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At the time that the prophet Isaiah
had a peace vision, of the temple in
Jerusalem as the center of a renewed
humanity, when most of humanity
would not by law have been allowed
into that temple, things looked bad.
Division, warfare, and threats to
national autonomy abounded. I am
sure many of his contemporaries
dismissed him as a well meaning
spiritual fool, the way you might think
of a tv evangelist.
Isaiah invites them and us to walk in
the light of the Lord. God’s light is
what leads toward better things,
particularly when people don’t see it,
or don’t see how.
“In nursing you see a lot of cruelty and
unnecessary suffering…all churches
were too blind to the suffering caused
by unwanted pregnancy.” This was
what Margaret Sanger said in a
fascinating tv interview with Mike
Wallace in 1957, when she had just
barely become mainstream enough
for the tv network, with qualifications
and disclaimers, to interview her. You
can see the interview on the UT
Austin website. She looks back on her
life and her crusade for women’s
reproductive rights. At that point,
Margaret was seventy-seven years
old, still brilliant and feisty, and
recognized for bringing the term
“birth control” into the English
language, and for making legal birth
control a possibility.
Her father and mother had
immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland
during the great potato famine. He
fought in the Civil War, and became a
stone mason, and an atheist who
advocated for public education and
women’s suffrage.
Margaret’s mother went through 18
pregnancies, and 11 live births and
died at the age of 50. Because of her
father’s views, some people referred
to the Sanger children as the devils’
children.
With her older sisters’ support,
Margaret went to college and became
a nurse. She married a Jewish
architect, became an Episcopalian,
and had three children. She could
have fit into a comfortable mold then
in New York, and we would not be
aware of her lifework to this day.
But she continued to work as a nurse
among poor women. Margaret
Sanger saw many women who
suffered from unwanted frequent
pregnancies, with all its attendant
woes. She became convinced society
could not change for the better unless
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women had access to information and
the right to control of their own
bodies. This view qualified her as a
dangerous radical in the eyes of many.
It was every bit like being an
abolitionist in the nineteenth century,
and Margaret was just as important to
the evolution of the world toward
God as William Wilberforce was with
slavery.
A century later, the Secretary General
of the United Nations would sum up a
sea change in world perspective that
began with one determined woman, I
am reminded that Mahatma Gandhi
remarked that God and one person
constitute a majority;-highlighting
that the single greatest factor in
whether a country advances or
declines is the health and education of
women.
God’s light is what leads toward
better things, particularly when
people don’t see it, or don’t see how.
And God’s servants need, in the words
of our epistle, to lay aside the works
of darkness and put on the armor of
light to prevail against negative vision
that keeps people divided and
enslaved.
Margaret was a spiritual person who
was attacked often by the church for
her belief in the equality of women,
and her belief that love was the
foundation of a successful
relationship. She also was opposed to
abortion, except as a medical
necessity, but thought it should be
legal, because she had seen what
happened when it was not. She also
accepted homosexuality as a naturally
occurring human variation, but
because she died before the court
case that allowed legal abortion, and
because lgbt people were so closeted
generally in her lifetime, her views on
these later controversies attracted
little attention.
Margaret was jailed numerous times.
When she started, even publishing
information about contraception was
illegal. In 1916 she opened the first
family planning clinic, and was
promptly jailed again. Two years later,
an appeals judge held that the laws on
obscenity could not apply to doctors
discussing birth control with patients,
allowing Margaret to establish the
first association for family planning
clinics in 1923.
1923 was the year that one of our two
founders, Dr. Inez Wisdom, graduated
from the University of Michigan
medical school at the age of 39. She
went off to Pennsylvania for residency
training, and she and her longtime
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companion and life partner, Gertrude
Griffith returned to Ann Arbor to open
a family planning and pediatric
services clinic.
Gertrude and Inez were outspoken
advocates of birth control, fans of
Margaret Sanger, and they got away
with it in polite society! They were
faithful Episcopalians. Within a
decade of it being legal, they were
pioneers for women’s health and
rights in Michigan. Two decades later,
a Great Depression did not prevent
them from having the further positive
spiritual vision of having indigent
patients help them build the family
chapel that is our chapel today, where
they are buried. And as older women,
they had the vision that there could
be a second Episcopal congregation in
growing Ann Arbor and gave us the
land to make it so.
I think there is a place in the calendar
and praise of the church for spiritual
but more secular saints like Margaret
Sanger, whose spiritual vision and
action has radically moved the world
closer to the kingdom of God; in spite
of the too frequent opposition of the
church.
Even more so, Gertrude and Inez
belong on the church calendar in the
Book of Common Prayer. They
pressed on as a family, though not
recognized as one by law, or even by
the limited view of most folks who
admired and like them. They worked
as medical practitioners, as positive
citizens, and as positive Christian
visionaries when many would have
stopped or felt disillusionment, or
bitterness.
The old photos of them I have found
show two radiant happy smart
women. And they look like icons for
me of the visionaries within the
church faithful and positive prior to
full acceptance who lead us toward
the full acceptance and blessing of
LGBT people because that is where
God’s light beckons us all.
Any sermon that tells the story of past
saints runs the danger of lionizing
heroes in gold, who are safely in the
past, which always seems clearer than
the present in retrospect. These three
women sparkle with spiritual gold.
But it is the same greater vision and
spirit that invites us to make progress
now. The spirit of God that came to
the prophet Isaiah long ago when few
could imagine it, as beating swords
into plowshares, being peace-makers,
building respect among peoples that
grows from walking forward in God’s
light. That vision became a sculpture
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piece in front of the United Nations
building at the end of World War II,
and the words are inscribed across
the street from the U.N.
It is the same opportunity we
have. Not on the safely resolved
issues of the past, but of our
lives, to put on the Lord Jesus
Christ.
To trust that Christ is sufficient to
the challenges we face. To
discover that putting on the Lord
Jesus Christ, like a nice outfit, is
meant to make us our best,
happy, brave selves.
We all can feel disillusioned or
disappointed at times in life. We
can all choose to sell short the
power of God’s desire for us, and
build our lives in more ordinary
ways. We all choose every day
whether to live as spiritual
people, or to fade into a
comfortable and easier mold of
life untransformed by the love of
God.
When I think of beloved St
Clare’s as Gertrude and Inez
Episcopal Church, it helps me see
that call to walk in the light of
God’s ways in sharper focus.
Our epistle urges us, you know
what time it is, how it is now the
moment for you to wake from
sleep. For salvation is nearer to
us now than when we became
believers; the night is far gone,
the day is near.
To become more spiritually
awake, and to walk in the light of
God.
To open ourselves to God, we
acknowledge we each have
challenges we may want to be
asleep to that could keep us from
putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.
We pray for God to be with us as
we face the issues of our lives.
So that we can face them like the
old Girl Scout camp song
suggests, alive, awake, alert,
enthusiastic.