Online Sermons
7th Sunday in Pentecost (proper 11): July 19, Barbara Schlachter
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsBut now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.
These words from Ephesians are what I speak to this morning, through a very particular lens, and that is the perspective of having just returned from General Convention. General Convention is the gathering of the Episcopal Church every three years. It is composed of the House of Bishops—every Bishop in the Church—and the House of Deputies, composed of four clergy and four lay people from every diocese in the Church, which is more than 800 voting deputies. Then there are people there for other reasons, like the Episcopal Church Women, United Thank Offering, exhibitors in a giant fair of goods and projects, and other groups that choose to meet during this time, like my reason for being there—the Episcopal Women’s History Project.
This was the thirteenth General Convention since I attended my first one in 1973, and while I haven’t been to all of them I have been to most of them, some as a deputy or first alternate. The convention before the first one I attended was in 1970 in Houston. Two remarkable things happened there. Legislation was passed so that women were able to be ordained deacons, no longer deaconesses, and the first women elected to serve as lay deputies to convention were seated.
It was a dramatic moment. Picture with me the House of Deputies in 1970. There are nearly 800 men in the room, almost all white, in suits and ties or clergy collars, and none admitting to being anything but heterosexual in their sexual orientation. Then a vote is taken, and the House has voted in favor of lay women being seated as deputies. This is good, for several of them have been elected by their Diocesan Conventions, and they are waiting in the visitor’s gallery to take their rightful place. And so, amidst dignified clapping, the men who are filling in for them, rise from their chairs and these first women are seated
The first wall of difference was broken down. At the next convention, in 1973, there were more women seated as lay deputies, but no women clergy. There were sixteen of us walking around in clerical collars lobbying for the male deputies to open the priesthood to women. I felt like a freak at a sideshow—so many of the people there had never seen a woman in a clerical collar and they couldn’t help but stare. I felt both marginalized and unwanted and called and determined. I have never forgotten in my viscera how it feels to be an outcast simply because of who I was as a woman, not for anything I had done.
This last week at the Convention I spent a good deal of time just observing, and marveling how different it all is now. I would like to think that the only excluded were those who excluded themselves, and yet until people are paid so that they can afford to leave their jobs, there will be some exclusion due to economics. But here is what I could see or know about how we are as a House of Deputies now:
43% were women, including our own Ellen Bruckner and Leslee Sandberg.So many women were in clergy collars that it was commonplace—no stares.
There were many more people of color, from all over the country, & western hemisphere.
Translation into Spanish was available all the time, and when we worshipped the bulletins were printed in columns—one in Spanish and one in English. Often the lessons were read in another language entirely.There were young people intentionally brought to observe and shape our life together—high school students like our Maddie Losby, and college students and recent graduates.
There were interpreters for the deaf.People who had mobility issues, including our host Bishop of Los Angeles, rode in self-powered carts.
There were a number of companion dogs.
And something that you can’t tell by sight—there were a significant number of gay and lesbian clergy and deputies.
Presiding over the House was its second woman to serve as President: Bonnie Anderson, who had studied both parliamentary procedure and Spanish to better do this job.
This was not your grandfather’s General Convention! So many walls had come down in order for this wholeness, this one new humanity, to represent all the Episcopalians in this country.
The symbol for this of course was our worship, communion every day at 11:30, and on Sunday presided over by our Presiding Bishop, fittingly enough. At that service 7,000 people, men, women and children of every description, were in attendance, fed by the one bread and the one cup. The most wonderful sign of incarnation for me at that service was the procession of women and one man from the 110 dioceses each offering the United Thank Offering from the people of their own diocese. Our own Kate Rose represented the Diocese of Iowa.
There was a sense of wholeness, a sense of holiness, about the Body of Christ as incarnated by this Convention in all its aspects. It was wonder-full for me to see how ever inclusive we have become, how mindful we are that we are not whole if there are people we will not welcome into all orders of the church: the laity, the deaconate, the priesthood, and the episcopate.
To go back to Ephesians, it was as though we are hearing, really hearing, these words: But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one.
Deutero-Paul, the author of Ephesians, that is a disciple of Paul, was referring to the enmity between the Jewish people and the Christ-following Gentiles. But this first church conflict and its resolution of difference becoming one in Christ and still preserving diversity has become the model for all subsequent expansions of our understanding of what it means to be the Body of Christ.
Now that we in the Episcopal Church know that any child we baptize, gay or straight, can grow in grace to be called to any of the orders of ministry, perhaps we can continue our work of inclusion in the world beyond the church. It is happening in the margins as we increasingly realize that the whole earth is the whole body and that diminishing any winds up diminishing us all.
Are we ready to understand that the poor must have their place at the table of God’s provision or there can be no security for those who now have enough? Are we ready to include the immigrant and the refugee with those of us whose ancestors landed on Plymouth Rock because God said even before Jesus that you must always befriend and care for the stranger in your midst? You, too, were strangers in Egypt and in the land we now call America.
The dividing walls are always to be brought down because we are Christians and we have this vision of justice and peace for all. This is our mission. We don’t do it because it is easy or always feels good. It is sometimes very hard. But it is always right. God is always at work expanding our idea of who is our brother or our sister.
This Sunday we see all of this through another lens and that is the lens of healing. In the Gospel we see Jesus filled with compassion, and out of that deep place within him he taught and he healed. This is a mob scene being described here. Can’t you hear the shouts and feel the pushing? Jesus, Jesus, over here, over here! He healed a whole mess of people, and he hasn’t stopped healing or wanting to heal all of us, in all the ways we need healing.
We all need healing. We need healing sometimes when we are physically sick; we need healing sometimes because we are heartsick, with grief or with worry. We need healing sometimes because we can’t accept, sometimes can’t even stand, who we believe ourselves to be with all our warts or our confusion. Sometimes we need healing because we doubt our gifts and our call. But God wants us all to be healed, and this is for two reasons.
Jesus never did like people to suffer; he never refused people healing. He wanted people to be well. But he also realized that when you are well you are able to rejoin the community and strengthen the community. Just by being part of the church, we are given a place at the table to be fed and to be loved. The community is where Christ is to be found today. It is where our wholeness and holiness lies, and the bigger and more inclusive the community the more whole we are. We are part of the temple of which Christ is either the cornerstone or the capstone, depending upon how you read it. He is either the foundation stone or the stone at the top of the arch that holds it all together. Maybe Christ is both!
By ourselves we are each precious to God. Together we are the Body of Christ, proclaiming healing and salvation to those who are far off and those who are near.
Today you are invited to the altar for a prayer of healing, a prayer for wholeness so that you may be a blessing to yourself and to others. Let yourself answer this God-given invitation. Let Jesus have compassion on you. Amen.