Morning Prayer Service for ‘The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever’
on the Feast of St Mary Magdalene, Clapham, 28 July 2024
This service took place on the morning when Clapham hosted one of the world’s annual ‘Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever‘ events, where participants recreate the music video for Kate Bush‘s 1978 song “Wuthering Heights“.
VIDEO Kate Bush, Wuthering Heights
Introduction: the Woman in Red in culture and in scripture
Today, Clapham is hosting an extraordinary event: The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever. A few dozen people gathered together to rehearse, then perform, their recreation of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights video.
It’s part of a worldwide series of performances which began in 2013 in Brighton, as an attempt to set a world record of having the most people dressed as Kate Bush in one location. More than a decade on and the event stretches across the world from Austin in Texas to Sydney in Australia; there are dancers dressed in red in Berlin, Copenhagen, Dublin and Tel Aviv, to name but a few. For an event which has its roots in Emily Bronte’s novel it seems astonishing that it’s never been performed in Yorkshire before – so today is a first.
I think it’s more than just a trivial bit of obscure pop culture: it’s something worth celebrating, and its themes are rich, suggestive, and not often enough explored in church. So here goes.
The Woman in Red is a familiar figure in life and in literature.
She is a ghost, often a jilted lover, killed in a fit of passion, or a woman of vanity. In all cases, she is wearing a scarlet or blood red dress. A Red Lady has walked around the Church of St Nicholas in Pluckley, Kent, since the 12th century, and Leap Castle in Ireland is haunted by a Red Lady holding a dagger, who reportedly committed suicide after being raped and seeing her baby killed.
Then there’s the Scarlet Woman, the promiscuous one, the prostitute, the woman condemned by the self-righteous for her casual approach to sex and relationships. Think Nell Gwynn, or The Whore of Babylon.
Kate Bush chose to become The Woman in Red for her performance; and by doing she invoked Cathy from Wuthering Heights, whose ghostly presence at the window of her star-crossed lover Heathcliffe is the central image of Emily Bronte’s novel of wild and brutal passion.
The musician has said that she was drawn to Emily Bronte when she discovered they share the same birthday: 30 July. What she may or may not know is that this date also coincides with the Feast of St Mary Magdalene, which took place this week.
Another woman usually portrayed in red, this is the Mary who had ‘seven demons driven out of her’ by Jesus. Mary Magdalene has caused the Church to get its patriarchal undies in a twist over the centuries, the sixth century Pope Gregory I insisting that she was the unnamed “sinful woman” who anointed Jesus’s feet with expensive perfume, which triggered the widespread belief that Mary Magdalene was a repentant prostitute or a promiscuous woman, a viewpoint heightened by centuries of furious speculation that she and Jesus were far more than just disciple and teacher. These aspersions were only corrected in 1988 when, under pressure from feminist theologians, Pope John Paul II published his apostolic letter “On the dignity and vocation of women”, which emphasised the special role of Mary Magdalene in the gospels. She is the first to meet the Risen Christ, and to announce his resurrection to the Apostles. Contrary to centuries of faulty Church teaching, that event, in the Garden of Gethsemane, affirms without doubt that Christ entrusts divine truths to women as well as men.Which may sound obvious t us now, but is a truth which has been suppressed until recently.
Thus we may find the real or imagined Mary Magdalene to be a kindred spirit to Catherine, the impassioned but unfulfilled lover, the phantom haunting the lives of her menfolk, the one damaged by many demons, seeking redemption even after death.
At daybreak on the feast day of St Mary Magdalene this week, crowds gathered on Glastonbury Tor, many dressed in red, for a lantern-lit ceremony involving throwing roses into the air, which was conducted by Priestess Caroline Glazebrook, hooded and robed in red. In The Sacred Magdalene Festival Mary is described as a ‘Sacred consort to Christ whose image was distorted and whose existence condemned to the periphery of history, she is now one of the central figures of a powerful heart awakening on the planet.’
In 2019 the British musician FKA twigs released an album titled MAGDALENE, alluding to the biblical figure Mary, a demonstration of how she has become a mythical feminist icon in modern day cultural portrayals, a figurehead for women’s misrepresentation in the media, an icon for the ‘reclamation of the sacred feminine and a reinvigoration of spiritual life.’
