A Risk Worth Taking

O God,
We often get it wrong, we wander in the dark,
We listen to the voice of fear, we blame others.
We follow the easy path instead of the just road.
We judge before we know, we assume rather than ask.
We are quick to anger and slow to understand,
We would rather be right than admit wrong.
Yet you love us faithfully and fully,
even in our messiness and our meanness.
You love us as we are, yet love too much
to let us stay that way. Amen.

Someone once said to me when i arrived in a new congregation, “WOW!. You know, sometimes, you can come on really strong.”He said this like it was a newsflash.

I mean, most people who’ve known me for 10 minutes know that, especially when it comes to the Gospel – preaching it or living it – I’m pretty passionate.

And, that’s what we were talking about.

Preaching the gospel.

And, that’s exactly what I said to him, in response.

“We’re talking about the gospel,” said I.

“You do understand, of course, the risks some have taken for that gospel? For living it and preaching it? Right?”

Yesterday, the 29th of July being the Feast of Mary and Martha of Bethany, was the 49th Anniversary of the Ordination of the Philadelphia Eleven who were eleven women who had been ordained deacons who were ordained priests in God’s one, holy, catholic and apostolic church in the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, PA.

Talk about taking a risk for the Gospel!

My friend Elizabeth Kaeton and I were discussing just how risky it was and how much we have inherited from their strength and courage.

And so much of this reflection comes from her spirit.

It was a monumental occasion in the life of the church.

The House of Bishops had, in 1972, voted 74-61 in favor of the principle of the ordination of women as priests, but in 1973 General Convention rejected the change.

So, it was, “illegal”.

The Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches in many towns, like many churches around the country, flew the flag at half-mast; others flew them upside down – a universal signal of “dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property”.

The event was covered on the nightly news on all three major television networks and made the front page of The New York Times, and the cover stories of Time and Ms. Magazines which made it difficult, if not impossible, for the institutional church to ignore.
 
Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, the Ordination of Women to the priesthood was not an event that sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus.

The movement had been building in the Anglican Communion since the ordination of deaconesses in the Anglican Church in London in 1862 and in The Episcopal Church in 1885, but it wasn’t until 1968 – more than 100 years later – that the House of Bishops asked the next Lambeth Conference of Primates and Bishops to consider the matter of women priests.

It is worth noting that it wasn’t until 1967 that a constitutional amendment passed that allowed women elected as deputies to General Convention to be seated with voice and vote.

That amendment was ratified in 1970. So, it’s been just 53 years since women have had the right to vote in The Episcopal Church.

A Special General Convention in 1968 allowed women to be lay readers and allowed to minister the chalice – only 55 years ago.

Let that sink in.

We ought not to be surprised by this.

In the 70s, women were trivialized.

Look, a woman in a hard hat!

A woman in a police uniform!

Bless their hearts, aren’t they something?

In 1975, I – a gainfully employed Wall Street professional – applied for a credit card and was told I needed the signature of either my husband, father or brother.

It’s not anything that women had never experienced.

In the first scripture lesson, we hear the story of Rachel and Leah, but we hear it from the perspective of Jacob, who, poor dear, was tricked by Laban, his second cousin, and to work 14 years for the woman he loved.

However, Jacob was with Laban after he left home because he had tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright.

Some might be inclined to say that being tricked by Laban served him right.
 
But, imagine Rachel. Scripture tells us that when Jacob met Rachel he kissed her and “lifted up his voice, and wept” (Genesis 29:11).

This was a rare event in ancient scripture. Men “took” women for their wives – indeed, “took” many women.

David lusted after and took Bathsheba, a woman married to one of his generals. But when Jacob met Rachel, he loved her.
 
Imagine what it must have been like for Rachel to have to wait seven years, to be obedient to the very tribal custom that gave to the eldest, the first born, not only the birthright but the right to be first to be married.

Imagine what it was like for Leah, who got what was her birthright but not only got a husband who stole his brother’s birthright, the truth was that he didn’t love her; instead, he really loved and wanted her sister!

Enough to work seven more years for her!

Imagine what those first seven years of marriage were like for Leah!

St. Paul reminds us that “all things work together for good for those who love God.”

