Gender and genealogy

Genealogies play a big part in Advent and I've read a couple of things recently about the place of women in Matthew's genealogy (Matthew 1:1-17) that I'm trying to ponder a little because there's something about them that make me a little uneasy.

Matthew includes four women in his list - Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba - and my response to their inclusion has, in the past, been a fairly simplistic, 'Oh, how nice that Matthew has gone to the trouble of naming four of the women who played a part in Jesus' story!'

There are, of course, many, many unnamed women whose presence in the list are implicit - for every man whose name appears there is a woman who conceived and gave birth to the son whose name appears next on the list.

So why, when that list of unnamed women includes people like Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel (to name the three most obvious), does Matthew choose Tamar (who tricked her father-in-law into sleeping with her in order to preserve her dead husband's line), Rahab (a prostitute), Ruth (who may or may not have engaged in some morally dubious shenanigans in order to claim the protection of a male relative) and Bathsheba (who had an adulterous relationship with David)?

I've read two explanations recently. Kenneth Bailey, author of Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, suggests that the list as a whole 'Matthew gives us clues about the kinds of people that the Messiah came to save. He was to be a Savior for women and men who were both saints and sinners, Jews and Gentiles.'

In contrast, Paula Gooder, in Journey to the Manger, suggests that these sinful women are included specifically to place Mary's situation into a broader historical context in order to protect her reputation; God has always used fallen women and Mary is just the latest. What I think is particularly interesting here is that Gooder appears to have opted for the worst case scenario with Ruth, choosing to highlight the possible use of a euphemism in the text ('at his feet' can, apparently, refer to the genitals) rather than focusing on her self-sacrificial actions as the Gentile daughter-in-law of an impoverished Jewish widow.

Personally, I can't help but go back through the list and reflect on the damaged and damaging men who also made the list, individuals who lives (and leadership) were often far more problematic than those of the women whose names appear, and yet they don't stand out in this list, simply because of how the list is constructed.

But maybe the point is that all of these people were flawed (some more obviously than others) but some allowed themselves to be used by God (consciously or unconsciously) in the face of huge personal cost and at severe risk to their reputation. Is it possible to argue that that cost and risk was always going to be greater for women in the Old Testament (and, indeed as Gooder suggest, in the New) and therefore we shouldn't be surprised that the women God used were those with the least to lose? Perhaps, but I'm not sure that really answers the question of why women like Sarah, Rachel and Rebekah don't make the cut but these four women do.

A New Perspective

I've been thinking about age quite a lot recently (in case you hadn't noticed...). Some of that started with Judi Dench: her appearance on The Graham Norton Show a few weeks ago, an interview in the Christmas edition of the Radio Times in which I discovered that she was about to turn 80, and then watching Skyfall on Christmas Day.

I was struck by the difference between her and other 80-somethings I know: by her physical wellbeing (although she is losing her sight), her mental agility and general sparkiness, as well as how amazing she looks.

Barry Norman, who conducted the Radio Times interview (and who is himself 81), brought up the subject of aging:

She will be 80 this month, but when I mentioned it she got quite upset. “No, steady! The moment you say an age, people think bath chairs and sitting with your feet up. They say, ‘Take it easy.’ Why do they say that?

“The worst thing you can possibly do is stick somebody in a room in front of the television and not speak to them. No stimulus at all – not a jigsaw, not a game of cards, not a nice dog to cuddle. People immediately associate old age with infirmity. They say, ‘Oh, you must take it easy,’ and I think, ‘Get off!’ I don’t mind people being helpful, because I can’t see very well [she has macular degeneration] but I don’t want them to help me.”

So is Judi the exception that proves the rule that old age equals infirmity? Almost as an afterthought, my dad handed me a book as I was heading back to Leicester after Christmas. Called Coming Up Trumps, it's the memoir of Baroness Trumpington, a rather astonishing woman who I'd heard interviewed on Radio 4's Midweek back in April. It reads like a cross between PG Wodehouse and Forest Gump but with (slightly) more swearing. I read it in two sittings over two days.

Born Jean Campbell-Harris to an army officer and his American heiress wife, she grew up in privilege before her family lost everything during the Wall Street Crash. She worked at Bletchley Park during the war and in Madison Avenue (of Mad Men fame) in the fifties before marrying an Eton master. She was Mayor of Cambridge before being made a Conservative peer by Mrs Thatcher at the age of 58, becoming first a health and then a agriculture minister. At the age of 92 she still attends the House of Lords whenever it's sitting. The list of people she's met - and the circumstances under which she met them - is genuinely astonishing.

Towards the end of the book, she mentions that she was featured in a Channel 4 documentary about six women in their seventies and eighties, Fabulous Fashionistas, which I had, co-incidentally, stumbled across on 4od but never got round to watching. So watch I did. I'll be honest - I'm not sure why she was included in a programme about clothes, but it was interesting to see her interviewed.

But even more interestingly, it meant I stumbled across five other older women who are defying the stereotype of age equalling infirmity, including Gillian Lynne, 87, choreographer of Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, who still works full time.

So are these women exceptions? Is their collective unwillingness to retire about vanity? Money? A desire to stay young? Or are they living lives that are stimulating and inspiring, surrounded by interesting people and new opportunities? Are they, or their circumstances, fundamentally different to those of the eighty-somethings I know?

One of the things that struck me was that all these women (including the ones I haven't named) has the ability to embrace change, to roll with the punches of life. Each has suffered significant loss. Almost all has had some kind of second wind in the second half of their lives - as the oldest female minister at 69, as a shop assistant at 71, as an Oscar-winning film star at 62. Clearly it helps that they've all enjoyed good health - consider today's news that most types of cancer can be put down to bad luck. But to what extent is it significant that they have chosen - and they do appear to have chosen - not to succumb to the pervasive social stereotype that old age means infirmity?

I'm really grateful to have stumbled across these women at this point in my life - perhaps over the course of this year they'll inspire a new perspective on the big 40...