“Religious and Episcopal!”

January 21, 2024: Arise, shine! For your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Amen.

Yesterday I was privileged to lead a retreat for the vestry of another parish in our diocese. It was a day filled with prayer, dreams, and a yearning to know where God was leading them. It was held at a place of spiritual renewal for many in our diocese – the Community of St. John Baptist (CSJB for short), our Episcopal Convent here in Mendham. I am an Associate of that convent, which means I pray for them, follow a spiritual rule of life, and support their life whenever possible. Perhaps you have been to this convent, and you may also remember that Sister Linda Clare came here last year on this Sunday to speak to us at our coffee hour. This is because today, across the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and spreading to other parts of our Anglican Communion, we celebrate Religious Life Sunday.

Some might be surprised by our having religious orders in the Episcopal Church, and you would not be alone. One sister of the Order of St. Helena, wrote “Several years ago, at the General Convention of The Episcopal Church, I was walking around in my religious habit, and someone said to me, “It’s so nice that you Roman Catholic sisters are here.” When I replied that I was indeed a sister, but also an Episcopalian, she answered, “But you can’t be; I’ve been an Episcopalian all my life, and we don’t have them.” So, we found bumper stickers that said, “Proud to be an Episcopalian!” and we affixed these to the front and back of our habits.”[1]

So, yes – there really are nuns and monks in The Episcopal Church! Just some background though, in case the only time we have encountered one is when we watch The Sound of Music, [cad-vail] Cadfael, or Sister Act on TV:

“Religious communities in The Episcopal Church include monastic communities—whose members live together under a rule of life and vows such as poverty, chastity, and obedience—and dispersed Christian communities, whose members have jobs and live in their own homes, but who also live under religious vows.”[2]

Some may have in their imaginations that these sisters and brothers who are part of the more traditional order sit around praying all day, chant beautifully, and wear habits. Well – all orders do pray the office multiple times a day. As for habits, some wear them, some do not, and some wear them only during services. Some orders make fudge or jam, others do bee keeping and engage in sustainable farming, some support the work of parishes. Others, like Sister Monica Clare of CSJB, can be found on her Tik Tok channel, Linked In, and once the NY Times. And I can assure you that many engage in social justice and activism too – don’t ever get in the way of a nun who has seen a child of God harmed!

The religious communities are also often places where people can go for spiritual direction, retreats – like the one I led, meditative prayer, and more. And of course, most convents and monasteries offer the gift of hospitality – serving as a model to us all – welcoming guests as they would Jesus. Your vestry has been to Holy Cross Monastery, an Episcopal brotherhood, in West Park NY on the banks of the Hudson many times over the years for spiritual nourishment and reflection on their work.

We should thank God always for all of them. Yet there is a reason this Religious Life Sunday was approved by General Convention to be celebrated on this Sunday in Epiphany. And that brings us to our passages from Jonah and the Gospel of Mark.

Taking first the passage from Jonah, it sounds like God tells Jonah to go to Ninevah and proclaim God’s message for them, and he gets up, says “I’m your guy, God – I’m on it!” and off he goes. But, if we actually read the full story, which, btw, isn’t that long, that isn’t how this went at all.

So, a brief recap: Jonah’s first response was – hell no! He had no interest in going to “those” people. He planned a little shopping trip to Tarshish. So on to a boat he went in the direction he decided was best. God was having none of it. The ship was wracked by a fierce storm, and the sailors sensed somebody had displeased God. Jonah fesses up, they throw him overboard, he gets swallowed by a big fish, and after three days of stewing over this whole thing, he finally offers a prayer to God, which gets him vomited up onto the beach.

THEN, we get to this passage we heard. Kinda changes the meaning of it, doesn’t it?

And in the gospel, it was a whole different reaction to the call of Jesus for Simon (later Peter), Andrew, James, and John, right? Jesus walks by, says “Follow me and I will make you fish for people,” and BAM! Off they went with him. Easy peasy.

Here’s the thing though… call, if it is genuinely from God, is much more like the Jonah story than that of the disciples. In fact, the disciples story can make it seem so easy, when it really is often not. And call is what we, as children of God and followers of Jesus have – every single one of us.

Now, you might be thinking – Jesus never walked by me and told me to drop everything and follow him. God never called me to some great act of prophetic witness. Or, like some, you might think call is for “those” people – ordained clergy or the religious.

Well, call is sometimes for ordained or religious life – and not just for those who are young, as many find that it is later in life that God calls us. And, we need to really take in that call almost never goes the way it does in our gospel reading today.

Ask anyone who is ordained or religious and they will tell you that they relate to Jonah, Moses, Jeremiah, or Isaiah – all prophets who felt unworthy or didn’t want to go in that direction. In fact, it is often the thing we want least to do that God is actually calling us into.

