Tag Archives: Philadelphia Eleven

Sermon – Mark 6.1-13, P9, YB, July 7, 2024

17 Wednesday Jul 2024

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I realized recently that one of things I often say when I am asked how my family is doing is to offer a halfhearted compliment, “Everyone is staying in their lane.”   I think I started adopting that minimum standard, “staying in your lane,” because I have learned over the years how little control I have as a parent.  I may not be able to control what things my kids are interested in, I may not be able to control how well they perform in school, and I may not be able to control how they handle interpersonal relationships.  But if each family member is “staying in their lane,” then that means I have at least controlled their meddling with one another, their active misbehavior, or their making a scene anywhere else. 

That is what seems to be bothering the folks in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth – Jesus is not staying in his lane.  At the beginning, there seems to be a modicum of respect for what Jesus is teaching in the synagogue – they compliment the wisdom he seems to have gained and the healing acts he has performed.  But the compliments end there.  Then the questions begin.  Where did he get this wisdom?  Isn’t he the carpenter’s son?  Isn’t he the son of Mary – a question dripping with criticism, as you would usually only refer to someone’s parentage through the father, not the mother.[i]  In other words, the people of Jesus’ hometown are basically saying, “Stay in your lane, Jesus!”

Passages like this can be so tempting for us.  We read about Jesus’ hometown and think, “Those silly folks from Nazareth!  They cannot see what God is doing right in front of them!”  As if “those” people and finger pointing is what the gospel calls for.  But when we start wagging our fingers at “those” people, we forget one kernel of truth about scripture:  we are always “those” people.”  Anytime something someone does in scripture makes us uncomfortable or sanctimonious, scripture is speaking straight to “us” not “those people.”  So, the people of Nazareth aren’t the only ones telling Jesus to stay in his lane.  We tell that to Jesus all the time.  When the Holy Spirit is calling us try a new ministry that feels daunting, we are tempted to tell Jesus to stay in his lane and let us do things our way.  When Jesus puts people in our lives that push us out of our comfort zones, we grumble to Jesus to stay in his lane and stop sending us prophets – I mean, annoying people.  When we hear that still, quiet voice speaking truth to us in places we like to keep in a box, we cut Jesus some nasty side-eye and tell Jesus to stay in his lane.

But as scholar Debie Thomas says, “The call of the Gospel is not a call to stand still.  It is a call to choose movement over stasis, change over security, growth over decay.”[ii]  Just last Sunday, we started a movie series about changemakers.  Last week, the film was The Philadelphia Eleven, the story of the unsanctioned ordination of the first eleven women in the Episcopal Church.  The vitriol of the bishops, clergy, and lay people who were opposed to those women’s ordination was shocking to the ears.  From the clergy person who stated with confidence, “Women can be anything they want – except a priest in God’s holy church.”  From the woman who lamented the ways those women had violated what God calls women to be and do in the world.  To the bishops held a public, scathing trial of the three male bishops who dared to ordain the first eleven.  The Philadelphia Eleven had waited time after time for the Episcopal Church to change – to chose growth, change, and movement instead of decay, security, and stasis.  And when the church refused to let these women out of their lane, the stepped out of their lane anyway.

Scholar Thomas concludes, “The scandal of the Incarnation is precisely that Jesus doesn’t stay in his lane.  God doesn’t limit God’s self to our small and stingy notions of the sacred.  God exceeds, God abounds, God transgresses, God transcends.  The lowly carpenter reveals himself as Lord.  The guy with the tainted birth story offers us salvation.  The hometown prophet tells us truths we’d rather not hear… [Jesus] will call out to us, nevertheless, daring us always to see and experience him anew.”[iii]  Our invitation today is let Jesus out of his lane in our life:  to not hold his lane as sacred, and to open ourselves to the ways his transgression of lanes is helping us to experience Jesus in new and fresh ways.  Maybe we do that in weekly worship, opening ourselves through song, prayer, and scripture to fresh experiences of God.  Maybe we come to the film series or Bible study this summer to see where God is exceeding, abounding, transgressing, and transcending.  Or maybe we let go of whatever boundary we are holding here at Hickory Neck to see what happens when we ask Jesus to please cross out of his lane.  The promise for us is a fresh experience of Jesus in our own day, time, and place.  Amen.

[i] Efrain Agosto, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 215.

[ii] Debie Thomas, “Hometown Prophets,” June 27, 2021, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3058-hometown-prophets on July 5, 2024.

[iii] Thomas.

On the Road to Getting It Right…

03 Wednesday Jul 2024

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Photo credit: https://azdiocese.org/2023/11/the-philadelphia-eleven-screenings-in-arizona/

This past Sunday, the local Episcopal parishes in my town gathered to watch the documentary, The Philadelphia Eleven.  The film details the history of women’s ordination in the Episcopal Church, and the first eleven women who were “irregularly ordained” in 1974 (i.e. ordained by Episcopal Bishops, but without the church’s General Convention sanctioning the ordination of women).  The question of women’s ordination had come before General Convention many times before, but was always defeated.  So, fifty years ago, a handful of women, along with male allies, decided they could not wait any longer.  The film tells the story of the outrage the eleven women created, the abuse and death threats they faced, and the way that their diverse ministries led to the sanctioning of women’s ordination by General Convention in 1976. 

I came into the Episcopal Church later in life.  Although deeply involved in the United Methodist campus ministry at my college, an ecumenical trip with the Episcopal campus minister was my first real exposure to the liturgy and polity of the Episcopal Church.  That campus minister was a woman, and at that point in my development, that did not seem abnormal.  Then, a couple of years after college, I stumbled into the Episcopal Cathedral, whose dean was a woman.  One of her assisting priests was also a woman.  Those early mentors did not just normalize women’s ordination – it never occurred to me that there was a time when women were not priests.  In fact, I remember an occasion when one of my own daughters as a young child asked me, “Can boys be priests?”

At this year’s General Convention of the Episcopal Church, we took the first steps to authorize the honoring of the Philadelphia Eleven in our set of honored saints we celebrate at weekday Eucharists.  In the same city, where 51 years earlier the General Convention had denied women’s right to ordination, we agreed to honor the saints who pushed us to be better versions of the Church.  All female clergy in the room were invited to stand to a roar of applause.  I looked at the other women, many of whom I know and love, and I looked at the male clergy and laity whose eyes and smiles were full of admiration and respect, and I realized a couple of things.  One, it is always a joy to celebrate when the Church gets something right – even if it takes a long time for the Church to get there.  And two, I can be in ministry as my most authentic self is due to the suffering and courage of men and women I may never meet. 

I share all this not to brag on the Episcopal Church – in fact, we still have a long way to go.  Income disparity between male and female clergy is still a problem, as well as access to comparable positions.  I have been the first female rector both times I have served as rector, and both times, people left the church when a woman was hired.  But I share this story more because I wonder who else have we excluded from the Table.  I share this story because I found myself wondering whether I would have risked being one of the Philadelphia Eleven, knowing the suffering that would come.  I share this story because as someone who really appreciates rules and boundaries, I wonder which of those rules and boundaries the Holy Spirt keeps bumping against.  While these may seem like big questions, or super-Church-nerdy questions, I think these questions are for all of us – an invitation to wonder who we have excluded in the communities of faith we love so much.  The Philadelphia Eleven seem to be still asking us these questions fifty years later.