Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women
Opening worship service focuses on hope
By Marie Bowen, Special to The Layman, July 20, 2012
ORLANDO, Fla. – Three large screens showing video scenes of rivers and waterfalls greeted about 2,000 Presbyterian women at the opening plenary of the Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women in Orlando, Fla., July 18, 2012. Music, text and water scenes introduced the conference theme: “River of Hope”.
A procession of moderators of various organizations NNCW, Presbyterian Church (USA) staff, ecumenical guests and global partners was led by bagpipes and the Christ candle. Participants carried chalices of water to an onstage fountain on the platform, pouring the water into the fountain in a symbolic gesture whose meaning was not entirely clear to attendees.
The liturgy pointed toward themes likely to be developed throughout the gathering: God of life, Creator, God of refuge and stronghold (Psalm 46), our longing for justice in the world, our calling to “lead change.” Scripture readings continued the “River of Hope” theme. Exodus 17:1-7 reminded the women of the complaining of the Israelites in the desert when they had no water to drink – how they asked “Is the Lord among us or not?” Bringing the “interpretation of God’s Word,” Jan Richardson, focused her eloquent and poetic sermon on Luke’s gospel story of Mary and Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-45) and Mary’s song, known as the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-56.)
An ordained minister in the United Methodist Church, Richardson opened by sharing that during the procession her husband leaned over and asked, “How come Methodists don’t get bagpipes?”
She and her husband live in Orlando and “I have been waiting for you to get here for a long time,” she told attendees. “I have been carrying you with me in prayer – that the Spirit would already be at work in our midst. Now I can see the faces of those I have been carrying in prayer all this time.” Touching her abdomen as she spoke of “carrying” the women in prayer, Richardson foreshadowed her message on the theme of hope.
Turning to the story of Mary and Elizabeth – a story usually told at Christmas, but which actually happens many months before the birth of Jesus – Richardson told women that “God is ever working to show up and spring forth in our life’s most ordinary moments in any season.”
What is going on with Mary in the moments after Gabriel left the scene? “Mary has spoken her courageous ‘yes’ to Gabriel’s outrageous request.” “Young Mary, pregnant Mary, unmarried Mary …” left without instructions except that Gabriel pointed her toward the road to her cousin Elizabeth, “who is experiencing a pretty unusual pregnancy herself.” Elizabeth represents a place of safety, refuge and sanctuary for Mary.
Richardson talked about Elizabeth’s reaction to Mary’s greeting and that she already knew what had happened to Mary, but she did not make mention that the baby in Elizabeth’s womb (the tiny unborn John the Baptist) “leaped for joy” at her greeting. Richardson instead emphasized Elizabeth’s blessing of Mary: “Blessed are you among women. Blessed is the child you bear. Blessed is she who believed that God will do what he said he would do within you.”
Mary responds by singing the ancient song, the Magnificat. “She sings,” Richardson reminded the women, “of God who restores, redeems transforms, heals the whole world as if these things have already happened.” She explained that Mary uses a Hebrew tense not found in English that tells of God who has already accomplished things that we can see have not happened. “God has not yet completed those things but Mary sings as though it has been completed.”
That “fancy theological word is ‘hope,’” Richardson said, returning to the conference theme. “Hope does not ask us to ignore what we see but to see beauty and brokenness and recognize that brokenness does not have the final word. God has lifted up the lowly – has filled the mouth of the hungry with good things.”
“Mary,” Richardson reminded us, “is echoing a song that Hannah sang – a woman experiencing an unusual pregnancy herself – on the day she offered her son to God.” “Hannah offered this song that Mary echoes as an audacious ‘yes’ to God’s outrageous request.”
This “River of hope flowing from the heart of God,” is one that generations of men and women have stepped into, offering “lives, selves, bodies” as a place where God brings that transformation about. How do we step into those waters and offer our own courageous ‘yes’, our own audacious ‘let it be?’” This was the perfect moment in Richardson’s message for her to point to Jesus Christ as our reason for hope, to His sacrificial death on the cross which accomplished for us the answer to our own brokenness and the brokenness of the world, but rather than spotlight the source of our hope as Christians, Richardson turned instead to a story – a compelling story – of a loving community:
Janet Wolfe is a pastor at Hobson United Methodist Church, a wildly diverse community of people, some with third grade education and some with Ph.Ds. Some members have homes and some are homeless. Some are crazy and some think they are not. One day a woman named Fayette, homeless, with lupis and a mental illness, came and found a family, safety, and sanctuary at Hobson. In time she entered the new member class and was particularly fascinated by baptism “marked by God’s grace with such power that it won’t come undone.” She would ask the group to repeat to her often, that when she became baptized she would be, “beloved, precious child of God and beautiful to behold.”
On the day of her baptism she repeated those words and danced around the church. Two months later she was brutally attacked and beaten on the streets. When Pastor Janet visited her at the hospital she saw her pacing, lips moving. As she came near she heard her say, “Beloved, precious child of God … she stopped, looked at Janet and began again. “Beloved, precious child of God …” She began another time. Finally she said “God is still working on me and if you come back tomorrow I’ll be so beautiful I will take your breath away.”
Richardson ended the story saying “Fayette and Janet stepped into that River of Hope as Mary ‘wallered’ (using a Southern expression) in Elizabeth’s blessing and stepped into that ancient river of hope and sang her song.”
That the “River of Hope” flows with and through the blood of Jesus Christ remained unstated. The One by whose power Fayette and each one of us is transformed from broken to beautiful, Jesus, the Christ was not named or proclaimed. A powerful message, beautifully delivered with poetry and grace ended with a huge gaping hole at its center.
Marie Bowen is the executive director of Presbyterians Pro-Life.