Yet, through the centuries, the church universal has been blessed by those who, despite their initial reservations or discomfort, followed their call – ordained, religious, and lay. People like Jonah, Moses, Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the other apostles to people of our time – Dorothy Day, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, and from the Episcopal/Anglican Church Louie Crew Clay, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Martyrs of Memphis, just to name a brief few.

I should note that Louie Crew Clay was from the Diocese of Newark, and a leading voice for the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the life of the church. I was privileged to have known him, and we in our diocese are proud of his prophetic witness.

One of those I mentioned were the Martyrs of Memphis. If you don’t know their story, you should – especially given the recent pandemic. From one account:

“In August 1878, yellow fever invaded the city of Memphis, Tennessee for the third time in ten years…In that time of panic and flight, many brave men and women, both lay and ordained, remained at their posts of duty or came as volunteers to assist in spite of the terrible risk. Notable among these heroes were four Episcopal sisters from the Community of Saint Mary in NY, and two of their clergy colleagues.

The Sisters had come to Memphis in 1873, at Bishop Quintard’s request, to found a school for girls adjacent to St. Mary’s Cathedral. When the 1878 epidemic began, George C. Harris, the cathedral dean, and Sister Constance immediately organized relief work among the stricken. Helping were six of Constance’s fellow Sisters of St. Mary; Sister Clare from St. Margaret’s House, Boston, Massachusetts; the Reverend Charles C. Parsons, Rector of Grace and St. Lazarus Church, Memphis; and the Reverend Louis S. Schuyler, assistant at Holy Innocents, Hoboken, New Jersey. The cathedral group also included three physicians, two of whom were ordained Episcopal priests, the Sisters’ two matrons, and several volunteer nurses from New York.

The cathedral buildings were located in the most infected region of Memphis. Here, amid sweltering heat and scenes of indescribable horror, these men and women of God gave relief to the sick, comfort to the dying, and homes to the many orphaned children. Only two of the workers escaped the fever. Among those who died were Constance, Thecla, Ruth, and Frances, the Reverend Charles Parsons, and the Reverend Louis Schuyler. All six are buried at the historic Elmwood Cemetery.”[3] Their saint day is September 9^th.

I think about people like the Martyrs of Memphis and so many others when people say that religions do nothing but create wars, or that being a religious – a nun or a monk – only means a life of prayer beads shut off from the rest of the world (as though prayer isn’t powerful in and of itself). Which is one reason I love that the PBS drama “Call the Midwife,” has so many people who watch it. It is based on the true story of the midwives (lay and religious) of Nonnatus House working in London’s East End, an impoverished part of that city, in the years following WWII. The sisters in that drama, if you haven’t seen it, are Anglican. They are not Roman Catholic, they are part of our church! Yet what some might miss is that the sisters are not the only ones called in that show. The other midwives are doing amazing work too – as lay midwives. In fact, it is based on the memoir of one of them, Jennifer Worth.

So call – whether as a lay person, an ordained clergy, or a religious – has many forms, and through the centuries, the world has been blessed by those who don’t hop a proverbia boat to Tarshish, but chose to drop their nets to follow where God calls them.

But here is something we all need to take note of… the ones answering calls, especially ordained and religious, are getting smaller and smaller every year. There are many parish openings, and not enough clergy to fill them. Convents and monasteries are closing in some places because there are not enough nuns or monks left to minister and support the work.

Does this mean God stopped calling people to these roles?

No. Not at all.

The thing is – call requires something of us.

We need to listen.

We need to be open to possibilities unimagined for our lives and that of others.

We need to trust in God.

And the truth is – many stopped listening a long time ago.

It is hard to hear God calling us amidst the insanity of our daily lives. To hear anyone, even God, we need to be listening – giving our full attention. This is true whether our call is to ordained and religious, or to lay ministry.

That is why we need to take a page from the religious and ordained, for we are required to set aside time for conversation with God in prayer every single day. And – we do it willingly and gladly – for we know by our own call struggle that we must listen for the wee small voice of God, because God is always trying to tell us something.

And perhaps just as important – we need to be like Jesus and recognize the gifts of others, helping them to live into their own call.

I can honestly say that if you do this, if you listen, really listen for God’s call in your life, if you commit to being open to whatever God needs you to do – you will never, ever, regret it. And if, by your willingness to prayerfully see call in others, you are able to guide them to where the Spirit is leading, they will be eternally grateful to you as well.

The truth for all of us is – that we all have a call – one is to follow Jesus wherever he leads us, and the other is be like Jesus and help others to do the same.

So, on this religious life Sunday, take a moment today to give thanks for those who serve Christ in Religious Community, those like Constance and her companions, the midwives of Nonnatus House, the sisters of CSJB, or the brothers of Holy Cross. Think also about those who you know who are ordained clergy.

And then take a moment to consider the people you know in your life.

Are any of them called to ordained or religious life?

Are you?

Amen.

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