Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 30, 2023

1 Kings 3:5-12+Psalm 119:129-136+Romans 8:26-39+Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Forty-nine years ago yesterday, on the Feast Day of Mary and Martha of Bethany, eleven courageous women were ordained priests in the Episcopal Church at the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia. These eleven were the first to be ordained in what were deemed "irregular ordinations" because the Episcopal Church had not yet approved the ordination of women. Mind you, it was not until 1970 that women were allowed voice and vote at General Convention, the governing body of the Church, and while there were no rules (or canons) prohibiting women priests, it simply wasn't done. Priests were to be Father, and that was that.

Frederick Douglass famously said that "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." These women, already ordained deacons, had been through theological education and had jumped through all the hoops required, but no diocesan Standing Committee would approve them, nor would any bishop. In 1974, four retired bishops stepped forward and volunteered to ordain the eleven. And ordain them they did. Four more women followed the next year in Washington, D.C., and at the General Convention of 1976, the canons were modified to explicitly state that the orders of ministry were open to women as well as to men.

By the end of 1977, about 100 women had been ordained. Today, that number is over 4,000.

The kingdom of heaven is like a handful of women, filled with love for God and God's people, who risked death - yes, death - crude insults and all manner of judgmental and hateful remarks to push the Church into recognizing the full humanity, the full personhood, of women.

I said to you last week that the parables are not to be manipulated into some tight, shiny, comprehensive package tied up with a bow. Even the explanations Jesus sometimes offers to the disciples are more challenging than the parables themselves. I find it helpful to remember that the crowds to whom Jesus is speaking are poor, desperate, living under the oppression of an occupying empire. They would have understood the hyperbole, the outrageousness, of the images Jesus has on offer. No mustard seed produces a tree. No woman baking bread is going to have as many as three measures of flour which would make enough bread not for her own table but for a banquet hall. Who is going to sell everything they have for something found buried in a field?

All these parables point to the extravagance of God. The people of 1st century Palestine were desperate for a God whose power and abundance were so great that Rome stood no chance. That God would cast a net so deep and wide that every kind of fish in the sea - or human on the planet - would be caught up in it is the kind of God with the power to save. And to be saved from their lot was exactly what Jesus's followers were looking for.

This is also the kind of God we need, right here and right now, whether we recognize it or not. Even if we don't pray or don't know what to pray, that Spirit is there, moving in the deepest longings of our hearts. We look at the world around us where the climate is on a collision course with disaster for all of us, where lies are passed off as truths, where people are judged in or out based on gender identity, sexual preference, skin color, nationality, and any other number of characteristics. Well, Jesus told us last week that we are not the deciders of such things. We are all those who, in Paul's words, can never be separated from God's love.

No matter the challenges in the world, our country, our city, our own lives, we are "more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37). This is the kind of Good News the crowds around Jesus needed to hear. This is the kind of Good News we need to hear in our expectations-driven, performative society. None of it matters except that God loves us. No one and no thing can take that away from us.

Many years ago, at the ordination and consecration of my friend Nathan Baxter as bishop of the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, the preacher was Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tim and I had trouble finding parking that day and arrived just as the great procession was lining up for the entrance hymn, and standing at the very end of the line, where all you could see was the tip of his miter, was Tutu, beaming with joy that his friend was about to be made bishop. Expecting great things from his sermon - he was, after all, THE Desmond Tutu - the congregation of more than 1,000 hushed as he approached the lectern to speak. And what did he say, this titan of the apartheid struggle, global ambassador for Christ, and fierce advocate for the oppressed of the world? He said, "Tell them God loves them." This was the refrain he returned to again and again in his sermon, "tell them God loves them." It was not at all what I expected to hear, but it was exactly what we all needed to hear.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)

The Philadelphia Eleven showed the Episcopal Church what true leaven looks like, how it creates the conditions for the dough to rise, to spread, and to feed multitudes.

At that ordination service in Philadelphia back in 1974, the crucifer - the one carrying the cross - was a vestry warden at Church of the Advocate. Her name was Barbara Harris. Fifteen years later, she was made the first woman bishop - and an African American woman, at that - in the Episcopal Church.

The kingdom of heaven is like that.