It is strange to sleep in on Sunday, which, for me includes an alarm set for 6:54 am. When it went off, I reached for my phone to shut it off, and then rested for a few minutes in the in-between of waking sleep before fiddling and finally, rising, showering, eating, and departing.
Rose and I were on the road shortly after 8:00 so we could swing by Dunkin on the way to Interstate 70, which would take us to Indianapolis. I’ve never seen such a line at Dunkin on a Sunday. But, to be fair, I’ve never been at that time, for obvious reasons. Apparently coffee and donut time is 8, not 12:30, when I usually get there. But we weren’t delayed too much, arriving at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church twenty minutes before the start of service.
Some people regularly drive an hour or more to church and, if you can help it, I don’t really recommend it. At least, not every week. If you do, I suspect you’re probably passing plenty of decent churches that don’t require several gallons of gas to attend. But this wasn’t us going to our church, but attending the retirement and leave-taking of The Rev. Rebecca Ferrell Nickel, who is one of my favorite people and an absolute delight.
I met Rebecca nearly eleven years ago.
She was still newly named as Rector after two years as priest-in-charge at St. Timothy’s, a diverse congregation in a generationally-changing neighborhood of Indianapolis, which is all stuff I knew nothing about because at that time, I was maybe two weeks of service at St. Stephen’s in Terre Haute, which I now know is about an hour and fourteen minutes away on a Sunday morning.
We were at diocesan convention, the annual meeting of the diocese, which was in Muncy that year. I arrived with my delegation in time for a tour of the host church and visiting before we gathered for dinner in their parish hall and I chose a spot at a table with a dark-haired woman with red lipstick and asked if I could sit there and she said “Only if you don’t value your reputation,” and I said “too late!”
Bad Reputations
It is easy to bond as outsiders: your scars are fresh and noticeable. They’re also far more interesting than the serial contentment of easy success and scripted support.
As the first female rector of an endowed Episcopal parish, Rebecca had risen to the top of a ladder the church claims doesn’t exist. A ladder which had been pulled out from under so many predecessors. She knew the work the first guard put in to be ordained, to even serve in congregations at all. Then the work of the second guard to blaze the trail in congregations, always being the first to do the work, to serve, to fight to be seen and heard. None of their trial was far from her mind. But it didn’t shield her from emotional violence when it was her turn to blaze a trail.
Rebecca received threats of violence and death — an all too common (and hypocritical) experience in the church — as if these were the fruit of the Spirit, the reflection of Christ’s love for neighbor. It is no less disappointing to know the sincere evil at the heart of the shameless and the prideful rejector’s of generous Spirit-led joy, even as so many come to expect it. Especially today, as Jesus’s words of protecting the immigrant are described by prayer-warrior partisans as the greastest of sins and equating empathy with abuse.
Backward and juvenile excuses are plentiful.
They let us argue that anger is good and kindness is evil, like love is weak and terror is strong, equity is unGodly but exploitation and separation — that’s at the root of holiness. It is how up can be down and hate can be love so, of course, when we see people actually loving, actually supporting their neighbors, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, caring for the wounded, welcoming the stranger, doing the the things Jesus actually cares about, well, we can say that’s making the church political.
These aren’t manipulative words — they are manipulative intentions we use to twist our words. Hatred has no place here. And these cowards have caused so much pain for so many people for so long, claiming it was Jesus.
Faith beyond evil
I didn’t know Rebecca then. I met her in the time after. After leaving a congregation so torn apart by fear and unholy acts which must be called abuse. She spent time in the ecclesiastical wilderness in an Episcopal Church world that had little interest in healing congregational trauma and still couldn’t imagine that problems didn’t start and end with the rector. This myopic view of leadership — as sinner or saint, the problem or the solution — certainly persists. Even as we question it. Questions of pay equity, seniority, performance: we still run these through a corporate lens of leadership and P&L sheets.
In the hight of #MeToo, Rebecca would find the language for it. Not just in naming sexual abuse, but also in systems which support oppression. It isn’t just #ChurchToo, it is still pay inequity and opportunities for promotion. It is the church’s language of all God’s children being equal and then still paying men more. Still preferring them to be white.
And as the Church has slowly turned, ordaining more women as bishops than ever before, raising more women to positions as rector in big, wealthy, powerful churches, it can be hard to give thanks for the scars, the bruises, the PTSD. In light of these, keeping on is a kind of faith. Being there still is an act of believing, of loving.
Loving love
I found a kindred spirit in Rebecca, not only in sharing stories of wounding, of loss, and of the ugliness that church can offer, but in her persistence in belief, practice, and devotion. We push each other to find, not just the love of Jesus anyway, but the fiery embers of the Holy Spirit in the shit. The stuff that either makes us pull our hair out or smile and say “bless your heart.”
Rebecca’s persistence in the Spirit’s work in her life and her ministry drove her through a long revitalization effort at St. Timothy’s. In loving people who needed someone to love them and teach them and sometimes deliver some hard news to them. She loves fiercely and acutely and compassionately. She is generous and patient and so thoughtful. And loves and loves and loves. Sometimes it is hard to do that, but she does it anyway.
It doesn’t take long for the Spirit to show up in our conversations. In the times between the love, when we can reflect. Share. Be real with each other. About church and ministry and all of that. And maybe she feels its presence or I do, but its usually Rebecca. She’s the one more often than not who is reminding me. And we remember her, the dove, Paraclete, Advocate is our guide.
She guides us through transitions and revitalizations. Names the pain points and reminds us that we survive and still love. That loving is our work and teaching that love is a life-long vocation.
Ends lead to beginnings
Rebecca and I are Pentecost fire people. But we’re also crucifixions lead to resurrections people. And death leads to new life people. This is what we talk about on the phone and in our sermons on Sunday. It is the teaching we have received which becomes the teaching we share. That’s how it works, you know. You’re taught so you teach so we’re all taught and all teach.
And we do this, too, because it is a reminder; that constant reminder we need. That being a person of faith, of being Christian, a follower of his Way of Love, is like that. Always. We don’t just start and then go forever. And also we don’t start and then end forever. No, there are starts and deaths and new starts all along. That’s all of life. It is life itself. The earth and creation! Life, death, life. Over and over and over.
We need reminding so we remember. And we remember so we don’t think of endings as like ENDINGS. These things are stops on the way. There is a thing ongoing and eternal here. And concepts like retirement and departures and leave-taking always feel final. But we’re not supposed see them that way. This is life, ongoing.
Always hosting
Today, she hosted us all at church, and the church itself hosts, too. A symbiosis. Learn and teach and learn; born and die and born anew. And we knew the love was in the shrimp and chicken salad and the bagels and mimosas. It filled us full and sent us forth.
I am so thankful for the life and ministry of Rebecca Nickel, her incredible and incomparable husband, David, and the tremendous work of St. Timothy’s these past fourteen years. I am grateful for her witness, integrity, joy; her passion, outrage, and keen heart for justice, her level-headedness, supportive heart, and brilliant mind. Most especially, I am grateful for friendship that does not end. It just keeps being reborn.
