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GC79: On Needing Revival…

18 Wednesday Jul 2018

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This week, I continue with more reflections from the General Convention of the Episcopal Church.  Look for posts in the days to come that give some insight into the experiences of the week, the take-home lessons, the pondering questions still ruminating in me.  Thanks for following along!

On Saturday evening of General Convention, we were invited to a revival at a local church.  The revival was powerful and clearly moving to many in the crowd.  Of particular note was the Spanish translator hired to translate for Bishop Curry.  She was poised, animated, and seemed to feed off Bishop Curry’s energy.  I do not know how she did it, but the two of them really seemed to be preaching together – to be dancing in God’s word as they preached a message of love and life.  Even for someone whose Spanish is minimal, I found her translation and presence really made Bishop Curry’s sermon come alive in a new way.

But what has been staying with me about that evening was the protest outside the church.  Members of Westboro Baptist Church gathered to protest what the Episcopal Church has been doing; from their signs, I understand they are mostly upset about the ordination of women, and our inclusion of the LGBTQ community in ordained and married life.  In the course of my life, I have had many conversations about both of those issues, including people confronting me about my own ordination and my theological understanding about the expansiveness of God’s love for all.  Those conversations have sometimes been hard, hurtful, and even anger-inducing.  But ultimately, they were always conversations – things said to my face, debates had between people, disagreements had within the context of relationship.

So the sentiments of the protestors was not new to me (although some of the language used against female pastors would have made many clutch their pearls).  What was heartbreaking was seeing a preteen standing next to her mother with a sign that read, “No Women Preachers – 1 Tim. 2.12.”  I went back and reread 1 Timothy 12, and I confess, a good portion of the chapter is about wives submitting to their husbands, keeping silent, allowing their husbands to lead.  We’ll talk about that in another blog post.  But as I looked at the young girl, I remembered all the times I started asking hard questions about things I had read in the Bible that did not seem to make sense – that did not seem to jive with the wide embrace of God’s love.  I remembered the Sunday School teacher who encouraged us to read the Bible literally, condemning her own current marriage because she had once been divorced.  I remember feeling a sense of discomfort until I found liberation in the Episcopal Church – a church that taught me to ask hard questions, to be uncomfortable in the ambiguity, to be released from the bonds of literal biblical interpretation, and to read the Bible in a new way.

Holding all that in my mind, I grieved for this young woman.  I sorrowed for the mother standing next to her, teaching her to keep silent, and to disrespect every woman who believes God is empowering us with God’s word.  I lamented the hate being inculcated into this young girl.  I mourned the light being limited in her life.  As female preachers poured out of buses for the revival, I found myself wanting to whisper into her ear, “God’s love is bigger than the words in 1 Timothy.”  Holy Scripture has been used time and again to limit God’s love, grace, and mercy.  I am sure I am guilty of a similar sin in one way or another; perhaps even this blog post is an exercise in sinful presumption.  My prayer for all of us is that we have people whispering in our ears words of truth, reconciliation, and peace.  Let not the work of the Holy Spirit be extinguished in us.

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Photo credit:  Jennifer Andrews-Weckerly (permission needed for reuse)

On Being Called by Name…

14 Wednesday Mar 2018

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Photo credit:  blog.sweetcareersconsulting.com/2015/10/what-name-should-you-use-on-linkedin.html

In my line of work, my female colleagues are widely divided on what we should be called.  You see, for years in the Episcopal Church, the male priests were “Father so-and-so.”  In formal writing, it was “the Rev. so-and-so.”  But in the Episcopal Church, priests are not called “Rev. so-and-so” because the word reverend is an adjective, not a noun, and most Episcopalians cannot stand by grammatical errors.  Episcopalians also do not often use “Pastor so-and-so,” as it is considered too protestant.  So, that leaves Episcopalians in a bit of mess with titles for female priests.  Many have taken to calling women “Mother so-and-so,” to create a sense of parity between male and female priests.  But some women despise that address.  And so, female priests tend to be all over the map about what they prefer – from no title at all (simply using their name given at baptism) to Mother, to Reverend (conceding to the grammatical error for the sake of convenience), to Pastor.

So, when I was asked at my local yoga studio what I was called professionally, I had to chuckle.  I told them when I use a title, I prefer Mother Jennifer.  But that I answer to almost anything – Mother Jennifer, Rev. Jen, Pastor Jennifer, or just Jennifer.  But this past week, I added some new favorites.  A toddler in our parish was watching on online broadcast from church.  When her dad asked, “Do you know who that is?” she replied, “That’s Mama Church.”  Just last week, as our ecumenical brothers and sisters helped us host a winter shelter for the homeless in our community, a Roman Catholic volunteer was talking to my husband.  When she realized who he was she said, “Oh, your wife is that little spitfire thing!”

