JtME Week Two
The Lover & the Knight
Hello bookish friends,
I got my hard copies this week of the book and I cannot wait for you to get yours—I’m just delighted with how it turned out. The color insert of the art is particularly wonderful. My eight-year-old is begging to read it but as you know, having read this week’s selection of chapters, some of the medieval writing is a little inappropriate for a younger audience!
Back to business: welcome to this week’s page for reflection & discussion on chapters three and four! These portrayals of Christ were likely a little more out-of-the-box for you in comparison to the Judge. I eagerly await your thoughts.
Here are the questions you received in your email:
Chapter 3:
The idea of Jesus as our lover may feel strange or even uncomfortable, and has been misused before. Yet medieval people strongly believed that bodily language was important in comprehending spiritual love. Can reclaiming some of this bodily language help us to understand the love of Christ as modern Christians? How can we do so thoughtfully, without falling into some of the more troubling ways that we have encountered this idea?
The Lover and the Judge as portrayals of Jesus have been tied together in scripture and theology since the early church. How do you see these two representations of Jesus as working together in our understanding of his character?
Chapter 4:
What do you imagine when you think of knights? How does the Christ-Knight subvert or fulfill these expectations?
Jesus as a knight is one of the more imaginative images of Christ in this book. What role do you think that imagination should play as we learn how to think and speak about Jesus?
Feel free to engage with other readers in the comments, ask your own questions, or share your thoughts about these themes and other themes in the book. Thanks for reading with me!
Peace,
Grace
I’ll be honest this was one of the chapters that I wanted to discuss with my small group when the podcast came out - with a significant amount of Puckish provocation as my motivation. But there’s certainly more value than winding up my very Protestant friends (they deserve better if nothing else).
This strangeness and discomforting metaphor for our modern eyes brings to the fore how we don’t really have a very healthy attitude to sex and relationships. I had a good conversation with one of my daughters about the various categorisations of relationships recently - I can’t remember what the exact definition of one of them was but it was something along the lines of non-sexual non-romantic. But’s you’ve just described a close friendship was my response as it describes how I feel about many of my closest friends.
I found myself coming back to the Incarnation - this metaphor explores the love of Christ in a way that we can understand in a human framing (albeit with some sensible limits). I think most of us have experienced the secret powerful yearning of an unresolved crush (or I identified a little too closely to Cyrano de Bergerac as a teen!) But crucially in that story, Cyrano speaks of his satisfaction with a close friendship with the love of his life (seriously watch the Gerard Depardieu movie - the ending gets me as close to tears as any). This view of Jesus can convey so powerful His love for us - it’s a description of an experience so visceral that it’s very hard to keep it as a head conversation.
I see some value in this view of Jesus as a conversation starter and a way to be counter cultural - I miss the long after work discussions with my atheist work colleagues that would have been perfect for this. There is always a danger in this of misunderstandings due to different understandings of words - it’s often amusing to me in my day job (Marketing Developer) that I often have to spend a lot of time thinking and being careful about the meaning of words - within the same company different people can have VERY different understandings of the same words - greying what little remains of my hair!
When I was thinking about the juxtaposition of Jesus as Lover and Judge I was reminded of a slight prejudice I have with humanity in general - most communities only seem to be able to hold onto one big idea at a time. And that manifests itself most clearly in whatever the morality question of the day it. When I was at Uni it was credit cards. Cutting up your credit card was the fastest route to peace and happiness. Today sexuality seems to impose on every conversation. Seeing Jesus as Lover and as Judge pushes against that mental limitation because we have to start holding seemingly contradictory ideas together - like holding the same poles of two magnets together. We don’t think of judges as playful or lovers upholding unpopular laws. Working to see Jesus as the Judge Lover and the Lover Judge forces us to consider His full character, not just the aspect we might want to at that time.
I find the idea of Jesus as lover at once attractive and also foreign. It's so interesting to learn more about how medieval Christians thought of this concept. I feel that sometimes my impression of medieval people is that they were at once far less sensitive about using yonic and phallic imagery to denote more profound things, but also very prohibitive around sex? I found the imagery of the wound at Jesus's side being represented as a vulva fascinating. It makes a lot of sense! But then doesn't square with what I have read about attitudes towards women and femininity...
I found the idea of Jesus as lover balancing out Jesus as judge comforting. That intimate tenderness that is the closeness and joy on offer while having a right understanding of Jesus as the one who judges.