Given the mind-bending miracles threaded through Jesus’ life on earth, his sudden resurrection, after dying a horrific and violent death and being laid in a tomb, was in a sense not that strange. His entire existence was woven through with extraordinary happenings, which were all about bringing life and wholeness where there had been death, disease and brokenness. He even actually raised someone else from the dead (his friend Lazarus) some time before his own death, in front of many witnesses.
So I might have expected people to be more ready to believe the reports of his empty tomb, at least those who lived alongside him and had witnessed all those other extraordinary things.
But people didn’t. Not initially. Why? Mostly because it was women who came across the empty tomb first, and people didn’t trust the words of women.
So when people today persist in not believing these reports, I find myself wondering how much of their disbelief is about the miraculous nature of the resurrection, and how much has been formed by our long history of patriarchy, which has taught us, above all else, to distrust the words of women.
Why are some people so content to assume these « silly women » made this up? These were not silly women. These were women whose lives had been materially revolutionised by the faith they’d found in Jesus, because of the time and attention he’d bothered to show them.
What is not surprising: it was the women who stayed with Jesus as he died, the women who brought spices to honour his body; the women who came back to mourn his death and their loss …and so it was the women who found the empty tomb and had the first holy encounters.
The other thing that’s not surprising: the women were not, and still are often not, believed.
And the final not surprising thing… millions of people; women, men, non binary… have discovered that the women told the truth and have encountered the risen Christ themselves. Millions, right across history and across the world. I hope in whatever form heaven actually takes, those first women can see this, know this, and be delighted with it. I’m sure somehow they do and they are.
I was inspired by this Substack post to write this this morning:
There is an ongoing rift in the Church of England that has become something of a running sore. Although our Church « unequivocally decided », through its governing body the General Synod, 30 years ago, that anyone could be ordained priest, regardless of their gender, we are still ordaining men who think that women should not be able to be ordained priest.
Broadly speaking such men fall into two categories; those who are longing for unity between our Church and the Catholic Church, who are waiting until the Pope, leader of the Catholic Church, decides to ordain women too; and those who believe that the Bible says women shouldn’t teach or have authority over men, who don’t ever envisage a time when women should be able to be priests (though I guess for these it would be ok if we led churches with only women and children in them?).
Women have been presiding over Shabbat (sabbath – the day of rest) meal tables for centuries. Even for centuries before Jesus walked this earth. In the Jewish tradition it is the women lighting the candles on the eve of Sabbath, presenting the Shabbat loaf, often baked by their own hands.
For someone to refuse to eat at a table we women are hosting at feels like such a slap in the face to me. After centuries of hosting at tables, shopping, cooking, cleaning, making beds for family, friends and strangers, that each one might find rest. For someone to refuse point blank to sit and eat at the table we have yet again laid, and to refuse because we are a woman, is an unspeakable insult. That’s how I receive it.
I have absolutely no right to bear the weight of generations of women across the world whose service to others has been so much greater than my own. And yet, because I am a woman, it feels like they are all in me, with me. When my table is rejected, so is theirs. When their table is rejected, so is mine. In my mind’s eye we are all – the millions of us stretching beyond where any eye could see – outraged and indignant. And tired and bewildered, too.
After all, this is not only our table, it’s also the Lord’s table. Jesus himself is the real host here. The Creator who made the grape and the grain that the wine and bread are formed of in the first place. Who made the trees that supplied the wood for the table, even. If he is delighted to host at our table and to make the meal we share here sacred, why on earth would anyone who loves and honours him not be delighted to eat at it?
Our table is your table. You are welcome. Come, sit and eat.
Having said that, one needs a certain hospitality of heart to be a guest. And I can’t seem to find it in myself any longer to be a guest at tables hosted by men who think I am not the priest I am, in the full knowledge that they will probably never come and eat and drink at the table I host. Even though it is not I but Jesus who hosts really, which belief was the only way I used to manage to be at their tables before.
