Sermon by Lindon Eaves, Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, 2010.

"If I were a rich man,
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
All day long I'd biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man."

So sings Tevye, the poor, hard-working, holy Jew at the start of "Fiddler on the Roof."  It's a wonderful dream.   "If I were a rich man....what would it be like?"

It's a really a question about what Tevye cares about most in the world.  If I were a rich man...if I didn't have to work hard, how would I like my life to look?"  It reminds me of the T-shirt "Lord, just let me win the lottery so I can show it won't make any difference."

Tevye's answer is the answer of every holy Jew.  His answer is:  "If I were rich I would study the Torah.  I would spend my hours studying holy wisdom, the lamp under my feet and the light before my path."

He sings:

"If I were rich, I'd have the time that I lack
To sit in the synagogue and pray,
And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall,
And I'd discuss the learned books with the holy men
Seven hours every day--
That would be the sweetest thing of all...
Oy!"

Tevye was a holy Jew.   He dreamed of life in the Kingdom of God.   The final Sabbath, when all men were free from labor:  an age where there was "neither sorrow, nor sighing but life everlasting."  It is "pura vida - pure life - LIFE as it should be."  It was the life of a rich man in perfect relationship with God and those around him.    The luxury of studying the law, getting inside the head of Moses, was the most beautiful luxury of all.   And it was a luxury that Tevye was denied because he was poor. Yet even a few minutes with scripture, a few moments at the feet of Moses, were for Tevye a taste of what life would be like when the Messiah came, when he and his people would be free, when creation was finally complete and could rest, with its creator, on that final Sabbath.

To be forced to live in poverty was to be denied access to the Sabbath, to be excluded from the Kingdom of God.   That's why Amos was so angry with the rich people of his day.   They were rich at the cost of the poor.   They denied the poor there opportunity to taste life in God's kingdom.  The Sabbath was merely a nuisance to the rich.  They wanted it to be over so they could get back to making money- making the pint smaller and the price higher. 

When Jesus comes, one of the first stories we hear about him, in Luke's gospel, is that story in chapter 2 when he scared his parents by slipping off to the temple to do what every holy Jew would love to do "Have a seat by the Eastern wall" debating the Holy Torah with the elders and rabbis.   "After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions."  (Luke 2:42).

Jesus was acting out the dream of life in the kingdom of God.  He was acting out Tevye's dream of the ultimate luxury of life close to Moses, studying and debating the Torah, the "lively oracles of God."   This is the richest life that could be conceived - "pura vida" - a life close to the Torah is a life close to God.  It is the ultimate Sabbath rest.    That is why Amos is so angry.  Fine palaces and ivory beds are not what life with God is like.   The highest dream of human life is to be with the people of God, meeting about God and meeting with God.  To put it bluntly, that is the peak of culture and civilization.  Everything else is directed to that end and to the end of making that dream possible for people like Tevye.

But what about Tevye's wife?  What about Golde?    Tevye's song continues:

"I see my wife, my Golde, looking like a rich man's wife,
With a proper double chin,
Supervising meals to her heart's delight."

So, Tevye's dream of riches has him in the synagogue debating the Torah with his friends while Mrs. Tevye is back home in the kitchen of organizing the servants while they cook the dinner and wash the dishes.  I'd be so lucky!  I wonder what Golde would think about it?   Is this also the Kingdom of God for her?

In 1974 the Episcopal Church in the USA ordained the first 11 women to the priesthood in Philadelphia. They did this against the current Law of the Church.  Ralph Bayfield, the previous rector of St. Thomas' took part in that ordination.  In 1977, the ordination of women became officially enshrined in the Canon Law of the Episcopal Church.

Not so in England.  A year later, 1978, the General Synod of Church of England voted not to ordain women.   One of the leaders of the opposition movement was Dr. Graham Leonard, Bishop of Truro, later Bishop of London.   When he retired, became a Roman Catholic priest.  In a passionate address to the 1978 Synod 1978 he pleaded:    "I believe that the scriptures speak of God as Father.   The Christ was incarnate as a male, because in the order of creation headship and authority is symbolically and fundamentally associated with maleness.  For the same reason I believe that the highest vocation of any created being was given to a woman, Mary, because symbolically and fundamentally the response of sacrificial giving is associated with femaleness."

A very convenient model if you're male:  God designed men to symbolize being in charge and he designed women to symbolize all the sacrifice.    It is hard to imagine it is only 30 years ago.  There was a loud cry of "B....s....!" from many theologians, most of them women.  The Jewish theologian Judith Plaskow wrote a blistering critique of this trend in Christian theology.  In effect she said that it is might be OK for males to learn to make sacrifice because they aren't used to it, but women have nothing to sacrifice because what you have never had you cannot give up.     

If you use biology and the past to define the future of humanity you are selling humanity down the river and limiting the scope of what the Holy Spirit can do with evolution, history and culture.

The issue came up again in England at the synod of 1992.  A witness describes a speech given by another Bishop, David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham on November 11. He was the Bishop whom Margaret Thatcher described as "The cuckoo in the Establishment nest."    It is said that he had tears in eyes as he spoke:  "What an offense to God it is that we are discussing whether half the human race is capable of representing Christ."    So the Church of England finally voted f to ordain women to the priesthood. 

                What would Jesus do?   What kind of a kingdom did he envisage for women?   What would he have thought about Bishop Leonard's speech?    Did Jesus think at the moment of creation God designed men for eternity in the temple and designed women for eternity in the kitchen (or worse)?   Is it written for all time simply by the lottery of whether the X or Y sperm scrambles first to the egg?

It is Luke who gives us a clue to what Jesus thought.  Maybe about 15 years after his day in the Temple, Jesus showed up in a nameless village in Palestine to eat dinner with the sisters Mary and Martha.    You know the story.  We just read it.  "Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

I never liked the story because it didn't seem fair.  I though Jesus' response to Martha was a bit snotty.  If I were Martha I'd have been mad as hell.   It doesn't seem very "Son-of-God-like".   To be honest, I'd much rather preach on Amos than this morning's gospel.   

I said this to Sue over our own Sabbath dinner at Tastebuds on Friday.   Her response was "There is not a woman at St. Thomas's who won't be expecting a sermon on this gospel Sunday."

She's right, of course.     In this story, the male Jesus who started out his adolescence studying the Torah with the other males at the feet of Moses in the temple is now himself a new Moses, a sign of the start of Messiah's kingdom.  Jesus was the sign of "Pura vida", "Pure life".  Life as it should be.    And in that Kingdom there is no male nor female, Jew nor Greek.  In that Kingdom Mary can sit with Tevye at the feet of Moses.  Golde can, with Mary, become a scholar of the Torah. 

In that living room, in that nameless village in the boonies of first century Palestine, Mary and Jesus sowed the seeds of a quiet revolution. You can argue that the Church spent almost 2000 years since digging them up and spreading herbicide.   Mary put aside her apron, left the pans in the sink, steeped out of the kitchen and came to sit at the feet of Moses.    She came to sit in the Temple.  She entered the Kingdom of pure life.   The seventh day of creation, the day of Sabbath rest with God, was breaking into human history and culture.  In that moment, Mary became free. She entered eternal life:  "pura vida".   In that moment the seeds of God's kingdom were being sown, the Messiah was coming into the world.