All Yoked Together with Differences Intact

A sermon preached in Christ Chapel on December 11, 2003, by the Rev. Dr. Flora Keshgegian, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology

Before Dennis actually gave me the painting hanging from the pulpit, he gave me a card with a print of his painting and a note inside. The painting was to be my ordination gift and Dennis's note read: "Dear Flora, you have been aptly named who must flower in a desert church to help careless creation give freely back the fruits of cactus crucified. Grains graciously taken from patient God's lovingkindness must now blossom forth a more caring creation."

In this season of Advent this image of a desert church seems an appropriate one. It echoes John the Baptist's call for repentance and his recitation of the prophet Isaiah's image of return from exile and of transformation: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make God's paths, straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough way made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

Flowered deserts, paths made straight, mountainous terrain smoothed out -- all these images of creation made more caring sketch together a vision of what the day of God might be like, of how deliverance into God's loving arms may feel, of what it is we wait for and hope for always, but especially in this season of Advent. In Advent the promises made manifest in Jesus, promises realized in a babe, born of a woman thousands of year ago, and promises still outstanding, cling to our hearts and breathe forth in a yearning for fullness of life. This painting of a woman holding up a child evokes both remembrance and hope. It recalls the New Testament narratives beginning with Mary birthing Jesus and ending with the unnamed woman of Revelations 12 giving birth to a child in a phantasmic tale of pursuit by a murderous dragon and escape into the wilderness, where, we read, "the earth came to the help of the woman." Perhaps so she too could flower in a desert church.

Dennis is not only a painter, he is a Jesuit priest and was once upon a time my spiritual director. I have not seen him in many years, but in these last several months I have found myself thinking about him and recalling the relationship we shared. I sought out a spiritual director after the General Convention in 1976 passed the ordination of women, which was the last time the General Convention met in Minneapolis. I did not attend that 76 convention, but was there for the first couple of days this summer. In both cases, I was following the Convention's actions attentively. This year, I found myself thinking of the parallels: not only meeting in the same city, but the church acting to realize the hopes of some, amid the protests and threats of others. The church embracing the new, both haltingly and courageously, though never swiftly. The last convention I did attend was in 1973, in Louisville, when the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopacy was defeated, yet again, as it had been in 1970. For some of us, the action of the 1976 convention came none too soon. I did not know how much longer I could wait.
But then, after the vote, after what I had dreamt and hope for, was to become reality, I realized that I did not feel prepared. In all the struggle and activity to fight for ordination, I had had neither the space nor time nor context to prepare for it. Yes, I had finished seminary and passed all the canonical hurdles, save that of my gender, and had been an ordained deacon for over two years -- but how was I to prepare for this thing that was not a reality, that was only a dream. I had even done a project in seminary entitled -- "To be a woman and a priest" -- but still felt unready -- perhaps because I dared not make my hope too real.

And so I went in search of a spiritual director, which presented challenges of its own. I wanted the director to be a priest, but not someone, like my fellow Episcopal clergy, with whom I had other relationships. I would have preferred a woman director -- but finding a priest who was female was not a possibility, at least not locally. So I went to the other extreme, so to speak, and asked a Jesuit, a priest I knew through social justice work if he would might be available. He was not, but he said would find another Jesuit. I was a bit nervous about this and told him that I needed whomever he found to be comfortable enough with women as priests that it would not be an issue in the direction.

He referred me to Dennis, someone totally unknown to me. It felt like a big risk, but one I wanted to take. For several months that fall and into January as my ordination date approached, Dennis and I met regularly and he guided me in prayer and preparation. I learned a great deal and was so enriched by the experience that, after my ordination, I felt I did not want this process to end. When I told Dennis that, he suggested, as would any good Jesuit, that the next step would be for me to do the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius -- what is called its annotation 19. The Spiritual Exercises are designed to be done in a 30 day retreat. There are specific directions and meditations designated for each day. Ignatius, however, being somewhat of a pragmatist, added a note, #19, which stipulates that those people whose lives will not allow them to be on retreat for a month can go through the exercises "in the world" and at their own pace. And so we did. It took over a year. In that time, I not only learned about prayer and life with God, but I wrestled with the Exercises and sometimes with Dennis, often about issues of authority and authenticity and difference. I not only reflected on my vocation and made some major decisions, including deciding to leave the job I was in, but Dennis and I tested and encountered one another in a relationship that affected and changed us both.

When the time came to mark the completion of the exercises in some way, I asked Dennis if he would preside at a Eucharist of thanksgiving. It was just the two of us. We met in the little chapel room in his Jesuit residence. During the reflection time after the readings and during the prayers, we each named and gave thanks for what we had learned and the gifts we had been given. Our sharing felt intimate and holy and graced. When we got to the liturgy of the table, Dennis invited me to come and be next to him. Then he took the stole that hung around his neck, lifted one side and draped it over me, inviting me to concelebrate with him. Yoked together in our differences, Jesuit Roman Catholic and Episcopalian, male and female, director and directee, we shared in a foretaste of God's kingdom. Outside that room, those differences might symbolize separation and ecumenical contestation and disproportionate power relations, but in that space and in that time, they were not divisions so much as flowers in a desert church, a vision of what could be and of what was in that moment.

In this Advent season, I find myself hungry for such foretastes. The memory of that Eucharist with Dennis feeds me still and reminds me of what might be possible. In these days, when the desert seems more real than the promised land, when the wilderness seems to offer little protection, when we all, no matter what we think or believe, feel beset by some version of menacing dragons, we need such reminders.
Without them we do not know for what or whom we prepare; nor of what we should repent. Without a vision, we are told, the people perish. Without a taste of salvation, we would not know what feast awaits us. Without a way through terrain that seems not traversable, we would be lost. Without a child to lead us, our eyes would not be opened. Without the breath of God, we would die.

We can bear the wait -- we can only bear the weight -- because we know whom and what we expect. In the Advent interplay between past and future, promises realized and outstanding, preparation and return, we dwell in the mystery of time's turning. In the seeming hopelessness of desert life, we recall the past and imagine a different tomorrow . We journey into the deepening darkness, knowing that it takes over but so far before light begins to regain the length of night.

This pattern of return is not an endless repetition held in a suspended, empty time. It is not the time of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, in which going and coming do not matter because all is the same and all is endless waiting. The time of our waiting, of our Advent preparation and return. is marked and determinedly specific. I find it striking that Luke wants us to know exactly when and where and under what circumstances, John preached his message of repentance. "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraca and Trachonitis; and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, and during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah [and] He went into the region around the Jordon…." This sense of historical location, this sense that time and place -- that history -- matter, is precisely what makes the differences among us so defined and important, so necessary and determinative. Indeed it is what makes us human. And is what God entered into with the people of Israel and took on in the incarnation, time in history enfleshed.

If we await such a birth, then the Advent vigil is not about waiting out the differences. We do not hope that they will be obliterated in some cosmic battle or that they will disappear in a future blending into conformity and undifferentiated unity. Rather we anticipate, even as we enact, an ingathering of seemingly endless variety, textured and enriched by the very specificity of each and every created being. All yoked together with differences intact. Flesh is always concrete. It is a woman, holding up a baby, as an offering of delight, for all the world to see.