20th Sunday Year B - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2015

Two tunes have been playing in my head this past week. The louder one, and probably the one most exercising people’s minds, has been the public discussion about same-sex marriage. The other tune has been playing more softly; and I wonder how many others are likely even to have heard it. Yet both reflect a shared interest and closely intertwine; both are concerned, in their different ways, with our quality of life. The lyrics of the second tune are well enough known, at least by Christians like us. One line even warns that life without it is no life at all. Life with it, on the other hand, opens out to the promise of life that never ends, indeed to a life shared with no other than Christ himself, the life that he sources from his Father. We heard that tune in today’s Gospel.

The life that originates in God is love. Love is what everyone, in their different ways, yearns for – though people seek it in myriad places. The nagging question in the back of my mind asks, Will changing the legal definition of marriage affect the amount of love in our nation, the quality of our loving? To me, at least, other issues are secondary. Interestingly, for example, the Royal Commission into Domestic Violence is currently at work in Victoria. I ask myself, Does the legal definition of marriage have any  bearing on the incidence of domestic violence in the community?

However we come eventually to legally define marriage, I also wonder whether the community’s attitudes to marriage have already moved well beyond its legal definition, not just on same sex marriage. People’s understanding of traditional marriage seems to have been in virtual meltdown for quite a long period, without much consensus. Is it for life? Is it about commitment, come what may? Is it all that important? Is it about equality? Is it primarily about personal relationship, or about having children? And if it is about children, how important is a stable relationship between biological father and mother? Is marriage about all of these issues, or only about some? And if some, which ones are negotiable, and which are not? And who decides? On most of these issues, do people simply decide for themselves? How do we followers of Jesus react to the concerns of the moment? 

As Jesus approached the society of his time, he was concerned to do three things. Firstly, he spelt out, as interestingly as he could, what he saw to be Good News; and he endeavoured to live his message accordingly. Secondly, he called people to change their accustomed ways of seeing things, to convert and to follow him. But he left people free; he did not try to coerce them into doing the life-giving thing, because for him, the life-giving thing was to grow in love – and loving must be free or it is not love. Thirdly, as far as he could, he sought to empower people to change – by approaching them with genuine love, practical respect, with consistent realism and, consequently, with warm compassion.

In today’s confused and troubled world, that may translate like this: As far as possible, enjoy being married [and for those of us who are not currently married, enjoy whatever shapes our choices to love may take in life]; show how committed love makes good sense, despite the struggles in entails; and be prepared to talk about it sensitively to family, friends or politicians when opportunity knocks; be equally ready to listen to what others have to say; avoid the temptation to make others act the way we think they should; and always approach them with genuine love, practical respect, with consistent realism and, consequently, with warm compassion.

Let us be joyfully convinced that following Jesus means somehow living in him and realising that at the same time he also lives in us, drawing life from him, refreshed by his very flesh and blood, drawn inexorably by the hope of living with him for ever – as today’s Gospel so confidently assured us.