✠
Golden Jubilee
of
Edgar Fisher Wells,
Priest
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Sunday 15 August 2010
The Church of St Mary the Virgin
in the City of New York
The Rev. Dr David Wood
Parish Priest
Grace Church Joondalup
Anglican Chaplain to Edith Cowan
University
Perth, Western Australia
Not
so long ago, I heard the best homily I have come across in years at a bar not
far from where I live. It must have lasted
all of thirty seconds. Late in the
evening - when various artists had created the sort of atmosphere we long for in
our churches, but seldom find - the singer dropped into the conversation a few
words of the French novelist Anais Nin. ‘Life
shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.’ But this text was not left bare, without
exegesis or commentary. In the singer’s
own words: ‘To everyone who has a vision: let us move forward with courage and
trust; may our commitment dance with our surrender, and may it be a smoochy
dance.’
Now,
I can’t speak for anyone else in that crowded space, but hearing those words, for
me at least, was one of those surprising, unsought, grace-filled, moments. It was one of those precious moment when the
‘ice breaks’ or the ‘penny drops’ – a fleeting experience of disclosure, of
revelation, when we touch the hem of the Lord’s garment, when everything – just
for that split second - somehow makes sense.
In
preparation for today, I had been living daily already with Mary, Mother of the
Lord. Let me be clear about which Mary I
mean. Quite deliberately, I have not been
living with Mary as she frequently appears in church tradition, where we have
so often projected on to her our own pathology. I have been living with the New Testament
Mary, the Mary we meet in Matthew’s and Luke’s infancy narratives, the Mary
Paul speaks of simply as ‘a woman’ who gives birth to the human Jesus ‘under
the law’ making him a Jewish baby, Mary who in every generation sings out her
Magnificat. In the Christian economy of
redemption, Mary is a principal player. Simply
put, without her ‘Yes’ to God, none of us would be here. She is first among the faithful, the very
first Christian believer. From among the
small company of God’s faithful ones, the anawim
– named as Elizabeth and Zechariah, Simeon and Anna – Mary steps into the light
not as one of the crowd, but as the very epitome of trusting faith - the One of low degree who is being
exalted, the hungry One who is being
filled with good things, the poor One
who is being wonderfully enriched. For in
sacred scripture, Mary’s virginity never signifies purity; what it signifies is
her poverty in God’s presence, the poverty of One who exemplifies those our
Lord calls the poor in spirit. In other
words, Mary is the courageous woman, the strong woman, the empty and open
woman. She is the embodiment of any and
every human being who longs for the coming of God to fill our emptiness, to
save us and make us fruitful. So it is
that she becomes God’s willing partner and loving servant, the friend who
returns love for Love.
So
it is that she becomes the One who
offers and gives herself wholly to the divine promise, One who helps us hold in
our hands the bird in flight by showing us how it can be done. In a word, her life expands with her courage,
her commitment dances with her surrender, until she becomes our pattern for
living humanly, our model for believing, our good companion who walks ahead of
us and prays for us always. Looking to
her we see ourselves as we already are in the divine imagination. She represents who we are becoming, giving
flesh and shape to all that is yet to be for the whole company of the baptized. Now if priests are representative Christians,
endowed with grace and given authority to live and act on behalf of the Church
in the world, then we are representative only in the same way that Mary is -
she who is full of grace, she who empties herself of ego, she who faces the
void without fear, she who embraces her extraordinary destiny with trusting
faith, she in whom courage and commitment dance with surrender. Here we touch the mystery at the very heart
of discipleship and apostleship. Here we
touch the mystery of priesthood and priestly ministry.
These
words are addressed primarily, of course, to our beloved Edgar, whom we hold
close today in love and prayer, for fifty years this week a priest in the Church of God, a priest of Jesus Christ. Edgar, as you know very well, the mystery of priesthood,
the mystery of your priesthood and our priesthood, the priesthood we share, is essentially
this hidden reality. Priesthood is a
form of God-bearing which arises deep down inside; it is a continual kindling
of light in the darkness of who we really are when all the games have stopped,
a kindling of the creative Spirit, endlessly bringing life out of the empty
womb and the empty tomb. As you have
discovered, little by little, this is the indispensable foundation upon which
everything else is built, a foundation to revisit daily in ministry, a
foundation you have managed to keep in good repair all these years – sometimes
sacrificially, and you have paid the price.
Martyrdom these days, after all, rarely involves murder, but it always
involves the violence of rejection, being spurned and dismissed by colleagues
and supposed friends.
It
is sometimes alleged that the Episcopal Church, like all Western churches, is
in decline because you celebrate both straight and gay as made in the divine
image and likeness. The truth, however,
is that this church began its so-called decline by embracing the Civil Rights
Movement, then by permitting new life within marriage for those battered by
divorce, and then again by prophetically ordaining women to the priesthood and
episcopate. One of the reasons we are
here today is to thank God for your leadership at all these turning points in
Christian history. It matters hugely
that you where here in Times Square interpreting the scriptures and conducting
this particular orchestra at a crucial time, and St Mary’s and catholic
Anglicans around the world are immensely grateful to you for helping us enter
God’s future with faith rather than opting for the safety of the past, huddled
together in a ghetto of our own making.
In
so far as we stand before God like Mary, with nothing to offer but empty, open
hands, responding as best we may in love to the Love that first and last loves
us, longing to be filled with fully divine and totally human life, there is
grace sufficient not only for ourselves, but grace enough and to spare. It is precisely because this stance reflects
in time and space the inner life of the eternal Trinity, the endless dance of
Love, that God says, “I want you Mary”. And
Mary, overcoming her perfectly natural fear, gathering up all her courage, says
her full-blooded ‘Yes.’ But Mary is not
the only highly favoured one. God also says
loud and clear, ‘I want you, Edgar.’ Not
someone else, but you; and not only the respectable you the world sees, and not
only the religious you the Church approves, but the real you. Only if the real you is at home, can I reach
you with my grace. ‘I want you, Edgar, and
I need you to be my priest.’ When the
real you said ‘Yes’ back on 9 August 1960, and when the real you continues to
say ‘Yes’ without reserve, the Lord turns all your wounds into worships, for
the sake of all the hungry people, for building
the topsy-turvy kingdom.
A
lovely story is told of the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, the
great Michael Ramsey of blessed memory. Close
to the end of his life, he was living in a convent on the outskirts of Oxford. A young Muslim from Bangladesh who
kept the post office across the road, where Bishop Michael used to buy stamps,
came to visit him, and asked how long he had been ordained. Ramsey answered, ‘Nearly sixty years.’ The young man said, ‘That’s a very long
friendship’, and Ramsey repeated the phrase over and over, savouring its memory
and smiling. Edgar, dear Father in God,
on this day of celebration and thanksgiving when we delight to honour you,
blessing God for all you have been and all you are to us and to so many others,
our prayer is that your own friendship with the living Christ who calls us to
follow him will only grow and deepen in intimacy through the days and years
ahead. Let us all move forward, like
Mary, first disciple and mother of all disciples, into God’s future with courage
and with trust. Like her, may our commitment
dance with our surrender; and may it be a smoochy dance.
✠
Isaiah 61:10-11; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke
1:46-55
Copyright © 2010
David Graeme Wood
All Rights Reserved
