Sermon
Women
Keeping the Message Alive
Gifts of Women Sunday,
March 7, 2010
University Presbyterian Church
Introduction: Bev
In
all generations there have been women keeping the message alive. We haven’t
heard their stories because in their time
they weren’t considered important enough to be remembered. As more and more women have been educated in
ancient languages, history and research, more energy has been spent in
uncovering books and diaries and letters written by women. In these stories and writings we have
discovered a treasure trove of wisdom, philosophy, theology, spirituality, art
and music. This morning Suzanne and I are going to tell the stories of some
brave, intelligent, creative, strong women who kept the message alive.
Euodia
and Syntyche kept
the message alive in the 1st century. Bev
Of all the unexpected places to
find women keeping the message alive is at the side of Paul the apostle. Paul is widely disliked among women for
saying such things as women should not speak in church, that they should not
teach men, that they should be subject to their husbands. Whether he actually
said these things or not is another sermon. What we know for sure is that he
worked side by side with women in spreading the Gospel throughout the
Mediterranean area.
We know about Euodia and Syntyche
because Paul names them in his letter to the Philippians which I just read. He addresses them first saying that they
should get along. Then he asks their fellow church members to help them get
along. Many interpreters of the passage focus on the fact that two women were
having an argument. When we read on we
find that just as important as the arguing is Paul’s description of them as his
co-workers, even that they have struggled beside him. He is saying that they preached the Gospel
and taught about Jesus just as he did.
They were right beside him.
Syncletia
kept the message alive in the 4th century. Suzanne
Syncletia
was a desert mother who lived in a crude
and secluded community. She was the abbess of a convent of nuns and a
confidant and advisor to monks. Born in the early fourth century in Alexandria
Egypt, she was beautiful and
wealthy. She refused to marry because of her commitment to the Christian faith.
When her parents died she became the
guardian of her blind sister and the recipient of a rich inheritance. She
distributed her inheritance among the poor
and took her sister to live in a tomb on a relative’s property. When she arrived at the tomb she sent for a priest. In his
presence she cut off her hair thus announcing that she renounced the world and
renewed her consecration to God.
Regarding herself
as her most dangerous enemy she spent her time in prayer and mortification,
punishing her body. Her fame spread abroad and many women went to her to confer on spiritual matters.
She frequently taught the virtue
of humility, in the following words: "A treasure is secure so long as it
remains concealed; but when once disclosed, and laid open to every bold
invader, it is presently rifled; so virtue is safe so long as secret, but, if
rashly exposed, it but too often evaporates into smoke.”
Her
words and the words of two other women of 4th century were deemed to
be edifying and worthy of representation and collection under their own names.
They were quoted in a work called
The Sayings of the Fathers.
Catherine
of Siena kept the message alive in the 14th century. Bev
She was seven when she vowed her virginity to God; fifteen
when she cut off her hair in defiance of efforts to make her marry; eighteen
when she became a Dominican. At first she lived in solitude and silence in her room
in the convent, going out only for Mass.
During this time she learned to read.
When she was twenty-one she abruptly changed her life style and began to
give herself to the service of the poor and the sick with other nuns. She
served as nurse in homes and hospitals, looked out for the destitute. But she still maintained silence and
contemplation. Most of her teaching was done in her room.
Her correspondence was prolific (nearly four
hundred of her letters are extant), drawing in popes and politicians as well as
the closer circle of her friends and followers. It was with all of these in
mind that she composed her Dialogue (she
called it simply “my book”) in 1377-1378, about two years before her death at
the age of thirty-three.
She
became a central figure in church politics as the battle raged over where the
Pope should live and rule. He had moved
to Avignon. Catherine was instrumental in persuading Gregory XI to return to
Rome. She was canonized by Pope Pius II in 1461, and in 1970 became one of two
women to be named Doctor of the Church (the other is St.
Teresa of Avila).
She wrote her book, The
Dialogue, in 1377. Much of it was dictated while she was in a
state of ecstacy. It is a long book
that consists of her asking questions of God and God giving her the answers to
her questions.
