Gracious God, Reveling God,
I look around and it is hard to be grateful.
Tweets Trump-it distain and disregard.
Foolish men, size up buttons of mass destruction
and we fail to teach, live or lead from a place of peace.
I guess revelation takes time.
I see our values in our budgets;
bullets over books, prisons profit over schools,
healthcare, even for children, is up for debate and
real access is just beyond the reach of every body, mind and soul.
I guess revelation takes time, how long do we have to wait?
I see Dreamers longing to make a way out of no way,
past the walls, built with the brick and mortar of slurs and slander,
half-truths and short-sighted policies.
Shut downs and shootings, brutality and brokenness.
But you are there with us;
calling us to your way of abundance, healing and grace;
opening our eyes to how lucky we are to be alive right now.
Your dream where the swords become plowshares
and we put our weapons and egos and words that wound away.
Your dream where the lion and the lamb lay down.
Your dream that sets the oppressed at liberty, offers healing, hope and recovery.
Your revelation that requires our utmost
and opens our eyes to how lucky we are to be alive right now.
Look around, you whisper, at the sweeping, endless pursuit of change
your revelation that calls us to show up for equality and inclusion.
there in rainbow flag waving and kitty cat hat making,
there in the teacher’s long hours and a nurses healing care,
you reveal Yourself in our learning and listening,
there in new policy and new practice
there in forgiveness and transformation and change.
Look around at new leaders, emerging voices and
songs of truth cutting through lies and storms of “fake news,”
Look at community gardens up rooting food deserts.
Habitat making homes for the least and the last.
Refugees making a way through the trauma and bureaucracy.
Look around at all sacred souls being the change.
Open our eyes to your dream, revelation is the future we can not see.
The future when words like racism and sexism are history
taught as things long past, never to repeat.
The future where sick beds don’t come with a fee
and equality means all, no exceptions or exclusions.
The future when each child goes to bed safe, beloved and well-fed.
The future that is almost but not quite.
The future that faith calls us to see and requires us to dive in and make happen,
we are the hands and feet, revelation feeding a revolution of loving a new way.
Look around. Look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now.
Thank God. Amen.
Scripture for Reflection
Exodus 1: 18-20
So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?’ The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.’ So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong.
Sermon by Rev. Debra McKnight
“Remember the ladies.” In 1776 Abigail Adams famously writes this to her husband John. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical places this sentiment on the lips of Angelica Schuyler, “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and when I meet Thomas Jefferson, I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the sequel.” The musical, Hamilton, places before us the tension and complications of revolutionary ideas, again and again the imperfectly lived hope of equality and freedom plays in the verses of songs, just as it does in the everyday politics of our lives. Equality excluded women, freedom permitted the bonds of slavery. Inclusion has been complicated and in someways… we have been fighting revolution after revolution after revolution to live into that founding creed. And when you are fighting revolution after revolution, it can be hard to look around and think about how lucky you are.
In the church inclusion relates to honoring the sacred of each soul and belief that all beings are created in the images of God. And the church has played its part in excluding, hindering and limiting the revolution of inclusion. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was fed up with the church and demanding that women be included in the sequel. She knew that women did most of the work at church. Perhaps you have witnessed this. I grew up watching the women of my home church make ministry happen with every cookie, cake and casserole. It seemed likely to me that the UMW (United Methodist Women), who boasted surprisingly creative casseroles and could trick any child into eating carrots with the cunning use of Orange Jell-O, held stock in Jell-O because there was never a shortage of creative ingredients or molds that could make that wiggly salad stand out on the potluck table. But it didn’t take much to see that women were making ministry happen, and it wasn’t always through casseroles bound by cheese or mayo. They were the rock of the church, organizing its ministry, raising the money for its walls, nudging the pastors, teaching Sunday school, setting up for Sunday school, cleaning up after Sunday school, checking in on people that were sick, communicating events, planning events, nurturing the community, and on one day a year one woman would preach for UMW Sunday.
That’s why more than 100 years before my first potluck, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was angry with the church. She knew women did the work of the church, singing out from the choir, teaching the children, feeding the hungry and baking the bread to be broken, everything but preaching of course. In The Women’s Bible, Stanton remarks, “So perverted is the religious element in [women’s] nature, that with faith and works she is the chief supporter of the church and clergy; the very powers that make her emancipation impossible.” She was fed up with a society that raised the Bible up to keep women down, preventing them from full citizenship and the rights of owning property, of making choices about her future and her body, of limiting her education and occupational choices, and of course, batting her hands away from the ballot box. Many of her contemporaries took one look at the Bible and saw the words of gruff barbarians as irrelevant to life in the 1800s, but not Stanton. Not only were were there too many Bibles published a year to disregard Christianity’s influence, but she saw something more, something deeper, something worth fighting for, and she dug-in, she studied with rigor. She dug into explore new possibilities for women and the church, to name its sins and love it enough to call for change. The Bible held the stories of change and of justice, it even held the stories of strong women who worked for change in difficult systems of oppression. Women like Shiphrah and Puah. Stanton could see herself in these women, they were midwives who taught the King of Egypt a very important lesson: Don’t mess with the ladies!
