Jackie |
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The Reverend Prebendary Jacqueline Fox became Rector of St Mary Acton in 1996. She had previously been among the first women ordained Deacon, and was attached to St Mary’s as honorary curate in 1987. She was among the first women ordained Priest in 1994. At the end of June 2008 she retired and moved to Yorkshire. At a celebratory Eucharist that month the following sermon was given by Canon John White, who first met Jackie in 1968 when she was an RE teacher: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed...” (Luke 2 v 34 b); from today’s Gospel, the words of Simeon to Mary, the mother of Jesus, when she had brought her infant son to present him in the Temple.
His mother tried to persuade him to break the law rather than take on the responsibility of re-building a parish church, “George,” she remonstrated, “it is not for your weak body, and empty purse, to undertake to build churches.” He, in reply, asked her to allow him at the age of 33, to become an undutiful son, because he had made a vow to God that if he were able he would indeed rebuild the Church. The Church was that of Leighton Bromswold in the prebend of Leighton Ecclesia, then within the diocese of Lincoln; the prebendary, George Herbert, now best known as a hymn writer and poet, but also for many years as the example of the ideal Church of England country parson. He did re-build the Church and it stands to this day, but only through an act of effective disobedience to his pious and concerned mother’s wishes. I think we tend to “gloss over” how often “undutiful” acts, risky endeavours against the general will, have moved the church forward and allowed the Gospel some space to breathe again. This should come as no surprise to us because small and significant acts of disobedience are part of our own process of growing up, so enabling us to make our own distinctive personal contribution to human life. Opposition is part of the cost, from the “You may be 16 but you are not too old to feel the back of my hand!” to the rather pathetic, “Father, I really do know how to put in a nail, I am 60 now, you know!” We, church people, often take the cautious parent role, a role where we ourselves feel secure so that we are rarely happy, at first, to approve of risk takers. When writing up the preference profile for a new parish priest it is rare to find, I suspect, words which say “we want someone risky, who will encourage changes everywhere so that by the end of the priest’s first year in post we will not recognise ourselves!” It is more likely that we will play a cautious card, looking for someone who may restore but not rebuild the church community. The undutiful son George Herbert has, in our eyes, become such a respectable member of the Church that we have now given him a special day of recognition in the Calendar of Saints. Before something similar happens to Prebendary Fox, at least in this parish, I think I have a duty to set the record straight. I notice that in the way we have of equating getting paid for what you do, Jackie’s record begins with her appointment as Chaplain to the Royal College of Music in 1979. I go back in Jackie’s history a great deal further than that, and I can promise you there was nothing “part-time” about her ministry in those earlier days! If at any stage in your knowledge of Jackie she has seemed just a touch “organising”, even perhaps a fragment “school ma’am’ish”, let me assure you she was just the same in 1968 when we first worked together on a confirmation school organised by the Diocese of Ripon. Kids from some pretty deprived parishes in Leeds were brought together for several days and Jackie and I were given the responsibility of keeping them happy and perhaps enriching their understanding of what it might mean to be an adult Christian. It all went wrong within an hour of beginning and not directly on this occasion because of us. We met in a parish hall in north Leeds and when we arrived the parish priest insisted, and I mean insisted, that the youngsters were dragooned into church for a celebration of Holy Communion. I need to explain that this highly respected parish priest was determinedly of the old school and so there were no liturgical concessions made for this particular congregation. The Victorian Church had everything that most of us younger people in the sixties hated. Pews, a long nave, a choir screen and, at a very great distance from the congregation, an altar which was so far away from the young people that it was hardly possible to see the clergy never mind hear them (of course, no microphones in those days!) By the end of what must go on record as one of the dreariest acts of worship I can recall Jackie was rushing over to me and saying “They all want to go home! You’ve got to do something about it now!” I soon knew my place! I soon recognised that this lady was not for turning! She had no intention of having the clergy school ruined by what seemed to her to be the pastoral ineptitude of an ordained minister of the Church! Needless to say, despite a few further problems the confirmation school happened and was reckoned to be successful. Jackie was teaching religious education at a time when it was not as highly regarded a subject as it has now become. She had to fight her corner even in Church schools. I think we tend to forget that there was a phase when it was presumed by many that religion was nothing but a negative contribution for young people; a time when many school teachers who were instructed to begin the day with some religious instruction in the class-room defiantly refused to do so, or did it so badly that not even a child with saintly attributes could have shown enthusiasm. Those “hidden years” of Christian ministry that are not included in Jackie’s printed biography in the service sheet actually helped to form her personality and to toughen her personal defences. Eventually, she accepted the chaplain’s job at the Royal College of Music, which was made possible by the courageous risk-taking of the then senior chaplain to the University Eric Tinker who, when it comes to Mother institutional Church, has a lot of the “undutiful” son about him. But she had to accept that for many of her fellow clergy – all, of course, male and by no means guaranteed, in those days, to approve of women’s ministry – she had to accept that for many of her fellow clergy she was potentially “a sign to be opposed”. In fact, I know that she was very well supported by her fellow chaplains and found with them the friendship she required when coming to live as a displaced person in the heart of London. Continued...
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