The simple answer is that I was looking for God and wasn’t able to find him in contemporary American Jewish culture. But that isn’t the whole story.
Searching the World for God
Frances J. Metcalf • March 13, 2023
The story of how a Jewish girl became an Anglican priest
Editor's note: This article continues our 2023 Testimony series. While most of the articles in this series will be about how some of our Jewish friends came to know Jesus as their Messiah and Savior, we may also tell stories of how the Jewishness of Jesus and his Gospel have enriched the faith of Gentile followers of Jesus.
By the Rev. Frances J. Metcalf
My parents were Jewish. My grandparents were Jewish … on both sides. My great-grandmother, Bessie, was Jewish, too. So were all my other great-grandparents, who were gone well before I was born. My DNA test says I’m 100% Eastern European Jewish.
So how did I end up being ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church?
The simple answer is that I was looking for God and wasn’t able to find him in contemporary American Jewish culture. But that isn’t the whole story.
Yes, my parents were Jewish, but – in reality – they were what I call cultural Jews. My mother didn’t ever light Sabbath candles; ours was not a kosher home. By the time I was 12, we didn’t even belong to a synagogue … although both my brothers made their bar mitzvahs. 1
Our Passover seders were wonderful family get-togethers, but they were more about matzoh balls and gefilte fish than the story of God’s mighty acts of redemption. Yom Kippur – Day of Atonement – at my grandparents’ synagogue in Jersey City, New Jersey was really a time for my cousin Donna and I to sneak out of shul 2 and giggle together.
I do admit that I tried Hebrew School. I went to one class and dismissed it as “too hard”. That’s actually one of the great regrets of my life. If I had stuck with Hebrew beginning at age 9, I imagine that by now I would be able to read the Old Testament in the original language … with fluency!
In my teen years, I attended youth group at the local synagogue a couple of times, but that didn’t engage me. I was really adrift. I was searching for God … to the point that I confronted my father with this question: “Daddy, is there a God?”
I think this was a crucial question for him. He had grown up in a strictly Orthodox family and abandoned that practice in his early 20s – probably when he went to college, although I’m not sure. I do know that he and my mother were great social justice warriors in their time … and were married to each other twice. The first time was a secret marriage at a liberal Unitarian church in New York City; the second time was in a traditional Orthodox ceremony in Jersey City, when my paternal grandparents discovered they were already married and – according to my grandfather – they were living in sin. Daddy was clearly struggling between the faith of his fathers and the culture of the time.
But my father was a gracious, loving man, so when I asked him, “Is there a God?” He gave me the answer that was perfect for me.
“Franny, what do you think?”
He gave me permission to find out for myself; he sent me out on a journey to search for God.
Now, I must admit that there wasn’t a straight line from “Is there a God?” to ordination. Nope. I really did explore.
I started in Judaism. I found lots of social justice there and a lot of rituals … but I could not see God. Now, please understand that I know God is clearly present in Judaism, but for me, he was not accessible. I just couldn’t find him there.
I started in Judaism. I found lots of social justice there and a lot of rituals … but I could not see God. Now, please understand that I know God is clearly present in Judaism, but for me, he was not accessible. I just couldn’t find him there.
So, I moved on to other things. Many other things. Astrology; Transcendental Meditation; EST (Erhard Seminar Training, a 1970s self-help movement) – to name a few. But nothing satisfied this longing; I hadn’t yet found God.
I started in Judaism. I found lots of social justice there and a lot of rituals … but I could not see God. Now, please understand that I know God is clearly present in Judaism, but for me, he was not accessible. I just couldn’t find him there.
So, I moved on to other things. Many other things. Astrology; Transcendental Meditation; EST (Erhard Seminar Training, a 1970s self-help movement) – to name a few. But nothing satisfied this longing; I hadn’t yet found God.
But God found me. The persistent call to know and be known was there … and the understanding came in an unlikely form.
In the late 1970s, I was living in Los Angeles and dating a guy originally from Toronto. On our first Christmas together, he decided he wanted to go to church. He grew up in the Anglican Church in Canada and hadn’t been to a service of any kind in years.
Now – if you’ve ever been to LA – you know it’s a driving city. No one walks anywhere. But my apartment in West Hollywood was two blocks from an Episcopal Church, which is where David and I ended up on Christmas morning, 1979. Coincidence?
Perhaps. Because that’s where I met God.
"Daddy, is there a God?" -- "Franny, what do you think?"
I walked into that church, took one look at the beautifully appointed altar, and knew that God was waiting for me in the Eucharist. Somehow, I understood that I wouldn’t be able to participate in that Holy Communion until I had been baptized and sealed as Christ’s own forever.
I walked into that church, took one look at the beautifully appointed altar, and knew that God was waiting for me in the Eucharist. Somehow, I understood that I wouldn’t be able to participate in that Holy Communion until I had been baptized and sealed as Christ’s own forever.
I want to share that I am a coward; I don’t think I would have been able to make that pivotal decision if my parents were still alive. Even though they were only cultural Jews, I was convinced that my decision to become a Christian would have broken their hearts.
But as he always has, and as he always will, God protected me … in his own mysterious way. In 1979, my mother died, and I moved back to New York to be closer to my family. My father had died 10 years earlier when I was just 20. While the early loss of both my parents still grieves me, God made my decision an easy one. I didn’t have to worry about how other people felt about my baptism. I didn’t have to think about whether my family would shun me. My only decision was whether I wanted to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior, which I did, in June of 1980, at Trinity Church, Wall Street, in New York City, where my father and I had spent some leisurely hours in my childhood, sitting in the peaceful graveyard, on various excursions to New York. Surely, God has this wonderful sense of resolution.
And that’s just the beginning of the story. God has taken me on a 40-year journey – yes, the reference is intentional – through ups and downs, hills and valleys, to the fruition of his deep call on my life … ordination in the Anglican Church of North America. And I am grateful that my father knew the right answer to my teen-aged question: “Is there a God?”
What do you think?
Frances Metcalf recently retired as Chaplain at UPMC Heritage Place, a skilled nursing facility in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. An accomplished printmaker and encaustic (hot wax) painter, she is currently exploring the development of a ministry to visual artists who do not know the Gospel. Ordained a priest in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, Rev. Metcalf holds a master of divinity degree from Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA. She and her husband live in McDonald, PA, just outside of Pittsburgh.
Footnotes
[1] Bar Mitzvah (bar MITS-vah) n. A son (bar) of the commandment; a man of duty. For more information see https://hebrew4christians.com/Glossary/Hebrew_Glossary_-_B/hebrew_glossary_-_b.html
[2] Shul (school) n. A synagogue; (from “school”). https://hebrew4christians.com/Glossary/Yiddish_Words/yiddish_words.html#Sh
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