Sermon, Feast of Mary the Apostle, 2013

     If you didn’t know before today that the Companions of Mary the Apostle are a new kind of women’s community, you can see it today.  At the same time, this Eucharist is a testimony to how much we need and depend on our brothers and sisters who have gone before us.  Elizabeth and I are to be clothed today, yet you have given us this place of honor.  We are experienced and ordained members of the Church, yet for all our experience and knowledge, we are only standing here now because you invited and welcomed us.  Thank you.

Having said that, let me say that I’ve changed my mind.  I don’t want to preach today.  It’s simply too big.  But I said I would.  So let me tell you what makes Mary so precious, so big in my mind.  Let me tell you why I want to be a companion of Mary the Apostle.

The first reason Mary matters to me is because I am a woman.  The treatment given her reflects the treatment given to women by the Church.  In reclaiming her, I claim women’s authority.

The early Church Fathers - I emphasize that title - conflated her with other women so that she became known as a prostitute.  Legends of her endless penance in the desert vie with almost pornographic depictions of her in Renaissance and later art.  Somehow she could never really be redeemed, really be forgiven, really convert.  The treatment given to her made clear that women’s bodies are not part of the new creation.

The other set of legends about her actually coalesce with these others.  It’s become fashionable to suggest that Mary and Jesus were secretly married and had children.  This is somehow supposed to be feminist, or liberating.  But it continues the theme that women’s discipleship must confront their bodies in a way that men’s does not.  In fact, it’s not far from saying she slept with the boss to get her promotion!

The reality of the love between Mary and Jesus, the love between Jesus and any disciple, is so much greater than any shape we can give it.  The generative love that creates new disciples is its own beauty.  It does not need to be sexualized just because the disciple is female.

Now, you may think that in a church with a female Presiding Bishop and many female leaders we don’t need to emphasize gender anymore.  This is suspiciously like the Supreme Court’s argument that with a Black President we no longer need the Voting Rights Act.  In fact, the deeper struggle is just emerging.  This is the struggle over the gender of God.  As long as God is named and treated as masculine, women will struggle to find and keep their places.  As long as women’s place in the story of the Church is distorted or hidden, each generation of women will have to discover it anew.

So the first reason that Mary matters to me is because her fate and mine are intertwined as women.  But she is not just the first woman apostle.  She is the first apostle of the resurrection.  She is the sign of healing and discipleship and new creation.  

In Mary we see the full transformation of human nature.  We see the path of recovery, of healing, of new creation in Christ.  She’s not the only disciple in whom we see that transformation, but she is the one who stands twice at the doors of resurrection.  She stands at the empty tomb, but before that she stands at the site of her own renewal, her own chance at new life.

When Mary Magdalene was healed, she began a journey that took her where she could never imagine going.  She saw signs and wonders, and she heard her rabbi talk about the reign of God.  She saw the glory shining in him.  Through him she gained a new family, a new community.  Through him she saw herself transformed from former nut case to apostle.

Mary was a twice-born soul.  She was healed, and she loved her rabbi.  She watched him die, and she saw him risen.  She told others, who didn’t believe her.  She was urged on by the love of Christ.  She was transfigured as surely as Jesus had been, part of the new creation.  She knew the deeper joy that comes with the second chance.

I think most of us who end up in rooms like this chapel have a moment when we reach the end of our limited resources, a moment when we realize that God really can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.   Over time, if we keep praying and living the life, we find that God does infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.  In that, we are soul-mates with Mary Magdalene.  

In fact, we might call Mary a thrice-born soul.  She began her life, and at some point she fell prey to demons.  Then she was healed, and her second life began.  And then that life was endangered, as she saw her Savior die on a cross.  That Good Friday must have been a death for her as well as for Jesus.  The one who had saved her had not been saved from death.

And then she goes to the tomb.  She sees an absence that she cannot understand.  Then she experiences joy beyond reason.  Her third life begins here.  She learns that even the grave cannot stop the love of Christ.  From now on, she lives not with him, but for him and in him.  As an apostle, she shares the ministry of reconciliation that is the gift of the Church.

