The icing on the cake

Like the profanest of mockers of a cake

Psalm 35:16, RSV margin

Cake conflict

The middle section of Mari Howard’s novel Baby, Baby, features four cakes, all made in the manse of the fundamentalist pastor, Alisdair Mullins. His wife Fee bakes the first one, an angel cake, as dessert for her son Max’s homecoming tea, but its end is untimely: the twin younger brothers steal it and eat it in their treehouse. The second cake is a replacement for the first, made, to general admiration, by Max’s girlfriend Jenny, after Fee has developed a migraine. The third cake is a chocolate one baked by Fee for late-night supper, but it is hijacked by Alisdair to be served at a session of baptismal counselling with his protégés Colin and Rachel. Happily the others in the manse get to eat the remains of it at supper time, though by then Jenny is bemused by what seems to be an evangelical cake obsession. Alongside all this the last cake is having an even more dramatic career. It is a rich fruit cake, lovingly baked by Fee for the forthcoming christening of her first grandchild, the son of her eldest daughter Erin. But in a moment of all round embarrassment at teatime, when Max has sprung his engagement on everyone, including Jenny, Alisdair intervenes and directs that the cake should instead be set aside for the baptism of Colin and Rachel’s adopted baby, Nathaniel. Max, Jenny, and obnoxious young cousin Chrissie duly arrive with cake in hand at Rachel’s: but in a moment of confusion as she tries to conceal a shameful mishap from them, the cake is dropped and smashed to pieces on the rockery.

Cake mix

Cakes are intrinsically trivial and comic. To me the misadventures of these Christian cakes symbolise the way that people of faith often get matters terribly mixed up. We treat trivia or secondary matters as primary, and by doing so, neglect the deepest and most fundamental principles. (‘You tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.’) Redirecting the two cakes is Pastor Mullins’s unconscious way of asserting his presumed ‘headship’ over his wife, his family, and his congregation. He wields this weapon almost petulantly when he sees his son acting autonomously and, moreover, choosing a partner from outside the fold, as his older sister has previously done. The smashed cake reflects the total disaster of Alisdair’s scheme of promoting the marriage of the sadly immature young couple, Colin and Rachel, the outcome of which is a criminal assault of the wife by the husband. But Jenny’s generous (one could even say merciful) intervention over the angel cake conceals the sin of the twin brothers from their father.

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Justice

Life and art have a surprising relationship. I believe that part of the inspiration for this cake episode was a split that really occurred in a church attended by the parents of a friend of Mari’s over the provision of cakes. But recently we have seen a national cake incident which had the potential for placing people of faith in a ridiculous light. I refer of course to the case of the Northern Irish Evangelical bakers prosecuted for refusing to make a cake for a client who wanted a pro-Gay slogan on the top. Now I think their vindication on appeal was the right judgement. I think a Jewish (or Christian, or Muslim) baker would be right to refuse to decorate a cake with a message advocating antisemitism, and equally a humanist baker would be justified in refusing to decorate a cake advocating Christianity, or a Brexiteer baker refusing to do one proclaiming ‘Remain’. This is a matter of basic civil justice. People should not be forced to promote a belief to which they are opposed. It has nothing directly to do with faith in Jesus Christ except in so far as that faith requires us to promote justice for all people. 

Just icing

I can completely understand the Irish bakers regarding their acquittal as an answer to prayer. They are grateful to God for reversing a seriously unjust sentence. But I also think that treating an inscription in cake icing as a manifestation of the battle between good and evil, especially when the ‘evil’ is a phenomenon that the world at large believes to be normal and natural, risks turning the Christian faith into a laughing stock. We Christians seldom pick our battlefields wisely. God is calling us to be good neighbours to those who fall among thieves and robbers, rather than their judges. Let’s not get stuck with the icing on the cake.

And, no, I don’t know what the Hebrew text of Psalm 35:16 means, but it has always amused me.