July 1: Pauli Murray, Priest, 1985

The Collect of the Day

Pauli Murray

Liberating God, we thank you for the steadfast courage of your servant Pauli Murray, who fought long and well: Unshackle us from the chains of prejudice and fear, that we may show forth the reconciling love and true freedom which you revealed in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Pauli Murray

Liberating God, we give thee thanks for the steadfast courage of thy servant Pauli Murray, who didst fight long and well: Unshackle us from the chains of prejudice and fear, that we may show forth the reconciling love and true freedom which thou didst reveal in thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Galatians 3:23–29
Psalm 119:17–24
Mark 12:1–12

Pauli Murray was an early and committed civil rights activist and the first African American woman ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church.

Born in Baltimore in 1910, Murray was raised in Durham, North Carolina, and graduated from Hunter College in 1933. After seeking admission to graduate school at the University of North Carolina in 1938, she was denied entry due to her race. She went on to graduate from Howard University Law School in 1944. While a student at Howard, she participated in sit-in demonstrations that challenged racial segregation in drugstores and cafeterias in Washington, DC. Denied admission to Harvard University for an advanced law degree because of her gender, Murray received her Masters of Law from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1945.

In 1948 the Women’s Division of Christian Service of the Methodist Church hired Murray to compile information about segregation laws in the South. Her research led to a 1951 book, States’ Laws on Race and Color, which became a foundational document for Thurgood Marshall in his work on the decisive Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

Committed to dismantling barriers of race, Murray saw the civil rights and women’s movements as intertwined and believed that black women had a vested interest in the women’s movement. In recent years, scholars have brought to light Murray’s complex sexual and gender identity, including her attempts to access testosterone therapy as early as the 1930s.

In later life, she discerned a call to ordained ministry and began studies at General Theological Seminary in 1973. She was ordained as a deacon in June 1976, and, on January 8th, 1977, she was ordained as a priest at Washington National Cathedral. Murray served at Church of the Atonement in Washington, D.C., from 1979 to 1981 and at Holy Nativity Church in Baltimore until her death in 1985.

Murray’s books include the family memoir Proud Shoes: Story of an American Family (1956) and the personal memoir Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage (1987).

Lessons and Psalm

First Lesson

Psalm

¹⁷Deal bountifully with your servant, *that I may live and keep your word.

¹⁸Open my eyes, that I may see *the wonders of your law.

¹⁹I am a stranger here on earth; *do not hide your commandments from me.

²⁰My soul is consumed at all times *with longing for your judgments.

²¹You have rebuked the insolent; *cursed are they who stray from your commandments!

²²Turn from me shame and rebuke, *for I have kept your decrees.

²³Even though rulers sit and plot against me, *I will meditate on your statutes.

²⁴For your decrees are my delight, *and they are my counselors.

Gospel

¹Then he began to speak to them in parables. ‘A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watch-tower; then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. ²When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. ³But they seized him, and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴And again he sent another slave to them; this one they beat over the head and insulted. ⁵Then he sent another, and that one they killed. And so it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. ⁶He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” ⁷But those tenants said to one another, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.” ⁸So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. ⁹What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. ¹⁰Have you not read this scripture: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; ¹¹ this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes”?’ ¹²When they realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.