The Rev. Laura Everett delivers her sermon “A God Who Repairs” during the morning worship service Sunday in the Amphitheater.
“Cast out, cast out, cast out. Another woman is cast out. There is a long history of women being cast out and sent so far from home,” said the Rev. Laura Everett.
Everett preached at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday ecumenical worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermon title was “A God Who Repairs,” and the scripture reading was Genesis 3: 1-12, 20-24.
Everett shared the plight of 18th-century British convicts — Eliza Deans female was 22 years old when she was cast out for stealing a pair of leather boots. Jane and Caroline Burton, ages 14 and 15, were cast out for stealing some linen drying on a hedge.
“Linen had a decent resale in 1831 and poor girls had few ways to make money, except to sell their bodies, which was also illegal,” Everett said. “They were cast out and sent to Tasmania. They were petty thieves, but they served British needs because there were 10 men for every one woman and who else would do domestic work? And how are you going to populate the land with only Adam?”
Under the watchful eye of the British Ladies’ Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners, organized by Quaker Elizabeth Fry in 1817, efforts were made in prison reform. But in 1841, 180 women were cast out of Newgate Prison in London. “They were cast out, cast out, cast out and sent off so very far from home,” Everett said. They set sail on the convict ship, HMS Rajah.
Everett said “from the first bite of the apple, Adam and Eve knew they were naked. The apple peel was still stuck in their teeth and the juice was running down their hands. They had no button-down shirt or blue jeans to wipe their hands. So how did they know what parts needed to be covered, which ones were inappropriate for public view? How quickly did they sew fig leaves?”
In 2016 the world’s oldest needle, 2 and 3/4 inches long, made out of a large bird bone, was found in Siberia. It had an eye for the thread and it could be used for sewing. “That is how old sewing is,” said Everett. So while Adam took a leftover chicken bone and made a needle, Eve foraged for fig leaves. Everett held up two fig leaves and noted that Eve would have had to gather a lot.
“What makes this text painful and glorious is the question, how long did it take to make the thread?” she said. “We have to think seriously about how long it takes to twist fiber into thread before you can begin to stitch. Let’s not be literalists, but it takes a long time.’
She noted that spinning fiber into thread is mostly done by women. “We pinned sin on Eve, now she also has to make the thread. Whether it was cotton, linen, hemp or wool, whether she used a spindle or spinning wheel, Adam and Eve were naked for a long time.”
And what they made was something of a mess. They were trying to stitch back their lives and the project ended up looking more like a third-grade art class project or Vacation Bible School craft. “Have you ever tried to cover up a mistake all on your own?” Everett asked. “Especially when you end up with a clumpy craft project after the Lord of all creation has created the universe?”
In Genesis 3:8, God decides to go for a walk and the humans hide themselves.
“What could be more calming, more beautiful than God out for an evening constitutional? Maybe he will ask them to meet him on the porch for tea or to check out the sunset,” Everett said. “Instead, God finds the humans in shame, fear, and hiding with homemade clothes. If you have ever gone to school in hand-me-downs, you know the terror of being found out.”
Everett’s sermon series will center on stories of textiles in scripture and use this exploration as a way into the ancient world, to see the clothes up close and put hands on the clothing.
What God did in Genesis 3:21 was repair, she said. God made garments of skins and clothed Adam and Eve. “This is fundamentally who God is — a mender who longs for repair. It takes time to clothe people, to make a garment, and each stitch is an act of love and care.”
God’s clothes for Adam and Eve put the threads where they needed to be the first time. Every stitch was where it needed to be, there was no need for alterations. God had all the time in the universe, all the skills and all the resources to repair Adam and Eve.
“God knows what we need and fixes it,” said Everett. She repeated, “God is in the business of repair. This is who God is. God knows what is needed. Sin keeps recurring and God calls us back, not one time but every time, especially when it takes a very long time for reparations.”
When the 180 women prisoners were sent to Tasmania in 1841, the British Ladies for Reclamation gave each person cloth, a needle and thread to keep them busy. In 1987, 145 years later, a quilt was found in an attic in Scotland made by the women on their voyage, created at sea.
“Is this justice? No. Is it testimony? Maybe,” said Everett. The women left this note on the quilt:
To the ladies of the convict ship committee, this quilt worked by the convicts of the ship Rajah during their voyage to van Dieman’s Land is presented as a testimony of the gratitude with which they remember their exertions for their welfare while in England and during their passage and also as a proof that they have not neglected the ladies kind admonitions of being industrious. — June 1841
The quilt is 10 feet by 10 feet, has 3,000 pieces and hangs in the National Gallery in Canberra, Australia.
Everett said, “They still made beauty, they created art. Nothing is lost in service to God. Everything cast out will be made whole with the God who repairs.”
The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor of Chautauqua, presided. Veronica Biggins, former Clinton administration staffer, resident of Atlanta who heard about Chautauqua through the Chautauqua Circle in Atlanta and a member of the Chautauqua Institution Board of Trustees, read the scripture. The prelude was “Menuet gothique” Op. 25 by Léon Boëllman, played by Rees Taylor Roberts, 2024 organ scholar, on the Massey Memorial Organ. The Chautauqua Choir sang “Adam lay ybounden,” music by Carson Cooman and text in 15th-century English. The choir was under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, and they were accompanied by Roberts on the Massey Organ. The offertory anthem was “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree,” music by Elizabeth Poston and text by Joshua Smith. The anthem was sung a cappella by the Chautauqua Choir under the direction of Stafford. The postlude, played by Stafford on the Massey Organ, was “Toccata,” by Leo Sowerby. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching was provided by the Randall-Hall Memorial Chaplaincy and the J. Everett Hall Memorial Chaplaincy.
