This homily was preached at St. George's Episcopal in Newburgh, NY on September 19th for the first Eucharist of the newly ordained priest, the Rev. Dr. Mary Barber.
Good evening. First and foremost, I want to say that it is a joy to be here with all of you and, especially, to witness and be a part of the Rev. Mary’s first Eucharist. Today is a great day in the life of the Church.
In today’s Gospel from Mark, Jesus and his disciples are passing through the region of Galilee in secret. Jesus was avoiding large crowds and was instead trying to tell the disciples what was about to happen to him, but we read that “they did not understand what he was saying and they were afraid to ask him.”
For instead of asking what Jesus meant, the disciples were engaged in a heated argument among themselves. When I hear this passage, I imagine the disciples fighting in the way that siblings sometimes do – or at least that I did with my siblings. That is, in secret -- trying to keep one’s parent from realizing there was a pitched battle going on behind their backs.
Jesus knew, however, and confronted the disciples by asking, “What were you arguing about on the way?” When they tell him they were arguing over who was the greatest, Jesus stops in his tracks. My favorite detail from this story is that he quite literally sits everyone down to make sure they hear what he has to say next.
For Jesus tells his disciples (and his Church still today): “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he takes a child in his arms and restates that “greatness” is not about power, wealth, and authority, but rather it is about welcoming a child even such as the one he was holding in his name.
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One of the reasons why I think Jesus sits everyone down for this is because he must have known. He must have known that a fascination with ‘greatness’, and with being ‘the greatest’, and a longing to return to “greatness”, would be a problem down the line, not just for the small circle of disciples he was speaking to that day, but also for his Church and humanity too. So many people spend their entire lives seeking after more power, more wealth, and more authority over others. And in this, the disciples and the Church are frequently no different. For Jesus to say, then, that following him isn’t about power, wealth, and authority, but rather about serving others, is to be profoundly out-of-step with the way the world works. Yet this is Jesus’ message to his disciples: Greatness is about being last and servant of all. Greatness is about caring for the most marginalized and vulnerable in our midst.
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Now Mary, you know that I appreciate ancient texts, and so I’m going to go there. And in preparing for this homily, I found myself reflecting on one in particular that I keep returning to over and over again when ministry gets a bit hard.
This text – actually it’s a whole series of texts – comes from a network of fifth century Egyptian Christian churches. These texts aren’t powerful sermons, nor are they lofty theological treatises, nor are they beautiful hymns. No, these are simple inventory lists, the kinds that today would likely be kept in a spreadsheet on a church office computer. Some of the lists say things like “82 women’s coats” and “47 pairs of women’s shoes.” Other texts in this collection are simply memos – terse, almost email-like requests – from one church to another requesting a coat, food supplies, or pair of shoes. Then there are the receipts that reveal that large containers of wine were being sent and received by churches. Now the reason why archeologists and historians are excited about these ancient inventories, memos, and receipts is because they reveal that there was a whole network of Egyptian Christian Churches that had stores of goods for charity, and that they were sending items back and forth to each other, serving as a kind of social safety net for the poor.
Now that is why archeologists and historians love those texts. But the reason that I love these texts, the reason I think about them now and then when ministry gets hard, is because I love to imagine the unnamed, ancient Christians who scribbled out those memos and inventories nearly 1500 years ago. Who were these servants of God? Did they ever imagine that their notes and inventories were going to one day be studied? Or preached about in a sermon in the 21st century? Probably not. And yet these ancient texts bear witness to a daily kind of faith, and to lives of service.
I like to imagine that the writers of those texts might have included a local priest whose name is lost to history, or a lay person who came to the church after a long day’s work, or a widow who had a particular talent for administration. One ancient memo comes from someone who doesn’t even take the time to sign their name. It simply says that there is a widow named Sophia who needs a winter coat and so they are writing to see if the steward of the Church of Saints Cosmos and Damian can send one over. Presumably, a winter coat was sent, and this gave the widow Sophia a chance of making it through another winter.
There are probably more than a few lay and clergy leaders in this very room whose own homes and offices are filled with these kinds of lists, memos, and receipts. And no, those texts aren’t powerful sermons, nor are they lofty theological treatises, nor are they beautiful hymns or poetry. But I hope you will look a little differently at those everyday texts now. Because these scribbled lists, these small inventories, the texts and emails that go toward helping people in need -- these too bear witness to what it means to follow Jesus. Indeed, if we hear Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel, that really is the heart of it.
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Now why on earth am I bringing this up today, on this the Rev. Mary’s first Eucharist service? There are two reasons. First of all, I bring this up because following Christ means embracing both the transcendent and the mundane. Yes, there will be times of soaring sermons, bracing theological insights, and sublime music that will lift our souls to God. And, there will also be times of inventory lists, of counting shoes and winter coats, of making white bread baloney sandwiches for the homelesss shelter. Yes, there will be courageous moments of prophetic witness and action, and powerful moments of pastoral care…and there will be meetings – so many meetings – and files and files of scribbled down notes. I want to affirm that all of it bears witness to the love of God.
The second reason I am bringing this up is because, for so much of the history of the Church, this quieter, mundane, frequently unnamed work of service has been done by women. I recently heard a colleague say, “I give thanks to Jesus and women named Susan because without them we’d have no Church.” There’s a lot of truth to that, although I’d want to add a couple of names to that list.
From the first fifty years of Christianity alone, one could add Phoebe, deacon and patron of the Church at Corinth, Lydia, another patron who hosted an assembly in her home, as well as Prisca, Tryphaena and Tryphosa, all of whom Paul calls “workers in the Lord.” Then there is Junia, a whom Paul refers to as a fellow apostle in his Letter to the Romans. Then there are unnamed women who pay the ultimate price for their faith, like two women deacons whom the Roman magistrate Pliny the Younger describes as dying in the persecutions against Christian communities. And then Jesus’ mother Mary, Mary and Martha, described as friends of the Lord, as well as Mary Magdalene, who is the first to bear witness to Jesus’ resurrection in John’s Gospel. That’s just from the first couple of years of Christianity. And so what a joy it is to be able to add another name to the list today: that of Mary Barber, a longtime “worker in the Lord”, now priest of the Church of God.
I give thanks for Mary. And I give thanks for this Church where women can live out their priesthood. And finally, I give thanks for this faith, which is centered on the transformation of things like lists and winter coats and bread and wine and everyday people, into the very signs and symbols of God’s enduring love. Amen.
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