To a question about prayer God
answers: “Never relax your desire to ask
for my help. Never lower your voice in crying out to me to be merciful to the
world. Never stop knocking at the door
of my Truth by following in his footsteps.” (201)
To a question about love God
answers: “And because I loved you
without being loved by you, even before you existed (in fact, it was love that
moved me to create you in my own image and likeness) you cannot repay me. But
you must give this love to other people, loving them without being loved by
them. You must love them without any concern for your own spiritual or material
profits, but only for the glory and praise of my name, because I love them. In
this way you will fulfill the whole commandment of the Law, which is to love me
above all things and your neighbor as yourself.” (165)
Teresa
of Avila kept the message alive in the 16th century. Suzanne
Teresa
was born in 1515 in Avila in Spain, to an aristocratic Castilian family.
Children of those days were educated with the stories of the early Christian
martyrs, so Teresa thought the best way she could serve God was to die. When
she was eight-years-old she convinced her eleven-year-old brother that they
should go to Morocco and announce that they were Christians. Then surely their
heads would be cut off by the Moors and they would be martyrs. She was only eight and didn’t know where
Morocco was, but they picked a direction and started out. They didn’t get far before one of their uncles came along the road and took them
home.
After
her mother died, Teresa became greatly interested in romance and fashion and
perfume. Her father sent her to be
educated by Augustinian nuns in the town. After a year and a half she fell ill
and while she was convalescing she decided to become a nun. At first her father objected, but he finally
gave in and she went to the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation. She was twenty. A year later she became ill
again, possibly from malignant malaria, and was treated at home for three
years.
At
this time the convent of the Incarnation was a large convent consisting of 140 nuns. The discipline was very relaxed.
The convent had a parlor in which
ladies and gentlemen of the town visited the nuns. The nuns were allowed to
leave the enclosure. Solitude and poverty were largely ignored. At first Teresa enjoyed this atmosphere
because she was beautiful, charming, exuberant
and enjoyed the attention of men.
As
her devotion deepened, she became disgusted with the laxity of the Carmelite
life and wanted to found a convent where the rule was poverty and where
obedience would be practiced. As a result she founded a convent in 1562 with
thirteen other nuns. Personal poverty,
signified by the coarse brown wool habit and the leather sandals, was a
characteristic. The regime of manual work, together with alms, provided their
income for a very simple way of life. It became the model for sixteen other
convents that she established.
In
selecting candidates for this austere way of life, she insisted above all on
intelligence and good judgment. She
said, “God preserve us from stupid nuns!”
She believed that intelligent people see their faults and allow themselves to
be guided, while deficient and narrow-minded people fail to do so, but are
pleased with themselves and never learn to do right.
As the years passed her
practice of prayer deepened until in 1555 she experienced an
inner
conversion. She began having visions and
experiencing times when the Spirit took over her body—an experience called
ecstasy. Her ecstasies included falling
on the floor and lying there frozen in position for hours, speaking out loud
with God, and levitating—rising into the air.
When
she felt it happening she would ask other nuns to sit on her to prevent her
floating away. St Teresa struggled because there were few
who could understand or appreciate her inner ecstasies. However on the one hand
she felt these experiences to be more real than ordinary events.
Unfortunately her visions and other
experiences became public which led to
much misunderstanding, ridicule, and even persecution. This was the time of the Inquisition when any
deviation from the orthodox religious experience came under strict observation
and scrutiny.
On one occasion Teresa complained to God
about her mistreatment from so many different people. God replied to her saying
“That is how I always treat my friends” with good humour St Teresa replied
“That must be why you have so few friends”.
In
1622 she was canonized. In 1970 she was the
first woman in the history of the church to be declared a Doctor of the Church.
Mary
Slessor kept the message alive in the 19th century.
