A Reflection for V Epiphany All Saints’ Church, Southern
Shores, NC February 8, 2015 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Some
Thoughts About My Language
There are two names for this Sunday: one is the 5th
Sunday after the Epiphany, and the older name is Sexagesima Sunday, which is an
old term meaning that the numbers of days before Easter are now in the 60’s.
When I was growing up in the Episcopal Church, we always used words like “Septuagesima”,
seventy days, which was last week, and Quinquagesima, fifty days, which is next
week. When I was much younger, I remembered the words because they were so old and
seemed to be extra special, but as I grew up, the words seemed like a quaint
anachronism and no longer meant anything real. Words have power for us
Episcopalians. In most cases, Episcopal churches have dropped these
designations, but we do love holding on to the old words.
I have two Bible Studies each week, one on Sunday
mornings between the two services and one at 11:30 on Monday mornings. In the Sunday
morning study, we go slowly through books of the Bible; this last week we were
crawling through Ephesians. In the brown bag lunch Bible study on Mondays, we
look through the lessons for the coming week. I enjoy both of the studies
because I learn from lay people about how they see things. We were looking at
the lesson from the Gospel where Jesus has just healed Simon’s mother-in-law
and she immediately gets out of her sick bed and starts to serve them dinner. One
on the members of the class - I am not going to tell you her name because that would
embarrass her - this unnamed woman piped up, “Well, I would not do that!” I
replied to this unnamed woman who is more than 20 years older than me, “Why,
Mary English, what do you mean?” This unnamed woman said, “When I am sick, I
don’t want to get out of bed and even after I get well after being sick, I like
to milk it a bit more and stay in bed.” I told her that, in the time of the
writing of the Gospel, an older woman’s job was to serve the men, and when Jesus
healed her miraculously, she went back to work “immediately.” I also told her
that I was not about to preach that a woman of a certain age gets her worth by
taking care of the men who show up at the house – not in this place and not
with my wife in attendance. I am not that stupid to be public about my own
latent misogynistic tendencies. Words have power and I should careful in the
words I use.
This then brought me to Paul’s letter to the
Corinthians for today where the NRSV translates Paul saying, “I have become all
things to all people that I might by all means save some.” That is how the
Greek reads, but as I looked at other versions, it gets translated, “I have
become all things to all men.” German existential philosopher Martin Heidegger
said “Language is the House of Being.” Words have power, and by the use of that
simple word “men”, it is so easy for us to slip into patriarchal gratuitous
misogyny.
If the spirit of Paul is hijacked by the patriarchal
structure in the letter of Biblical language, how then can I live into that
spirit of becoming all to all? I try to do it. For instance, some of you know
that my politics are extremely left-wing; yet my job is to be here for all
people, so I work with people who have right-wing beliefs, not because I want
convert them to my way of thinking, but because they are my sisters and
brothers in Christ. Last week I watched
some of the Super Bowl. Now that was
rough for me because when I tried to play football in high school, I spent the
season sitting on the bench because I just was not good enough. Sitting and watching
a game is a reliving of my own feelings of humiliation and inadequacy. However
I am no longer 15 and we are talking 53 years ago, so I don’t really have to
relive those times. And I needed to be
there because it said that I thought that God was present, whenever two, three,
or more are gathered together in love. It was wonderful, and the game was much
less important than the space between the people. Of course I was called upon to give the
blessing, but it was the space between the words that spoke loudest, for as St.
Francis says, “Preach the Gospel and if necessary use words.”
I am proud of how this church has opened up its
doors to all sorts and conditions of people; being all to all as we work to
start a place for day care for children who are not Episcopalians. I am proud
of how we are gracious in welcoming and hosting homeless people in the Room in
the Inn program. I love the idea of openness we give to the community as we do
the All Saints’ After Dark programs. I am proud of how welcoming this church
has been for the Lutheran congregation to share sacred space and in negotiation
with the Orthodox Church. There is one God and all of us are God’s children; we
are called to be all to all. We do well at the space between the words as we
preach the Gospel.
