Today is an example of a multi-themed service; sometimes the main ideas clash a little bit, between course-reading of the Bible and the Church’s designation of a lesser saint. For Jackson Kemper Day I always do it up kind of big – not because he founded my parish, which is only important to a few hundred of us, but because he made TEC a nationwide Church. I’ve even taken to calling him informally Kemper the Great, to emphasize him for people who don’t know his name.

And then there was that quote from Ruth. Her story is very significant for ancient Israel – 8th book of the Hebrew Bible, because it ties together the Covenant, the people and the land – but then there was that quote. So I put it right up top, and responded to it with a 19th century saint and feminist.

I think we have to recognize that we inherited a patriarchal religion, which on its own terms has characteristics of justice – who is more righteous than Boaz? – but which on our terms is flatly unjust. Boaz didn’t buy that field to get the real estate, he bought it to honor Naomi’s daughter-in-law.

So if today’s Morning Prayer has all that going on, I thought it was appropriate to include E.C. Stanton, who produced her own Bible translation from the Greek, reinterpeting the ancient patriarchy which she found unjust and therefore ungodly. Then I added an editorial comment that God doesn’t approve selling women either.

The majority of our services have more than one theme. I like it when the entire message is unified, though knitting the parts together to tell a coherent story is a skill I’ve only recently acquired and cannot always produce.

I know this: Jackson Kemper, Apostle of the Midwest, was such a great man he deserves the Jubilate on a Friday. The course reading continues, but we don’t live in ancient Israel, and my evangelical concern has to be the women and men, girls and boys who drop by today. Women are not property, God didn’t put them here to submit to anyone, and Ruth is a hero of the faith – an ancestor of David, who was an ancestor of Christ.

Let this Good News find its way to the Eastern countries.

Josh