A transcription of the sermon given by the Rev. Winnie Varghese, Rector of St. Luke's Church in Atlanta, at the ordination and consecration of the Rt. Rev. Julia E. Whitworth on Oct. 19, 2024, appears below.
Good morning. Like you, I too am wondering why I am standing here and he is sitting there [gesturing to Presiding Bishop Michael Curry], but here we are. My name is Winnie, and I bring you greetings from St. Luke's in Atlanta, a mighty witness to God's mercies on Peachtree Street, and if Delta ever decides for you that Atlanta is on your way home, please do come see us. Early voting has begun with great enthusiasm in Georgia, and we ask for your prayers and pray for you in the days ahead.
I am so honored to be with you to celebrate Julia Whitworth and the great commitment that she makes today with you towards God's future here in Massachusetts. This diocese is such an important witness to the entire Episcopal Church, to God's wild, wonderful hope- and justice-filled future. So thank you.
You have elected one with a directness and moral clarity that matches your history. I don't know if you know that about her yet. In standing here I feel the close presence of some who have served this diocese and also marked my life and yours, Barbara Harris, Tom Shaw, Ed Rodman. We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses this morning, Julia, encircled, and I hope you feel that.
The president of Union Seminary in New York where Julia and I both spent some time is here today, and, Dr. Jones, seeing you reminded me of an encounter I had with Raphael Warnock when we were all students. He is now the pastor of Dr. King's Ebenezer in Atlanta and our junior senator from Georgia, as he reminds us. When we were students at Union he stopped me once on a Sunday afternoon in the Pit to report that he had preached at an Episcopal church that morning. And he said, "I do what I usually do and they just sat there." So I now live in the hollering and clapping part of the country, so if you are moved throughout this service, I'm here for it.
As we were preparing for today a few months ago, your bishop, Julia, said something to me that I think is a mark of becoming one of you. Noticing that we had some options for what we did today, and one of the options was to celebrate Henry Martyn, she said, Oh, yes, Henry Martyn of Cambridge, as we were both reading through. And then she paused and said, Oh, other Cambridge. So the readings we did choose for today are for Henry Martin, who died at age 31 in 1812, priest and missionary to India and Persia, known for his translations of the New Testament and Psalms into Urdu and Farsi, which must have been so beautiful, and known also for his daily diaries which, depending upon your mood, are either a treasure of Anglican spirituality formed in daily prayer, or an endless illustration of scrupulosity, that affliction of the religious in which we are never pious enough, our prayers never effective enough, our mood too bitter, our temper too easy to rise, our energy strangely limited, like other humans. I am guessing for most of us these diaries would read as very familiar and they're all online, you can read them right now if you choose.
Bishop, whatever we do, we seem to be defined by the limits of our bodies and our times. We seem to labor in vain, spend our strength on nothing and vanity. I hear we're even declining. How many end-of-the-world presidential elections can there be? Except, of course, this one is serious, right? How many natural disasters, but millions and millions in this country have muck- and debris-filled homes and no power, and the town will not be rebuilt, and FEMA doesn't cover debris removal, a friend just learned and told us, and so many are renters and not owners, so nothing will come for them. And for so many there is no water nearby to move away from, nowhere to go, they were barely surviving before these floods. Or is it that you have faithfully loved your community and your church, wherever that has taken you. You make a good potluck dish. You tend the smoker or make the coffee. You have listened politely to more than your fair share of sermons that go one and on like this. Because you know that showing up matters, and that sweet thing up front with his strange collections is doing his very best.
We are all trying so hard. And in public life we watch our faith being twisted into a vessel of hate. Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism, claiming our Jesus, Christianity, the saving liberating Good News of Jesus the Christ that we have committed our lives to deformed again into a spiritual scaffolding for fascism and racism. So I've been skimming Henry Martyn's diaries, they are online as I said, and it is striking how much they are like watching those videos where nothing actually happens, except for when it does, like following social media posts and watching your own anxiety rise, strangely calming and then not at all, no logical place to stop but too much to read all at once, entertaining, even instructive it seems, then suddenly eye popping and hateful, and for social media in particular, terrifying. In my neighborhood in Georgia I've been told you don't see political signs on lawns because people are afraid, afraid to be targeted for having an opinion about a candidate. Afraid someone with a gun and a short fuse might see it, and if you read those diaries on Facebook or X, you know why.
