3396 ESWTR 9 13 Methuen

Charlotte Methuen

Women priests have real presence reflections on liturgy and presidency*

“Women priests have real presence” proclaims a badge produced by Eng- land’s Movement for the Ordination of Women in the 1980s. The real presence that we are talking about here is not to be related only to the elements of bread and wine, but to the whole community. The reformers suggested that the real presence must be manifested in the body of Christ as incarnated in the presence of the community, so that the change in substance – the transubstantiation – wrought by faith is the transubstantiation of the whole community, and not of the elements.1 The question of the real presence in the Eucharist is thus intimately bound up with another: what does it mean for the Holy Spirit to be present in a celebration of the liturgy, for God or for Christ to be a real presence in the Eucharist? And this in turn is bound up with yet another: what does it mean for me, a priest and a woman, to preside at a celebration of the Eucharist? For me as an Anglican, these questions are inevitably and deeply connected with reflections about our use of liturgy. The liturgical tradition has been vitally important to the Anglican church since its inception during the Refor- mation, although it is only in the last seventy years that emphasis has come to be laid upon regular, in the sense of weekly, celebrations of the Eucharist as the main Sunday service. At the same time, another shift has taken place to a focus on the importance of the community:

* An earlier version of this article appeared in Dutch as “Gedeelde macht als kracht. De rol van vrouwelijke priesters in de liturgie,” in: Fier 3/1 (Jan/Feb 2000), 4-5. 1 See especially Martin Luther, “Ein Sermon von den hochwirdigen Sacrament des Heiligen Waren Leichnams Christi,” in: Martin Luthers Werke (Böhlau: Weimar 1884), 2, 742-758, esp. 749, and Huldrych Zwingli, “Vorschlag wegen der Bilder und der Messe,” in: Zwinglis sämtliche Werke (Heinsius Nachfolger: Leipzig 1914), 3, 124-126. Compare also Bucer’s emphasis on the congregation as the body of Christ: Von der waren Seelsorge, in: Bucers Deutsche Schriften (Gütersloher Verlagshaus Mohn: Gütersloh 1964), 103-107.

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we have lived for centuries with a presumption that the liturgy in whatever tradition is the domain of the ordained clergy, and in recent decades we have had the first tentative beginnings of a recovery of the theological principle that liturgical actions are the work of the whole people of God (leitourgia).2 In my understanding of our tradition, liturgy, whether eucharistic or not, should offer a space in which we, as a community, can focus our individual lives upon God, experience the love of God for each of us, and be touched and inspired3 to live our lives in relationship with God. Liturgy should be a place in which we encounter ourselves and one another in love, as gifted but broken children of God, in which we can indeed encounter the praesentia realis of Christ in the community of faith. There are good reasons why many people – men as well as women – have begun to ask whether such an experience can be possible within traditional forms of the liturgy. In seeking to answer that question, I want here to address two central, albeit interrelated, issues. One is the words, form and intention of the liturgy, and the other is the role of the priest.

In much of the Anglican Communion, which includes the Church of England, the Eucharist is celebrated (sometimes reluctantly) in a modern language version. There is now a great breadth of authorised liturgical forms, most of which can trace their ancestry back to the sixteenth century Book of Common Prayer.4 “Modern language” has not necessarily meant inclusive language, and despite a great deal of improvement, parts of many of these liturgies remain exclusive of women. Thus, in the form of the Nicene Creed authorised for use in the new Common Worship of the Church of England, we are still supposed to affirm that in Christ God was “made man” rather than “made human”; this seems to me both a bad translation of the original Greek and highly inappropriate, given the use of Christ’s maleness as an argument for the exclusion of women from the priesthood of the Church of England.5 On the other hand, the newly authorised liturgies introduce a far broader spectrum of

2 Louis Weil, “Community: The Heart of Worship,” in: Anglican Theological Review (ATR) 82 (2000), 129-147, here 132. This principle is at the heart of Orthodox understandings of liturgy; compare Katerina Karkala-Zorba in this volume, p. 23 3 In the sense also of being filled with the breath/spirit of God. 4 In the Church of England, ordained and accredited lay ministers agree to conduct services only in accordance with the wording and structure of authorised forms, agreed by centrally by General Synod. 5 On the grounds that a woman cannot “represent” the male Christ.

