A Sermon given by Revd Jan Kearton
"The feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary"
The Independent newspaper this week ran a cover picture that showed the balance between men and women in the boardrooms of British industry. There was a sea of blue symbols (men) with a few red ones (women). The government last week appointed Lord Mervyn Davies to investigate why there are only 120 individual women on boards, out of a total of 1,100 directors. Of those 120, only 20 of them – 6 per cent – are executive directors running the company on a daily basis, compared with the 309 who are male. There is still a long way to go before women are fully accepted as gifted and authoritative leaders of industry.
The confirmation group had a lovely morning at the Cathedral yesterday. During that visit, I was approached by a man who wanted to tell me that his daughter is a priest in Somerset and having a miserable time. She feels undervalued, unwanted and oppressed in her own church. The man wanted to know if that was my experience too. I told him that it wasn’t but I think that, whilst it may have helped him to feel a little less angry with the Church of England in general, it also made him feel even angrier about his own daughter’s plight. There is still a long way to go before women are accepted as gifted and authoritative leaders of the church.
In British industry, there is no shortage of gifted and highly experienced women in very senior posts just below board level. Part of the brief to Lord Davies’ enquiry will perhaps be to explain the failure of boards to appoint from amongst these women. In the church, there is no shortage of gifted and experienced women. However, unlike their female counterparts in industry, they may not apply to occupy the most senior roles of bishop and archbishop.
The July meeting of the General Synod of the Church of England approved the first stage of legislation to allow women to become bishops, and this legislation will now slowly find its way to dioceses for discussion and then an eventual vote will be taken in General Synod when the consultation period finishes. To be enacted, it will require a two-thirds majority in all three houses – bishops, clergy and laity – and that will not be a simple matter. We will at some stage have our chance at Deanery Synod to express our feelings about that legislation through our Deanery Synod representative.
Today is the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Gospel reading is the Magnificat, Mary’s great shout of joy. God chose her, a woman, as a partner in his greatest act of mercy since the creation. The child who was to be the Saviour of the world, the most wonderful expression of God’s own Being, was to be grown in her body, nurtured, taught, loved and supported by her from conception to adulthood. Hers were the arms that would cradle and comfort him, hers was the mind that would form his character and hers were the eyes that would weep as he died on the cross.
If a woman was good enough for God as a partner in such a remarkable enterprise, if a woman was good enough for God as the pattern of formation for his Son what, I want to ask, has gone wrong? Perhaps the clue lies in the rest of Mary’s song of justice, a song of both surprise and delight that God is able to act in a new way through her. Perhaps Mary, like some women of our own time, didn’t expect to be chosen as a player in great plans. This great outpouring is a realisation of real change and of justice begun to be enacted – the justice of God’s blessing on her as a woman for all time, the justice of the scattering of the kind of pride that inhibits God’s work in the world, the justice of the overturning of those who hold all the power and the lifting up of those who presently don’t. It certainly is a woman’s song.
I’m sure that there are in North Yorkshire local companies in which women can be employed, flourish and rise to the very top. I know that this parish is a very good place to be a woman. Ripon and Leeds is a very good diocese in which to be a woman priest. But we should not let the goodness of our own situation conceal from us the injustices that the world still offers to women in this culture and so many other cultures around the world.
Mary stands as a great and enduring reminder that God uses women to bring his plans to perfection just as he uses men. Mary’s ‘yes’ to God reminds us that women are fully capable of entering into roles of their own choosing, roles that demand responsibility and perseverance. St Paul reminds us elsewhere that in the new kingdom of Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, for all are equal in the sight of God. The Spirit calls both men and women to know God as ‘Daddy, Father’, to become his children, to move from the lesser role of slave to the honour of being a child of God.
On this her feast day, we thank God for the gift of Mary and we remember her call for justice, echoing still down the years. May the time come when the world gives women the same degree of trust and respect that God gave to her. May the world come to know the blessing of women, conferred by God on Mary for all time. May women be given the same freedom that God offered to Mary – freedom to choose, to determine their lives with confidence and dignity, to be full partners in every good and rewarding aspect of life. AMEN.