Women Preaching the Resurrection

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Chapel of Our Lord, Episcopal Church Center

Wednesday in Easter Week

Acts 4:1-12;John 21:1-14; Psalm 116:1-8 or Psalm 118:19-24

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.  Amen.

A meme has been going around Facebook in the last couple of weeks, particularly shared by my fellow clergy women that says, “In the interests of Biblical accuracy all the preaching about the resurrection this Easter Sunday will be done by women.” This makes us smile and laugh. It makes us smile because it is true, and there is some pride for us in it. But behind the laughter is a bit of the struggle in the fact that people need to be reminded that the first people to know about and believe in the resurrection were women. Mary Magdelene is known as the Apostle to the Apostles.  

But it didn’t take long for the Church to gloss over that fact and then to spend centuries saying women cannot even speak in Church. Sadly there are still many Christian communities where in the interests of “biblical accuracy” women are still prohibited from preaching or holding leadership positions. Discrimination is real. Still.

Note our readings from today. Acts tells us of the ongoing importance the reality of Jesus’ resurrection held for his followers. John tells us of his appearance to Simon Peter and the other fishermen. It is a story designed to ensure that we believe in the reality of the resurrection. But . . . did you notice? There are no women in it. No doubt they were there. On the periphery, perhaps cooking over the fire, but apparently their presence did not warrant a mention. It is such a timeless tale. The women did the work. They were first. They had the important information to share. And who gets most of the credit? Or sometimes all of the credit? The men.

I am sure many of us can relate to this with stories from our own lives when we have felt invisible or ignored by those in power and authority. But just in case you have forgotten the systemic reality of sexism. Let me remind you of the fact that women in the Obama White House (a place one would think would be a bastion of feminism and progressive values) had to institute a strategy of “amplification” to make sure that there ideas and voices were heard in meetings. As described in the Washington Post, “After one woman offered an idea, if it wasn’t acknowledged, another woman would repeat it and give her colleague credit for suggesting it.”

It has only been five days since Easter, and already our sacred texts have forgotten the women. Let’s not follow suit. For all the intellectual reasons that we know supporting women and girls matters and how it makes life better for everyone. And because there is a profound individual, personal lesson for all of us, male and female, in the Easter story and its women preachers.

Let’s start with Jesus. He is Jesus. Fully God and fully human. So he could have appeared to anyone anywhere on Easter morning. He didn’t. He appeared to Mary Magdelene and the other women. The women who had come to care for his body. In the Ancient Near East caring for the dead was all women’s work, because it was unclean. Birth and death were the realm of women because they were messy. And that is where Jesus showed up. Just like at his birth, God showed up right in the middle of the messiness of real life. Jesus showed up in a way that honored and empowered the women in their work. He sought them ought and gave them a message, perhaps one of the most important messages ever, to share with the world.

Jesus did not appear first to his 11 disciples. He did not go see all the guys. He chose the women. He chose those on the margins of society whose voices often went unheard. They are not the ones that society or the rules of the day would have elected to be important messengers. And that is probably precisely why Jesus chose them. Jesus was not interested in upholding the status quo. He was interested in transformation.

And this matters for each of us. In two important ways. First off, no doubt there are days when we are pretty sure that we are not worthy of the responsibility we have been given. Days when we feel like we are on the margins struggling to be noticed. On those days let us remember that Jesus is with us. We are worthy. We are beloved of God. We belong to God, and just as Jesus chose the women to bear his good news to the world, so to have we been chosen to be evangelists (literally bringers of good news) to the world as well.

Second, there is an invitation to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. To be someone who empowers and amplifies the voices of those who have been ignored. How might we be a force for transformation? How might we amplify each other’s voices in a world that often clings to a mythical idea of the past or fears change? How might we join with Jesus in helping people to hear and believe in the reality of resurrection?

Just like in the Easter stories, the world needs the message those women had to share. Our headlines are far too full of violence, hatred, and division. The reality of the resurrection. The overwhelming power of God’s redeeming love is real. May we have the courage to proclaim that truth with our words and our lives.

AMEN.