242 Charlotte Methuen Women priests have real presence biblical imagery when speaking of God, moving away from predominantly male, triumphalist terminology and helping us to explore the possibilities of realising, as Janet Morley has put it, “that to examine how and why the femi- nine has been omitted from our ways of addressing God is to discover also what else has been left out.”6 It is still too soon to see how these new liturgies will enrich the life of the community,7 but the expansion of possibilities means that it will be easier to introduce new images while remaining within the range of what is authorised. Preserving this balance, or practising what Elizabeth J. Smith has called the “Art of Accountability”8 is in my view an important consideration precisely because liturgy is an expression not only of the local but also of the wider community. As a local congregation we pray the liturgy together with the wider church. This means that the question of recognising what is a good, valid expression of faith, is not local, and nor is it mine alone. As a priest, it is essen- tial, and not optional, to “acknowledge that the community’s spiritual identity is larger than my own.”9 This is especially true because familiarity with word and form can be vital if liturgy is to act as an effective structure for and spring- board into prayer. Those who are ordained need to recognise that they have “enormous power to enable or disallow liturgical speech,”10 and to realise too that they have enormous power to facilitate or to block the prayers of those who are present. The priest who changes too much can cause just as much exclusion and pain as do those who do nothing to shape the liturgy in accordance with the changes within the celebrating community. If the liturgy is to live, it must change, but not arbitrarily, for, as Elizabeth J. Smith comments: A very important thing for liturgically creative spirits to remember is that my delight in innovation may far outstrip your desire to have novelty inflicted upon you in the course of your worship, and my individual expressions of piety may not be conducive to your “Amen.” Especially important for the unadventurous wor- shiper to remember is the fact that every old favourite hymn or prayer was once an innovation. Somewhere in this tension between innovation and continuity, between individuals’ gifts and communities’ needs, lies the fertile ground for growing new

6 Janet Morley, All Desires Known (SPCK: London 21992), xi. 7 Common Worship was authorised for use from the beginning of Advent 2000; at the time of writing, we are only just beginning to explore its possibilities. 8 Elizabeth J. Smith, “Women, Word, and Worship,” in: ATR 82 (2000), 113-128, here 124, but cf. 124-126. 9 Ibid., 125. 10 Ibid.

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words, new visual images and new body language to take Anglican worship into its next stage of its evolution.11 This is a process in which the whole church must be engaged, on the level of the particular community and of the wider church. Within this process, there is a danger that if a priest chooses to reorder the liturgy simply to suit her own preferences, she/he may be abusing her/his authority. As priests, we are ordained to a complicated relationship of authority and service; we need to reflect on our responsibilities as well as our rights, not only pastorally but liturgically. As a priest I may certainly indicate, but should not impose, my own preferences. Individual style is inevitable and enriching. Individual dom- ination is not. This balance is both delicate and paradoxical; I shall return to it later in the article. Before doing so, I want to raise another issue linked to the question of inclusive language: the complex relationship between words and meaning, and thus between terminology and practice. While the use of inclusive language is important, it is also important not to be naïve. An inclusive language by no means presupposes an inclusive praxis. There is a danger that an over-emphasis on the words can obscure the fact that much of what shapes and makes liturgy is not its words but the act of its “doing,” for “the liturgy is something done not said.”12 An particularly appropriate example of this is the sixteenth- century Anglican prayer of preparation for the Eucharist, the so-called “prayer of humble access,” which asserts that “we are not worthy even to gather up the crumbs under the table.” This is clearly an articulation of a theology which believed, not only that human beings had no right to demand anything of God, but that they were not worthy to be given anything. As such it has been much criticised in the twentieth century. But for me, the prayer of humble access is a reminder always of the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman who came to Jesus asking for healing for her daughter, and was refused: [Jesus] said to her, “Let the children [the people of Israel] be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” [Mk 7.24-30; Mt 15.21-28] Even as I say that “we are not worthy even to gather up the crumbs under the table,” the Syro-Phoenician woman’s voice rings in my ears, arguing with

11 Ibid., 122-123. 12 John F. Baldovin, “The Changing World of Liturgy,” in: ATR 82 (2000), 65-81, here 71 (cit- ing Gregory Dix).

