The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue preached this sermon at  Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Brunswick, Georgia on September 21, 2024.

A Very Consecrated Woman
Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 20-25

Dedicated. Devoted.

Anna Ellison Butler Alexander knelt in the Church of the Good Shepherd in Thomasville, Georgia, which was brimful with black Episcopalians joining in prayer for a woman all knew to be a devout Christian, a church planter, and the founder of a thriving school in this deeply rural part of Glynn County. The liturgy was held during the second annual meeting of the Council of Colored Churchmen in the Diocese of Georgia. It was the last year that the whole state would be a single Diocese and so the biggest such meeting that would happen for some time.

We do know something of what was in the room that day in the experiences of those at the meeting. The gathering where Anna was set aside as a Deaconess came 42 years after the end of the American Civil War. Many of those who traveled to Thomasville knew the chattel slavery system from painful personal experiences and the experiences of those in their families. And in a meeting of black Episcopalians, the truth is most of those who had been enslaved had been considered the property of their fellow Episcopalians, as that is how they had come to first know the liturgies of the Book of Common Prayer.

This was certainly true for the Alexander family as the parents, James and Daphne Alexander, were enslaved by Pierce Mease Butler. He had inherited much wealth, which he squandered, amassing a massive debt, largely from gambling. Butler was reduced to auctioning 436 men, women, children, and infants over a two-day period in what we now remember as the Weeping Time. James and Daphne worked in the household and were spared from that sale, but they were an integral part of the community that knew the unimaginable pain of that auction. They knew the immense suffering of this tragedy from the inside.

The congregation gathered that May all knew chattel slavery. They knew the dashed hopes of Reconstruction. They knew the Jim Crow laws that had brought slavery by another name in a legal doctrine of separate but equal that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld 11 years earlier. They also knew in their marrow that none of that nonsense was the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

They knew the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer and so that congregation understood well that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God. They knew that God brought the children of Israel out of slavery to Pharaoh. They could see a path for their own children and children’s children to forge a better future for the generations to come. That path was to provide a sound education for the African American children who would have been lost and left out if not for the schools Episcopalians opened around the state.

That day in 1907 when Anna Alexander became Deaconess Alexander, black Episcopalians from across the state gathered on grounds that included Thomasville’s Good Shepherd School which offered a Kindergarten through fifth-grade program so good that students graduating out were advanced a year in public schools on admission. The delegates came from many church that also operated a school including those delegates from St. Cyprian’s in Darien and St. Athanasius’ in Brunswick.

The order of Deaconess was well known by 1907, in which women across the Episcopal Church had been consecrated to life-long service. But they had never known someone who looked like them, and shared their life experiences, to wear the distinctive robes of a Deaconess. What would the feelings have been as Bishop C.K. Nelson led that liturgy, asking Anna Alexander, “is it your desire to give yourself to the work of the Lord as a Deaconess in singleness of heart?”

And to hear Anna answer, “I desire to do so, by the help of God.”

In a momentous moment she knelt, and Bishop Nelson laid hands on her head and prayed:

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless, preserve, and sanctify you; and so endow you with all faith, wisdom, and humility, that you may serve before him to the glory of his great Name, and to the benefit of his Church and people; and make you faithful unto death, and give you the crown of everlasting life. Amen.

Anna, I admit thee to the office of Deaconess, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

He blessed the simple cross that she would wear for the rest of her long life as she traveled backroads of Glynn County and many miles beyond.

Dedicated. Devoted.

Deaconess Anna Alexander exemplified the best of what the Order of Deaconess aspired to be in dedicated service to the suffering and needy in a life devoted to the Triune God.

We get a glimpse of The Deaconess early success, in her report to the Women’s Auxiliary three years later, Deaconess Alexander wrote of the school then in its eighth year, “It opened with twenty-four pupils; now nearly one hundred are enrolled, with a large average attendance.”