Reflections on Wednesday in Holy Week

Cross in Chapel of Our Lord

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Chapel of Our Lord, Episcopal Church Center

Wednesday in Holy Week, April 17, 2019

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Hebrews 12:1-3; John 13:21-32; Psalm 70

Our daughter is eight, and this winter she and I started reading the Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. These were absolute favorites of my childhood, and it has been a joy to share them with her. Currently we are in the middle of the third book, On the Banks of Plum Creek. If you are familiar with this book, then you know it is the book that has some tragedy in it. We are only a few chapters past the horrors of the grasshoppers. It reads like something out of the book of Exodus. The Ingalls family has staked their future and the house they are living in on a successful wheat harvest. A plague of grasshoppers arrives just days before the wheat is ready to harvest. The grasshoppers cover the landscape. The family tries to build fires around the wheat field. They work tirelessly and completely in vain to save their crop. The grasshoppers eat every plant for miles around. Charles Ingalls ends up having to walk 200 miles east to find work as a farmhand to earn enough money to keep the family from becoming completely destitute. I read that book many times as a child. I knew how the story went. And yet, even as I was reading it outloud to Katherine, I found myself wishing and willing for a different outcome. I somehow hoped (beyond all reason) that the story could go differently and the family could avert tragedy and loss.

Isn’t it remarkable that even when we know the story, even when we know how everything is going to turn out, we can still find ourselves wishing for a different ending? I don’t know about you, but I often find myself feeling that way at this point in Holy Week. We have had Palm Sunday. We have read the passion narrative. We are moving systematically through the story. Tomorrow will be Maundy Thursday, and then it will be Good Friday. We know where this is going. We know how painful it is going to get. We know that our Lord will give “his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon.”  

And yet, there is some small part of us that just might be wishing it could go differently. Does it really have to be like this we ask? Couldn’t Judas have found a different way? Why did he have to betray Jesus? It is a familiar dialogue, isn’t it?

Isn’t it the conversation we have with God when we encounter our own sufferings and challenges? In the midst of an experience where our buttons are pushed by a friend who sees the world differently than we do or in the midst of a new difficulty that is requiring us to draw on our reserves of strength and creativity. Or perhaps in the midst of a time that feels very dark and seemingly hopeless. We say, “God, if there is a way I could learn whatever important lesson I am supposed to be learning here without all this suffering that would be great. Okay? Thanks very much.”

Oh, if only that were true! If only we could just ask God for the cliff notes version. It is so very human of us to want the reward without the hard work. It is so understandable that we would want to find a better way forward that minimizes our suffering.

And yet, we know that is not how it goes. Suffering is a part of life. It will come. We cannot eat, exercise, medicate, or will ourselves a life free from suffering. It is not possible. Just as this story of Holy Week cannot unfold in any other way, there will be pieces of our lives over which we do not have control. We cannot control the weather. We cannot control the actions of other people. We cannot control when those we love will die. We cannot control everything about our own health and well being. There will be suffering that will just come.

And yet, I do think there is an important distinction to make here. Our Collect for today asks that we might have “grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time.” That is a statement that can only be made from a position of privilege, and I do not think it is a fully accurate description of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Yes, there is much to be learned in the midst of our suffering. Yes, there is suffering (death, disease, natural disasters) that is endemic to the human experience. We will have to find ways to cope with it. AND, there is also suffering that is the result of injustice. There is suffering that is the result of systemic oppression. Suffering that is the result of the very human sins of sexism, racism, classism, etc. This is suffering that should NOT be. This is the suffering we Christians, especially those of us who are in positions of power and privilege are called to do something about. This suffering is not to be accepted joyfully. It is to be named, called out, and stopped.  

So, I want to go back to that feeling we get when we are wanting a story to turn out differently. Sometimes that is just wishful thinking on our part, particularly when we are reading a history book. But when it happens to us in the here and now, when we look at a situation and have a niggling feeling that things should be different that feeling is worth noting, worth paying attention to. Because it just might be the Holy Spirit inviting us to be a force for transformation in the world.