Eventually, Jacob’s sons would be the fulfilment of God’s covenant with him.

The six sons of Leah, the four sons of Jacob’s concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah, Rachel’s son Joseph, who was Jacob’s favorite, and Joseph’s two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, would become the leaders of the 12 Tribes of Israel.

None of that would have been possible without the women in his life.

I have hung onto those words of St. Paul’s – that promise that “all things work together for good for those who love God” – when I knew I certainly loved God but things did not seem to be working together for anything good.

I’ve known I wanted to be a priest since I was six years old.

My mother says, long before that, I used to set up the piano stool with the oil and vinegar cruets and the biscuit cutter to make a priest’s host.

I was having communion with cookies as wafers and kool aid as wine.

I remember the priest of my childhood saying he would drop dead before he would allow a girl on the altar.

I remember watching my twin brother serve the mass while I sat on the front row, dreaming of serving.

I remember living in the Virgin Islands as a teenager as a part of a team of young people from our Diocese working with children of sugar cane field workers, living in the parish hall of a little church in St Croix, 54 years ago and knowing in my hearty that i was called to be a priest.

In those days the answer always was “but you can be a nun.”

Not knocking the ministry of nuns, but I wanted to be a priest.

“Girls can’t be priests.

Girls become nuns and boys become priests.

Not me.

When asked, I said, right out loud, “I want to be a priest.”

I learned to serve on the altar in that little church and when we returned home, he still should not allow girls to serve.

I learned to serve on the altar in that little church, but our priest still would not let us serve when we returned…..

It would be a few years until I was able to give voice to my true sense of vocation.

I had lived din Europe and prepared for ministry leadership in secular jobs until that day in Philadelphia, when suddenly my dream was a possibility.

I was in my early 20’s and until that day I had not yet seen a woman priest.

The process began and what a journey and process it was…

Field work and people who did not want to receive communion from a woman.. good learning from priests who cared—-and a real sense that all things work together for good for those who love the lord and are called by his purpose.

The next few years were an amazingly incredible journey.

Turns out, that my home priest’s rejection prepared me for the many challenges I would face in the journey to priesthood, but it turns out St. Paul was right.

Not only is it true that “all things work together for good for those who love God,” it was never more true that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That is the Good News of Christ Jesus as proclaimed by Paul that is worth the risk.

It’s like a teeny-tiny mustard seed that grows into one of the most magnificent trees in God’s realm.

It’s like measure of leaven that takes the dreams of a young, six year old girl who was told she couldn’t be what she knew God was calling her to be and expanded them beyond anything she could have asked for or imagined.

The Good News of Christ Jesus is like a treasure, hidden in a field and forgotten and then found, just as Leah and Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah, that despite the rules of patriarchy that made some legitimate, some more valuable than others, the covenant of God could not have been completed without them.

The Good News of Christ Jesus is like a pearl, precious, precious, that formed as an irritant which the ocean pushed through a crack in the shell.

Once inside, a pearl grows from a particle of sand into a beautiful internal luminescence that the shell can no longer contain, so it must be pushed out for the whole world to see and treasure.

The Good News of Christ Jesus is “like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind;”.

One person who objected to the ordination of women said to me, “If we start to ordain women, everything will change.

Everyone will think they can become Episcopalian.”

Son of gun if she wasn’t right!  

Those of us who have been excluded are especially passionate about making certain that absolutely everyone feels welcome to be a member of this old church of ours – warts and all.

We are passionate about casting the net wide and catching fish of every kind into the kind of baptismal water that helps each one become the best of who God created them to be.

Different.

Unique.

Called to seek and serve Jesus in the spark of divinity they see in themselves and each other.

And, when we are allowed to grow and change, so does the church.

Because we are – you and I are – the church, The Body of Christ, part of the baptismal water where we are challenged to be the living, growing, being and becoming the unique creature God intends for us to be.

And that, my friends, is something to come on strong about, to be passionate about.

And, even if it makes some people nervous or uncomfortable, living it is a risk worth taking.

I can’t imagine a pearl of any greater price.

And, I am so very deeply, humbly grateful for the gift of the women who are the Philadelphia Eleven who made it possible for me to be the unapologetically feisty, impatient, passionate priest I am today – warts and all.