Rev Elaine Julian: ‘Some Women Accompanied Him’ Sunday, April 3rd

A note from Elaine about this service:
It was a great privilege to lead worship with you yesterday. As the next newsletter won’t be out for a few weeks, I thought I would share the service and a bit of background with you now, for those who weren’t able to join us and those who wish to revisit our time together.
The shape of the service was based on the work done on Mar. 30 by a small group of Board members and worship leaders, and I am so grateful to all of them for their honesty, heart, and hard work.

Here are a few of the things that we had in mind in our work:

  • We wish to be welcoming to those who aren’t comfortable in a church, and to move beyond our walls into the community. Therefore our intent is to use less “churchy” language and to provide more background to our Christian worship practices. We have also included our church Vision near the beginning of the service.
  • The shape of worship is an open circle with four basic movements. It is not two-dimensional but more of a spiral, continually moving in, out, and up as well as around.
  • We need to hear the prophetic voice: What needs transforming?
  • We wish to foreground themes of earth spirituality and the divine feminine, and to honour our pain for the world and lament our losses.
We are nearing the end of the church season of Lent, a contemplative journey with Jesus towards Jerusalem. Our next service isn’t until Easter Sunday, led by Rev. Julianne Kasmer. Between now and Easter the sacred story arc of the Christian faith is leading up to the climax: the entry into Jerusalem, the final days of his life, his last meal with his followers, his betrayal, trial and execution. We can’t skip past all this to the happy ending. There is no Easter without the cross.
So on Sunday we journeyed with Jesus through these last sad weeks with the women who accompanied Jesus, women whose voices are not often heard clearly.
Thank you to everyone who led and participated yesterday. Our worship together is a work in progress and I’m grateful for you all, good companions on the Way.
Blessings,
Elaine

FORMING THE CIRCLE Welcome & Announcements

Vision: We are a United Church, rooted in the Christian tradition. We seek to distill and exemplify the unifying and nurturing core of that tradition; namely, the life and teaching of Jesus, untouched by hierarchy, patriarchy, politics and the dominant culture. And, we extend from our core to receive and partner with people of diverse faiths, and others, who share in our love of the earth and all beings. Together, we celebrate and learn from each other. We value friendship, support, inclusiveness, and accessibility. Through worship, music, contemplation, visual art, social justice and environmental activism, we help build a more resilient and sustainable community.

Land Acknowledgement: We acknowledge, with respect, the history, spirituality, and culture of the K’omoks First Nations and the Coast Salish Peoples on whose traditional and unceded territory we meet. We also honour the heritage of all indigenous peoples, as we recognise the need to seek healing and reconciliation between the descendants of the settlers and those who were here before colonisation. Wherever we are, we are on land where other peoples have lived and moved and rested -for generations, centuries and even eons before us. As we give thanks for our own grounded-ness on this land, we recognise the stories that have gone before us and new chapters that need to be written.

Lighting a Candle for Christ:

As we light this Christ candle, we honour the interconnectedness

of all creation, and our interconnectedness with the Creator and the Cosmic Christ, and we remember “All My Relations”.

All my relations.

Akwe nia’tetewa:neren

Light the candle.

A moment of silence for Centering and Grounding: Let’s take a few moments to breathe deeply in silence, to centre ourselves in the Spirit that calls us together, to ground ourselves in Creation.

The singing bowl is rung.

Greetings to the Elements and the Four Directions North: Earth my Body

West: Water my Blood East: Air my Breath South: And Fire my Spirit

Invitation

We gather in the presence of the Holy One to encounter Love that sets free. We do not come seeking crumbs of justice but a way of life that liberates.

Together, we practice courage in resisting evil and rejecting the temptations of complicity and complacency.
The Spirit leads us in power and truth.

Our faith is placed in Love Eternal that lifts broken spirits and brings new life from places of ruin.
With hope that is neither narrow nor fragile, we come to follow Christ.

SONG: MV#10, “Come and Seek the Ways of Wisdom”

HEARING WITH NEW EARS, SEEING WITH NEW EYES

Reading: “Why the Women Matter” by Rachel Held Evans including a quote from Dorothy Sayers, April 1, 2015

I’m not convinced it’s an accident that the first person to declare that Jesus had risen from the dead (to a group of skeptical men!) was a woman. I’m not convinced it’s unremarkable that God chose a woman to anoint the Messiah with oil and a mother to hear his cries from the cross.

When the rest of the world had given up on Jesus for failing to look like the liberator they expected, the women stuck around. They stuck around because before Jesus was a king, Jesus was their friend. And friends love one another through uncertainty, pain, fear, disappointment and even death.

Jesus inaugurated his new kingdom in the presence of women…

So it’s as important as ever that we tell these women’s stories.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dorothy Sayers’ essay, “Are Women Human?”

“Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man—there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as ‘The women, God help us!’ or ‘The ladies, God bless them!’; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious.

