(The following is a sermon written by Maren Haynes, NNPCW Coordinating Committee member. The sermon was delievered at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tuscon, AZ on Nov 5, 2006.)

To be of Use

The people I love best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the much to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

(By Marge Piercy, taken from Cries of the Spirit, a collection of poems)

I don't even know where to start in giving a brief overview of the ways women's gifts have been of use in the church. We can start in Biblical times with Jesus and his invitation for women, such as Mary and Martha, to join the circle as leaders spirituality and study for the first time in that culture's history, and as he built relationships with the downtrodden, outcast women of society.

The Apostle Paul, who we often think of as a misogynist, celebrates his sister in Christ, Thecla, who left her fiance, and dressed in men's clothing to become an evangelist in the area. Though persecuted by her neighbors, family and the state, Paul affirms her commission to ministry.

Hildegard of Bingen lived in the 12th century, and provided counsel to many people in the hierarchy of the church. Bishops, Kings and Popes sought her advice, and she was believed to have a supernatural connection to God which she explored through medicine and music. She wrote major works of visionary and theology, and is academically hailed in all these fields to the present day. Though not canonized, she has been called a Saint for centuries.

The 19th-20th century women's movement brings forth women like Quaker Elizabeth Cady Stanton who helped kick off the women's suffrage movement with the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848, and fellow Quaker Sojourner Truth, political activist and former slave who engaged the hard truth of the Social Gospel and seriously aimed to bring that Gospel to fruition. Many of the female leaders of that convention had very recently been leaders in the Underground Railroad movement of the 1800s.

And in the 21st century, I have had the opportunity to hear and meet so many amazing, challenging, engaging women, who take the gospel seriously. Among them have been Esther Byu of Thailand with the Fellowship of the Least Coin, Musimbi Kanyaro of Kenya with the Young Women's Christian Association, Lisa Larges of the United States of the Gay and Lesbian Ordination Activist group That All May Freely Serve, and thousands, thousands of others who have dynamically led the people by faithfully following God's call for their lives.

It is not a question of women's “contributions.” The church simply would not be without women.

Since this is so much the case, approaching a service or a sermon where we celebrate the gifts of women seems rather silly. We, at Southside, are so fortunate to see amazing women standing as partners with the men in nearly every venue, from our social justice outreach, to pulpit ministry, sunday school, to music ministry, women and men share their gifts here. But history has not often told this story.

When the women of Southside came together at the Women's Retreat and on last Wednesday night, we identified many ways women's involvement in the church has been marginalized.

Women in the Christian Church, historically, have been limited to actualize their callings through decidedly subordinate outlets. Although this has ebbed and flowed from Jesus' time until present, several women of Southside remember growing up in denominations where women could teach: Sunday School – but only to girls, or to boys under 12. Women could lead: Other women. Women could Pray: Silently.

History has often been reinterpreted to minimize the contributions of women. By keeping women illiterate, the task of recording history has been nearly completely a male activity, and thus women's accomplishments often went unrecorded, or were misattributed to their husbands or brothers. For example, recent scholarship has revealed that, perhaps, Miss Fanny composed at least half of the music attributed to her brother Felix Mendelssohn. Oftentimes, women were able to reveal their ideas solely by succumbing to this reality, penning under a pseudonym.

At its worst, history has tended to set up false dichotomies between masculine and feminine. The masculine characteristics, according to sociologist Janet Saltzman Chafetz include logical, rational, strong, unemotional, leader, individualistic, and independent. Simply put, these masculine values are considered the cornerstones of western society, and have up until very recently been almost fully integrated into the western understanding of Christianity.

If the characteristics of God are decidedly this archetypal masculine, then the feminine must be the opposite of God. Up until the last 50 years, or so, much of western society has recreated God in this image, and has thus excluded feminine characteristics from the realm of the Holy. Thus, at least my perspective is that the contemporary church has had struggles in adopting a more communitarian, less self-serving, more globally-minded set of ethics, despite the fact that the Bible's true text very clearly backs up these values right along side many masculine ones. Feminist Theologians like Rosemary Radford Reuther go so far as to argue that the feminine side of God was left out of the conversation for so long, we need to reinterpret every facet of our faith to break this cycle and get the whole story.

Certainly, this is not a struggle that is isolated to women's issues – it is a sizable lamentation to be made on behalf of all marginalized groups. I hope we can all unite around the belief that we have a really long way to go, and that for every wonderful woman we celebrate throughout our lifetimes, hundreds of thousands of women have been forgotten.

