SACRED LITURGY OR HOCUS POCUS?

There was no way our bunch of ordinands in the Diocese of Johannesburg could attend a residential seminary- most of us had jobs or families to look after. So our theological education was via distance learning underpinned by week-end classes hosted by various parishes. 

These ranged from the 'Little England' in the leafy suburbs to 'township vibrant' with not a tree or flower in sight. 

The suburban churches were invariably built of stone, or face brick. They boasted impressive bell towers, stained glass windows, organs, modern music groups and sound systems. Set in beautiful gardens, their dwindling congregations were predominantly white with a few black faces.  

The packed township churches were mostly large plain structures. Sans organs and sound systems, they had huge choirs. The youth music groups favoured drums, modern and African traditional, and they were as crazy about electronic keyboards as their suburban counterparts were. Nobody checked their watches during the sermon.

Everyone expressed 'New South Africa' love and 'PC speak' was the order of the day. But it wasn't easy going. 

The black families who were easing into the traditionally white suburbs missed the music, the dancing and the choruses they'd grown up with. Too many decided to return to the townships for their Sunday worship and then found it easier to lie in bed instead of travelling the distance. 

One friend shared how it irritated that over tea the white parishioners talked about their dogs as if they were human. 

My white friends were concerned that, as more black families moved into the suburbs, the ancient and modern hymns and Songs of Praise would be overtaken by African choruses. They shuddered at the thought of allowing the Holy Spirit to dictate when a service ended, in case it stretched to two or three hours. 


They complained that the black parishioners weren't prepared to assume leadership roles. The blacks said they were never given the change to express an opinion. 

For those readers in other countries this must all seem very weird. But we South Africans were, and still are, paying the price for legislated segregation. One general election and a democratic government wasn't going to fill the cultural abyss that separated us.  
In fact we ordinands were privileged to experience such diverse forms of Anglican worship. What always amused me was how much higher and hazier the township parishes were when in came to incense, ancient hymns and the size of the altar party. 

I was starting to understand how cocooned I was in my suburban parish so asked to be moved. At that stage it was unthinkable to send a white woman to the townships so I was relocated to a working class, predominantly 'coloured' parish. 

There I would learn about the angst of folk caught in the middle of the new political dispensation. One in which they felt neither white enough nor black enough.

That wasn't the only complication. They were also high and hazy and my Anglican ignorance was laid so bare I nearly got killed. Of course you folk all know that at the end of  the Maundy Thursday service the altar is stripped and the aumbry is left open. I didn't and the prayer book made no mention. So like any good housekeeper I shut the door after the service. 

I'd just reached home when my very tall and volatile rector was hammering on my front door - the epitome of a towering rage. It seemed to escape his notice that I was in a training process and that he was supposed to teach me. I've never seen a man work so hard at resisting the temptation to do physical harm. 

We both recovered but it took a while.

I've just Googled and checked my prayer book - still nada about an open aumbry. Then again so many rituals are absorbed by osmosis if you grow up in the environment. This begs the question: Do the people in the pews understand the significance of the symbolic aspects of our liturgies? Or is it just comforting hocus pocus? 

BAREFOOT AND PREGNANT IN THE CHURCH

It would be the start of a long, sometimes painful, but mostly joyful journey beyond Anglicanism into priesthood. 

Priesthood! 

For heavens sake I didn't know what half the tools of  my new trade were called - the robes, the stuff on the altar, and architectural divisions of a church. I found organ music jarring, I needed a hymn book for the words. The rituals of the Eucharist were foreign. Fact is I hadn't grown up with the externals that are taken pretty seriously. 


There was much to learn  but I wasn't alone. So often when I'd seek an answer from someone in the pews, The answer would be 'I don't know'. 

(I've still never been involved with a Christingle service and have just added it to my bucket list.)  

Fact is, unless you attend an Anglican School quite a lot is likely to fly over your head. Much depends on how your Confirmation Classes are handled. Little teaching on Anglicanism is done from the pulpit. Yet one of the most valuable sermons I experienced was on the Eucharist and its various forms. That sermon effectively transformed the service from traditional ritual to a sacrament steeped in Scripture.

Years later I would work in a parish run by a superb rector who had joined our ranks via the Assembly of God Church. Both of us had such fun taking Anglicanism to Anglicans.

Back to the story. Fr Andrew advised me to discuss my apparent calling with my Spiritual Director and my rector. Their response was basically 'We were wondering when it would happen.'  

My old circle of friends were alarmed. There were not so subtle hints about a delayed menopause. Others were still convinced the church was after my money. My mother was bemused and my sons had learned that I tended to do my own thing.

Then I woke up and smelled the coffee. There was a huge difference between dabbling in religion and answering a call to vocation.  

