8 May 2011
Today’s gospel: Luke 24:13-35
Mother’s day is not a church holiday. But, growing up in Illinois, almost Iowa (right on the border), it was a big church-going holiday. It was the day you pinned an orchid corsage on your mom, and your grandma, and you brought them to church, and then took them out to brunch. It was second only to Easter Sunday in attendance. I know, it’s hard to believe, here in Minnesota, where mother’s day is usually eclipsed by the Sunday of Fishing Opener.
Because my expectations of the day were shaped by geography, when I first came to Minnesota I had a bit of a culture shock. My first year in Fergus Falls, I suggested to the Christian Education Committee that the Sunday School children could sing to their mothers in church on Mothers’ Day. “Why?” the chairperson responded, “Nobody’s going to be there.”
They were as puzzled with me as I was with them. They were astonished that I could be so clueless.
Which is seems to be the attitude that the disciples took, when they spoke to the stranger on the road to Emmaus. You are coming from Jerusalem, and yet you haven’t heard about what happened? What’s the matter with you?
They seemed to have the same dismissive, incredulous attitude toward the women disciples. They reported that the women had ASTOUNDED them. The women went to the tomb, but the body wasn’t there, so they came back with this wild claim that they had seen angels, who told them that Jesus was alive. Naturally some men went to verify the claim, but they didn’t see any angels, or Jesus.
Those astounding women. Talking crazy-talk!
So I’ve been thinking about astounding women this week.
I received an e-mail notice about a union gathering this week, and that made me thing of an astounding woman named Mother Jones.[1] It’s not just a magazine, you know. The magazine was named for an actual person, Mary Harris Jones. She was a mother, once. But her husband and four children all died of yellow fever, in Memphis, in 1867. Then she moved to Chicago where, four years later, she lost everything in the Great Chicago Fire.
But from the ashes of her grief, she was reborn. She got involved in the labor movement, and worked for the abolition of child labor. She organized the United Mine Workers. Coal miners and their families called her “the miner’s angel” She called the miners as “her boys.” This bereaved mother became the mother of multitudes, she became ‘Mother’ Jones. Her detractors called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” which is hard to believe. In her photo, she looks more like Granny Clampit than, well, anyone who could be called “dangerous.”
She perhaps is best known for, “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.” It is one of my favorite quotations, because it really sums up the Jesus message. Following Jesus is not about the next life, it’s about sharing with God in the creation of the Kingdom, where justice and righteousness reigns. Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living. That’s one astounding woman.
Of course, being a UCC clergywoman, another astounding woman that comes to mind is Antoinette Brown Blackwell,[2] the first woman ordained by a major denomination in the United States, in 1853. When she nine years old, she joined the Congregational Church, and as a young woman began to feel that she was called to be a minister. So she went to Oberlin College, in Ohio, one of the few colleges that would admit women. She wasn’t allowed to earn a degree, but she was allowed to attend classes. After completing the coursework, she was called to be a pastor of a small church in South Butler, New York.
She didn’t stay in parish ministry long, but became part of the lecture circuit, preaching against slavery and for women’s suffrage. She married the brother of Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell the first women physicians in the United States, and she became the mother of five daughters. While raising her children she continued to write and publish articles on the cause of women’s rights.
Some astounding women are not famous at all. I have become familiar with one astounding woman through the writings of her son Ron Buford, a regular contributor to the Stillspeaking Daily Devotional, which you can have delivered to your e-mail box every day. Ron Buford is the guy who took the Gracie Allen quote, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma,” and built a promotional campaign around it.
[After Gracie’s death, her husband, George Burns, found a letter in her desk, that said, “Dear George, never place a period where God has placed a comma, Love, Gracie.”]
Ron has written several devotionals in which his mother “Queen Dorothy,” features prominently, and I want to share part of one with you. Ron wrote:
As a kid, I remember coming home one weekday evening to the smell of fried chicken, fried corn, greens, cornbread, candied yams, homemade peach cobbler. Oh my! The best china and silver were stacked on the table. I asked Momma (whom we affectionately called Queen Dorothy behind her back):
“Who’s coming?”
“Just us,” she said.
“Why the food and fine china?” I asked.
And as only Queen Dorothy could say, “Because we are the most important people to ever sit at this table. . . . Now set the table, boy.”
Wow! Momma knew Jesus’ sense of “now.” Even in those improving but still-troubling times of lynchings, church bombings, riots, marches, student protests, assassinations of our political leaders, my Dad’s humiliations as a Black man, and our not being able to live or go just anywhere in town.
That evening, we said grace over an extravagant meal in the spirit of Martin Luther King, who said, “I may not get there with you, but I’ve been to the mountaintop and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord.” Past, present, and future sat at our table that night, and when I remember it, I taste all three . . . . seasoned with Momma’s lesson from Jesus: Love the people in your life . . . right now.[3]
I’m sure we can all remember some astounding women in our lives. Women who delivered good news to us. Women who worked tirelessly to create a little paradise on earth. Astounding women, through whom we have come to know the grace of God.
Let us give thanks to God, for all these astounding women. Amen!