In Cathy, in Kate, in Mary, and in the growing numbers of Women in Red inspired by them, there is something fascinating afoot.
Using the simple service of Morning Prayer for the Feast of St Mary Magdalene as our basis, let us spend some time contemplating these themes….
Invitation to Confession
Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul,
and why are you so disquieted within me?
O put your trust in God;
for I will yet give him thanks,
who is the help of my countenance, and my God.
Psalm 42.13-14
If anyone is in Christ, she is a new creation:
everything old has passed away; everything becomes new.
That we may put behind us all that is past,
let us call to mind all that troubles us.
cf 2 Corinthians 5.17
Silence
Kyrie Confession
Lord, in your love you invite us to be your friends:
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, in your joy you accept the gifts we offer you:
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, in your trust you send us to be your faithful witnesses:
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Silence
Collect
Almighty God,
whose Son restored Mary Magdalene to health of mind and body
and called her to be a witness to his resurrection:
forgive our sins and heal us by your grace,
that we may serve you in the power of his risen life;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen
READING: Song of Solomon 3.1-4
Read from the New King James Version
By night on my bed I sought the one I love;
I sought him, but I did not find him.
“I will rise now,” I said,
“And go about the city;
In the streets and in the squares
I will seek the one I love.”
I sought him, but I did not find him.
The watchmen who go about the city found me.
I said, “Have you seen the one I love?”
Scarcely had I passed by them,
When I found the one I love.
I held him and would not let him go,
Until I had brought him to the house of my mother,
And into the chamber of her who conceived me.
A DIGRESSION on PASSION
You don’t hear the Song of Solomon very often in church. Why? Is physical attraction not a God-given thing? Is sexual intimacy not part of what makes us human, in God’s image?
Somehow, the Howarth curate’s daughter understood that in separating out the physical from the spiritual, Christian theology has done us all a disservice, and so, by contrast, Emily Bronte created some of the most movingly intimate passages of any nineteenth century novel. Hear Catherine making this confession to Nelly Dean:
“My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath — a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff — he’s always, always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being.”
Scripture does carry more of this kind of insight; including the sensual act of the woman anointing Jesus’s feet with expensive perfume, and the longing expressed here, in Psalm 42: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.”
SONG As the deer pants for the water
Based on Psalm 42. Martyn J Nystrom © 1984
Sung by Kathryn Crosweller, from How Deep the Father’s Love for Us, 2015
A DIGRESSION on THE PAIN OF UNREQUITED LOVE
If you’ve read the book or seen one of the many films, you’ll know that the love which Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliffe shared was torn apart by circumstances in life; and Kate Bush relives in song – and reenacts in dance – the deceased Cathy haunting Heathcliffe, seeking reconciliation, for their separation in life – and even in the afterlife – causes them both so much pain.
After Catherine’s death, Heathcliff declares the mortal world a living hell. She has taken his soul with her to the grave. “‘…Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’”
Kate compresses Cathy’s longings into the bridge of her song, “Ooh, let me have it; Let me grab your soul away.”
Did Mary Magdalene experience similar feelings for Jesus? It’s a question which has haunted the ages and inspired much great art and music. In the 1971 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber gave us the moving torch ballad I Don’t Know How To Love Him. It’s been covered by many artists since, and I have chosen to share the version sung by Sinead O’Connor, child of a Magdalene Laundry, a self-confessed promiscuous person, a deeply spiritual seeker and agitator of religious authorities; this performance from The Sugar Club in Dublin, in 2007, marked the launch of a collection of devotional songs which Sinead entitled Theology. When we see Sinead performing today she appears to us as a ghost on the screen, following her death of natural causes at the age of 56, one year ago this weekend, 26 July 2023.
SONG Sinead O’Connor, I Don’t Know How To Love Him
Taken from the collection Theology. Recorded at The Sugar Club, Dublin, 8 November, 2006.
A DIGRESSION on RUNNING UP THAT HILL
(or how men make ‘ghosts’ of women)
It could be said that Emily Bronte was a ghost writer: for she published Wuthering Heights using the pen name ‘Ellis Bell’, as her chances of getting published would be far greater if people thought the author was a man. Similarly, her sister Charlotte used the name Currer Bell; and her sister Anne, Acton Bell. It was only after her early death that her name became credited to her one great literary work.