I booked an appointment with my psychologist who I hadn't seen in more than a year. After the session she half joked  that I probably hadn't ended up in the Catholic Church because it didn't allow women to become priests and I wasn't great at guilt. Many a true word....

That same year my son and I visited Jerusalem where we had the wonderful privilege of staying at the Ecce Homo Convent. It is in the Old  City and run by Catholic nuns. During breakfast a young nun approached me and asked if I was a priest. Of course the answer was no but I had a toe in the water. 

The entrance to the Ecce Homo  Convent on the Via Dolorosa

I, in turn, was curious why she had asked. Turned out she had sensed my calling and that she was going through terrible angst because she believed she had a priestly vocation. But for her that door was firmly shut. It was a sharp reminder of how many Anglican women had gone through the same pain before our Church had changed its mind on the matter.

Later I would come to appreciate what a bitter and hard won battle had opened the door to my own ministry. Also how fortunate I was that our southern African Province was so ahead of many others. At the time of my calling the Church of England was still only allowing women to go as far as the diaconate  - the first step to priesthood. 

In  November 2012,  about 18 years after the Anglican Church in southern Africa decided women could become bishops,  Elinha Wamukoya of Swaziland (right) made history  as the first woman to be elected.  Shortly afterwards Margaret Vertue was made Bishop of False Bay.  

Back to my session with my psychologist (turned out she was Jewish).  I left her confident that, at the very least, I should be going through the formal discernment process.

Soon I was enlisted into a Fellowship of Vocation programme. Ours was a group of varying ages from gungho youth to widows and they were much holier than I was. Nonetheless there was a powerful common denominator  - we were all pretty desperate to crack the nod for priesthood. 

As such we were all vulnerable to the hurts that come with being at the bottom of a woodpile. 

The young men were being strongly advised to 'first go forth and experience the world' and I know we lost a couple of potentially good priests. Once you are on that corporate ladder with a family to keep it's hard to change track.  

All the women in my group were middle aged and most had gender war stories to tell. We would all be self-supporting and would often joke about being cheap labour.

The church may have officially approved the ordination of women but some rectors still had one foot in the dark ages. I remember how one tall friend was instructed to always stand a step below her rector because she made him look short! We were all studying for a Theology degree and most of us had had careers but too many were only allocated responsibilities that were seen as  'womanly' - the Church's version of barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

Mind you, I once attended a retreat that included rector's wives and several were in tears about what they were expected to handle at parish level. Professional accountants and even one engineer were expected to do 'womanly'  things in the parish. Yet in many cases those wives were the main bread winner.  (Just as we women would joke about being cheap labour full-time male priests joked about being 'kept men'.)

I had never had to kick my way through a glass ceiling and I was fortunate to be in a parish that empowered women. But that didn't mean I wouldn't get my share of hurts a bit further down the line.

Meanwhile, strategising was what I did for my business clients  and it seemed a good plan to serve on the Parish Council. I was duly elected and should have been great but I still cringe at the 'holy' platitudes I spouted during that year as I sought to convince the leadership that I was priestly material. 

I was awful and not re-elected the following year.     

PRIDE DOES COME BEFORE A FALL

Why, you should be asking, did this arrogant self centered woman with so much to criticize stick with the Anglican Church? Back in the day I'd have called it self-confidence and a questioning mind. 

Be consoled, pride does come before a fall. 

And I'll speed up the story because if I'm getting bored with it you must be too.

To sum up. I'd discovered Gerard Hughes and the God incidence factor. I was also reading a lot of Henry Nouwen. He probably appealed to me initially because I have a partially disabled son but the professor of Divinity, priest and author would greatly deepen my understanding of communion, community and ministry.  

It was an element I was enjoying during my more frequent visits to the Benedictine retreat house. (A couple of days with the sisters, no cell phone and just my navel to contemplate was a lot more regenerative than my expensive trips to  the health farm used to be.) 

Throw in a generous dose each of Benedictine and Ignatian Spirituality  and you've got the picture. A bit of a dog's breakfast but I was loving it. 

The,  during a visit to the convent, I had one of those inexplicable lightening bolt moments. Not wanted. Not expected. 

As usual Fr Andrew, the Community of the Resurrection monk who'd introduced Open Door Retreats to South Africa, was directing my retreat. He asked me to meditate on John 21:1-17. 
I don't think I'd read it before.

If you're one of those folk who can quote the bible chapter and verse, this is your aha moment but please don't get too excited. 

For those of you who don't have retentive memories, it tells of how one night several of the disciples go fishing with Peter. Early next morning they head for the shore with empty nets.  Jesus who has made a fire on the beach, calls out and encourages them to cast their net just one more time. The net was so filled with fish they couldn't haul it into the boat so they towed it.