We cannot go back and redo the story of Holy Week. BUT we can use the story of this week to be an inspiration for us to act differently in our own lives. The realities of betrayal and innocent suffering are real in our world. Greed and selfishness can cause people in power to act without regard for the implications of their actions. Innocent people are punished for crimes they did not commit. Far too many people spend their days being made to feel less than because of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity . . .you name it.

We cannot change the story of Holy Week, but we can change our lives and the lives of those around us. May we have the grace and courage to do just that, today and everyday.

AMEN.

Palm Sunday 2019

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Simsbury, CT

Palm Sunday, April 14, 2019

Luke 19:28-40; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Philippians 2:5-11; Psalm 31:9-16; Luke 22:14-23:56

May God’s Word be Spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I love Palm Sunday. That may seem a funny thing to say, and yet it is true. I love Palm Sunday because it is so real, so like actual life. The happiness and the pain are right next to each other.

We start our service with shouts of Hosanna, celebrating Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. We are joyfully celebrating that so many people are recognizing a truth that has such power in our own lives. They see that there is something special, something profound, something life changing about the manon the donkey. He is different. He is offering a way of living, a way of understanding that is different. He is bringing people hope and joy. He is not settling for the status quo. The atmosphere is electric. People want to join him. You can feel the excitement.

Then before we leave here, we will have taken ourselves all the way to Golgotha. We will be left standing with the women at the foot of the Cross trying to figure out how in a such a short period of time, we went from triumph to tragedy.

If we acknowledge our own feelings, there is probably a little bit of us that would like to just pause at the happy part. We would like to just end the story with Jesus’ triumphal entry. Couldn’t we just add “And Jesus and his disciples lived happily ever after” instead?

The fairy tale ending is tempting, really tempting. And yet there is something ultimately unsatisfying in just leaving our story there. And not just because we know intellectually that the Gospel of Luke goes on for a few more chapters.

It is unsatisfying because our lives are much more complicated. Fairy tales are not real. Part of what enables us to connect to Jesus, at least a large part of what helps me connect to Jesus, is the fact that he is human, fully human. He knows the fullness of the human experience, and that includes the fullness of what it means to grieve, to suffer, to feel pain.

Suffering is a part of our lives. It is a part of what it means to be human. And there can be great meaning and value that come out of suffering. There is something about the reality of loss, or even the possibility of loss, that makes us sit up and pay attention. It is like the shadow in a painting; it helps us to see things more clearly. We experience joy and success more deeply when we see them in full perspective of the times when we have known loss and failure. Because we have known pain, grief, and seemingly insurmountable challenges, our joy just a bit fuller.

Now, I think you all know by now that I do not subscribe to the theory that just because suffering has meaning and offers us valuable learning experiences that we should seek it out. Life has certainly taught me that suffering comes all by itself. We do not need to go looking for it. The question is, when it comes, how do we respond? Do we allow it to be our teacher and to help us widen our perspective? Do we learn from it so that we might use our knowledge and experience to build up the kingdom of God, that we might care more fully for all of God’s people?

We have chosen to follow Jesus. And following Jesus means that we will have wonderful moments of celebration - those Hosanna moments. It also means we will have our moments of seemingly unbearable pain. But the marvelous truth of of the fullness of Palm Sunday, with its “Hosannas” and with its story of the crucifixion, is that we are given the reminder that we are not alone. Jesus knows the fullness of our experience - our joys and our sufferings.

And in all of this there is also an invitation for us to remember that suffering does not have the last word. We don’t get a “happily ever after,” but neither are we left to suffer without hope. Today reminds as that suffering and joy are inextricably connected. We will not have one without the other. The question is how do we frame it?

Do we let the suffering dominate and define our experience? Or are we able to hold onto the reminder that we are not alone in our suffering? Do we “look for the helpers” as Mr. Rogers advises? Do we turn our focus to those who are helping, those who are seeking to bring comfort and hope? Do we look for the blessings and the gifts that are present? And they are there. Always. In the smiles and the love of those who care for us and walk with us. In the gifts of perspective and gratitude that come when we are reminded of the fragility and preciousness of life. In the way our focus is narrowed and our awareness of beauty is heightened when we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

That is the truth that Palm Sunday shows us so clearly. Joy and suffering are inextricably linked. They will come together in our lives. Sometimes back to back. Sometimes all at once. That is okay. There are great blessings to be found, even in the midst of our challenges. And we can always hold fast to the beautiful and life changing truth that this Holy Week proclaims so boldly. Do not fear. God’s Love, made manifest in so many ways in our own lives, is stronger than anything we humans can come up with. God’s Love always has the last word. Thanks be to God for that.

