Breaking Down Barriers
A Sermon preached by the Precentor, Canon Anna Macham
Sunday 12 October 2025
2 Timothy 2:8-15 and Luke 17:11-19
This last week in the Church of England has been a joyful one, as people both inside and outside the Church have continued to respond to the news that Bishop Sarah Mulally, the Bishop of London and a former Canon Treasurer here at Salisbury, is to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury. In a context where much reporting about the Church feels negative- highlighting for example our failures in safeguarding, or the failure of the Church to adequately acknowledge, let alone embrace, same-sex unions- such a piece of joyful news- that for the first time ever, we will have a female Archbishop of Canterbury- felt incredibly heartening, and even exhilarating.
As a young person exploring my vocation, I remember how hard I found it that there were – at that time in the late-1990s – so few female role models to look up to- hardly any women priests were at that time in high enough positions in the Church to be making public pronouncements on behalf of the Church in the media or preaching from prominent pulpits. Of course, it’s not that I couldn’t be inspired by male priests, or have them as role models – and I did. But in the decades since then, the presence of women at all levels in the Church and in Church life has made things a lot easier, and better. We have women priests, and bishops- women vergers and head vergers, women servers and stewards, choristers and now- lay vicars. I count it as a huge privilege to work alongside so many highly dedicated, capable and talented people, female and male.
In many ways, it was a bold move for the Church to appoint a woman to this historic role. But at the same time as many of us were rejoicing, the news was also greeted with dismay by some. The leader of Gafcon, the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, a network of conservative Anglican churches across Africa and Asia, received the news “with sorrow” – as they said pretty quickly afterwards in a statement. Objection to female leadership in the Church is not just a feature of overseas Anglican churches either – in this country, there are still nearly 600 C of E churches, according to the organisation Women and the Church, where women are still not able to preside over communion or preach.
What is it that accounts for these differences and divides between Anglicans? How can news that brings great joy to some bring dismay to others? On the one hand, it’s differences of opinion and traditional attitudes and prejudices, just as opinions on certain topics are polarised in wider society as well. On the other, it’s a genuine difference in ways of reading and applying scripture. Christianity is a religion of the book, and these differences in reading scripture go right back to biblical times and even to the biblical writers themselves.
Our two bible readings today illustrate this difference. In our reading from 2 Timothy, the author, who probably isn’t Paul but a later person who knew of him and wanted to appeal to his authority, urges his readers to “avoid wrangling over words” and to “rightly explain the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:14-15).
The so-called Pastoral Epistles- the two books of Timothy and Titus – are known for their conservative attitude towards women, though this this certainly isn’t unique to them and reflects similar attitudes held in the Greco-Roman world at the time. The author expects women to be submissive, not leading or teaching men, and in the section that follows today’s reading – that’s left out of the lectionary before we pick up the following bit in next Sunday’s Eucharist – he refers derisively to female Church members as “silly women” (2 Timothy 3:6) – in a tone of open mockery.
The author justifies his concern to maintain what he sees as sound doctrine like this by appealing to scripture and tradition, “the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15) as he puts it in next week’s reading. It’s not clear whether by “sacred writing” he’s referring to “New Testament” writings – that is testimonies to Jesus that were already being regarded as sacred writings, or what we know as the Old Testament, especially the law. But he seems to be using the bible to try and justify his views and to dictate what should happen. He doesn’t question scripture or its validity but seemingly uses it in a somewhat straightforward and legalistic way, assuming it speaks with one, clear voice and using it almost as a law code that prescribes our behaviour and governs our conduct.
The attitude of Jesus in our Gospel is very different. Jesus doesn’t reject the scriptures or the law, but he does question them. According to the law, laid out in the holy scriptures of the Jews, lepers were deemed to be ritually unclean. “Leprosy” was a term used to designate a number of skin diseases. It wasn’t so much a physical problem – in that it wasn’t life-threatening- as a social one. Lepers were regarded as living under a divine curse, and as ritually unclean, and so they were relegated to the margins of society. This is why they “keep their distance”, as the reading tells us. And what’s more, in this instance, the leper who comes back to thank Jesus isn’t just an outcast because of his condition; he’s also a Samaritan, a foreigner. Samaritans and Jews did not agree about where the holy temple was – so when Jesus includes the Samaritan when telling the lepers to go and show themselves to the priest after he’s healed them so they can be declared clean, it’s not clear which location he was referring them to- making his action in including the Samaritan leper even more startling and controversial.
And in the end, it’s Jesus who the Samaritan leper comes to, the only one of the ten who does, full of thanks. In this account, it’s the Samaritan, the most excluded one of all, who through their faith, experiences not only cleansing from their debilitating illness like the other nine lepers, but also deeper insight – into the role of Jesus as himself the Word of God in the inbreaking kingdom of God. They receive not just healing, but salvation.
For Jesus, then, the Bible is a resource of the Spirit, to be applied generously and inclusively, not literally or straightforwardly. In the face of a new situation, where people are being excluded, Jesus refutes tradition, or at least opens it up to new applications and new interpretations, led and directed by the Spirit.
This week we will be holding a memorial Evensong for Hugh Dickinson, a former Dean of Salisbury who was instrumental in the founding of the girls’ choir here over 30 years ago. A former girl chorister here was telling me how important and life-changing this decision was to her, as it meant that she too was able to become a chorister, when up until that point it had looked as if only her younger brother was going to get that opportunity. Making the Church and its traditions inclusive and welcoming of all is very much in the spirit of Jesus’ approach to the scriptures in today’s Gospel, where no one is excluded for being the wrong ethnic group or gender, and where mercy and inclusive, expansive generosity overrule the rigid application of the letter of the law. For Jesus, it’s individuals who are important, not the keeping of a particular rule, or particular version of it, at any cost.
Even in this day and age, appointing a female Archbishop of Canterbury feels like a bold thing to do. So often the Church appears to be on the side of unflinching tradition in the face of new challenges. As an ancient and hierarchical institution, this should not perhaps surprise us. Yet Jesus also valued the new and wasn’t afraid to be innovative in how he applied the ancient Jewish law to the human situations he faced. There’s something instinctive, immediate, existential and relational about his personal ministry, even if the religion he set in train sometimes often seems to be at odds with that to which he calls us.
As religion of the book, Christianity – rightly – looks back to the past for its inspiration. Yet the Bible is book that we must use wisely and responsibly, always remembering the true Word – Jesus – to whom it points. We can never assume we alone hold the key to what it means, or that we alone know how to apply it now. We can only make our best judgements, trying not to be swayed by our own preferences and prejudices, and to follow Jesus’ courageous, Spirit-led approach, even when that means we have to go against the flow and stand out against the crowd.
Boldness is one of our values as a Cathedral, along with kindness and fairness. In the eyes of his opponents, Jesus was not fit to interpret scripture, because of the company he kept, choosing to fraternise with all kinds of sinners, as well as lower ranking people such as lepers. Yet we are his disciples if we learn to read the Scriptures and interpret them in exactly that spirit- having the courage to read them through the eyes of those who are most vulnerable and excluded in our communities, and the boldness to act accordingly.