Homily on Vida Dutton Scudder

Readings for the Feast Day of Vida Dutton Scudder

Isaiah 42:5-9

Psalm 25:1-14

Romans 12:1-2, 14-21

John 6:37-51

This sermon was preached in Lewis Hall at Christ Church Eureka in a gathering of the Episcopal Church Women on Wednesday October 10, 2018. 

Vida Dutton Scudder (1861 – 1954) was a social welfare activist in the social gospel movement (early 20th century) as well as an English professor and one of the most prominent lesbian authors of her time. She wrote about Franciscans, St. Catherine of Siena (14^th century saint of Italy who became one of the few female theological Doctors of the church), King Arthur, the Venerable Bede, the founder of the Order of the Holy Cross (James Huntington) as well as subjects such as Christian Socialism, liturgy and poetry.

While Professor of English literature at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Scudder became an active member of multiple societies devoted to prayer and service to the poor (the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross and the Society of Christian Socialists). She organized one of the first Federal Labor Unions and founded the Denison House in Boston, which offered education and social services to the poor.

In 1894, Vida had tapped out and basically had a nervous breakdown that lasted for several years. She was giving herself so completely over in self-giving love to her writing and teaching and social outreach that she eventually burnt out. Somehow she was not getting fed enough from the source of all self-giving love. Eventually, she recovered from her illness and utter exhaustion and then resumed her indefatigable ministry: organizing a Woman’s Trade Union, founding the Episcopal Church Socialist League and the Church League for Industrial Democracy, and then supporting a controversial strike of textile workers that almost made her lose her job. Her self-giving love led her to risk her own profession and wellbeing for the sake of others.

Not too long after recovering from her nervous breakdown, Vida Dutton Scudder wrote, “Willingness to accept the death of God offered that we may live, to take the ever-renewed sacrifice into the ever-changing being which can otherwise not live at all, is the ultimate act of faith…It is the seal on the awful mystery of interdependence, the lie forever to all attempts to live a self-sufficing life. Existence itself is a continual Communion, in which [humanity] feeds upon the universal God.”[1] Existence itself is a continual Communion, in which we feed upon the universal God.

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Christ is the perfect embodiment of God’s self-giving love for us and offers himself to us in this meal. In order for us to offer ourselves in love and sacrifice to a broken and hurting world, we need to be fed regularly by the source of self-giving love. In some cases, in order to just simply exist, we need to be fed by God’s love. “Existence itself is a continual Communion, in which we feed upon the Universal God.”

            I wonder, in what other ways, apart from the Eucharist, do you feel fed by the source of self-giving love? In what ways do you participate in that continual Communion with the Universal God? What practices, disciplines, or activities nourish and empower you to continue your work of love and service and sacrifice?

[1] Vida Dutton Scudder, Social Teachings of the Christian Year: Lectures Delivered at the Cambridge Conference, 1918 (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1921), 261.