But, By God, We're Here

Women in Alice Walker's The Color Purple, the musical

It seems in some ways that the ordination of women in The Episcopal Church is still relatively new. In other ways, it is difficult to remember a time when women weren’t ordained.

But I remember that time. Indeed I lived through the tumultuous years leading up to the ordination of eleven women in Philadelphia in 1974. I was ordained a priest in 1971 in my sixth month as the curate at St. Martin’s Church, Charlotte, North Carolina. St. Martins’ was the home parish of Carter Heyward, an exact contemporary of mine. Carter at that time was at student at Union Seminary in New York City and was in the forefront of women pushing the Church to ordain women to the priesthood. I myself had only recently come into the Church and like many converts, I espoused Episcopal traditions with gusto. One of those traditions happened to be an all-male priesthood. I don’t know that I was solidly against the ordination of women, but I certainly was no enthusiast for it.

One Sunday in early July, 1974, I preached a sermon on the gospel story of Jesus sending out his disciples two by two to places where he himself was going to come. I entitled it “Disciples That Go Ahead of the Master.” I preached this sermon never even thinking about or mentioning the hot-button issue of women’s ordination. Carter’s mother, Mary Ann, was in church that Sunday, as she usually was.  Ever the enthusiast for “the women,” as she put it, she immediately inferred that the sermon was precisely relevant to women’s ordination. She asked for a copy of it. News came out in several weeks that eleven women had been ordained to the priesthood in Philadelphia by three bishops. One of those women was Katrina Swanson, who co-authored the liturgy we are using today. Another was Carter Heyward. Mary Ann Heyward sent copies of my sermon to all eleven of those women. Within days, I think, each one of them wrote me a personal note thanking me for my support. And that is how I became an advocate for women’s ordination. 

The Philadelphia Eleven at their Ordination to the Priesthood
July 29, 1974

A year later, four more women were ordained in the Diocese of Washington in St. Stephen and the Incarnation Parish, known for its highly experimental liturgies, its unorthodox practices, its hit-the-streets-and-demonstrate-for-justice-and-peace mentality, and especially for its popular rector, The Rev. William Wendt. Father Wendt got into trouble with his bishop, The Right Reverend William Creighton, and was brought up on charges for which he was tried in a church court and ultimately reprimanded in the cathedral for his disobedience. 

I never imagined in 1975 that I would one day serve the parish of St. Stephen and the Incarnation. In 2015, I was in my twelfth year as Senior Priest there when we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the ordination of the Washington Four. The three living priests who had been irregularly ordained returned for a special liturgy and celebration. The wonderful occasion brought together a host of people who had been directly affected in one way or another by that event in 1975 that had been so painful. The year before, Carter Heyward had come to St. Stephen and the Incarnation to preach when we commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the Philadelphia ordination. It was all a part of a year of commemoration  and celebration that left me grateful that I had lived through the struggle, but profoundly aware that I myself had been privileged to avoid any suffering of my own, and that for only one reason: I was male.

It is interesting to me that the first lesson chosen for this liturgy is the story of Abraham’s agony over not having an heir.  It is a story about trust, the theme of the entire Abrahamic cycle.  Trust is integral to faith.  But there is a sub-text to the story.  It is implicitly about an outsider, Eliezer of Damascus, Abraham’s slave who he thinks will be his only heir.  Eliezer is only mentioned in the biblical text in this connection, although there are rabbinical stories about him.  So in the background of this highly important story about the establishment of a lineage that was ultimately to become Israel, God’s own people, who in turn were to be a light that shown for all nations, there hangs the question about who along the way is left out. 

Several years ago a friend of mine introduced me to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Howard Zinn was a professor at Columbia University. His history is history told from the underside, stories of the people who were the losers, like the Native Americans, like Africans forced into slavery, like common laborers of all races that rioted and frequently died for worker’s rights, like children who were working in factories under awful conditions prior to the passage of child labor laws. I was amazed on page after page to learn of things no one ever taught me in school. Nearly always the winners write the histories. They tell their own story about how they are powerful. They crow about what they’ve accomplished. Only recently have we begun to pay attention to the unsung heroes that have come from the ranks of minorities. And there are plenty of people who don’t like telling the stories of the so-called “losers” one bit.

