I grew up in the Episcopal Church. My earliest and most constant memories are of the Episcopal Church, or as it was known when I was growing up, the “Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America.” It had an appropriately “important” sounding name back then because it was “the” church to belong to in the 1950’s and 60’s. We are now simply known as “The Episcopal Church” or “TEC.”
My earliest church memories are for the most part pleasant ones: Sunday school with apple juice and graham crackers. The Christmas Eve lessons and Carols service. Confirmation class. Belting out “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” on Easter Sunday while inhaling the heady smell of hundreds of lilies. Being a member of the Girls’ Friendly Society.
But in all my memories of those times growing up in our suburban Washington DC church St. John’s, Norwood Parish there is one thing absolutely and completely absent from my memory: never once did it ever occur to me, never once did it cross my mind, never once did even a hint of a suggestion of this thing appear on even the remotest edge of my horizon of possibilities. Never once did it ever, ever, ever occur to me that I might some day grow up to become a priest. Didn’t even cross the threshold of my imagination. In retrospect, at that time, the idea that I could become a priest in the Episcopal Church would be about as foreign as imagining a device in which I could do everything that this (show Iphone) little gizmo now enables me to do.
You see in those days of course there were no women priests — not even any discussion of it. There may have been some “deaconesses” who were kinda sorta like nuns, but that was about it. You see back then, not only were there no women priests — there were also no women deputies to General Convention, no women on vestries, not even any girls serving as acolytes. No wonder the idea of being a priest was not even a blip on the radar of my imagination.
Two days from today we will celebrate an event that took place in the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, PA forty years ago. On July 29, 1974, the Feast of Saints Mary and Martha, three bishops, Daniel N. Corrigan, retired bishop suffragan of Colorado, Robert L. DeWitt, recently resigned bishop of Pennsylvania, and Edward R. Welles II, retired bishop of West Missouri gathered with eleven women deacons (by 1974 women could be full-fledged deacons, not “deaconesses”) and ordained them as priests. This was done without the approval of General Convention or the Presiding Bishop, but there were now 11 women who had had bishops lay hands on them in the ancient rite of ordination, which made them well, priests.
The church had to deal with this. The next General Convention took place in Minneapolis in the summer of 1976 and at that convention the House of Bishops voted 95 to 61 to change or eliminate ambiguous places in canon law that seemed to prevent the ordination of women to the priesthood, and to clarify matters by creating a canon to affirm the ordination of women as priests and bishops. Because of the two-house structure of the General Convention, the House of Deputies had to vote on the matter the following day. After much deliberation in that House, the clerical order voted 60 in favor, 39 opposed, and 15 divided, while the laity voted 64 in favor, 36 opposed, and 13 divided. Women’s ordination to the priesthood and episcopacy was approved, and the vote meant that women deacons could be canonically ordained to the priesthood as early as January 1, 1977.
And so it happened. A group of trailblazing risk-takers paved the way, the rest of the church followed fairly soon after. And day after tomorrow we celebrate the fortieth anniversary. I was ordained as a deacon just ten years after the first “regular” ordinations — on the one hand it seemed like no time had elapsed; on the other those ten years seemed like an entire era had gone by. I have a personal connection with two of the “Philadelphia 11” — The Rev’d Jeannette Piccard was an older alumna of my alma mater, a progressive women’s college that helped shape my identity along with those of many who were trailblazers in their own fields. The Rev’d Nancy Wittig was a rector in the Diocese of Pennsylvania where I served first served as a rector. I remember attending a meeting of women clergy soon after I got there. Nancy was present along with another priest, The Rev’d Nancy Stroh who had been the interim of Trinity Church Gulph Mills before I was called as rector. Nancy Stroh was the first woman priest that parish had experienced. I had a powerful moment of realization sitting in that meeting that day: these two women — to one I owe my priesthood, to the other I owe my rectorship. I felt such a strong sense that day of not only standing on the shoulders of giants but also being blessed to be in the presence of two of them. And the giants include not just the original Philadelphia Eleven, but all women who have faithfully served the church through the centuries.
Imagining the impossible. If someone had told me back in Sunday school at St. John’s lo those many years ago what I would be doing here this morning I would have thought they came from a different planet. And yet…
And think of the other impossibilities we have seen come into being or coming into being just in the lifetimes of many of us here: schools being integrated, for one. Russell and Christopher getting married last month for another. Possibilities do take shape in the consciousness of dreamers who then inspire others to join them in taking action and a whole new thing is born.
But it isn’t easy, is it? Two steps forward, one step back — which often feels like one step forward, two steps back. As much hope and faith as I personally have, I get discouraged. Looking around at the world today with every news report being about people slaughtering each other, or our Congress gridlocked over just about everything, especially everything that would make people’s lives better, or the rapidly widening gap between the haves and the have nots — looking around at the world today it’s easy to get discouraged.
But then along comes today’s reading from St. Pau’s Letter to the Romans, hands down my favorite Bible passage. Like a seventh inning stretch in the midst of a really awful baseball game comes this reminder of the big picture, this gentle embrace from God reminding us Who is ultimately in charge and Whose we ultimately are.
In this passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans we are reminded that at times when we can’t even form the words to pray God’s Holy Spirit “helps us in our weakness” and “intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
We are reminded that all things work together for good for those who love God. We are reminded that if God is for us, who is against us? And the “us” in question here, I believe, is all of humanity. And finally Paul tells us:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Sometimes when we get mired down by whatever it is that mires us down — whether in our personal lives or events in our local community, national community, global community, sometimes when it almost seems impossible to envision anything beyond the here and now, sometimes it is good to, as Father Michael likes to say “hit the pause button” and remind ourselves that there is indeed a bigger picture and that bigger picture is in the mind and imagination of God. Sometimes it’s good to have a mantra that reconnects us to the ground and heart of God’s being. And for me that mantra is:
I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. AMEN.