AMEN.

Children and Jesus

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Chapel of our Lord, Episcopal Church Center

April 5, 2019

Lections for Harriet Starr Cannon

May the words of my mouth the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

My husband, Reade, and I have two children. As you might imagine, our children have a number of children’s bibles and story books about God, faith, and Jesus. My husband is a Mechanical Engineer who works on jet engines, so there are also a lot of books about science, math and airplanes. We are a balanced household.

And of course there are lots of important life and faith lessons to be learned from the math and science books. Of the particularly Jesus and God focused books, my favorite by far is Desmond Tutu’s Storybook Bible. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend getting a copy for any little people in your life. The illustrations are by artists from all over the world, and the joy that is evident in any of Archbishop Tutu’s writing and speaking emanates from the Bible stories as well. One cannot help but love God and the stories even more after reading them.

I thought of this book in particular, because its cover is an illustration of today’s Gospel. It is a story of the little children gathering with Jesus. And just as you might imagine they are in his lap and on his knee. They are clearly joyful and comfortable in his presence. Jesus is happy. You can almost hear the laughter. No two children look the same, so pretty much any child could find themselves in the picture. They could easily imagine themselves sitting with Jesus or excitedly talking with him.

It seems notable that there are no adults visible in the picture. It is just kids with Jesus. They are safe. They are happy. In fact it is probably a bit of a novelty for them to have such an important grown up paying attention to them. You know the Victorian adage, “Children should be seen and not heard.” I think that was even more true in Jesus’ time. Children were on the margins. They were property, valuable because of their potential labor, but not valued or respected by society as full persons.

But things are different with Jesus. Jesus sees them as beloved children of God who have value. And there is our first lesson from today’s reading. If we are called to be like those children, and like Harriet Starr Cannon whom we remember today, then we are being called not to sell ourselves short. We are called to believe in our own value and dignity, even if or when those around us do not. We are called to see ourselves as Jesus does - as a beloved child of God who is worthy of respect, and worthy of finding joy in life.

Yes, I realize it is still Lent, but that does not mean that life needs to be devoid of joy. If we are meant to be like the little children then we cannot help but be joyful. Really. If you don’t believe me, try it. Next time you are hanging out with some important little person in your life. Try to maintain a dour mood for as long as you can. I find it nearly impossible. How can you stay sad or frustrated when that little person’s face lights up when you walk into the room or when they come running to meet you, stumbling over their words because they are so excited to see you and show you what they have just been doing?

Children are really good at finding the joy in life. I think that is the other invitation for us in today’s Gospel. I think part of that comes from the fact that they are fully present in the moment. It might be worth noting that in the illustration of the story none of the children are walking around staring at their smartphones. None of them are furiously typing on keyboards. Neither are they attempting to write on papyrus or to draw in the dirt. They are focused on Jesus. They recognize what matters most in the moment. They are willing to put aside their tasks and their games to be fully present with Jesus.

Hmm. I don’t know about you, but that is a reminder I could use on a regular basis. It is one of the things I love about my new routine of life here at the Church Center. There are daily opportunities, even in the middle of the day, like we are doing right now. Opportunities to pause, to recalibrate, to be reminded where are priorities are. Yes, there are tasks to do, and they are important. AND, we will do those tasks better, we will have more joy in our hearts if we take time to reconnect with our Lord and with our companions on the way.

So if  we put our Lord at the center, if we remember that we are called to be faithful and trusting, like the children, like Harriet, then things will be different. We are called to put our trust in Jesus, to believe we are safe there and that doing so will enable us to be of service to God and to the world. And we are called to be on the lookout for opportunities in which we can deepen our connections to God and to each other. When we find those moments, we are called to be fully present and to seek out the joy. It is there. Always. Thanks be to God. AMEN.