By The Most Rev’d Colin R. Johnson
Convent Chapel of the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine, Feast of St. John in Eastertide, May 6, 2025
It is an honour for me to receive the invitation to speak this morning. I have had the privilege of knowing this community for a long time, since first coming 51 years ago. Very few of you were here then! There have been so many changes in so many outward ways that community I knew in 1974 Is outwardly almost unrecognizable.
The habits.
The assigned seating by date of profession and the physical arrangements of the refectory.
The quality and variety of the food. (It was awful then!)
The rigidity of the rules, the Chapel, the liturgy.
The range of ministries.
The convent.
There was an apt quotation in the newspaper this week: “The past is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” In spite of all the changes, the core remains unchanging; the life of prayer undergirding everything else; the evangelical hospitality; the vocation to serve where, when, and how God calls; a life of joyful sacrifice, of love and obedience, and devotion to our Lord. The changes have reflected the changes in our society, in church. The underlying bedrock of that core purpose has not, and still challenges the society (and I daresay the church) to examine its priorities and values.
Over those 50 years, I have known the leadership of four Reverend Mothers, each bringing different gifts and skills that have served and met the needs of the community at the particular time and place they served. Today we come to give thanks for the wise, gentle leadership of Sister Elizabeth, who has led this community through some of its most challenging times in its history, blessing us with maturity, faithfulness and grace. As we give thanks to her for that excellent leadership in ministry, and as she continues to exercise her vocation as a religious within the Community, we also welcome back into that leadership today Sister Elizabeth Ann, already a proven leader, but now with another decade of experience and prayer under her belt.
I want to say something more about leadership in a couple of minutes, but I want to start with the community itself, and the particular charisms that might inform your witness as sisters under the dedication and patronage of Saint John the Divine, the beloved Disciple.
Listening to the four readings of scripture today, we get glimpses of this vocation.
The Gospel of the Resurrection [John 20:1-8.] The first witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection were women who came to the burial site responding with love to the grief that they bore for the one who loved them. They discovered the startlingly empty tomb, and soon knew the joy of the risen Lord Jesus. John’s gospel from beginning to end underscores that the Word of God is made flesh in Jesus. The Lord of life, who speaks creation into being, cannot remain locked in a tomb but is risen, alive and life giving. Eternally.
The ancient Johannine community’s dwelling in the word of God, both in Scripture and Sacrament, still informs and enlivens the life of prayer of this community today. The risen Lord is in our midst – in word, in sacrament, in gathered community, in loving service, in one another, in the encounter of friend and stranger.
In the epistle [1 John 1], John assures us that this is no fable, but a real, tangible experience. John writes powerfully: “We declare to you what was from the beginning, … we have heard, … we have seen with our eyes, … we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life. This life is revealed. We have seen it, we testify to it, we declare it to you… And sharing it makes our joy complete.” Note the repeated pronoun, “we.” Not just John, not just the apostles, not just his congregation, but this Community too, you and me. Your/our experience in worship and prayer, in study and service, in evangelical zeal, in a life lived in the embrace – the loving embrace – of God is an experience to be shared with others who come to find here that same encounter with the living God enfleshed and made visible in us. The late Pope Francis wrote. “Rivers did not drink their own water. Trees do not eat their own fruit. The sun does not shine on itself. And flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. Living for others as a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other. No matter how difficult it is, life is good when you are happy, but much better when others are happy because of you.” Coming to know Jesus and to be enfolded again and again in his love, and then so radiating that love in our interactions with our sisters and brothers is, for John, how others may come to know and believe in Jesus, and receive the gift of eternal life.
In our first reading, [Ex 33] Moses, like us, wants to see God and his glory and power face-to-face. He is at the end of his earthly life. He has laboured hard and borne the burden of the day leading God’s people. He surely has earned that privilege. But this, God does not allow him to do, nonetheless, he can still catch a glimpse of God. The story reminds us that the reality of God’s mercy and grace is most often seen in retrospect. We see God’s back. As we look back we can see where and how God has been active in our lives and in the lives of those we love and pray for. So in this community the role and place of meditation, recollection, and discernment must have a high priority so we can have time reflect. We do not live in the past, but we need to look back to the past, both recent and more distant, to trace the footsteps of God’s gracious activity. And recognizing that we can respond with greater precision and joy with the words of our second reading today, from Psalm 92:
It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High,
2 to declare your steadfast love in the morning
and your faithfulness by night,
3 to the music of the lute and the harp,
to the melody of the lyre.
4 For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
This is the unchanging, core framework in which you as religious live your lives, proclaim the grace and mercy and love of God, welcome the stranger and share this good news with others. As you experience the mercy and grace of God’s love yourselves, you help others to behold it for the first time or to awaken anew its truth in their own lives. You are witnesses, according to John’s exhortation, so that others may come to have life in all of its abundance.
It is in this context, noting the particular charisms that inform this community of the Beloved Disciple, that we mark today the laying down and taking up of leadership for the Sisterhood of St John the Divine. What is the character and style of leadership that we need today? I suggest that you should not be looking for a heroic leader – someone who will single handedly solve the issues and problems facing the community today. It’s not possible! Neither should you look for a general who is in full command, knows the clear plan of action, and marshals obedient troops into the battlefield. Nor should you look for a servant leader who will quietly tend all your needs and desires, and leave you unchallenged and complacent. Those leadership styles will not serve you well today. Certainly, you should not be looking for a saviour leader who will rescue you from all trials – that role is quite adequately filled already!
I suggest instead that what fits the ministry of a religious leader for SSJD today is implied in the very title by which the leader of this community has been traditionally known: reverend mother. Yes, we all know the negative images of dysfunctional mothers, perhaps some of us unfortunately have experience of that model all too closely in our own mothers: mothers who smothered rather than nurtured, who domineered rather than liberated, who infantilised rather than cultivated their children. But that is not what healthy mothers do. Think, rather, of healthy mothers, and particularly healthy mothers of adult children.
As their children grow and mature, they continue to love,
protect,
care,
encourage,
pray,
yearn,
learn to let go,
guide,
admonish,
hope,
advise,
question,
connect,
embrace,
share,
yearn,
suffer,
support,
rejoice.
And they receive all of that reciprocally from their family: love, respect, support, encouragement, protection, advice, questions, celebration in a mutually life enhancing, life giving relationship. It is all relational and mutually interdependent.
Listen to that list again: mothers are called to continue to love, protect, care, encourage, learn to let go, pray, yearn, guide, admonish, hope, advise, question, connect, embrace, share, learn, suffer, support, rejoice.
Above all, a good mother gives the gift – she is entrusted with the gift – of love – unconditionally, constantly, sacrificially, achingly, proudly – love. Love that is rooted in the love God has for us. Do you hear John’s great leitmotif?
No mother is perfect – and her own family can recite her failings more clearly than anyone else – but mothers don’t have to be perfect. That’s not in the job description. They have an honoured place as the head of the family, they are revered (hence the title, “Reverend”), in spite of their faults, because they carry the burden and the joy of loving their family so that the family grows and matures – grows in love and grace, mercy and compassion, hope and joy, creativity and inspiration, generosity and wisdom.
We give thanks for Sr. Elizabeth and the long line of Reverend Mothers who have led this Community in love since its foundation, and we pray for God’s blessing on Sr Elizabeth Ann as she is called again to leadership of the Sisters of St. John the Divine as the next Reverend Mother. May she be endowed with the burden and the gift of love.