Now I’m not sure the King of Egypt ever learned that lesson, but they did resist his plan. While the previous administration had welcomed these foreign nationals, these Hebrew people, now it seemed they were a growing threat to Egypt… or at least that was the popular narrative. Something like, these foreigners are taking the best jobs or the best land or not speaking our language… you can imagine. As the fear grows the Pharaoh escalates his response. First, forced labor, then slavery with more difficult conditions and finally genocide. While he might have found some men to carry out his other plans, this time he thought it would be the ladies. He orders all midwives to kill Hebrew baby boys at delivery.
But the Egyptian midwives resisted. The Bible says, the midwives feared God, they feared God more than they feared the King of Egypt. Now fear is an interesting translation because it could also be translated to awe. The women were in awe of God and open to the Divine. See these women were the leaders of their community. They stood with a woman when she was naked, terrified and vulnerable; they stood with each woman and coached her into using her energy and body to its best advantage. They saw rich women and poor women endure the same complications of birth; they were present as Hebrew women and Egyptian women first looked into the eyes of their precious little ones. They lived in that thin space, where boundaries of class and ethnicity dissipate, sacred space where we are simply human. And they would not defile it, they choose the awe of God’s life-giving presence over the Pharaoh’s fear commanding them to deal death.
They are artful in their resistance but the Pharaoh notices, see bouncing baby boys keep popping up everywhere and he calls them to account for their insubordination. The Bible does not say one word about fearing Pharaoh. They, I think, use Pharaoh’s own fear and his lack of knowledge about women’s health against him. Claiming that the Hebrew women are different from Egyptian women, they are vigorous and deliver before the midwife can arrive… as if that is true. Maybe there were jokes told in ancient Egyptian locker rooms about how those Hebrew people reproduced like rabbits… that would make this lie a key tool of resistance for the these two Egyptian women who dreamed of a better day. They didn’t topple the system all at once, unseating the King in a bloody coup or a velvet revolution, but they did plant the seeds of emancipation that would free the Hebrew people in a generation. They live in the complicated messy world and do what they can, when they can.
Ethel Dudley, a Methodist Lay Woman, went to General Conference in 1956 with a lot more than a casserole dish. As a member of what would latter come to be named the UMW, Ethel took the floor of general conference in 1956 to speak for the women’s full inclusion and ordination in the church. Ethel’s opposition, Dr. Oscar Olsen, offered a litany of objections that had been circulating in the more than 70 years of debate over women’s ordination that preceded the 1956 annual conference and he concluded his remarks with fear, fear that your church might have a woman preacher, or worse yet your district might have a woman as Superintendent, and finally going nuclear, he reminded the room that they could report to a woman Bishop. But on that day the walls of fear Olsen was banking on crumbled, and delegates voted for the full inclusion of women. Leaving the conference in anger, Dr. Olsen looked at Ethel Dudley saying, “Young Lady, you will live to regret this day.” She responded, “Dr. Olsen, you know neither of us will live to see it.”
She knew that even as she might celebrate this victory for inclusion, it was only one step. It wouldn’t be until the late ‘60s and ‘70s that women would enter seminary with noticeable numbers. They tell stories of seminary that are completely different from mine, stories of rude classmates, professors that didn’t think they should be there, and Deans feeling them up or patting them on the behind... and where do you go with your sexual harassment complaint when it’s the Dean? They held on to one another and powered through to graduate. They went to churches that didn’t want them. These churches behaved badly, one clergy woman even had to deal with a family taking back the piano they donated out before the first Sunday that she preached. These women had to earn every shred of respect and authority, and they did. They made their way, they worked hard… and in one case, the chair of the SPRC donated a new piano. They offered grace when they received none and managed sexism in every aspect of church life, and one day a women became a District Superintendent and then more followed and then eventually women, at least a few, were elected as Bishops.
In 1984, Rev. Judith Craig was elected as Bishop and after her consecration, as people were filing out of worship and giving her words of encouragement, shaking hands and giving hugs, a small woman, gray with wisdom and tears in her eyes, looked at Judith and said, “I Lived.” It was Ethel Dudley. She lived to see it. Look around!
It can be hard to stay in the struggle. This fall, when Lila starts kindergarten, I will be mindful that the laws that made weapons accessible and mental heath inaccessible to create Sandy Hook have not changed. Not even a little. And this rain of terror continues at concerts and malls, movie theaters and schools. It is hard to look back and realize I have been working on immigration reform and marching and praying and calling and organizing for 15 years, and families are still being separated, and we have not found a better way. It is hard to watch friends and family, say “Me Too” and acknowledge that we have so far to go.
That’s why we come to church. That’s why Stanton found the midwives in the Bible. That’s why we lean into singing “The Schuyler Sisters” and ordinary folks like Ethel Dudley when we need it most. Because we are called to work for the world as it will be. That’s revelation. God filling us with dreams of grace and love, pointing us to dive headlong into a better way. Look around and imagine what we might live to see, if we try. A day when racism and sexism are old news, stories told in history. A day when no one says, “Me Too.” A day when hospital beds don’t come with a fee, when we spend more on educating the last and the least, and our nation has a Secretary of Peace. We are the hands and feet of the revolution; we are the heart’s pulsing the revelation’s energy.
Look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now.
Alive in this complicated mess filled with possibility.
Alive to march and love and dream.
Alive to be the change.
Take courage my friends we are not alone. Thanks be to God, Amen.
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