Bev
Mary Slessor was born in 1848 near
Aberdeen, Scotland. Her father was a shoemaker. When his business failed he
began drinking to excess and soon died of pneumonia. Mary was forced to work in
a cotton mill to support her mother and four siblings.
When
she was twenty-seven, Mary received the
news that her long time hero, David Livingstone, the famous missionary in
Africa, had died. At that moment she
determined to go to Africa as a missionary. A year later she was on her way
to Calabar an important seaport in Southeastern Nigeria. After three years of working in Calabar she
wanted to go into the interior of Africa where, in her words, “no other white
person has settled.” Instead she got
malaria and had to go back to Scotland to recuperate. After 16 months she was allowed to go to an
area three miles into the interior. She
settled in among the tribes there. Her
love for children became well-known and
soon babies were abandoned on her
doorstep. These were unwanted babies, that otherwise would have been
killed. She made a home for all of them,
even adopting one of them as her own daughter.
Again she became ill and had to be sent home this time for
three years. When she went back she was
sent to villages farther into the
interior.
The thirty-nine years Mary spent
with the people of different regions of Calabar were filled with excitement,
disappointment, horror, and joy. Even though she was only 5 feet tall, she
stood up to many warriors, chiefs, witch doctors, and murderers. Her adventures varied from healing hundreds
of people (including chiefs), rescuing prisoners and/or slaves and wives from
being murdered, saving and caring for countless children and babies, witnessing
to the most frightening tribes, settling many disputes among tribes and
neighbors, assisting chiefs in decisions for their tribe, and sometimes just
looking a tribal person in the face and
telling them about the love of God. She
died at age 64 of a jungle disease.
Barbara
Brown Taylor keeps the message alive in the 21st century. Suzanne
Barbara Brown Taylor, who was born on September 21, 1951, is an American
Episcopal priest, professor, and theologian and is one of the United States'
best known preachers. She is quoted as saying that she wants to be a “holy
troublemaker.” In order to be that she
had to give up her position as an Episcopal priest. Now,
on Sundays, she writes, prepares the religion courses she teaches at Piedmont
College, or works with her husband on their northwest Georgia farm.
For years, her
books – eleven so far – reflect her
perspective as a church member and leader. Her new book is called LEAVING
CHURCH. It’s about burning out as the priest of a parish she had wanted very
much to serve, and then leaving not only the pastoral ministry but many of her
former beliefs, too.
When she began her
ministry at Grace-Calvary Epsicopal Church in Clarksville, Georgia, the
sanctuary seated 82 people. As the
congregation approached 400
members, they were up to four services on Sunday. Taylor
says, “Everyone was tired. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn’t
doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family. And I even found
that the work for God was taking me away from God. There was no time anymore to
be quiet or still or pray.”
One day a call
came from nearby Piedmont College asking if Taylor might like to come teach
world religions. She quickly said yes and resigned from Grace-Calvary.
She said in an
interview: “I wanted to be as close as I could to the Really Real. And I’ll
capitalize both of those “R’s” because God is a word that means different
things to different people, but we might all agree it’s what is most real.”
Not only was the
work wearing her down, she got tired of being considered the holiest person in
the room. She said she did start out to be holy and to be the perfect exemplar
and to fulfill all of her vows, baptismal and ordained. But she didn’t want to be set apart anymore.
As a priest, she never blessed same-sex unions, since her
bishop opposed this. But Taylor believes the clergy should talk about "the
virtues of righteous sexual relationships of any kind and bless them." Taylor remains a vocal Episcopalian, staying
in the fold because, "If you leave, no one has to deal with you
anymore."
Conclusion Bev
There are many, many more stories of women who should be
remembered. There are stories not only
from centuries past and places far away. There are stories of women here at UPC
in the past and currently who are keeping the message alive. Praise be to God! Let us pray.
O God,
you who are present with your people in all places at all times, we thank you
for all the people—women and men who have kept the message alive through the
generations. You have called all of us to do what we can with the gifts you have
given us to keep the message alive. May
we do it to your glory. Amen.
An Altar in the World, published
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