Yesterday I went to Hanford. I didn’t mean to. Hanford is most of the way to Bakersfield, tucked into the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, just a bit below Fresno and between Hwy 5 and 99. I didn’t intend to go to Hanford. I had a lovely Saturday planned, and none of my plans included driving 360 miles to one of the hottest places in California. But that’s what happened, and I’m glad I went, because it’s worth driving six hours to see a miracle.
Early Friday afternoon, I learned that the Rev. Suzanne Ward was going to be ordained to priesthood in the new Diocese of San Joaquin. The people of the new diocese are those who chose to remain Episcopalian after the former diocesan leadership decided to leave The Episcopal Church in early 2008. Since that time, the new diocese has been rebuilding, welcoming all who choose to worship with them, building a community of faith where God’s grace is flourishing. Suzy Ward is the first woman to be ordained priest in this diocese where women’s ordination has never been allowed, and I really wanted to be there to witness this sign of God’s grace, but when the Rev. Wendy Smith called to ask if I wanted to drive down there with her, I was daunted by the idea of that long drive and tempted by the plans I had already made. Then, in the late afternoon, I sat down to write my sermon, and as soon as I re-read the lections, I knew where I needed to be on Saturday.
At first glance, the connection between yesterday’s events in Hanford and today’s scripture seems to be that a woman was ordained and a woman and female child were healed. The connection is much deeper than that. The healing of the hemorrhaging woman and the raising of Jairus’s daughter attract our attention. We can imagine the desolation the woman has experienced for all the years that she has lived as an outcast in the community. We can imagine the grief of the parents whose beloved daughter has died. We can imagine those things—we can imagine ourselves in the same situations—and the miracles of healing are so dramatic and capture our attention so completely that they obscure the even greater significance of Jesus’ actions.
By choosing not to rebuke the woman who reaches out to him for healing—by choosing to enter a house of death and actually take the hand of a dead person, Jesus chooses to stand with those who are outside the boundaries of society. By choosing to stand with them—to touch them, to bless them, to acknowledge their faith—he breaks down the barriers that seem to get created in every society. By choosing to stand with the outcasts, he gives notice that the ways we set ourselves apart from others are not the ways of God. By choosing to stand with outcasts, he breaks the rules that humanity has made and draws us back to the rules God has given us.
As I reflected on the society-made rules that shape our lives and experience, I remembered an event in my mother-in-law’s life. She was widowed in the late 1940’s and needed to continue to manage the furniture store she and her husband owned in a Dallas suburb. As she tells the story, soon after her husband’s death, her father took her to the courthouse and “removed her disabilities”. Her disability was her gender. Through his legal action, her father—according to law the person in charge of this grown woman—essentially vouched for her capacity to act responsibly in matters of business. He certified that she could enter valid contracts, sign checks and direct her own destiny as a small business owner. In other words, he certified that she was able to act like a man.
This story sounds ludicrous to us today. We would like to think that the sexism embedded so deeply in the societal rules of mid-century America is absent today. We like to think we’ve moved on, and—thanks be to God—there has been forward movement away from this ism and from many of the isms that set a fence between insiders and outsiders. This movement is in large part the result of courageous people who have followed in Jesus’ footsteps—people who have recognized the good news Jesus came to give us and who have lived it in their lives. This movement is the result of people living out the gospel—living into their baptismal promises—living in awareness of Jesus’ actions—living from God’s love that is abundant, overflowing, freely given, never-ending and completely indiscriminate.
In his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul addresses a community that has grown in faith and abundance but has difficulty sharing with those whom they see as “other”. He urges them to a balance of giving and accepting—giving to others from their riches and accepting from others the riches they also have to share. Only a generation removed from Jesus’ presence on earth, people just like us struggled to live into his teachings—to open their hearts to people they saw as outsiders. Two thousand years later, we’re still struggling, and two thousand years later, God’s grace is still with us, helping us do the work of moving this world forward into the new creation.
The Church did good work in God’s name in Hanford yesterday. The Church—we who call ourselves followers of Christ—is doing good work in God’s name right here in Santa Clara. That’s a good thing, because the work is not yet done. As long as people are excluded because of gender, race, faith, orientation, financial situation, ethnicity or any of the other reasons we find to exclude our brothers and sisters, the work is not done and our world remains broken. The good news is that we are not alone in our work. God is with us as we gather today and as we leave to go into the world.
Yesterday, as we celebrated the ordination of a woman whose God-given call to priesthood has finally been answered by the Church, the collect for ordination held special meaning for us all. No doubt through the working of the Holy Spirit, this prayer is also part of the Easter Vigil, reminding us that God’s grace continues to move us forward from darkness into light. I invite you to turn to page 291 in the prayer book and to pray the collect with me. As we pray, I invite you to give thanks for the fences that have been broken and to ask for courage and grace to continue the struggle until all people are truly sisters and brothers in the world.
Let us pray:
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.