The funny thing is that despite our baptized names, I think we are all living into identities throughout life.  Sometimes we will only be known as our child’s parent – “Simone’s Mom.”  Sometimes we are known by our profession title – Doctor Smith, Nurse Johnson, Professor Green, Colonel Davis.  Sometimes we take on a funny nickname from a particular stage of life – I’ll let your memories recall a few of your own.  What we are called creates meaning, purpose, and identity throughout life.  And sometimes we have nicknames that we do not even know about – whether it’s “spitfire” or something else.

One of the things I love about church is that we work hard to know each other’s names:  sometimes the ones we are baptized with, but sometimes the funny, the serious, and the beloved names.  Those names can make us feel known, loved, and affirmed.  But mostly those names in church remind us that we are known by name by someone else:  our God.  I like to think God is able to hold all our names in tension:  the funny, yet embarrassing ones; the honorific ones; the ones that remind us of our call; the ones that reveal our relatedness.  God knows us better than any one name can contain, and yet I imagine loves every little nuance of our names.  I wonder what names in your life could stand to be let go, and which names invite you to be someone powerful and life-changing.

Sermon – Mark 1.29-39, EP5, YB, February 4, 2018

14 Wednesday Feb 2018

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One of the things I love about the Bible is that the Bible never makes you feel wholly comfortable.  You can always find a comforting passage – a victorious song from Isaiah, soothing words from a psalm, a story of encouragement or inspiration about a beloved character.  But as you read Holy Scripture, you can almost as equally find passages that make you bristle.  This especially happens when you follow the lectionary, because, much to the chagrin of your preachers, you cannot pick and choose what texts you like.  And so, you open up the assigned text and your modern sensibilities say, “Whoa!  Hey now!”

Today’s lesson from Mark hit me that way at first glance.  Jesus has had a pretty full day.  On the Sabbath, Jesus and the disciples go to the synagogue and Jesus teaches with an authority that amazes those gathered.  He rids a man of an unclean spirit, and the people marvel again.  Jesus leaves the temple and goes to Simon Peter’s house.  Before he can even sit down, the disciples tell him that Simon’s mother-in-law has a fever – which, in those days, is a dangerous condition.  Jesus goes to her, offers her his hand, she rises, and is healed.  And this is the part where I bristle.  The text says, “Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”

The timing of this text could not be worse.  Our country is in the middle of a complete reevaluation of the treatment and role of women.  Just a few weeks ago, women around the country, and even here in Williamsburg, marched to protest the ways in which women are being treated and the ways in which legislation is affirming that treatment.  This year, Time Magazine chose the women of the #metoo movement as their “Person of the Year.”  These Silence Breakers are women who have begun to take a stand against sexual harassment and assault.  The magazine’s selection was timely, as story after story continues to break of prominent men are accused of mistreating and assaulting women.  Even our political elections are seeing more women running for office, including three graduates from the Naval Academy.[i]  In this season of women and men calling our country to examine the role and treatment of women, the last thing I wanted to hear was a story about a woman whose immediate reaction to a miraculous healing and resurrection is to go into the kitchen and serve the men.  She does not join the four disciples as part of Jesus’ entourage; she does not sit with Jesus and learn more from his teachings; she does not become an evangelist of the Good News.  The text simply says, “Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”

One of the tricky things about reading Holy Scripture is how to interpret scripture in the context of our modern sensibilities.  In my last year of seminary, I decided to write my thesis on the book of Ruth for this same reason.  Here was an entire book on women – a rarity in scripture.  The first three chapters of the book show women of agency and power, who make their way, even in a world where widows have very little power.  Even Ruth is described as a woman of hayil, a Hebrew word reserved almost entirely to describe men of great power and military prowess.  And what happens to this mighty, powerful woman?  In the final chapter of the book, men determine Ruth’s fate, she gets married, has a child, and the child redeems her mother-in-law.  This character who speaks throughout the book is rendered voiceless throughout the last chapter.  It took me a year of wrestling with this book to realize that my modern lens and interpretation of the book of Ruth prevented me from understanding how Ruth’s fate does not mitigate her hayil, her power in the story.  Reading Ruth would never translate the same way to modern ears.  Ruth’s story is still a story of empowerment.  But in order to hear that empowerment, I would need a deeper understanding of the cultural context.  And I would need to be open to other messages from the text – not simply what I wanted to hear and have affirmed to my everyday life.

A similar reality is true in today’s reading from Mark.  This is not a story about a woman’s role or a woman’s expected place with Jesus.  This is not a story about the differences between men and women in the kingdom of God.  This is not a story about gender and discrimination.  This is a story about discipleship.[ii]  The past three weeks we have been talking about discipleship –  how discipleship is discerned within community, how discipleship involves sacrifice and a response to Jesus, how discipleship involves a sense of immediacy.  Today’s lesson reminds us that discipleship is also about service.