There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and Jesus that there was anything ‘funny’ about woman’s nature. But we might easily deduce it from His contemporaries, and from His prophets before Him, and from His Church to this day.

Good News: John 12:1-8

12 Six days before Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, home of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 Lazarus and his sisters hosted a dinner for him. Martha served and Lazarus was among those who joined him at the table. 3 Then Mary took an extraordinary amount, almost three-quarters of a pound,[a] of very expensive perfume made of pure nard. She anointed Jesus’ feet with it, then wiped his feet dry with her hair. The house was filled with the aroma of the perfume. 4 Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), complained, 5 “This perfume was worth a year’s wages![b] Why wasn’t it sold and the money given to the poor?” (6 He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. He carried the money bag and would take what was in it.)

7 Then Jesus said, “Leave her alone. This perfume was to be used in preparation for my burial, and this is how she has used it. 8 You will always have the poor among you, but you won’t always have me.”

Reader: Holy Wisdom, Holy Word. Thanks be to God! Reflection: “Some Women Accompanied Him”

It’s often said that when we hear a story, it’s as important to look for the voices who are not represented as it is to hear the voices that are represented. That can be a big challenge when we look for women in the voices represented in the Bible, the sacred story of the Hebrew and Christian faiths.

In 2014, the Rev. Lindsay Hardin Freeman published her frequently-quoted book, “Bible Women: all their words and why they matter”. Here are the numbers that she and her team of three other women discovered as they counted all the words spoken by women in the New Revised Standard Version: 93 women speak in the Bible, and 49 of these women are named. By contrast, there are 1770 men named in the Bible. So I think it’s really important to pay attention to the stories where women are named, and where women are crucial to the action.

In our journey through the church year and the sacred story arc of the Christian faith, we are approaching the climax, the point that everything so far has been leading up to, the point that leads to everything that follows. The stories of the next two week follow Jesus into Jerusalem where he is executed by those whose power is threatened by his message. Jesus is accompanied in this lonely, terrifying journey by his closest followers. But somehow in the telling, the voices of the women who support him and stand by him are muted. Somehow, the stories of the faithful women companions who knew where Jesus was headed yet never deserted him are eclipsed by the stories of the twelve disciples who are in denial about his coming death and scatter in fear when he is arrested.

But we know they were there! Some of them are even named, as in Luke 8:1:

Now, after a woman anointed his feet Jesus went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the reign of God. The twelve were with him. There were also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources. (A Woman’s Lectionary for the Whole Church)

So today, let’s bring the women out of the background and invite them back to their rightful place at Jesus’ side during his journey through what we now call Holy Week.

I have mentioned Rachel Held Evans before, a prophet to the church, a young woman raised in the American evangelical tradition who questioned, clearly but kindly, the ways in which the evangelical church has lost its way. She argued fiercely for a more radically inclusive church, a church that follows a God of love instead of a God of exclusion and hate. She called Christianity to a new path, and many listened because she shared their background but had arrived at a new vantage point. She was gone far too soon at the age of 37.

In 2015, Rachel published a blog series titled “The Women of Holy Week” and the reading I shared with you earlier was from the first section, “Why the Women Matter”. With Rachel, let’s join the women who walked with Jesus through the final agonizing days of his life.

In our story this morning from the Gospel of John, Mary of Bethany is both loving companion and courageous, unflinching prophet. A week before he enters Jerusalem, Jesus stops to visit his chosen family – Mary and Martha and Lazarus, whose home has been a refuge for him since he began his ministry on the road. In the chapter before this, surrounded by controversy and opposition from both followers and political and religious opponents, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Now he sits down to dinner with him, with Martha serving.

In this version of the story, Mary is named but has no words. In one extravagant act, breaking all the boundaries of proper behavior for a woman in that time and place, she expresses both her devotion to Jesus and her awareness of his coming death. She pours an expensive ointment, often used to anoint bodies for burial, over Jesus’ feet and wipes his feet with her hair.

It is a shocking thing to do! To men in that culture, it would be deeply offensive for a woman to interrupt a meal or to touch a man. To the practical, it was wasteful. To the senses of all who crowd together in that small room, the scent of the spikenard is overwhelmingly pungent. Mary jolts them all out of their complacency and denial with action, with touch, with scent.

Mary puts everything on the line with this one impulsive act, expressing her commitment to Jesus and her symbolic prophecy of his imminent death. She is the first of Jesus’ followers to comprehend the inevitability of the suffering that is coming, and to completely commit herself to him on the path that he must follow.

And now we come to another Mary, the mother of Jesus, who journeys with him from beginning to end. She is no stranger to the sorrow of loving Jesus. When he was still an infant, she fled to Egypt to keep him safe, knowing that other mothers were losing their babies in Herod’s paranoid quest to eliminate a threat to his power. When he was a young teen, she lost him in the crowd only to be told that he must be about his father’s business. When he was a young adult, she let him go to become a homeless healer and teacher, feared for his safety as he wandered in the wilderness, and was rejected at the door by his followers when Jesus told them that his true family was those who did God’s will.

