26th Sunday Year A - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2008 

Jesus was talking to those at the top: to the chief priests and the senior men (the elders) of the people.  He brought it right up to them: The tax-collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before you.  That’s fascinating, isn’t it!  The tax-collectors – the ones who administered the taxes that crushed the poor, and the prostitutes…  I suppose some tax-collectors and prostitutes struggled with their behaviour, and didn’t always sleep soundly at night.  Yet, as Jesus said, they were able to approach God, and to believe him.  And they could do that, perhaps, because they hoped that God is a God who knows where they come from, who knows the pressures they live under … and also perhaps, because Jesus had helped them see that God is also the God who forgives, who forgives the guilty (No one else needs it).

Because they believed in forgiveness, they were able to face the prospect of change, to change the way they saw themselves… to change their minds (like the son in today’s story).  They were able to face the destructiveness of their behaviour – because they had come to see that their sin did not in the least block their access to God.  They no longer needed to deny their sin, to soften it, or to call it something else (where previously they may have been tempted to do so).  They could see the pressures on them not as justifying reasons or excuses, but as they were: factors confusing, even rattling, them, and lessening their freedom.  They could be real before God, and, because they were real, God could touch them.

I have been thinking a lot these past few weeks about women who have abortions.  We tread a difficult line.  On the one hand, as we look at things objectively, in a detached way, we can’t but see abortion as destructive of human life.  The issues are, though, more complicated.  The culture, and the media, muddy the waters.  So many articles in the paper of late keep speaking of the child in the womb as though it is not a child.  They say it’s just another part of the mother’s body, with which she can do what she wants.  They deny that abortion is the destruction of a human life.

More pertinently, perhaps, many unwillingly pregnant women, without necessarily thinking things through clearly, simply see their situation as impossibly messy.  They are anything but detached – indeed, they feel under enormous pressure.  Do they necessarily, cold-bloodedly, turn their backs on God?  Or might they think that God, somehow, understands?  It is hard to know what goes on in human minds under pressure.  Only when the pressures have gone, as they look back, may they see clearly what in fact they have done – and that their choice was at too great a price.

People who know forgiveness can front the destructiveness of what they have done.  They do not have to run from the truth or from themselves.  Those who know the forgiving God find the beautiful freedom to change their minds, to be genuinely sorry and to seek forgiveness.  It is truly tragic that so many never meet the forgiving God.  They have to go it alone.  They never discover the heart of God.  They never find the deepest inner peace.

Let’s be slow to judge anyone.  Perhaps, we in the Church make it hard for women, too, because we are not as good as we could be at witnessing to the God who is love.  Perhaps, we get across a God who points the finger.  Like the chief priests and elders of Jesus’ day, none of us is all that good at recognising and naming our sin, because half the time we mistake it for virtue – it’s our way to impress God.  Sometimes, sadly, the energy that fuels the loudest condemnations comes from an uneasiness that stirs within, stemming from our unconscious struggles with our deeper, unrecognised sins.  We are all vulnerable.