Slideshow image

On July 18, 1976 Pastor Nancy Winder was ordained into Word and Sacrament ministry. She was the first woman ordained in what was then the North Pacific District and the fourteenth woman ordained in the American Lutheran Church.

But Nancy and those thirteen women were not the first. We remember all the women who came before them. In scripture we remember Mary, the mother of Jesus, Elizabeth, Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, Phoebe, Priscilla, Junea, Lydia, and all the unnamed women including the Samaritan woman at the well who ran to proclaim what she had seen and heard, becoming the first to declare Jesus as Lord.

Along with these women in scripture, we also remember the countless women in these last 2000 years – Hildegard, Katie Luther, Argula von Grumbach, Maria Stewart, Phoebe Palmer, Catherine Booth, Margaret Wold, and so many others who were called by the Holy Spirit to preach, teach, proclaim, lead, and serve. We give thanks for the myriad of gifts that God has poured out through women for the sake of the church and the life of the world.

I am so thankful for the many women in our lives who passed on their faith to us. The women who taught Sunday School, prepared the altar, made meals, visited those who were sick, and marched against injustice. The women theologians, mystics, and writers. The women who, in countless ways, proclaimed through word and deed the good news of Jesus.

Thank you to our sisters in Christ. Thank you for the ways you have lived out your faith in every vocation. Thank you to the women who have gone before us, to the women serving today, and to the women who continue to say yes to God’s call – including those called into ordained ministry.

I wonder, do you remember the first time you heard a woman preach? The first time you heard an alto or soprano voice chanting the liturgy or saying the words of institution? I remember. I was twenty years old. Seeing and hearing someone who looked like me, who had a body like mine, made the gospel come alive in a way I hadn’t experienced before. Truly, it changed my life.

This is why I grieve what is happening to some of our sisters in other denominations. In recent weeks, the Southern Baptist Convention voted at its annual assembly to further restrict women from teaching, preaching, and pastoral leadership. This means women ordained ten or twenty or fifty years ago may now find their callings denied by the very churches they have faithfully served. So many women – chosen, loved, called, sent –women with fire in their bellies to preach the gospel may no longer do so. Not by God, but by their denomination. Their silencing is not only a tragedy for them; it is a tragedy for the whole Church.

So today there is an urgency to remember, celebrate, and publicly proclaim, that women are called by God. Just as the Spirit came to Mary, who sang of the mighty brought down from their thrones, just as the Spirit sent Mary Magdalene to proclaim resurrection to the apostles, just as Lydia helped birth a community of believers, the Spirit has called and continues to call women in every age.

So, in joy, thankfulness, and celebration, let us give thanks for the women of the past, present, and future who continue to proclaim, teach, lead, and serve. For, as we read in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, “Since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart … For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.” 

Bishop Shelley Bryan Wee | bishop@lutheransnw.org