Simon’s mother-in-law does not recover from an illness and immediately begin to serve Jesus out of a sense of gendered identity.  She immediately begins to serve Jesus because, through her healing, she understands a key component in discipleship:  service. This is something the disciples will not learn until many chapters later, when Jesus says, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.”[iii]  Two of the same disciples who are there this night of the mother-in-law’s healing, James and John, after ten chapters of following Jesus think discipleship means power and privilege – sitting at Jesus’ left and right hand.  But Jesus, the mother-in-law, and countless others show the disciples that discipleship is about service.  Discipleship is about what we reaffirm in our baptismal covenant – to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.

This story is not a story about gender and the role of women and men.  This story is about discipleship.  Now, for those of you who may still feel dissatisfied, what is interesting in this story is that in a room full of men, the woman is the one who actually understands what Jesus is all about.  We see that point even more fully when Simon Peter approaches Jesus later as Jesus is praying.  The text says, “In the morning, while it was still very dark, [Jesus] got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.  And Simon and his companions hunted for him.”  Scholar’s argue that Simon did not simply “hunt for” or look for Jesus.  The implication of the Greek word here is that Simon vigorously looked for and approached Jesus with the intent of forcing Jesus to get back to work.[iv]  Simon misunderstands Jesus and the work of discipleship; Simon’s mother-in-law does not misunderstand.  But taking this story to be a feminist text of the women getting it and not the men is probably reading too much into the text too.  This is a text about one disciple getting it – getting it to strong degree.  In fact, the word used for “service” here, is the same root of the word for deacon.[v]  The service of the mother-in-law is akin to the work of deacons in the church.

I do not know where you find yourself in this text today.  Maybe the text is reassuring because you have made your life of discipleship about the service of the kingdom.  Maybe this text is reassuring because you understand that sometimes you do not always get the message, and yet you can still be disciples.  Or maybe this text is reassuring because you are grateful to be surrounded by disciples on various points of the spectrum, who are all figuring it out.  The point is – this is a reassuring text.  This passage from Mark is not meant to be a text for bristling, for defensiveness (on either side), or for creating a sense of failure.  This is a text which reassuringly reminds us that we are all on a journey to understanding discipleship and becoming more faithful disciples every day.  This text reminds us that we need each other: men and women, old and young, married and single.  Together we help each other walk with Christ.  Together we teach each other the work of discipleship.  Together we do the work of seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.  Amen.

[i] Michael Tackett, “From Annapolis to Congress? These Three Women Know Tough Missions,” January 28, 2018, as found at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/us/politics/women-annapolis-democrats-congress-trump.html on February 2, 2018.

[ii] Karoline Lewis, “A Call Story,” January 28, 2018, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5052 on February 1, 2018.

[iii] Mark 10.45a.

[iv] Daniel J. Harrington, ed., The Gospel of Mark, Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 2 (Collegeville, MN:  The Liturgical Press, 2002), 87.

[v] Gary W. Charles, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 335.

Homily – Exodus 1.15-21, Matthew 5.13-16, Emily Malbone Morgan, February 26, 2015

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Today we honor Emily Malbone Morgan, founder of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross.  Born in 1862 in Hartford, Connecticut, Morgan came from a prominent family with deep Anglican roots.  Through a friendship with a homebound friend who looked to Morgan for spiritual companionship, Morgan began to gather a small group of women for prayer and companionship; this group evolved into the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross.  Morgan worried about working women who were tired and restless but had little hope for a vacation.  She formed summer vacation homes for the working women and their daughters for physical and spirit renewal.  She also formed a permanent home in Massachusetts, which is still the headquarters and retreat center for the Society.  Today the SCHC has 31 chapters and over 700 Companions in six countries.  The Society lives a life of prayer and contemplation rooted in tradition and has led to commitments to social justice for women.

What I love about Morgan is that she comes from a long line of strong women.  We hear about some of these women in scripture today.  First we hear of Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives who clearly disobeyed the king and saved many children.  Then we hear of Martha and Mary, who both witness to the full and complete spectrum of the ways women participate in the life of faith.  What I love about all three sets of women is that they boldly lived into their faith, sometimes taking on risks, thinking outside the box, and ultimately shaking up expectations of what men and women can do.

These last couple of years, the issue of the way women are treated around the world has become a hot issue.  Wage discrepancies, and susceptibility to violence, oppression and societal limitations have all come under criticism.  As legislation around women’s bodies arises, many women have fought back.  What I love about our lessons today is that both God and Jesus praise the women who step out to seize power and equality.

For the midwives, Shiprah and Puah, God rewards them for their loyalty and bravery.  For Mary, Jesus praises her for taking what was usually only given to men – the privilege of sitting and listening.  Today our lessons and Morgan’s witness invite us to consider our own role in inequality and God’s invitation to be an agent of change.  Amen.

