Courage to speak up

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Margaret of Cortona, February 22, 2021

Zephaniah 3:7-13; Psalm 30: 6–13; Luke 7:36–50

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. 

Today we remember Margaret of Cortona. There are many things about her life and faith that are notable - her courage, her fasting, her good works - but it was this line from Lesser Feasts and Fasts that stood out to me: “Twice, following divine command, she challenged the Bishop of Arezzo . . .because he lived and warred like a prince.” A woman in the thirteenth century was decidedly on the margins of society and the Church, and yet she did not hesitate to speak truth to power. She did not hold back. She stood up for what she believed in. She was empowered by God. She did not wait to be asked for her opinion. She spoke her truth with conviction - more than once!

And then in our Gospel for today, we get the story of the woman with the alabaster jar. This is a familiar story and there are a hundred different directions we can go with it. So much food for thought and reflection here. But reading it in light of Margaret’s life story, I am struck by the fact that the woman just goes up to Jesus and starts anointing him. Notice there is no preamble. No exchange. No, “Jesus, would it be okay if I . . .” No, permission given by Jesus, except implicitly by his acceptance of the gesture. Just like Margaret, the woman with the alabaster jar does not hesitate to act on her convictions. To take a risk for what she believed in. To offer care and generosity with no expectation of anything in return. She does not come seeking a transaction. She offers a precious gift - both in terms of monetary value and personal cost - because doing so is deeply meaningful to her. 

So these women have gotten me thinking about the importance of holding to our convictions, of speaking the truth without waiting to be asked. I think how different that is at least from my own life, perhaps much to do with how women and girls are socialized, especially in my own upper class WASP culture. I have been conditioned to wait, not to rock the boat or risk upset. I remember an elementary school teacher telling me how he and other teachers preferred to have a higher girl/boy ratio in the classroom, because girls were so much less disruptive. Or how in so many ways, we female caregivers are told that the mark of a good daughter, wife, mother, is to always put the needs of others before our own. 

But the women whose lives and stories we honor today did not hold back or hesitate. They did not simply follow the societal scripts laid out for them. They had stories to tell and truths to proclaim - about the depth of love and care, about how even the one who was willing to give his life for us all deserved to feel some measure of his impact, to receive the kind of communication that is only possible with the touch of a hand. They had truths to proclaim about the kind of world we are called to create as followers of Jesus and how those of us in positions of power and authority ought not to take that responsibility lightly - how we ought to live exemplary lives that point to the Truth of the Gospel.

Those women did not hesitate. And neither should we, no matter our gender. No doubt all of us have grown up with challenging and problematic scripts of various sorts that can hold us back, keep us from stepping out in faith or saying something important for fear of how it will be received. In the midst of this time, and all the challenges of these days, it can be particularly easy to say, oh I’ll wait until we get through this to say anything. I don’t want to add to anyone’s stress. Well, maybe . . .

And yet if this pandemic has taught us anything, it has been a profound reminder of the fragility and uncertainty of life. A reminder that is so powerfully reinforced in this Lenten season. “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Life is precious and short. We never know how long we will have.

May this season and the courageous, unhesitating witness of Margaret and the woman with the alabaster jar remind us of the importance of acting and speaking with conviction. Whether it is a truth that needs to be spoken to the powers that be or an expression of how much someone matters to us, may we feel empowered to speak up. There will be no perfect time. And yes, there are risks involved in speaking up, but God has certainly shown me, shown us, over and over again that the risks are well worth it. Far more often than not, speaking up opens the doors to new, more life giving possibilities. 

So in the days ahead, throughout this Lenten season and beyond, I hope we will have the strength and courage we need to proclaim the Truth, to make our voices heard, and to trust that the rewards of doing so far outweigh the risks. Amen. 

Grumbling into Hope

A reservoir

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom
May 11, 2020, Commemoration of Johann Arndt And Jacob Böhm
Exodus 17:1–7;Psalm 119:137–144; Mark 6:45-52

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 don’t know about you all, but I love the stories of the Israelites grumbling in the wilderness. They are so real. So human. They sound just like any long family road trip. Or our own internal monologues on days that just are not going the way we had hoped. Today we get the Israelites complaining that they don’t have enough to drink water. Recently in our Morning Prayer readings we got them talking about how slavery in Egypt was better because they had fish and cucumbers. Ah yes, I bet we have all done that. We have wished to go back, we have wished for comfort and familiarity, even when it was miserable - merely because it was a known entity.

Now, of course, we should give the Israelites some credit for asking for water. I mean, water is a necessity of life. We cannot live for long without it. They were not just asking for caviar or complaining that the soup wasn’t hot enough. They were desperate for survival. They were fearful. They had lost their perspective.

That is something else I love about these stories. That is part of why they resonate. If I find myself in a place of worry and fear, in my own places of grumbling and frustration, it is because I too have lost my perspective. My world has shrunk in on itself. I am only aware of my own needs, my own emotions, my own pain. It can feel frantic because I think I am alone, and I have to get myself out of it all by myself. Yet, nothing is further from the truth. I am not alone. The Israelites were not alone. They had each other. They had Moses. And God was with them. Oh. Right. We are not alone. Ever.

It is easy for us to forget that all important truth. Pain, struggle, fear can all feel overwhelming at times. These are indeed days when it is easy to lose our perspective. Like the Israelites we are wandering in a wilderness. The future seems uncertain, and there are moments when our very survival seems unsure. We have been, sadly, regularly reminded that these are perilous times.

That can shrink our vision. They can make us lose sight of the abundance of God’s love that is always present in our lives, if we are paying attention. God is indeed present to us each and every step of the way. Johann and Jacob, the mystics we remember today, remind us that God is indeed present in our lives, evident in the simple things, like the beauty of a sunbeam.

I hope that you can hang on to that knowledge in these days. I hope that even in the moments where your perspective has narrowed, even when the fear and sadness are very present, that somewhere in the back of your mind, in the depths of your heart, there is niggling reminder that there is more. May we see God in the beauty of a sunbeam. May we hear God in the voices of our friends, in the voices of loved ones, who gently remind us to widen our vision. Those who remind us that we are not alone. Who remind us to trust in what we know is true. God is with us. What we need is here. We are blessed with sustenance for our bodies and our souls. This wilderness may be longer and more challenging than we ever would have imagined. And yet we will not find hope and courage if we focus only on what is missing or what we wish were true.

Hope is found in letting go of a desire for everything to go as planned. Courage is found in trusting that we do not journey alone. God is with us. We have each other. Let us hold that truth together in our hearts, today and always. Amen.

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.