However, I decided that I need to be more consistent
in the kind of language I use. I so easily slip into God as “Father” and “He”.
Yes, I know that there is a long history in our patriarchal religious
establishment where clergy like me are called “Father”. The Episcopal Church
has had a mixed record in how it deals with women. When I was growing up,
Vestries were all male preserves. Women had their ECW, Episcopal Church Women,
which ran a shadow organization in the church with its own budget and power.
There were separate conventions for the Men of the Church and for the Episcopal
Church Women. In 1946 the Diocese of Missouri elected a woman as a lay delegate
to the national General Convention. There was a tizzy because the language did
say “men”, but the church had always used the word “men” in the worship
services to refer to all people. She was seated, but it was ruled that this was
a one-time thing. At the next general Convention in 1949, four women were
elected from different diocese, but they were not seated because, in the
meantime, the rules had been clarified so that the word “men” meant “men”. The
people who ran the organization said the word “men” meant males, and then they would use “men” when they said
it meant all people. In other words, “men” meant “men” except when they said it
didn’t. It was not until 1970 before women were again allowed to be delegates
or members of the Vestry, and another six years, 1976, before women were
allowed by General Convention to be Priests, and 1988 before the first woman
was elected as a Suffragan Bishop, which is an assistant Bishop, 1994 before
the first woman was elected as a Diocesan Bishop, and 2005 before a woman was
elected as Presiding Bishop.
When All Saints’ Church was being organized in 1996,
they decided that it did not really need a separate organization for women, and
the first Rector was a woman. The space between the words is powerful, but we
are still finding that language is less than helpful in freeing ourselves from the
patriarchy that is built up around the Divine that cannot really be known or
named. All we can be is in relationship with the Divine and too often that
relationship is diverted when we see an image of our own earthly fathers.
The word for father has changed over the years. In
the world of Jesus, fathers did not go off to work at offices. In the science
of their time, the father was the one who gave life to his children - the
mother was just the field in which the seed was planted, and the worth of a
woman was seen in her fertility. The father was there every step of the way as
the male children would work beside and for his benefit. Father became a
metaphor for God – the one who gives us life and who is with us every moment of
every day. With modern life, our science suggests that life is the product of a
union of love, not just the will of the father and the fertility of the mother.
We now consider a woman as having more worth than being a field of
fertility. I would suggest that the
metaphor for “father” now has come to mean someone who is busy and far away. I
cannot tell you how often people come to me and start to apologize for
interrupting me, saying “Father, I know you are so busy , but. . . ” Is that
the image that comes to mind for us when we start to pray “Our Father” in
Heaven? Do we feel like we are intruding
on God - which might keep us from understanding that God’s energy and love is
flowing all around, in and through us at every second of every day?
We limit God so much and so it has always been. In
the Hebrew Testament lesson from Isaiah, the writer of that song is telling the
people that God is really much bigger than our imaginations and suggests that
we are like “grasshoppers” before the Divine. Yet, even in that reading which
tells us to be aware of the creative force, the language uses the male pronoun
as if God were A Being instead of the Ground of all Being. We see this in the
Psalm as well as they celebrate the God who created all things and is able to
count the countless stars and give them all names, and yet as I read the song
with its beautiful language, I kept stumbling over the number of times the word
“He” is used.
Lent is coming and, so far, my Lenten Discipline
will be to use better and more inclusive language when in reference to the
Divine. I will go through the Liturgy and make some changes and see if we can
update some of our metaphors in the hymns. This will trip us up a bit, but I
think it may be a good discipline to help us to be all for all.
Let me try to sum this up in a poem.
Some
Thoughts About My Language
“To be all things to
all men”,
questions what about
women?
Was God’s womb only
male?
Or, was it fully a
hopeful tale
that we might things
all to be
for all, when we could
soon see
the Divine SHE kissing
of breath
molding new creation, not
death
held in stasis. Now in
joy re-alive
of fertile birthing
life full to thrive
being
open to that soft gentle kiss
in divine touch for
love not to miss.
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