How in this time are we to be a light to the nations? So to the well. In the reading we've just heard from John, in my imagination--this is John 4--Jesus is leaning on the low wall of a deep and wide well, leaning in that long-day-in-the-sun kind of way--I don't know if y'all have those here, we have those in Georgia. He's probably got an arm stretched out. He is tired. He has asked for water because he has no vessel to draw the well water, he who has just called himself Living Water has asked this woman for some water. The one who has come for the life of the world has parched lips in today's reading. This wise Samaritan woman has said, Give me this living water, thirsty man, so that I might no longer carry this heavy water for my household daily from this well of our ancestor Jacob. Change my life, sir, she seems to have said. Like a typed message in which the tone is lost, I can't tell what was happening. Are they teasing one another? Are they one-upping? Did it look like flirting from a distance? Or were they dead serious in staring straight into each other's eyes. Was it compassion meeting curiosity opening their hearts. Jesus tells her who he is and what his life is for. After naming the things that everyone in her community must have known about her and seem so complicated to understand today--this is that five-husband Samaritan woman--what is the household of the woman to whom Jesus proclaims himself the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah?
What is a worthy household? She returns to her community to say, he has told me everything I have ever done, like Mr. Martyn's diaries, the contradictions and turns of my life, my intention, and how things have actually turned out. Jesus has just said to Nicodemus in John 3, you must be born again. He says nothing like that to her, just names the facts. And Jesus says, Let me place myself in the heart of your most difficult daily task, bearing water, the one that links you to women the world over through time, water bearers. How fortunate are we to have water. Jesus says, Let me sanctify with my words the primordial element out of which life emerges and depends, because what could be more holy than water, the cool water in which God's fingers must have drifted as the great first words of creation roared over the face of the deep as the idea of earth creatures like us first took shape in the imagination of the Divine.
Jesus says, Let us sanctify your labor, your loves, your life, woman, who could rightfully assume I would not know how to see you through the complexities of our mutual self-understandings. We are outsiders to one another, this situation too historically complex to even be worth the time and the effort. The guys will be back any minute with snacks--that's where the disciples are.
But instead Jesus sees her and speaks and offers this Samaritan woman living water, a tumbling grace, a freeing mercy, a power-filled recognition, everything she has ever needed.
Friends, let me not confuse anyone that I actually know what the job is that you're about to start means, what the vocation is. But for today I am going to imagine that it is sometimes like sitting at a storied well, waiting for the one with the vessel to come by, and even though one is waiting, and one is busy, the opportunity is to see one another with compassion and curiosity, the kind that drives the other to share the very good news that I have been seen and known, and could this be for us our salvation?
I wonder, Julia, if the bishop is one who takes our assumptions of what we must do in such limited circumstances and decline, decline, decline, I hear, and tells us a story of life abundant from the beginning, whatever a beginning is, an irresistible God-spokenness in each of us, water flowing from fonts, healing and blessing for the hurting, hate-filled world, of endless possibility all around us. The irresistible Gospel of our savior Jesus the Messiah for the healing of the world, open and free, like being born again and washed in the primordial churn of all of creation. Exactly as you are, to be, to trust what you know, to tell your story.
Julia, I wonder if your call includes to believe in us so that we may have the courage to find words and ways to love our neighbors, the truthful ways, possibly the healing ways, the institutional, the systemic, and the personally healing ways to build vessels for healing waters. To use your own hands when our vessels have cracked beyond repair, to remember that we the Church have always built churches and schools and co-ops and businesses, at times even a financial institution, to live in the real world of five husbands, hot days, and flooding, but no clean water in sight. To step into the deepest filth with us. A world that tells us only Israeli or Palestinian, both peoples' lives cannot matter or live with one another in peace, a genocide-producing lie unfolding in real time around us. The deepest filth of flood and fire, self-hate and real violence, of racism and power, a nation in which many are terrified of this election and the violence promised. Julia, there is a well. We can visit it in Balata by Nablus in the West Bank. Our ancestors have told us of it. In beautiful Urdu and even in Farsi, we can hear this story. Jesus sits down in the heat of midday and a woman walks up with a vessel. Julia, we trust that you see him, and the water we thought was for one day will become in your hands living water, healing and refreshing, collaborating and justice-seeking, artful and joyful, never-ending, the promise of life eternal for everyone, and may God bless your ministry together.