But they are not they gospel and that is not how the gospel works. Like it or not, throughout the biblical story, God displays a preferential option for the poor and the powerless. It is not the rich and famous, but those who are the dispossessed, the marginalized, the forsaken who turn out to be the recipients of special divine care. That is what the Magnificat is about, Mary’s Song that we hear in the gospel today.  It reads like a manifesto for universal economic and social justice. Why? Because it is a manifesto for economic and social justice. Listen:

⁵¹ You, God, have stretched out your mighty arm
    and scattered the proud with all their plans.
⁵² You have brought down mighty kings from their thrones,
    and lifted up the lowly.
⁵³ You have filled the hungry with good things,
    and sent the rich away with empty hands.
⁵⁴ You have  kept the promise you made to our ancestors,
    and have come to the help of your servant Israel.

Mary herself, a woman, or, more likely a teenage girl, is the poster child for the powerless. She is female in a world dominated by men, young in a culture where age is revered and children discounted or ignored, a Jew without vote or office in a nation subjugated to a foreign imperial authority. 

"“Until you do right by me, I say, everything you even dream about will fail.” 

Last week I saw a production of the musical version of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.  The climax of that story takes place at an Easter dinner when the discounted, abused, downtrodden Celie declares her independence and finally flies in the face of Mister, her oppressive husband, as she announces that she is going to leave him. Celie curses Mister, an act of amazing courage. Enraged at being defied, Mister yells, “Who you think you is? You can’t curse nobody. Look at you. You’re black, you're poor, you're ugly, you're a woman, you're nothing at all!” But moments later when she is leaving, she shouts back at Mister, “I'm poor, black, I might even be ugly, but dear God, I'm here. I'm here.”

It is not an accident that this all transpires on Easter Day. Sitting around the table is the whole cast of characters, all of whom, to a person, are walking in darkness and the shadow of death. That is the case with all human beings at one time or another. But even the most bedraggled of them sees and hears Celie claiming her power and proclaiming her freedom, and some, notably the women, take fresh courage. One laughs declaring she is home again, back where she once belonged and was brave. Another follows Celie’s example and declares that she too is leaving, leaving her narrow immature dependency to become the singer she believes she can be. That’s Easter. That’s resurrection. That is the story of the power of God that we know as Christ breaking the bonds of death and hell and rising victorious from the grave. It happens again and again and again in lives like Katrina Welles Swanson’s and Carter Heyward’s. In lives like Bill Wendt’s. In lives like yours and mine. 

Three of the Philadelphia Eleven Celebrating Holy Eucharist in Riverside Church, New York
October 27, 1974
L-R:  Alison Cheek, Carter Heyward, Jeanette Picard

And it will happen again in this nation of ours. Evil will prosper but for so long, but the cause of Truth will triumph. It is built into the fabric of the universe. And that fabric may be ripped and torn and trampled upon by the forces of darkness and destruction and death, but that fabric will be mended by the only force that ultimately breathes, namely Life itself. Truth and life and love will continue moving, however unsteadily and haltingly, until the circle of life becomes wider and wider to include everyone. The only ones excluded are the ones who exclude themselves. The mighty are cast down from their thrones not by some punishing god from a distant throne but by self-will dedicated to the self’s destruction. The rich are sent away empty not by the Spirit but by their own choice to refuse the Bread of Life, which is Truth and Justice, Mercy and Love. We have seen darker times and lived through scarier moments, many of us. And we may be poor, we may be black—or white, we may be ugly—or beautiful, but by God, we’re here, we’re here.

A sermon preached on the commemoration of the ordination of women in the Anglican Communion on the texts Genesis 15:1-6 and Luke Luke 1:46-55.

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2018