13th Sunday Year B - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2018 

What a great Gospel today! And how relevant to where we are now as Church! Two women, one twelve years marginalised, discarded and excluded by a male-dominated religious culture because of an untreatable uniquely gynecological condition; the other, twelve years old, carefully protected, facing puberty, respected within the religious culture, but facing death.

And then there is the male: synagogue official, used to power and influence, but in this case helpless. Distraught, he does a deal with Jesus. He bargains his dignity, his honour, falling at Jesus’ feet and pleading with him for his desperately sick daughter. Within the honour culture of the time, his action places a duty on Jesus to return the compliment, to hear his plea and to do what he is asked. Jesus honours the transaction, and goes with him.

The woman has absolutely no power, nothing to bargain with. She has only need. No! she also has hope, hope in the goodness and the mysterious authority of Jesus. She takes a risk. She furtively touches Jesus’ garment and in the process ritually defiles him. But Jesus responds to her, heals her condition, listens to her whole story, reaches out to her as his daughter; and she experiences within her healing and wholeness.

To me, this story seems wonderfully relevant. Here we are as Church, experiencing humiliating marginalization. We have lost our attractiveness, and with it lost the feeling of familiar and comfortable power. We have been crumbling from within. From outside, we have been challenged to change by a Royal Commission – challenged to become aware of deep defects, to alter what the Commission calls our culture, the familiar ways we see and do things and how we interact. Specifically we have been directed to recognize the dangerous ways we have ignored the particular gifts of women and their wisdom, and used Canon Law to exclude them officially from significant decision-making and over-sight.

I believe that today’s Gospel passage indicates a few ways to face our problems. The woman showed initiative, motivated by what the translation calls faith, but involves also hope, what we might better call trust. We need women in the Church who trust enough to take initiative. It is happening. Precisely because your experience in the past has been so disheartening, you need hope, you need trust – trust in yourselves, but especially in Jesus who is interested in you and who sees in you cooperators who together can change the Church.

The Gospel passage says more. As Jesus continued his way to the official’s house, the man’s young daughter died. The situation had deteriorated from desperate to literally hopeless. The synagogue official, the man of local power and influence, representative of the religious structure, could do nothing. Not so! said Jesus. He said, “Do not be afraid; only have faith”. That meant profound change. Structures work through control. The official’s falling at Jesus’ feet, a seeming indignity, in the honour-saturated culture of the time gave him a way of controlling Jesus’ response. That is the way cultures inevitably operate – control. And why? because radically their leaders [including, in the Church’s case, bishops and priests] are unconsciously afraid that without controlling, things will fall apart.

Jesus got to the heart of the problem: the fear that generates control. Could the official trust? Can the male-focussed Church trust the authority, not of control but of truth, and integrity; not of law, not of government sanction, not of personal learning? Can it learn to trust Jesus, to trust the guidance of the Spirit, to trust the attractiveness of truth and genuine value, of love, of non-violence – and keep on trusting? Can it let go of power, of the search to dominate? Such is the cultural change that alone can lead the Church today from death to life. “Do not be afraid! Only have faith!”

The Gospel passage concluded, “Give her something to eat”. On our part, what better than the enlightened, reflective, deliberate, regular celebration of Eucharist - of the death that led to resurrection?