And now, she follows him to Jerusalem, walks with him to the place of execution, and witnesses his death. She cradles her son’s body in her arms and places him in the tomb.

As Rachel Held Evans says, “Fittingly, Mary watches her son’s crucifixion in the company of other mothers. …In this moment, when Mary’s eyes locked with the eyes of the boy she once nursed, once tickled, once watched fall asleep, I imagine Jesus understood the suffering of mothers, perhaps the most powerful suffering of all. Mary was not the first, or the last, to hold the broken body of her child in her arms. She was not the first, or the last, to weep in the company of mothers as they stumbled their way to an open grave. It happens every day…it is a pain that pierces the heart.”

On Saturday, after the unspeakable cruelty of Jesus’ trial and execution, after his hasty burial in a borrowed tomb, we wait with the women through the Sabbath, when according to tradition they could not carry out the women’s tasks of preparing the body for burial. We hide and wait with the few disciples who have not run away.

We wait, and weep, and tell each other the stories that we always tell as we try to stay close to the one who has died. We wait, and we weep, and we begin to wonder: How will we get access to the body on Sunday morning so that we can minister to it? Who will roll away the great stone in front of the tomb?

And finally the endless night does actually come to an end. John tells us, “Now it was the first day of the week. Mary Magdalene came, early on while it was still dark, to the tomb and saw the stone removed from the tomb.”

Mary Magdalene is about to become the first witness to the resurrection, the first to encounter the risen Christ. She becomes the first apostle, the first to carry the good news to the other followers.

So we have journeyed briefly with some of the faithful women companions of Jesus. Some of them, especially the Mary’s, have become iconic over centuries of church tradition, some of them have been ignored or misunderstood. Their names and their roles have been blurred and combined in many different ways by many different scholars and theologians.

But today, perhaps it’s enough to remember them, whether or not they are named, whether or not their voices are clear. Perhaps it’s enough to remind ourselves and others that the women stayed with Jesus and witnessed his final hours. Perhaps it’s enough to begin to know them as human, as both strong and terrified, as people like you and me.

And perhaps we can continue the work of excavating their being and their voices from underneath the rubble of centuries of tradition and erasure. Let’s do a small piece of that work today by listening to a passage from Dialogue Two in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene in which her role of teacher and encourager of the other apostles after Jesus’ death becomes clear.

Read: excerpt from Dialogue Two

It is the eye of the heart that sees the vision. May it be so. Amen.

SONG: VU#375, “Spirit, Spirit of Gentleness” RESPONDING AND RE-MEMBERING
A Time for Silent Reflection

Sharing Circle

Please pass the feather around the circle. The one who is holding the feather is invited to speak, or to pass the feather on. Please respect each other as speakers and listeners, so that everyone is heard and everyone has the opportunity to speak.

Offering: MV#191, “What Can I Do?”: What can I do? What can I bring? What can I say? What can I sing?
I’ll sing with joy. I’ll say a prayer.

I’ll bring my love. I’ll do my share. Prayers of the People

In this time of silence, we bring before Creator our gratitude for all Creator’s gifts, our lament for the ways in which Creation has been damaged by our actions or lack of action, and our concerns for ourselves, for others, and for the beautiful, hurting world. You are invited, if you wish, to light candles representing your specific gratitudes, concerns, and commitments for the future. What needs transforming by Spirit working in us and the world? What needs to be made whole?

Lighting our Candles of Concern and Intention

The Disciples’ Prayer

Mother of us all,
who dwells within and beyond,
Sacred is your name.
May your holy vision for collective flourishing
come to fruition among us.
May your dreams of justice, love, compassion, and connection be enfleshed on earth. Provide us today with what we need to be nourished in body, soul, and heart.
Forgive us for the harm we cause as we seek to forgive those who have harmed us. Lead us away from everything that destroys and liberate us from the hands of evil. For you are the ultimate source of hope.
Your power-with exceeds all power-over.
Your presence incites eternal wonder.

All praise to you, our comfort and strength. Amen.

SPIRALLING OUT INTO THE WORLD SONG: MV#165, “There Is a Time” Blessing and Sending

Holy One, we thank you that you have poured yourself out for us, and given us your Spirit, that we might pour ourselves out for others, that we might bless them and serve them in your name.
Go in peace and go in love, accompanied by the Holy Spirit, to be Christ’s anointed and anointing face and hands and feet in the world.

Amen.

Elemental Closing

Invitation and The Disciples’ Prayer, from enfleshed.com
Blessing and Sending adapted from unfoldinglight.net
Cover image and quote copyright https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/women-holy-week-1

“The Luminous Gospels: Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and Philip” translated from the Coptic into English by Lynn C. Bauman, Ward J. Bauman and Cynthia Bourgeault, c. 2008, Praxis Publishing.

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