244 Charlotte Methuen Women priests have real presence

Jesus and asserting the right of the dogs to the crumbs. This creative tension between humility and assertion, emptying and filling seems deeply appropriate as an approach to the Eucharist. Others will not find it so, but it is an example of how meaning can break through the literal. As Elizabeth Smith puts it, drawing on the imagery of 1 Corinthians 15: What dies is not identical with what is raised, instead it is changed. It is sown a Prayer Book; it will be raised a liturgy. It is sown patriarchal; it will be raised for liberation.13 Lived and living liturgy transcends the written words to become something larger and deeper. The non-verbal is of crucial importance in our worship because we are people who gather together, bringing our own cares and concerns, experience and knowledge. Michael Aune writes speakingly of the way in which observa- tions and thoughts and distractions come together when we participate in liturgy, and concludes: What kind of theology is embodied by furtive questions, wandering thoughts, and “the great poetry of Bread and Wine”? Whatever we think liturgy is, it is always an embodied practice, regardless of what theologians or pastors intend or claim is the ”the real meaning.”14 Indeed, the “real meaning” of the liturgy may be precisely that it allows these “furtive questions [and] wandering thoughts” to be incorporated into “the great poetry of Bread and Wine,” affirming that God’s presence is to be expe- rienced, not only in focused, theologically precise thinking, but in the minu- tiae of daily life: wondering whether the roast is burning in the oven may not be an especially elevating spiritual response to the liturgy, and should proba- bly not be the central response, but it may nonetheless represent deep care for family and guests, and the liturgy should enable the recognition that this is so. In theological terms, perhaps this is to say that “gathering right”15 means allowing

13 Smith, “Women, Word, and Worship,” 132. 14 Michael B. Aune, “The Changing World of Liturgy: A Response to John F. Baldovin,” in: ATR 82 (2000), 83-92, here 84-85. 15 Stephen Cottrell suggests that the gathering rite of the Eucharist (or any worship) is about “gathering right”: paper at the Affirming Catholicism Conference, Durham, 14-17 September 2000. The papers from this conference will be published by DLT later in 2001.

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an approach to the sacrament based on the conviction that “the world is permeated by the grace of God. In this model, the sacrament is no longer an isolated encounter with God, but rather the manifestation of God’s grace that quietly but effectively permeates the world.16 If the sacrament is about the way in which God’s grace permeates the world, “quietly and effectively,” but also radically and painfully, then this needs to be made clear, and the liturgy needs to become a space where the community learn to recognise the kingdom of God in their lives. That means that within the Eucharistic liturgy, the Ministry of the Word should be taken seriously, so that our preaching “models and teaches interpretative strategies that equip those who hear sermons to be confident and critical users of the Bible in their turn.”17 This inevitably means filtering the scriptures through the personal to reach the universal: “I bring a very personal approach to preaching,” notes Joanna Anderson, “concerned always to connect scripture with ordinary people’s lives and experience.”18 And if this is to be an authentic experience, then it has to be our experience as well. We preach, as Rowan Williams has put it, “in and as a witness that conversion is possible.”19 Barbara Brown Taylor speaks of the need for preachers to speak in their own voices out of their own experience, addressing God on the congregation’s behalf and – with great care and humility – the congregation on God’s behalf. … When the holy vision speaks, it is my own heart that is pierced. While I may struggle to make sure that my response is true to those whom I represent, I cannot stay out. Every word I choose, every image, every rise in my voice reveals my own involvement in the message.20 At the same time, “those of us who preach … speak as members of a body and not for ourselves alone, which means that we may not dominate the sermon any more than we may be absent from it.”21 The community is not there

16 Aune, “Response to John F. Baldovin,” 86; quote from Karl Rahner, “Considerations on the Active Role of the Person in the Sacramental Event,” in: Theological Investigations XIV (Seabury: New York 1976), 166. 17 Smith, “Women, Word, and Worship,” 121. 18 Joanna Anderson, “Paths are made by those who walk in them,” in: Lesley Orr MacDonald (ed.), In Good Company: Women in the Ministry (Wild Goose Publications: Glasgow 1999), 135-142. here 141. 19 Rowan Williams, paper on Homiletics at the Affirming Catholicism Conference, Durham, 14- 17 September 2000. 20 Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, Cowley: New York 1993, 78. 21 Ibid., 79.

