Every December when I read Luke’s account of Mary and
Elizabeth I think to myself, “Here goes God again pullin’ out the big
guns. Y’all men just step aside and let
the sisters take over. If it’s gonna get
done, then the women gonna do it.” Then
I start thinking of some special people with whom I have had the privilege of
sharing in ministry, and they are women who had seen difficult days but through
whom God worked to build his people up.
I think of Francis Pugh. She was a widow, in her 80’s, thyroid problem
that caused her eyes to bulge right out there at you. She spoke with this wonderful south-central
Virginia southern accent that was high class Southern not no Gomer Pyle. She was a resident at the Masonic Home of
Virginia in Richmond, VA. My last two
years of Seminary I conducted their Sunday evening chapel service. Frances played the organ and directed the
little choir of about 10 people which included Mr. Hesslebeck who was all but
deaf as well as tone deaf but loved to sing loudly. He was a real Southern gentleman himself; a
former schoolteacher and always wore a suit jacket and a bow tie. Francis always kept me informed of the
pastoral needs and who needed prayers and there was frequently a “Randy, if
you’ve got a minute could we just go see...”. She was an “information hub”, up
on things in the way people we would call gossips are up on things, but she
wasn’t a gossip. She was full of
compassion and believed in prayers and visits, and so she did a lot of that
herself and so knowledge of needs just came her way. She also organized the Wednesday night Bible
Study.
During my two years of conducting that chapel service
attendance went from 20 something to 80 something. That’s 300% growth if you’re interested. Francis’ little choir doubled in size. The service was so important to the residents
that the Home did some remodelling of the sanctuary to accommodate more wheel
chair space. Part of the growth came
from the addition of small houses for active life-styler’s to occupy. But, the real reason was Frances. She was always inviting people to come, new
residents and old, and they came and they enjoyed it and found it helped. I preached resurrection and hope to people
who had made their last move and many were just waiting to go home while enduring
those difficult challenges the aging brings. God hadn’t forgotten them. In the midst of
them God had put Frances, who for the last ten years of her life, herself
suffering the aches and pains and heartbreaks that accompany aging, she just
wanted her neighbours to know God was in their midst.
In my first church, in the little town of Marlinton,
WV there were several women who kept that church thriving: Jane Price Sharp,
Ruth Morgan, Francis Graham, Louise Burns, Jean Thomas, Demetria Moore, Jaynell
Graham, Annette Graham, and more. I
would not have wound up in that church had not Jane Price Sharp felt I was the
one. She lost her husband in WWII and
never remarried. She raised three
children, served in the State legislature, and ran the local paper. She was one of the most generous people who
ever lived. Jaynell, well I have to be
careful what I say about her. She’s
still alive and might find out. She lost
her husband to physician-assisted opioid addiction. She fought a long, hard losing battle on
that. Without her help and insight into
people I likely would not have been able to negotiate the “politics” of my
first charge. She is also a very
involved and influential person in the area around Marlinton. If
anything is getting done, she’s likely got a hand in it.
In my church in Caledon, I’ll only mention one
woman. We were a small fellowship and
men and women both carried the load.
Doreen Shackleton was a notable constant support. She went through a divorce and raised four
children on her own. She was faithful to
Jesus and to his church and probably the longest active member at Claude. Due to her longevity there she always
reminded us that when we would lose a person or a family at Claude due to death
or moving or whatever, that God would always bring someone in to take their
place. For the most part that held
true. There was a time in my ministry
there that she kept telling me that she kept telling people in the church, “The
best minister you can have is the one God has given you right now.” After I had been there about two years and
people weren’t flocking in by the droves as was hoped and in those days the
tendency was to blame the minister, there was some grumbling. Doreen was an avid supporter of the one she
knew was called there. Doreen was also
the one who kept me abreast of the pastoral needs in the congregation. It surprised me that in her last two years
she kept her struggle with cancer so secret.
She died this past August. I
unfortunately had a funeral that day and could not go to hers.
All these women were/are blessed as Elizabeth said of
Mary. “Blessed is she who believed that
there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord”. The grace of the Lord was/is also on these
women as the angel Gabriel said to Mary, “Greetings, favoured one. The Lord is with you.” The Lord was/is with these women and worked
his grace through them. Being blessed,
being favoured didn’t mean that their lives were free from suffering because
they all suffered. It meant the Lord was
with them through their sufferings and they knew it and they kept faith and
were faithful and felt a particular urging to be involved pastorally in the
life of their churches. Jesus worked
through them.
In this church there are blessed women, favoured by
the Lord. Women who, like Elizabeth, hold
in themselves the faithfulness of many generations of God’s people and are
bringing it to fulfillment. There are
also young women like Mary who will see the birthing of a new way of being
church in these days when the institution of the Church is waning. Today women are taking a greater, upfront
role in ordained ministry. Our
seminaries are turning out more women for ministry than men and we would be
dolts if we didn’t admit that this is the Lord’s doing. The expert’s are wondering what effect the
“feminization” of the Church will have in our culture. Most are expecting a more compassionate and
less political Church to arise, a more Christ-like church that functions less
like a hierarchical empire. In my own
journey in ministry, I have found that women more than men have been the
pastoral backbone of the ministry that Christ Jesus has done in the churches
that I have served. And so it is now in
this church, so thanks to all the sisters who are getting it done. I won’t name names, but do know I am
appreciative. Amen.