Sermon – Jonah 3.1-5, 10, E3, YB, January 25, 2015

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

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Whenever a family has two children, often the children fall into two stereotypes – the goody two-shoes and the rebel.  The goody two-shoes generally follows the rules, rarely gets in trouble, and usually does what they are asked to do.  The rebel on the other hand makes their own rules, is regularly in trouble, and rarely does what they are asked to do.  The goody two-shoes conforms to expectations and the rebel blazes their own trail.  Many a harried parent has said to their rebel child, “Why can’t you just be more like goody two-shoes?!?”

Today, our scripture gives us not just one set, but two sets of such siblings.  First we have Jonah in our Old Testament lesson and the disciples in our gospel lesson.  When Jesus calls out to the disciples who are fishing and tells them to follow him, all four disciples drop their nets, abandon their family and livelihoods, and follow Jesus.  They do not ask questions.  They do not take a moment to consider the invitation and carefully discern whether to go.  They do not even complain.  They immediately drop what they are doing and follow Jesus.  The disciples are our goody two-shoes today.  The rebel, then, is Jonah.  If you remember, God came to Jonah early on and told Jonah to go to Nineveh.  And while Jonah did respond immediately, his response was to run in the complete opposite direction.  He runs the opposite direction, hops on a boat, and makes his escape.  Of course we know how that turns out.  Jonah is tossed overboard when the seas get out of control, and he is swallowed by a large fish.  Even in our lesson today, when God tells Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh, we can tell Jonah’s heart is not in the work.  Later we find out that when God forgives Nineveh, Jonah rebels again, throwing a temper tantrum of epic proportions, proclaiming that he wish he could die he is so upset.  Jonah is our rebel today.[i]

Our second set of siblings is found in the Jonah story itself.  We know that Jonah has already rebelled and taken to the seas to escape the job he is supposed to do.  But look at how he does execute his work.  When he finally does proclaim the judgment on Nineveh, he only says five words in Hebrew, translated, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”  Jonah is a grumbling, half-hearted rebel of the Lord.  Meanwhile, Nineveh proves to be our goody two-shoes this time.  This is the most surprising turn of events too.  Nineveh is a brutal power in Jonah’s day.[ii]  They are known for their vicious treatment of the people of Israel.  They are the enemy.  But when the residents of Nineveh hear the judgment of the LORD – Jonah’s brief, half-hearted one – they immediately respond.[iii]  All the people put on sackcloth, even the king and the animals; they take up a fast, sit in ashes, and turn from their violent ways.  Talk about a 180!  And what makes the situation all the more ironic is that Nineveh, the city we might normally label as the rebel in this story, actually comes out as the goody two-shoes; and Jonah, the prophet of God, who should be the goody two-shoes turns out to be our rebel.

In our world, we know what happens to these two archetypes.  The goody two-shoes are ones who get straight A’s, have successful careers, have happy relationships, and lead stable, content lives.  They are held up as the shining examples for all of us.  The rebels, on the other hand, are the ones who get sent to the principal’s office, have spotty employment, are in and out of relationships, and are known for their instability.  Though the rebels may be fun to be around, they are not as dependable as the goody two-shoes.  And for those of us who are rebels, we are told time and time again to get our act together.  In our world, society is quite clear about which role we should choose.

The good news is that God is not like the rest of the world.  God has enough room for everyone.  God invites everyone: rebels like violent Nineveh and Jonah, and goody two-shoes like the disciples and the reformed Nineveh.  God encourages both and God gives second (and third and fourth) chances to both.  God’s mercy is so abundant that God is willing to totally change God’s mind.  Like the old hymn goes, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; there’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty.”  The grace in our stories today gives us hope that those uptight goody two-shoes and those restless rebels among us both have a chance in God’s eye.

But the good news today is not just easy news.  The good news comes with work too.  God has mercy for both Nineveh and Jonah, but God does not let either off the hook.  God saves Jonah from the perilous sea and the big fish.  But then God puts Jonah back to work.  God does not destroy Nineveh, but only when Nineveh turns from its evil ways.  God is much like the parent who loves their children equally – both the goody two-shoes and the rebels.  But part of that equal love is also an equal expectation that we all respond to God’s invitation.  We may all respond differently, but God will not rest until we respond.  The question today is what invitation from God have we been avoiding, and how might we take up God’s invitation anew?  God is waiting for our response.  Amen.

[i] Kathryn Schifferdecker, “Commentary on Jonah 3.1-5, 10” found on January 22, 2015 at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2347.

[ii] Callie Plunket-Brewton, “Commentary on Jonah 3.1-5, 10” January 21, 2012, found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1214 on January 22, 2015.

[iii] Joseph L. Price, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 270.