Celebrating the God of Liberation

Beloved in Christ,

On Friday, July 26, ECMN will celebrate the 50th anniversary of women’s ordination to the priesthood. The day includes storytelling, a showing of the film The Philadelphia Eleven, a potluck dinner, Every Gift an Offering, a new, thirty-minute documentary focusing on Minnesota’s experience of ordained women, and a Eucharist at 7pm featuring the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, preaching.

A team of dedicated women has been planning this special day for months. It includes some of the first women ordained in Minnesota. As I think about this important anniversary, I recall never entertaining the possibility of being ordained until I experienced a woman leading worship. The church was Christ Episcopal, located on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. I was fresh out of college and living and working on “the Hill” when a friend invited me to come to church with her. The church was lively. They had a theater group, a sailing group, and a pub lunch after church. But what really moved me was the fact that one of the priests was a woman.

When I first saw the film The Philadelphia Eleven a few months ago, I was amazed by how much I didn’t know. Before divinity school I was trained as an historian, and spent a lot of time studying religious history, including women’s religious history. Somehow I missed what Episcopal women went through when they sensed God calling them to be ordained priests. I was aware that being a priest was tough for the first group of women, but what the film revealed was sobering.

As we approach this anniversary, we are honoring not just the women and men who fought battles so women could be ordained; we’re honoring not just the earliest women who couldn’t get jobs and faced opposition in some of the churches they served; we are honoring and giving our profound thanks to the God of liberation who brings new possibilities and new life where there seems to be none. Jesus loved women as much as he loved men. He hung out with them, healed them, shielded them from shame, and empowered them. Some of his earliest followers were women who traveled near and far to share the good news of Jesus with neighbors, and provided the hospitality and resources needed to support the early Christian movement.

When I first arrived at St. Matthew’s, St. Paul I thought it would be fun to have an All Saints’ Day procession of saints. I invited the children to learn about Christian saints with their parents, and to dress up as one (and be able to tell the adults why they chose that particular saint). As the opening notes of “For All the Saints” were played on the organ, the children started to process out a side door, single file. Saint Patrick entered the church, then St. Francis, then Mother Teresa, then a little girl wearing a collar. She didn’t know any different.

Grace and Peace,

The Rev. Canon Blair Pogue
Canon for Vitality and Innovation
Episcopal Church in Minnesota