When Wuthering Heights peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart for four weeks in early 1978, it made Kate Bush the first female artist to achieve a number one single with an entirely self-penned song. A cause for celebration – but also yet another signifier of a culture in which men seem to make ghosts of women, relegating them to the fringes.
According to Kate Bush, in her 1985 single Running Up That Hill, the only way to overcome the differences between men and women is to “Make a deal with God.”
There’s a fascinating passage of scripture which interrogates this ages-long dilemma; the account of the so-called ‘sinful woman’, maybe Mary Magdalene, pouring expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet, and Judas, the PCC treasurer for the disciples, weighing in heavily to try to put her back in her place. Jesus, though, gives short shrift to that patriarchal palaver, as wonderfully expressed in Sydney Carter’s 1972 song, Judas and Mary:
SONG Judas and Mary
Judas and Mary written by Sydney Carter, performed by Jancis Harvey on her 1972 album Distance of Doors.
READING Verses from John 20
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. She stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, Mary bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
A DIGRESSION on WOMEN IN RED
Here is Mary, haunted: by the loss of the man she loved; and by the second loss piled up on top of the first, the loss of his body, not in the tomb where she had seen him laid to rest just hours before.
And here is Mary, healed: by the appearance to her of her Jesus, calling her by name, life after death, eternal love piled on top of the love they already shared. Mary, alone above Peter and all the other disciples as the one Jesus trusts to break the news that will transform their lives and the life of the world, Mary, the ‘First of the Apostles’, who announced the good news of the resurrection to that frightened group of broken men.
Mary, in kindred spirit with all Women in Red, a force for challenge, creative change, celebration and renewal.
Intercession
With Mary Magdalene and all holy women,
let us praise our God and call upon him in prayer.
Mary Magdalene was the first to greet your risen Son
and carried the news of his triumph over death to the disciples.
Strengthen us to be faithful witnesses to the gospel in the world
and grant your grace to all who preach and teach the faith.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, graciously hear us.
Father, when Mary came to you with her demons,
You cast them out by your love.
Help those who struggle with their demons;
all who suffer with poor mental health;
Open our eyes to see those in need or sickness;
strengthen your Church to show forth your love to them today.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, graciously hear us.
God, we give thanks for the artists:
the dancers, the singers, the painters and all who give expression to the deep loves and anguish of the human soul.
We thank you for how they enable us to reach into ourselves and discover parts of us we never knew existed;
how they challenge us to see things differently and appreciate others’ ponts of view;
how they help us to dig into the life of the world and find deeper joy in our life together with all we share this good earth.
Lord, hear us.
Lord, graciously hear us.
Joining in fellowship with Mary Magdalene and all your saints,
we thank you for … recently departed,
and all those who have gone before us in the faith.
Grant that with them we may see your Son face to face
in everlasting glory.
Merciful Father,
accept these prayers
for the sake of your Son,
our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Silent prayer
The Lord’s Prayer
A DIGRESSION on DANCE
One of the world’s most popular performers, Lady Gaga, was a Catholic school girl who found it easier to worship “a more feminine force” in her life, and who throughout her career has found strength by praying to holy women like Mary Magdelene. In 2011 she released the song Bloody Mary, in which she “casts Mary Magdelene as a graceful, eternal icon of feminine suffering”, humanising Magdelene, who “chooses to focus on the love Jesus spread in the world as opposed to the tragedy before her. Despite her grief, she promises to pick up that mantle and spread love in her own way: drying her tears and dancing through the night.”
“I’m gonna dance… with my hands held above my head… like Jesus said,” sings Lady Gaga, channelling Mary Magdalene, and the song signs off in Spanish, with “Liberate, mi amor”, meaning, “Free yourself, my love”.
From the day that the prophetess Miriam took a tambourine in her hand, and led all the women of the people of Moses in a dance to celebrate God having freed them from captivity, to Kate Bush giving physical form and visual language to Cathy’s ghostly petitions at her lover’s window, women have danced, to express they freedom and power which they have found, or sometimes fought to claim for themselves, over and against a world which would so often otherwise suppress them.
Which is why today is such a cause for celebration.
VIDEO 2023: Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever around the world
Australian Community Media.
Blessing
May Christ, who makes saints of sinners,
who has transformed those we remember today,
raise and strengthen you that you may transform the world;
and the blessing of God almighty,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be among you and remain with you always. Amen