Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52
+ Occasionally, we need to step outside our usual
Sunday morning routines. Occasionally, we need to step back and take a good
look around. I do this for you on occasion when I say, “Let’s take a trip back
in time.” Because we are today. We’re going back in time. We’re gonna take the
time machine back.
Are your ready? We’re not going back to a time I
really want to visit. We’re not going back to quiet, staid 1950s.
The top news in the country on Monday, July 29, was
that the House
Judiciary Committee voted a second time in its recommends to impeach President
Richard Nixon. A third and final vote on
July 30, would actually cement the impeachment process for President Nixon in
the Watergate cover-up. On August 9, of course, he would resign in
disgrace.
On July 29, 1974 the Great Mama Cass Elliott of the Mamas and
Papas would die of a heart attack in her hotel room in London.
The number one song in the country on that day was “Annie’s
Song” John Denver.
The top TV shows at this time were “All in the Family” and “Hawaii
5-0.”
Here, at St. Stephen’s, on the day before, Sunday, July 28,
some of you here this morning were probably here that morning. Fr. Sandy
Walsch was the priest and the Episcopal Church was in the midst of
experimenting with new liturgy. The 1928 Book
of Common Prayer was slowly being phased out. On that Sunday morning, I believe St. Stephen’ was
using the so-called Zebra Book, which had been introduced the previous year. Most people who came to services that morning probably
had no idea that on the next day, the Episcopal Church would be shaken to its
very core.
On Monday, July 29, 1974 in the Church of the
Advocate in Philadelphia, 11 women, Merrill
Bittner, Alla Bozarth-Campbell, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt,
Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield, Jeannette
Piccard (from Minnesota), Betty Bone Schiess, Katrina Swanson
and Nancy Wittig—were ordained priests in the Episcopal Church, the
first women to be ordained as such. They
were so-called “Philadelphia 11.”
Now why, you might ask, would this be so
controversial? Well, although it was not necessarily against church laws at
that time, there were also no laws allowing such a thing. As a result their ordination was termed “irregular.”
Of course, in 1976, at the General Convention
of the Episcopal Church in Minneapolis, the same one at which the current Prayer
Book was approved, women were approved for ordination to the priesthood. But because these 11 were irregularly ordained,
they were left out in the cold, so to speak.
Now depending on where you stood on that hot Monday
in 1974, this ordination was either a blessing or a curse upon the Episcopal
Church. And while many rejoiced, some lamenting and raged. The Church
splintered. Many people left in droves. And
for those who lived through the debate, they heard those who people who opposed
this move speak from their anger, and most importantly from their fear.
An example: the following summer, in June, 1975,
Bishop Iveson Noland, the bishop of Louisiana, was killed along with about 100
people in a plane crash at New York’s JFK airport during a thunderstorm. He was
headed to special meeting of bishops to discuss the issue of women’s ordination.
After the crash, one bishop was heard to say that they blamed Bishop Noland’s
death directly on those Philadelphia 11, because if they had not done what they
did, Bishop Nolan would not have been on that flight that day.
While
some people who opposed the ordination of women saw the “irregular” ordination of
these 11 women as (using imagery from last week’s Gospel) some kind of bad seed sown in the field, the real bad seed
sown came actually from the fear and anger of those how opposed this ordination,
in my opinion. I think it’s appropriate
on this Sunday before the 40th anniversary of the ordination the
first women in the Episcopal Church, we get the Gospel reading he do.
In our Gospel, we heard the Kingdom being compared
to several things: mustard, yeast, treasure, pearls and fish. The gist of these parables is that something small
can make a difference. Something small can actually be worth much.
As I pondered this these last few days, I realized
that Jesus really is right on this. When we do a it of good—like planting a
bitty mustard seed—a lot of good can com forth. But, as I preached last week, we
also realize that a little bit of bad can also do much bad. For us, we a little
bit of bad comes in many forms.
Fear is a great example. A little bit of fear can
grow into something out of control. Fear
of the future. Fear of change. These can be crippling. We sow the small seeds of fear that grow into
larger ugly plants of fear when we are afraid that everything we once knew and
found so comfortable is now being viewed as out-of-date or somewhat archaic.
One of the greatest small seeds of
fear we all experience in parish
ministry is when people say things like:
“We can’t do that. We have never done
that before.”
Saying things like that and being
stuck in that mentality is certainly not joy in finding a treasure, as we hear
in today’s Gospel. As scribes of the Kingdom, we bring what is new and what is
old out of the treasury. Yes, we need to
have a healthy respect for our history and our past. We can never forget where we have come from
and what has been done in the past. We can bring forth the treasures of our
past. But when we let fear reign, when
we let it run roughshod through our lives, we see a situation happen very much
like it happened forty years ago.
It took the Church years to recover
not from the new thing—the ordination of women--but from the old thing—the fear
and anger that followed those ordinations.
Here we are, forty years down the road, and the ordination women is not
even a remote issue for most of anymore. And if it is an issue for anyone, I’m
sorry to say: the Church has been made richer and better for the presence of women
priests among us.
The Holy Spirit moved. And how do we
know the Holy Spirit moves? We know the work of the Holy Spirit, by the Spirit’s
fruits. And those fruits are bountiful in our Church because of women priests.
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