Many Southside women expressed extreme feelings of abandonment in the church in their 20's and 30's, especially those who grew up during the women's movement when it seemed women were gaining rights in society before gaining those same rights in the church. Some women expressed that such a split between faith and feminism pushed them to replace their faith with feminism. Today, too many young women look to the church in America as one of the most extreme places where even their basic rights aren't valued, to say nothing of full participation. Young women identify a church where we spend way more time focused on whether or not abortion should be legal, than actually addressing the pervasive, barbaric, and all too common issues of domestic partner abuse and rape, for example. It seems we creep along at a historical snail's pace toward what many of us believe, nearly instinctually, is the will of God, but that our church seems to identify as a wishy-washy fringe concern or political issue. Women, and many men, leave the church in droves over the seemingly endless battle we have been forced to fight over inclusion. It seems all too logical to give up on the Church when this realization is reached. If the will of God is that women should be honored, in daily life, in society, and in ministry, shouldn't God at least have the power to set right the agenda of the Church?

I found such solace in the passage from David's song, Psalm 68:7-10. This Psalm recounts the movement of the Jewish people out of the slavery of Egypt and into the Promised Land. The remainder of the Psalm goes on to recount the details of that journey, which was gory, costly, and difficult. Although we all know the ending, and this particular group of people did find solace in the place where it was promised, the realization of that promise came only with an enormous struggle which, I'm sure, often times caused its participants to wonder 'Where is God?'

We are guaranteed struggles in this world, especially where power dynamics are concerned. Most Christian theologians call this struggle “human sin,” and I'm very inclined to agree.

In Psalm 68: 7-10, though, we understand God, too, endures our struggles, going out in front of the people, paving the way through the wasteland to justice and solace. As Christians, we are constantly required to walk closely behind God, to redefine our faith as the time and place requires it, to empower the powerless, to give up power when we have too much, and to stand as a bulwark to fight for power when it is taken away. We must labor in the fields until the voices of all people are valued with equity. As we squelch the gifts of people whom God has called, to ministry or otherwise, we are bereft of those beautiful gifts, and our traditions and faith are deeply affected: they become skewed, fragmented and distorted.

My experience at Southside has been that this church is a haven of visionaries for laboring toward full participation and inclusion of all the people of God. I have no doubt that the people of Southside aim to stand on the cutting edge of these demands that God asks of us, and that we will move forward peaceably and thoughtfully, yet passionately.

I am thrilled to say we are continuing to see the fruits of our labors in the feminist theological movement. Each of us can attest to a huge number of female leaders in the church who have affected us. Women of Southside identified so many – student leaders, deacons, elders. One woman remembered the first female deacon in a neighboring church, who rose to become moderator of her Presbytery. Others recalled growing up with female pastors, others following the calling to become pastors themselves. In the church of the United States, we continue to see new avenues for women in leadership finally realized. This week, we celebrate our Anglican sister, Katharine Jefferts Schori as she assumes her role as the first female bishop in the Anglican church.

We honor the strength of groups of women to move mountains, such as the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina who faithfully searched for sons and daughters of families who had lost them due to an estimated 30,000 disappearances by the government in attempts to build an army with the children of their country. We recognize a group of women in Africa who decided to abstain from sex with their husbands until the wars of their countries stopped. We honor the Presbyterian women of our own denomination who have consistently provided a prophetic vision for us, as a church, to engage the social issues of our time more fully.

The fruits are not limited to women as leaders: We are seeing adoption of more democratic decision making processes as Open Space and Consensus Model become much more mainstream (the Presbyterian Women even adopted Consensus Model at their business meeting this past summer! We can only hope the General Assembly will follow suit). We are seeing a quietly rising church engaging social action through an unlikely medium – monasticism – with movements like 'The Simple Way' and other intentional communities which take commitments to communitarian lifestyle, shared resources, living lightly on the earth, and the social gospel very, very seriously.

As more voices are invited to the table, and transformation occurs, we create larger caveats for the Holy Spirit to enter into our dialogue and discussion, and we have the ability to be more creative as the body of Christ in recognizing and affirming all our gifts. We are working toward something worthwhile, which will undoubtedly continue to transform our church and each of our lives, and which will reform our ways of understanding God in ways we cannot foresee.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Let us continue doing the daily work that needs to be done toward celebrating the gifts of all our sisters and brothers in the work God has called each of us to do. Today, we celebrate the amazing women of the church.

Beautiful work, Maren. Have you met Dan and Sue Mudd, or Buzz and Bobbi Hargleroave, who each moved there from L-ville? Both couples were part of my congregation.