Many years ago I went and stayed for a weekend in the communal household of a wonderful Catholic priest in his mid-80’s called Father Peter, who lived in Preston in Lancashire in the UK. He was a man full of the love of God. I was there as a Church of England priest, wanting to learn about living communally with others and to wonder whether God might enable me to inhabit or create a similar kind of household with other people, as part of my priestly ministry.
To understand this story fully you have to grasp that in the Catholic Church you can’t take bread and wine at mass unless you are a practising Catholic. Even other types of Christians are not permitted to share in mass normally in Catholic churches. And women are most definitely not able to be ordained yet in the Catholic Church (though I have met many Catholics who are longing for the day they are).
On the Friday morning, I had a conversation with Father Peter that went pretty much like this:
Father Peter: Now then, so we’ve a Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament later today for an hour 5-6pm so people arrive into the silence as soon as they can after work, and then after an hour of silent prayer we share mass. Will you come? I’d love you to come.
Me: Oooh wonderful yes I’ll come. But I’ll not take the bread and the wine, right?
Fr Peter: You will.
Me: OK…?
Fr Peter: then there’s mass on Sunday morning…
Me: Well of course I’ll come to that too but I’ll not take the bread and wine.
Fr Peter: You will…
Me: Well OK I’ll come and take part but I’ll not wear my clerical collar then…? [The clerical collar is the sign that I am ordained.]
Fr Peter: You will… I hope? And I am going to say mass in your name for a month following your visit, to pray for you. If that’s ok?
Me: ….mmmpfff… Really? Oh wow.
I guess Father Peter figured he was too old for anyone to be able to get too upset with him. His church was rammed on the Sunday morning and full of joyful worship and love.
Unless we can sort this pickle out we will be nowhere with the new wine the Spirit of God is bringing. There are priests in waiting of non binary gender. Their tables will also be hosted by Jesus, who will make the bread and wine they share sacred. I will be honoured to re-member Jesus and to eat and drink at such tables. Because I believe that ultimately the love of God is greater than whatever obstacles we try to put in its way.
Back in the late 1990’s I was working for a tiny tin pot little community development project. We did some training with the members of a local tenants’ association based in some high rise social housing near where I lived. The then Labour government had housed quite a few Kosovan refugees there. Now I recall that, I think how amazing it was that not that long ago a UK government was without question housing refugees from a war zone. There was no renaming them « asylum seekers » or branding them in some way as less than human and deporting them to Rwanda. There was a genuine welcome. How far we have fallen since then!
Park Hill Flats, Sheffield
Understandably, the refugees formed quite strong social boundaries and often went about together, fearful of this new environment they found themselves in, the women particularly identifiable in their long black hijab. The local people in the tenants’ association were suspicious and rather hostile towards them. Who were these strange people standing huddled in groups on the street, who barely spoke a word of English, invading their territory?
I ran a visualisation session, where I invited members of the tenants’ association to sit in a circle and shut their eyes, then to put themselves in the shoes of the Kosovan women (they were predominantly women), hearing the bombs, fleeing for their lives from their homes which had become a war zone, losing family members including many of their spouses and sons, then eventually arriving in the flats, not speaking a word of English, wondering how they would manage in this strange country, with these strange foods and people.
You could have heard a pin drop. One woman began crying.
As a result of that exercise and their own good conscience and initiative, the women running the tenants’ association decided to proactively welcome the refugees. To give them vouchers to use in the second hand shop for children’s clothes and other useful items. To bridge the gap. To show kindness, consideration, empathy, compassion.
Who could we include?
A colleague of mine was reflecting with great sadness on the approach of the Church of England currently towards all sorts of things. They said « It seems to me that, instead of asking « Who could we include? » we are constantly asking « Who can we exclude? » » We were having a group discussion about who is and isn’t allowed to take communion (a meal of bread and wine all Christians share to re-member Jesus). People were asking why in some churches children can’t take it, given the church’s teaching that a sacrament like this is effective no matter how little understanding the participants have. It’s a good question. In many churches now anyone is free to participate and take communion. But some still lag behind. I am not sure what they are afraid of?
