crowd in their tracks. “Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone,” he says. The crowd falls silent. They look abashed. They’re about to disperse. Then suddenly a stone comes flying out of the crowd and beans the poor woman right in the noggin. Jesus looks around furiously. His eyes settle on the culprit. He shouts:

“That’s not funny, mother!”

A belated Happy Mother’s Day to those of you who are mothers or have acted the role of a mother in someone’s life. I hope your day was filled with love, patience, respect, and good humor.

Filed under Sunday Sermon and Star Wars Star Trek and Stargate.

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Tho' I'm still no Catholic, more from the irreverent preachings of Lance Mannion:

Then he conjured up for us the image---the altar with its gold cross still standing, looking almost untouched by the fire amid the burnt wreckage and scorched ruins. Another symbol. Not a miracle. A piece of luck giving us something to focus on and think about: that no matter the trouble and the suffering and the difficulty we go through, some good can still be left standing inside us and from that and around that we can rebuild.

To read the whole post, follow the link to "A symbol of the best in all of us".

Comments

[JD]

When I heard the joke it was Stephen getting stoned, not an adulteress. But the song remains the same.

[FDChief]

The version I heard was that the stone zaps the adultress right between the eyes, and the Christ looks down at her, out into the crowd, and grates out: "Daddammit, Mom, sometimes you REALLY piss me off..."

[Mary Ellen Sandahl]

Having receivec my early childhood religious education in a firmly mainline Protestant environment, I can't say anything interesting about the theological implications of the marriage at Cana story, but I can say one thing about the translation quoted above. I'm a smallish female, and have a part time job as a horticultural maintenance person, which means I haul water around in various containers. A 2-gallon plastic watering can weighs almost 10 pounds. Twenty or thirty gallons in a stone jar wouldn't be something that even a couple of muscular servants could just casually carry around. I use a rolling metal tank at one site that holds about 15 gals; it fell on its side while full once, and 3 big guys couldn't lift it back up - fortunately we were able to partially empty it. Either those stone jars at the Wedding were stationary jogs that were used, like ale casks, to fill smaller serving pitchers, or the translators got it wrong. (Of course helping the servers to levitate the jogs ight have been part of the miracle.)

[Lance Mannion]

Chief, it's funnier if "mother" comes at the end of the punchline.

JD, I think the scriptural underpinnings of your version hurt the joke. Stephen was the first Christian martyr. He died after Jesus ascended to heaven. He was actually stoned to death, which isn't funny unless it's done by Monty Python, and St Paul who was still Saul at the time led the mob that killed him.

Mary Ellen, "(Of course helping the servers to levitate the jogs ight have been part of the miracle.)" LOL!

[Kaleberg]

Thanks for this mother's day celebration. I grew up with Borscht Belt Jewish humor, so I wasn't sure what to expect my freshman year when I had two room mates from Christian backgrounds. I definitely wasn't expecting "Drop that cross one more time and you're out of the parade." I doubt that's actually from the New Testament.

Not knownig whether those were US or British gallons, those 20-30 gallons could weigh from 160 to 300 pounds. A half keg full of beer weighs 160 pounds. A refrigerator weighs 300 pounds. It would probably take two men to haul it. Of course, I can't think of why the New Testament would be dealing with US or British measuring units.

[navarro]

to me the funniest thing about the enormous veronese painting is that it faces a painting that is 1 foot 6 inches by 2 feet 9 inches. that tiny canvas gets 100 times the traffic of the giant . . . because it is

the mona lisa
.