When I mentioned to my spiritual director that we are celebrating our 8th anniversary as a community this weekend he said, “Wow, eight years!” Then he asked “Do you feel God’s gratitude?” I’ve come to expect such a typically Jesuit question from a Jesuit director. Still, it took me by surprise. “God’s gratitude?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “God couldn’t do this without YOU.” So I sat with that as he softly said, with great tenderness, “God is grateful to you.”
As I’ve taken this statement into prayer and turned it over in my mind I’ve come to see it as the theme of our 8th anniversary. God is grateful to YOU—all of you—for living this prophetic witness of inclusive acceptance and whole-hearted welcome of everyone—here and now—not outside of but WITHIN the Roman Catholic Church.
We wouldn’t be here without God, of course, but there is something radical-sounding in the assertion that God couldn’t do some things without US! Without us, though, God has no feet on the ground, no prophetic voice, no hands or words to comfort the sorrowful or encourage the fearful. Without us, there would be no Sophia Christi. The prophetic witness of this community wouldn’t exist. There would be no radically inclusive and welcoming Catholic Church here in Portland/Eugene where everyone is welcome at the table, whatever their background, and where a woman’s call to priesthood and ordination is verified, validated and celebrated. God can’t do this without us, all of us. God can’t do this without YOU!
God depends on you and me to do the work we are called to do, to be the worker in the vineyard, the prophet delivering the message, the voice in the desert, the baker of bread and the tender of sheep. God calls, invites, asks hard things of us sometimes, and when we say ‘yes,’ like Mary and Elijah—when we accept the risks, go through labor, deliver the baby or the unpopular message—when we show up and do what we are asked to do—God is grateful, because we might just as easily say ‘no’.
We are co-creators with God in building the reign of heaven on earth. We show up with all our flaws and fears, give the best we have to offer in the moment, get tired, become discouraged, convince ourselves we’re the wrong person for the job, find a broom tree, lay down and go to sleep. When we wake up we see some bread, water. Famished, we eat. Eventually we find our strength and, with a little inspiration, our will to go on. God is right there, with the bread, the water, inspiring us with the Spirit of call and journey. When we finally get up and take that next step, God is grateful.
God is grateful to you and me for creating and sustaining this community of WELCOME in the midst of a largely conflicted and often unwelcoming church. As Sophia Christi, you and I stretch to include everything and everyone in all of God’s creation, which is a radical thing to do. That larger, universal reality stretches us, too. It stretches our minds as well as our hearts, and urges us toward a new theology of presence and being that even our theologians can barely wrap their heads around.
So, to ground us as we walk that sometimes painful and always risky path God lays before us, we return again and again to words and stories like the ones we encounter in today’s readings. We return to the bedrock of our Jewish ancestry that anchors us in a covenantal relationship with the One and only God. We return to the teachings and ministry of Jesus who, knowing THAT God, emptied himself of his very selfhood so that God could shine through his being unobstructed and undisturbed. And we return to the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, contemplating their meaning as we gather around the table to celebrate and remember who we are.
Who we are is CHURCH, part of the ‘Body of Christ.’ And because we are part of that extensive, cosmic Body, the entire church is stretched, renewed and challenged by our presence. We humbly and courageously claim what we are today—the Church here in this place. Through US welcome, mercy, forgiveness and compassion flows as an open-hearted expression of the church itself.
Though it is hard to imagine, let alone believe, that what we do here every month has any larger significance or any effect, really, on the church or the world as a whole, our witness DOES anchor and advance the vision and promise of Vatican II. It affirms the reality of women’s ministry and priesthood, and focuses attention on Church as the People of God. In doing those things, it undercuts the notion that the hierarchy alone represents and speaks for the entire Body of Christ, the Church. And that, in itself, is a powerful witness. It is prophecy.
As we pause to remember our beginnings and reflect on our journey together, we might identify with the exhaustion of Elijah, or with the young church at Ephesus needing encouragement to be kind, compassionate and forgiving of those who marginalize, refute or ignore our prophetic voice. We hear Jesus telling the Temple authorities of his day to stop murmuring among themselves so they can hear God’s invitation in his words, and we pray that the Temple authorities of our own day will open their ears to God’s summons in the message we are called to deliver with our lives.
As we celebrate our 8th anniversary and begin our ninth year as a community, let’s pause to experience God’s gratitude for our continuing ‘yes’ in spite of any weariness of body or spirit we might feel. Let’s join hearts and humbly assume, once again, our role as a prophetic voice within the institutional church. And as we come to the table to eat and drink the food God provides, let us remember who we are as the Body of Christ, and go from this place as prophets renewed, ready to serve wherever we are sent.
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