She added, “The names of 141 baptized persons, nearly all of them children, are now on the mission lists, and I am the sponsor for nearly every one. Of these many children, through hard struggle and prayer, five are at St. Paul’s School, Lawrenceville, Va., where they pay part of their expenses by their work.” She would, in time, send many, many more students to technical schools and colleges, especially to Fort Valley in Georgia, and to her own alma mater St. Paul’s and St. Augustine’s in Raleigh, North Carolina.

While the Deaconess worked here in a poor part of Glynn County, she was widely known across the church for her faithfulness. The month after her death in November 1947, the periodical The Southern Churchman ran a notice saying that they had received word of the death of Deaconess Anna E.B. Alexander. They noted, “Deaconess Alexander was a very consecrated woman and the work she did among the people of her race in the little backwoods town of Pennick was very wonderful.”

A very consecrated woman. Consecrated. Dedicated to serving Jesus and set apart for high and holy purpose. Devoted to the God that she knew loved the children of this community as she did.

The congregation gathered that May of 1907 knew well the character of the woman who knelt in prayer as she became the only African American Deaconess in our church. They would not have been surprised to learn of the many lives she would touch across 60 years of consecrated service. But I can’t imagine anyone could have conceived that the pious and Godly woman they knew so well would be recognized for her holiness of life by the entirety of the Episcopal Church or that the Presiding Bishop would make a pilgrimage to this building to honor Deaconess Alexander as a saint.

Saint Anna. I have been asked numerous times about sainthood in the Episcopal Church when I add to the Eucharistic prayer the name Anna Alexander. Like last Sunday when in Albany I said, “In the fullness of time, put all things in subjection under your Christ, and bring us to that heavenly country where, with Paul and Anna Alexander and all your saints, we may enter the everlasting heritage of your sons and daughters….”

The question I get most often is whether the Episcopal Church expects evidence of at least two miracles as our siblings in the Roman Catholic Church require. I explain that their practice is different as they need proof of a miracle happening after someone prayed to the saint for intercession. The criteria for those recognized as saints in the Episcopal Church are: “heroic faith, love, goodness of life, joyousness, service to others for Christ’s sake, and devotion. Those we consider will further be already recognized by the faithful as saintly. And all of this should come with historic perspective that results from widespread recognition for two generations or fifty years or more.”

Of course, The Deaconess has all of that. But Anna was, in her own lifetime, a miracle worker. Founding this church. Starting a school. Keeping it all going in a Diocese that would not support her, and bishops who would not come all the way to this church, but confirmed its members at St. Athanasius in Brunswick. She showed heroic perseverance and in the process worked miracle after miracle after miracle. We are gathered here in a place where through the faith of this saint, lives were transformed. We are gathered here as that work of transformation is not near finished. We are gathered to speak against the sin of racism that tried to name the very separate and never near equal system as a just way to live. We are gathered here as that work is not done. We know the injustice that persists and long for the freedom we know in Christ to be experienced by everyone, especially those lost and left out in every system of oppression. We, like The Deaconess, need to be dedicated and devoted to the work of the Gospel. We must consecrate ourselves anew to the purpose that animated the black Episcopalians gathered for a segregated convention. They were joining with what the Holy Spirit was doing in the world to lift up future generations so they would not be bound by that same system of oppression that judged the content of a person’s character by the color of their skin. Those Episcopalians knew that none of us will be truly free until everyone is free. Those faithful followers of Jesus gathered in 1907 worked to make a difference and they made great strides as have the generations who followed them. Yet, that work of liberation is far from complete. So much is very different and far too little has changed.

This sacred place can and will be part of teaching generations yet to come how God wants us to break the bonds of injustice that are far from divine in origin. We must invest in this church and school as a means to further the work they began in praying fervently for Anna Alexander as she became a Deaconess. We have come here to celebrate the Deaconess’ life and ministry not so we can go home feeling good about ourselves, but in order to trouble our spirits with the knowledge that we have work to do. We are gathered here on this feast day of Anna Ellison Butler Alexander as we see that while she is at rest, the work remains to bring racial justice to Georgia. Let us not fail to act where generations of faithful have led the way.

Amen.