Some years ago, after a long time of prayer and discernment, I had the opportunity to have a conversation about ministry in the Episcopal Church. By this time, I had already been an Episcopalian for a few years and had started an earnest discussion about what ministry would look like for me.
Perhaps afraid of his judgment, just as I had received from
the RC bishop and other leadership, I decided to wear my gray robes for my
meeting with my bishop. Let’s be honest, it’s
a little weird when I wear my habit, let alone as an Episcopalian, but I
digress. I had also decided to be as
honest and forthcoming with him as possible, I needed to make sure that he knew
who I was right then and there. In
truth, I was a wounded heart, ready to defend myself from anybody who could
cause me further hurt. For context, I
think it is important to mention that in 2015, after 15 of serving in the RC
Church, the leadership of my order had decided that there was “something wrong”
with me, even going so far as to threaten sanctioning me for not divulging the
problem they perceived. Being the
stubborn mule that I am, I refused to admit to any so called problems unless
those leaders told me what it was that they were seeing. The never specified and I never came
out. Shortly thereafter, however, I was
no longer welcome to serve publicly as a priest. The problems they saw in me were so serious
in the mind of one person, the same person who “saw” these problems in me, that
I was eventually sanctioned and formally excommunicated from the RC
Church.
I mention this because, after having lived through that, I
once again found myself in front of a Bishop, discussing the ministry, but
unwilling to be hurt again. Our meeting
took place on a Sunday after the Bishop’s visitation in Midland. When the time finally for us to meet, I was ready
for the worst. Much to my surprise, the bishop
didn’t bat an eye. Instead, he started
by asking me one question; “What order do you belong to?”
I was floored, unsure of how to proceed and yet, quite sure
at the moment that I had found my home.
The woman in today’s Gospel reminded me of that time in my
life, so raw, so vulnerable, and so scared and alone. At the mercy of the powers at be and hoping
for even the slightest gift of mercy and grace.
I can’t know what she must have felt at the moment when her
battered body and heart received that breath of a life. We simply can’t know, but I imagine it as having been a moment of
unexpected and maybe unimagined grace, a breath, much like the breath at
creation which restored the promise of life and good. Like the first breath after coming up out of
the waters of abandonment after being resigned to a life of abandonement. Here, in this instant, she was transformed
into a person with a new hope and a very different life.
We see her changed, no longer under the weight of the
community’s condemnation and marginalization, no, now she is made new and she
is welcomed back into the community, her life is fully resotred. No longer the outcast, she is once again a
part of the body, we are one once again!
You and I too, are brought into the Body of Christ, into the
community, into a place of love where nothing is expected of us but to
life. This is the gift that Christ
offers us, a gift that doesn’t demand the impossible from us except to recieve
the impossible love that is so graciously outpoured upon us. We too are changed and made into a new creation,
no longer victims to the expectations of others, or even our own, instead, we
become a people living in the light of Christ, made new in every breath and
with every moment of knowing God. The
truth is that in Christ, we find something far greater than we could ever
imagine, we find ourselves, we find our dignity, we find our worth and we
discover that all along, God’s love walked with us through the good and the bad
and through the happy and sad moments. And
we learn that all these things are not dependent on societal norms or on the
approval of authority, they are rooted instead in the very heart of God who sees
us, knows us, recognizes our every quirk and can’t help but smile.
The problem is that we sometimes can’t see these things for
ourselves and we don’t see God’s smile. And
yet, even at those times, Christ continues reaching out and loving us. He continues being a presence of love in our
lives, and often, through those we least expect.
The story in our Gospel today is the story of Jesus, our
mother hen, who so readily and willingly finds us, protects us and offers us
life, even when we are unsure of what that will look like or how it will turn
out.
The story of our Gospel today is of our God who loves us so
much that even when we arrive, in all our stubbornness and ready to fight, God
is there, loving us and calling us into life.
Amen.