Today Elizabeth and I step further into another life.  The last six months have been months of unimaginable joy and discovery.  The next period I trust will be deeper, and different, but just as powerful and transformative as any that have gone before.  

I know that we can face any challenge, because the God who saved me once, the God who carried me on each step, is still here.  And I know, somehow, that we bring a message to you in turn.  With Mary may we all be able to say, “I have seen the Lord.” 

Mary and Martha sermon, July 2013

What a joy it is to be back with you at Redeemer today.  And how wonderful to be here with the story of Mary and Martha, two powerful women who were close to Jesus.  We meet them again in the Gospel of John, where Martha declares Jesus to be the Messiah.  There we meet the same pair: Martha tells Jesus what’s on her mind, and rants at him for not saving her brother Lazarus, while Mary comes running and is seemingly more deferential to him.  I love Martha’s familiarity with Jesus, her willingness to tell him what’s up.  She reminds me of Teresa of Avila, who loved God and founded dozens of convents.  She could still tell God during hard times, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them!”

Yes, I love Martha.  I also love Mary.  I love her desire to know and listen like the men, her willingness to defy convention and sit with Jesus instead of serving in the kitchen.

What I don’t love is the way these two wonderful women get pitted against one another in the Church.  We hear that this story is about the contemplative life versus the active one.  Monks and nuns love that version.  Or we hear that it’s about knowing how much is enough.  That fits with our culture’s obsession with more, and speaks nicely to it.  But there’s much more going on here.

Mary and Martha are stand-ins for a fight between groups of men in the early Church.  As the Church grew, people started to organize for physical needs as well as spiritual ones.  As the dispute grew, the twelve apostles said, “It’s not right for us to neglect our study to wait on tables.  But someone has to.  So let’s appoint some people to do this work.”  The result was the first deacons.  The word, deacon, comes from the Greek word for service.  It is the word for what Martha is doing.

But Luke couldn’t tell us a story about Jesus coming to a home where a man served.  The man of the house would be expected to be with Jesus.  The women would be in the kitchen.  So in Luke’s telling, the deacon’s role falls to a woman.

Martha is doing important work.  She’s doing work that later people are ordained for, caring for the physical needs of the community.  

So the problem is not that Martha is thinking about dinner.  Someone has to!  The problem is not that her dinner is too elaborate, as some people say - though this comes closer to the core.

The problem is how and why Martha is doing her work.  

The question is how and why we do our work.

Hospitality is the number one priority in pre-modern cultures, and still in poorer areas.  Hospitality may be the difference between safety and death, or between comfort and hunger.  Without the promise of hospitality, people could never leave their homes for more than a day.  

And welcoming others is, in those cultures, both an obligation and an honor.  Even if it means changing all our plans and killing calves and laying out a feast, it’s expected.  

In this case, Jesus is traveling with a group.   It would have been quite an enterprise to feed all those people, and quite an honor.  Imagine - the Teacher is staying with us!

But I imagine that it’s easy to let that go to your head.  It’s easy to think that you have to measure up, to be the best host ever, to show off.  The neighbors will want to know the menu - you have to keep up appearances.

If that is in our head, then our hospitality is really not about our guests at all.  It’s about us.  If my welcome of you is so focused on impressing you that I never listen to you, I’m not welcoming you at all.  You’re my target, not my guest.

And it’s clear that this happens for Martha.  Jesus becomes first a target, and then a tool.

Part of hospitality is easing people’s burdens.  This means giving them water to wash and to drink, and food to eat, but it also means giving them a place to relax and lay down their problems.

But Martha has broken the code.  She has violated hospitality by drawing Jesus into her dispute with her sister.  She’s got her plans for the meal, and Mary has let her down.  So she tries to get Jesus to intervene.  

In contemporary psychology, this is known as triangling.  “Tell my wife to give me the car!”  “Would you ask Jimmy if he likes me?”  “Let me tell you what’s wrong with my boss, or my partner, or my lover, or my parents, or my children.”  And Jesus does what priests and other counselors are advised to do - he refuses to get in between them.