246 Charlotte Methuen Women priests have real presence for the preacher, but for the gospel, for God: “Ordinary, sane people are in love with the gospel … ‘much as one might be in love with a person.’” notes Kathleen Norris. “And they are there to find him, not me.”22 As a preacher and a priest, I am in the sermon, I am in the liturgy, but I am not doing it for myself. Writing for (male) ordinands of the 1960s and ’70s, Michael Ramsey, then Archbishop of Canterbury, emphasises that being a priest should never be a self-conscious (or, perhaps better, self-centred) act of being: “As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way” if our consciousness is not of our own status but of Christ whose commission we hold and of the people we serve in [Christ’s] name. … O Sacerdos, quid es tu? Non es te, quia de nihilo, Non es ad te, quia mediator ad Deum, Non es tibi, quia sponsus ecclesiae, Non es tui, quia servus omnium, Non es tu, quia Dei minister, Quid es ergo? Nihil et omnia, O Sacerdos.”23 “You are nothing and everything, O priest.” This is the paradox of ministry, the paradox of priesthood, the paradox of the liturgy. Every minister, every preacher, every priest is faced with this paradox. I do not minister, preach, celebrate for myself, for I am doing it to enable myself and others to encounter God. And yet I can only minister, preach, celebrate as myself, if that encounter with God is to be possible. Celebrating the liturgy, just like any other aspect of living as a Christian, is nothing about selflessness in the sense of denying the self, but all about selflessness in the sense of aligning myself to God, of knowing myself, but seeking not to impose myself. It is tremendously important for us as (women) priests to grapple with the challenge of knowing ourselves, especially of knowing ourselves as active agents who hold authority. Reflecting on her experience as a priest, Barbara Baisley recounts the difficulties she encountered in defining her self out of the mixed messages about “woman” she received from her up-bringing.24 In a

22 Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace. A Vocabulary of Faith (Riverhead: New York 1999), 187. 23 Michael Ramsey, The Christian Priest Today (SPCK: London 1972), 10-11. The Latin may be translated: “O priest, who are you? You are not from yourself, because you are from nothing; you are not to yourself, because you are the mediator for God; you are not for yourself, because you are the bridegroom of the church; you are not of yourself, for you are the servant of all; You are not yourself, because you are the minister of God. Who are you? Nothing and everything, O priest.” 24 Barbara Baisley, “Being realistic about feminism,” in: Hilary Wakeman (ed.), Women Priests. The First Years (DLT: London 1996), 97-116.

247 Aus den Ländern From the Countries Des Pays discussion of priesthood amongst a group of Anglican women priests a number claimed that “For me priesthood does not mean power.” This claim bor- ders on the naïve; whether we like it or not, the Anglican church still has a pretty high view of its priests. Although the woman who prayed for the clergy (including me) in the intercessions at the parish Eucharist as “those who are in authority over us” may be a minority in her articulation of this thought, it still exists. All priests, and especially those whose vision is a different kind of church, must grapple with the relationship between priesthood, presidency and power. It is possible, and desirable, to use presidency to share power because it is possible to use leadership to share power. We can learn from the experience of the St Hilda community in London, which developed eucharistic forms of service involving the whole congregation and offering forms of mutual absolution and blessing.25 Sharing even in simple liturgical acts can be both powerful and empowering: we finished a chaplaincy study day with a service including a renewal of baptism vows in which each person made a cross with water on their neighbour’s forehead. “Will they feel manoeuvred into this?” I wondered whilst planning the liturgy; “We were allowed to…” reported a woman the next day. Part of sharing power is moving away from the understanding that only the leader is “allowed” to do things, away from liturgy as a place where only the president or leader feels enabled, to an understanding that the liturgy as the work of the people means ensuring that the people are involved, and welcome. This may sometimes mean letting go of expectations, as Kathleen Norris found, as she fled over-planned liturgy in search of worship with room for the Holy Spirit, worship hospitable enough to welcome a confused soul such as myself. And there, among strangers, I found it: living worship, slightly out of control, and not terribly educational. Orthodox in the ancient sense, as “right worship,” joyful enough to briefly house a living God.26 This is a reminder, above all else, that celebrating the Eucharist (or indeed any liturgy, or preaching a sermon, or living any part of our Christian lives) is about taking what we do seriously, about being open to God, but not pri- marily about “getting it right”. Liturgy is not about presenting ourselves

25 Described and collected in: Women Included: A Book of Services and Prayers (SPCK: Lon- don 1991). 26 Norris, Amazing Grace, 250.