It's the third time Jesus appears to them after his resurrection. Peter who had denied Jesus three times before the crucifixion is now asked three time if he loves Jesus. Of course we all know the answer to that. Yes, yes and yes.  

Effectively Peter is reinstated as head of the Church and told to get on with the job. 

I had, however, read the Matthew version of this story in which Jesus tells Peter and Andrew "I will make you fishers of men." 

So I put two and two together and got five. My imagination went into overdrive.

I had this urge to walk. Which I did, round and round the garden where the butterfly had helped me believe in God. I was filled with a deep driving sense that I was being called to priesthood.  Me  of all people!!  

When I shared this with Fr Andrew he gently brought me back to reality. I'd need to discern whether I'd had my Damascus moment or if it was just wishful thinking.

If you're not Anglican, I need to explain that we believe one is called by God into a vocation. It's not just something you decide to do. 

Well, being me, I very quickly 'discerned' that God was telling me to have one last glorious go at my successful business. I'd make enough money to be a full time self-supporting priest and probably be the first woman bishop in southern Africa. I'd fill his emptying churches.

What an idiot!

SAINTS PROSTITUTES AND BAD BRANDING

As a divorcee, a single mother, successful business woman and an adored only child brought up to believe I was a genius, I was soooo switched off by the church’s branding of biblical women. The tendency to place them in three categories – temptresses, saints and prostitutes.

There I was, 50 years old, voraciously reading and studying the Scriptures for the first time and sans the influence of Sunday School or decades of paternalistic preaching from the pulpit. It didn’t take long to pitch my tent in the Mary camp – having enjoyed domestic help all my life, there was no way I could identify with Martha.



However, as I looked to the Scriptures for inspiration I knew I wanted to do more than learn. My activist genes were kicking in. I was impressed by the likes of Rahab who hid two spies from the king’s men among the stalks of flax which were used for her rope-making business. I was inspired by Deborah the judge and gobsmacked by Jael who hammered and a tent peg through Sisera's temples and into the ground while he slept.

(Batwoman eat your heart out.)


Mary tame?
I still fume at how Mary, mother of Jesus, has been tamed by Church. Was she really a doe-eyed humble teacher’s pet with an electric light behind her head?



Or a feisty female who raised her kids in a village which would have called her first child a bastard. All this at a time when honour was everything and she was still a teenager. We get a glimpse of the Yiddishe mama at the wedding of Cana. As in ‘Boychick make wine.’

She’s there for her boy throughout the crucifixion and then mothers his disciples. Dare I suggest that she played a meaningful role in the Early Church, along with other women so often overlooked? Still in her late forties was she just a frail granny for young John to look after?

We insult women as much by presenting them as floppy saints as assuming, without evidence, that they were temptresses and prostitutes.

Just as David and Peter were complex humans so were the biblical women. The point is, they leaned in and made a difference.

The Magdalene conspiracy
It was in one of my New Testament assignments that I stumbled on the massive gender discrimination perpetrated by Church against Mary Magdalene.

It continues. Only last week I asked my congregation what she did for a living. Yes, you’ve guessed it. A prostitute! Who says? All I have ever found in the bible is the fact that Jesus chased seven devils out of her. And Luke 8:1-3 tells of how she, along with several other women supported Jesus’ travelling ministry from their resources.

She’s a main player during and after the crucifixion. She’s mentioned in all four gospels but none say she is a lady of the night. If she was, so what?

St Augustine, despite his weird ideas about marriage and sex, declared her the ‘apostle to the apostles.’ No matter what she was before she met Jesus, let’s acknowledge her leadership role.

Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox but let’s give the woman a break. Seems our Catholic cousins are just as remiss. There’s a great blog by Phyllis Zagano, a senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic studies, http://ncronline.org/blogs/just-catholic/what-would-mary-magdalene-do

First apostle?
While we’re at it, I’d like to see ‘the woman at the well’ honoured as an apostle, the definition being ‘an early follower of Jesus who carried the Christian message into the world’.

By the way, does anyone ever notice that Jesus doesn’t instruct her to leave her lover?

Although I jump ahead in my story I must mention the sage advice I received from Archishop Njongogonkulu Ndungane when I was placed in a Sowetan parish while training for the diaconate. ‘Whatever you do, don’t get on the wrong side of the Mother’s Union in your parish.’



August is Women’s month in South Africa. We honour the 20 000 women who marched on the Union Buildings in 1956 to protest against the abhorrent Pass Laws of our apartheid regime. It is also the month when we beat our breasts about gender inequality.

The month comes. The month goes.