I wonder what’s up between Martha and Mary.  What’s going on that Martha can’t talk to Mary directly?  What’s going on that Mary would leave her sister alone in the kitchen and go listen to Jesus talk about love and compassion and service?

I suspect it has to do with Martha’s inability to see who has come into her house.  

The one who eats with outcasts and sinners has come.  The one who has no place to lay his head has come.  Surely he does not need to be impressed.  He needs to be enjoyed.

I don’t know about you, but I can get into that Martha place.  As I write this sermon, I have to choose: do I want to leave you aware of my brilliant insight, or do I want you to see God among us?

Well, both, really.

But Jesus shows me how to choose.

Grace and peace have entered the house.

A simple meal, some talk, some listening, are all that’s needed.  

Everything else is ego.  

Jesus is here.

Listen.

A School of Love

Elizabeth and I have continuing shared reading as part of our formation.  We're currently reading Michael Casey's book, Strangers to the City, on the Rule of St. Bendict.  It spurs great reflection and conversation, even when we disagree with particulars.

In his discussion of chastity, Casey refers to St. Aelred's description of monastic life as a "school of love." This is really powerful and to the point for me.  We are about conversion of our lives and hearts, from fear in all its forms to love, openness, and compassion.  That shows up not only in chastity, but also in being willing to live with less, to listen to another's guidance and direction, to serve others.  This school of love answers my deepest needs for belonging and purpose.

Yesterday the school of love appeared again.  Our dream team met to consider how to be companions.  We compiled responses to questions we had asked locally, and the main thread that came out was the desire for a community that supports us in ongoing "conversion of life" - living by the values we want to live by, pursuing the disciplines that are part of that, rejoicing with us and comforting us as we journey.  We want to be a school of love.

We made amazing strides in our discussion.  Details will appear over the next few months.  We are clear that we are building community, not an organization, not a hierarchy.  We are going to be companions together, supporting one another in our various life situations, teaching one another even as we learn about love together.

So as usual after these meetings, I couldn't sleep.  I'm exhausted.  I'm a bit terrified.  We just gave birth, and the baby has a life of its own.  We're not in control.  Everything we hoped for is happening.  So, I guess like a new mother, I'm terrified.  And exultant.  I can't wait to watch it grow up, but I also want to catch my breath, get pictures for the scrapbook, and just enjoy it.  But even as I say that, it's starting to cry and want food and crawl . . .

I wonder if this is how Jesus felt after he started calling people, proclaiming the kingdom?  Suddenly people are interrupting his meals, his homilies, his prayer time.  It's what he came for, but I expect he was daunted too.  Whether he was or not, I sure am!

Keep praying!  Keep giving thanks!  Stay in school!

Thinking about networks

When we started talking about the Companions, we soon found ourselves exploring what it would mean for people to be Companions without being in shared residence.  The traditional model of "religious orders" is that everyone is living together, at least with some other members if not with everyone.  "Christian communities" have been more dispersed, but we're not sure we know enough to talk about them.  We wanted to have the option of residence, without privileging those who live together.  The reality, we've found these months, is that some of us need to live together and devote full time to getting us going - but many more people want companionship but cannot move here and drop their lives.

So from the beginning we've been thinking about networks as well as "centers."  But it was just an intuition.  Now it's starting to come to life.

Last month we had the first meetings of the Board of Directors and the Companions of Companions, two extensions of the network.  Recently we've had rich conversations with several women about how to discern their relationship with us, or how to be more closely involved without residence.  And, out of the group, wisdom is emerging.  People are bringing their experience to this conversation, and showing us more possibilities and paradigms.  I'm not going to discuss details - it's still early - but I'm so energized by the conversations, by what people open up.

To me, this is how the Spirit works.  If I can sit still and not force a solution, not say "this is how religious life is supposed to be" or "these are the rules," but instead can ask questions and listen for need and passion, then eventually Spirit delivers new insight.

For all of you out there who are thinking you're stuck, at a dead end or without a good answer to your dilemmas - just wait!  I mean it.  Just wait.  Stay open.  Tell God you trust her to show you the way, and mean it.  And listen.

Thank you to everyone who is listening with us and for us.  It means more than I can say.