SERMON - “ FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS”

Scripture: Esther 4: 9-17 July 25, 2021

(Celebrating the 65th Anniversary of Full Clergy Rights for UM Clergywomen)Foundry UMC, Washington, DC

There are times when the words in a letter are burned into our memories. Such a letter to me got lost between the move of my first and second pastoral appointments. I had recently been ordained an Elder in Full Connection in the Florida Conference. I suppose I reasoned at the time that it didn’t matter anymore if I kept the letter. But it did matter because I can still quote it today - 47 yrs ago! - from the Chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry in 1974 - “Dear Charlene, You seem to be qualified for ministry, but because you are a woman, there might be issues in the future........ if you think you have a call to ministry, you could try to exercise it in another annual conference.” At the time I received the letter, it still didn’t sink in that I had been turned down royally, and the kind suggestion by the Registrar was to tell me to look elsewhere if I insisted on pursuing my calling. I began to hear all the negative voices in my head. Was I really called? Did I have the capacity to be a pastor? Can I finish seminary? I’m a

failure. The endless loop continued in my head. But more importantly, what was God saying to me? After crying all the way home on my flight from central Fla to the Chicago airport, and then getting to Evanston where I was a student at GETS, I was pretty much paralyzed, and not able to discern God’s voice or presence.

My soul was wounded and my spirit was crushed. But right away, I began to hear other voices speaking to me: from seminary students and faculty, from church friends, from my pastor, from my husband, and especially other women on the path to ordination.

“Don’t give up. Try again even if they said NO to you. Come to my Ann. Conf - we will take you. And most poignant from a professor - don’t let the church rob you of your calling. DON’T LET THE CHURCH ROB YOU OF YOUR CALLING! It’s a long story with several chapters, but suffice it to say that in another year, I applied again to my home conference and was accepted for Deacon’s orders and my first appointment as an Associate pastor. All because a Path was opened up to me by prayer, advocacy, a visit on our seminary campus by a Fla. Leader, a plea from me for another chance, a DS and a Sr. Pastor willing to give me a try and support me, offering me a place to serve. As it turned out, I would be the first female pastor in the Fla. Conference to be appointed to a local church, the first female Elder, the first female DS, and later, much later, the first female bishop in the SEJ.

When a discernment and support team accompanied me for a year as I was being called to the episcopacy, our theme for my candidacy was FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS. The SEJ had yet to elect a female bishop after 4 quadrenniums of effort to elect gifted women candidates. In a book titled “Women Bishops of The United Methodist Church” Bishop Sharon Rader and Professor Margaret Ann Crain interviewed all the living women bishops of our denomination in 2019. In some way or many ways, all the women bishops have carried the unique and heavy burden of being the first woman - to serve in an appointment, to serve on a Cabinet, to birth a baby in an appointment, to lead on a Conference staff, to lead a delegation to Gen. Conference, and to be elected as bishops. Bishop Judy Craig, who is now in the Communion of Saints, said “When our dust is dust, they’ll remember us as those who did the first thing.” Bishop Susan Morrison stated, “To be claimed for a time such as this in the role I was in and the ability to touch lives is unbelievable. I’m awestruck.” Being firsts also meant being under constant scrutiny of what they said, how they looked, how they led, whether they could preach, how they presided and on and on. The reality is we were all under the stress of charting a new course as cl