248 Charlotte Methuen Women priests have real presence through play-acting but about setting the stage for the real presence, for the encounter with “the uncomfortable, even frightening closeness of the difficult God who is not made in our image.”27 For that should be our aim: that each Eucharist, every liturgy bring spiritual sustenance, an encounter with God, to all those present. “I go out up- lifted and strengthened for the week to come,” says someone. “You could feel the Holy Spirit in that silence,” comments another. Surely that is real presence – brought about by community and priest turning together to God.

La liturgie de l’Église anglicane est un havre où nous venons nous recueillir et nous rencontrer devant Dieu dans l’amour, comme des enfants de Dieu tout ensemble comblés et brisés. Cet article considère que le rôle du ministre du culte, femme et homme, est de faire tout ce qui est en son pouvoir pour que cet idéal soit vraiment vécu. Il est certain qu’un usage scrupuleux de la langue évite que la liturgie, en étant exclusive, choque certains. De même que notre conception de Dieu s’enrichit extrêmement lorsque nous faisons usage d’un large éventail de représen- tations du théologien. Il est néanmoins important de comprendre que la liturgie permet de trouver le sens caché des mots. En outre, quand elle découvre un chan- gement à faire et l’introduit, la femme revêtue de la charge de ministre du culte doit être consciente de sa responsabilité face à tous les groupes qu’elle dessert au sein d’une communauté ecclésiastique. Un paradoxe de son sacerdoce est qu’elle ne peut être prêtre qu’en restant elle-même – et ne devrait l’être qu’à cette condi- tion. D’un autre côté, elle ne doit pas imposer sa personne à la paroisse, mais lui ouvrir la voie vers Dieu.

Die Liturgie der anglikanischen Kirche bietet einen Ort, an dem wir uns selbst und einander vor Gott als beschenkte und zugleich als gebrochene Kinder Gottes in Liebe begegnen. Dieser Artikel geht auf die Rolle des/der Priester/in ein: er/sie soll ermöglichen, daß dieses Ideal zu einer wirklichen Erfahrung wird. Es steht außer Frage, daß ein sorgfältiger Gebrauch der Sprache die Liturgie weniger exklu- siv für manche Menschen machen kann; es kann auch nicht geleugnet werden, daß unser Verständnis von Gott durch eine Vielfalt an Bildern für das Göttliche berei- chert werden kann. Es ist jedoch wichtig zu verstehen, daß die liturgische Hand- lung auch eine Bedeutung außerhalb der buchstäblichen Worte eines Texts ermög- lichen kann. Umso mehr muß der/die Priester/in sich seiner/ihrer Verantwortung bewußt sein, für verschiedene Gruppen innerhalb der kirchlichen Gemeinschaft zuständig zu sein. Dies ist ein Beispiel des Paradoxes dieses Amtes: Um Priesterin sein zu können, muß ein Mensch ganz er (sie!) selbst sein; gleichzeitig darf dieser

27 Morley, xii.

249 Mensch aber nicht seine eigenen Bedürfnisse und Meinungen in den Vordergrund stellen, sondern soll der Gemeinde helfen, ihren Weg zu Gott zu finden.

Charlotte Methuen studied Mathematics at Cambridge and Theology at Edin- burgh, where she was awarded her PhD in 1995 [thesis published as Kepler’s Tübingen: Stimulus to a theological Mathematics (Ashgate: Aldershot 1998)]. Her publications include a number of articles discussing women and authority in the early church. Since 1995 she has been Assistentin for Church History (Reformation and Modern) at the Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany. She has served on the Board of ESWTR and as co-ordinating editor of ESWTR’s Yearbook since 1997. She was ordained Priest in the Church of England at Pentecost 1999.

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