The Sermon . . .

Bishop Gerald Beaumont

It has been put to me, that men simply cannot do two things at the same time. I hear it a lot, and I am a bit inclined to believe it on the basis alone of my own incapacities. Especially in the region of the refrigerator!

“Keep the logic proceeding in one direction” seems to be the mode with which men are most comfortable. It has its virtues, of course.

But at its most extreme - one close to me has suggested - breathing and driving at the same time could be a little perilous.

Personally, I think that is going a little too far, and we all know that it is dangerous to generalise.

Life is too complex for judgements to be made on that basis. However, it does seem to me that an open mind and an open heart, at the same time, are too much for most men to bear. It just is too many fuzzy and uncertain bits at work together.

Thank God, then, that the solidly male band of disciples - at least as reported - were surrounded by some very significant women, who were able to draw together, the mystery of the Resurrection, and enter so completely, and trustingly into it.

So let me offer this morning a particular appreciation of some women who have dared much, and taught me more.

This is a day for the appreciation of such heroes. There is a thread that holds them together. You will, I am certain, be able to add to their number out of your own experience. Let me start with my Grandmother, Eleanor. A most uncommon woman whom I have probably extolled before in this place, and likely will again. She deserves it!

Born at the end of the 19th Century, she was, for many years, bound by the constraints of that Victorian era. Married early, she bore five children and was a compliant wife, to a demanding and severe husband.

Eleanor was a gifted musician, but knew little encouragement after her marriage, and supplemented her family’s income as a seamstress.

I think her father was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but it seems to have fallen out, and she mostly knew hard graft, with an increasingly locked-away talent.

I suppose a revolution was inevitable, and it came when her last child was born. She had had enough of oppression, and burst scandalously free of the marital bonds, and found herself a new life.

The details are sketchy, because she was regarded - because of all of this - as a rather dubious piece of work in my family.

I remember her as a somewhat intimidatingly severe-looking figure, always dressed in blue, tearing into my child-life and out again. Off on another mysterious mission. Making up for so much lost time.

Terrorising preachers in great Cathedrals. Reported in the newspapers as the “woman in blue”, who would pop up anywhere, and everywhere, to challenge the slack and careless academic or cleric. She sits on my shoulder still when I write and preach!

And then that great burst of inspiration was over, and I knew her, in later years, as the gentlest, most loving creature. A very old lady, who stroked the soft cheeks of my daughters with evident love and appreciation. Grateful for any small act of care, and content with very little.

Her picture sits on the window sill of my study, and I give thanks to God for he most every day.

Then there is Rosalie, my aboriginal friend, whom many of you have met. I interviewed her before you in this place, a year or more ago.

What a woman! In her youth, star of the ground-breaking movie: “Jedda”, an Arrente woman, fluent in the language of her people, an elder and spokesperson for indigenous people over much of this land.

I am much in awe of her, and her considerable capacities. A woman who struggles to be heard by the male elders of her people, but one who will never leave them. She has borne much pain, as she has striven ever to be faithful to her culture, whilst coming to terms with the realities of 21st Century Australia.

She can, and does, speak anywhere and everywhere. She speaks with authority, and she speaks also out of her deep Christian convictions. She looks for, and expects understanding and justice for a people who have fallen off the political agenda in this country.

She becomes older and more tired but - working harder than ever - she looks anxiously for others to take up the work on behalf of her people. She prays for others to listen to her, and to see what she sees. She has a vision for her people and it will not let her go.

Then there is the Magdalene, the fantasy figure of so many depictions in art and literature. A woman fallen into the imaginations of men, who deal with her out of many, sometimes prurient, and ill-supported speculations; the redhead, reformed prostitute, saved - don’t you know! - by her love of the right man!

From the Da Vinci Code, to the poems of the otherwise great George Herbert, the woman of Jesus and the Garden, is cast in a range of inadequate roles that rarely come even close to capturing the heart of the matter.

You have heard again this morning, the deeply moving story of the encounter of Mary with Jesus in the Garden of the Resurrection. That ought to be enough for us to understand that most depictions of the woman give us little hint of the profound love that Mary felt for her Lord.

What a little journey it is from that appreciation, to a very modern, and trivializing assumption, that they were lovers, or even married. Personally, I don’t care if they were or not. It matters little against this great miracle of a much deeper revelation.

Her Lord had certainly died, and yet was now most wonderfully alive. And she was the first witness of an event which would turn the world upside down.

Needless to say, however intimate that Resurrection encounter was, it would need the seal of approval of the men! The also-ran disciples, locked up away from any likelihood of immediate persecution.

A little harsh, perhaps, but they really weren’t much around!

Peter and John ran to the tomb on the startling word of Mary, and then they ran back again. Missing the crucial encounter that was, alone, to be the delight of Mary.

What a poignant moment this is in the whole story of the people of God.

Overwhelmed by a doubled sense of loss, Mary still looks to make sense of things, until she hears the transforming word; her name again in the mouth of her beloved Lord. “Mary”!

That redeeming, hope-filled, breath-of-a-name, energises and certifies a great wonder which sits at the heart of our faith as Christians.

Really dead, and now, really alive!

The window into eternity is, for a moment, wide open. We live in eternal life now, and God has risen above all that we are, to draw us into all that we may become.

Mary did not make any of this happen, but she did have the courage to meet the mystery of Jesus with an open heart. In this way, God could get in to the very place that God will never enter uninvited.

My beloved Grandmother, Eleanor, finally cast off all that bound her, and embraced the dangerous journey of life with her heart wide open. Anything then was possible.

Strong and commanding Rosalie, the often unsung hero of her people, with her heart also wide open, hears the whispered word of vocation, that comes from the Lord of her life, and leaves her loving and vulnerable, bearing the needs of her people.

The most arresting reality in this time is that it re-presents a God who also offered - and offers - us a heart, wide open, and vulnerable. Jesus is the living, dying and risen sign of that astounding truth.

But for it to fill us with new life and courage to be, we must respond with open hearts, too.

For some, that is easier than others, and you know who I mean.

Look to the women of our company. Always last at the cross, and first at the Resurrection.