Who could we include?
I was listening to this fabulous talk recently given by Bishop Rose Hudson Wilkin, Bishop of Dover in the WATCH (Women and the Church) « Not equal yet » day.
Bishop Rose Hudson Wilkin Daring to claim the sky: enabling the souls of women to sing
In it, she refers to our Church’s teaching about sacraments; that they are valid and effective because of God’s work, irrespective of who the priest is or what the priest does. « But, » she says, « Suddenly it is a woman and it matters!? »
I have for some time now been working in the background to enable people in the structures of the Church of England to hear the voices of LGBTQ+ community and of women more clearly. It is hard work, because so many of us are so used to not being listened to, being silenced, undermined or disrespected, our gauge of what is OK or normal is often warped. It takes others to listen to our stories, before we finally hear ourselves speaking and realise the burdens we’ve been bearing and the hassles we’ve been putting up with all of these years.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the admission of women to priesthood in the Church of England. So we as women are now included. And yet we are still ordaining new priests who think that women shouldn’t be ordained.
We now have women who are bishops, who are in the unenviable position of having to sign to say they support the ordination of new priests who don’t even recognise them as priests let alone bishops! These new priests won’t be ordained by the bishop who signs this paperwork but by an alternative bishop, whose episcopacy (bishop-ness) they do recognise, firstly, because they are a man. And secondly because he’s a man who somehow remains a purer? (or something?) bishop than our many male bishops who do ordain women, because he has never ordained women or been ordained himself by a woman. That means that in a diocese like ours, where the main bishop is a man, evenhe can’t ordain these particular new priests, because he ordains women.
How can we have allowed this situation to come about? To enshrine discrimination in our structures like this is so abhorrent in an organisation that is supposed to be about love.
There is inclusion, and then there is equality, and then there is equity, and then there is also parity. The image below is not perfect (I wouldn’t fancy negotiating that slope in a wheelchair!) but it introduces the general gist.
Friends of mine who are not church members have expressed relief to me that they never became members of the church, and a clear intention never to touch it with a barge pole, because the Church of England is not signed up to the Equalities Act, and we are also flagrantly not an organisation that treats women equally. And also because we are basically hostile as they see it towards the LGBTQ+ community – even those who are already part of the church! This is what they see when they look at us.
This is a great shame, firstly because of the horrendous and ongoing cost of the discrimination and exclusion to LGBTQ+ people, women and people with other protected characteristics too. Many people walk away from the church because this becomes too much to bear, or because they can’t put their name to it when they see the cost of these policies and practices for their friends and family. We seem to have a habit of protecting those who are most powerful. I wonder why?
It is also a great shame because those same friends, by contrast, can see a lot of good in the way many Christians live out their faith, and what it leads them to say and do. The love and message of Jesus Christ is still attractive to people, and the fruit of it (which never has anything to do with this excluding attitude) still commands respect. There is so much fertile ground for mutual learning and sharing and mutual work for peace and justice. But all of this is constantly undermined by our discrimination and exclusion of whole groups of people, based on protected, God-given characteristics which most of us affected were born with.
Along with my aforementioned colleague, instead of all this nonsense, I propose we concentrate on the questions:
Who could we include? And how?
And that we create structures for listening attentively to the voices that have been systemically suppressed in the Church of England for generations; those of black and Asian people, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people and women. And that we prepare ourselves to act on what we hear.
This, to me, seems much more resonant with Jesus’ way.
After all, as one of my Christian friends delights in asking, « Who would Jesus exclude? »
To return to the start of this article, I also wonder what might happen if we in the UK began to focus on how we could include people who are fleeing horrendous persecution or war, rather than on how we can exclude them by policing our borders in such a draconian way? People do not voluntarily abandon their homes and country without very good reason. I long to see inclusion and compassion here again.
la perle 