Sermon for March 7, 2021 - The Third Sunday in Lent - Year B - The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello

Today we commemorate the life, witness and ministry of Barbara Clementine Harris.  This coming Saturday, March 13th will mark the one year anniversary of her death, at the age of eighty-nine.

Barbara Harris was the first woman, and first black woman, ordained a bishop anywhere in the worldwide anglican communion.  She was elected in the fall of 1988 by the Diocese of Massachusetts and consecrated the following February at Hynes Convention Center in front of eight thousand people.  Perhaps you were one among them.

The camp our young people attend and where we hold our fall Parish Retreats bears her name.  The portrait on the cover of this morning’s worship bulletin hangs in the main lodge of the camp, a reminder that Bishop Haris is watching, so you’d better have fun.

We commemorate Bishop Harris simply because hers was a life worth remembering and a life worthy of emulation.  The reason we commemorate her here this morning is to join in an effort to add Bishop Harris to the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints.  To be included requires passage at two successive meetings of the Episopal Church, which occurs every three years.  One measure used to decide whether a person is worthy of inclusion is evidence of “local observance” of their life.

So our commemoration today will be noted and sent to the Diocese, to be included with the written testimony of all those communities across the church who are remembering her this week.

I am not a Bishop Barbara Harris historian.  There is plenty written about, and by, her.  I do not wish to regale you with the dozens of “Bishop Barbara stories” I know, and not because many of them include language I can’t repeat in church.  I am unbelievably blessed to be one of the thousands who had a chance to know her personally, to spend time sitting at her feet and learning from her, had more than one occasion to wipe tears of laughter from my face listening to her, and joy to walk with her one year, arm in arm, through the streets of Boston marching in the Boston GLBTQ Pride parade as she did every year.

This morning, I want to commemorate her, not merely as local celebrity or even as a bishop we all knew and loved.  This morning, I want to hold her and her life up as a lens through which we get to see a bit of the vision God has for the world God has made.  Her life lived was nothing short of the Gospel, that is, the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Not everyone was thrilled at Bishop Harris’ consecration.  Women had only been allowed to be ordained priest for little over a decade when she allowed her name to be considered for Bishop.  There were many in the church who saw, in Bishop Harris, the end of the church as they knew it, and they were very, very afraid.

If you look at pictures of Bishop Harris’ consecration you will see that there are two acolytes, one in front of her, and the other behind walking in procession.  These were not acolytes from a local church, representing the Diocese.  They were members of the Boston police department and they were wearing bulletproof vests under their robes.  Bulletproof vests Bishop Harris declined to wear.

The stories of harassment and threats are plentiful.  She was forced to live in a hotel near the cathedral and have a security escort between the two.  She was shamed; for being a woman, for being black, for being divorced and for lacking a seminary degree (though she possessed more theological training than I will ever know).

What makes someone want to go through all that?  A bishop in the Episcopal Church has some power and the position holds a bit of prestige, but enough to risk your life and bear unceasing harassment?  Enough to heal the memory of a white bishop wearing gloves when he needed to put his hands on you at your confirmation because he did not want to touch a black child directly?  Enough to be the only woman, and only black woman at every gathering of bishops she would attend for years, and the isolation and intimidation all that would accompany such occasions?  Apparently, Bishop Barbara thought so.

Maybe she thought, as the adage goes, “you either get a seat at the table, or you’ll end up on the menu.”

A dear friend and colleague of mine preached a beautiful sermon several years ago about making room at the table, rather than limiting the number allowed to sit around it.  In his sermon he talked about his grandmother’s dining room table, at which I have had the blessing to sit.  This table had many leaves, more than the usual.  It could go from a table that comfortably sat 4, to seating 18 or 20.  As the number of attendees increased, leaf after leaf would be added, and the table expanded, until there was room for all.  It was a beautiful image of the kingdom of God.

No such hospitality was extended to Barbara Harris.  

Turns out, some tables need to be expanded.  And some need to be flipped over.

In today’s Gospel from John, Jesus enters the temple and sees the sacred place where God’s people were meant to come and pray, turned into a marketplace.  The animals being sold were for ritual sacrifice, and the poor would have a hard time coming up with the money to purchase the necessary offering, limiting those who could to those of means.  The moneychangers exchanging local money into money they could use for their purchases at rates that were exploitative. 

Jesus takes one look at this complete perversion of Jewish practice and unleashes the wrath of the Holy Spirit.  Anyone who insists that the God of the Old Testament is the angry God and the God of the New Testament is the God of love and peace ought to sit with this passage for a bit.  Jesus, the Son of God, has a whip in his hands and fury in his heart.

The religious authorities refused to make the table big enough for everyone to have a place at it, so Jesus flipped it over.

Bishop Harris spent her time as Bishop working to make the table of the church bigger.  She worked tirelessly to call out the sexism, and racism built into the church and she was unrelenting in casting a vision for the full inclusion of GLBTQ+ people in the life and ministry of the church long before it was cool.

That is why we commemorate her life and ministry this morning.  Her life was a witness to the truth that sometimes, tables need to be flipped so they can be broken.  Once broken, they can be put back together, bigger, better, with room for all.

When we examine our lives, as we are called to do during Lent, let us examine what tables we are trying desperately to get a seat at.  Like the junior high school cafeteria, the “cool” tables in our lives might not be the tables where God needs us.

Maybe we shouldn’t be working so hard to get a seat at a table Jesus would have flipped over.

Or maybe, like Bishop Barbara, we can follow Jesus' example by expanding the tables that can be expanded and flipping the ones that need to be flipped.

As I read recently, if we want to ask “What Would Jesus Do?”  remember that turning over tables and using a whip to drive people out is within the historical realm of possibility.”

Asking “What would Bishop Barbara Do?” might just lead to a table overturned; a table rebuilt and expanded with the leaves of justice, mercy, and love making it bigger; making it a table where there is now, Praise God, room for all.

AMEN.

© 2021 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello