10th Sunday Year C - Homly 1

Homily 1 - 2013

I find today’s Gospel story an attractive cameo – though it is difficult in our modern Western world to recognise much of its poignancy, and to respond accordingly. The story is not about the young man brought back to life, but about his mother and Jesus’ interaction with her. Galilee at that time was a harsh place to live. Many peasants were unemployed, and available work was seasonal. Unemployment meant poverty; and poverty meant hunger; and poverty and hunger together meant disease and sickness. Most people did not live beyond their mid-thirties. To make things worse, sickness was seen to be connected to sin – so brought religious stigma and social ostracism as well. The situation was accepted pretty much as normal, and, overall, there was not much compassion.

At the bottom of the social pile – as is so often the case in such cultures – were women. Women had no rights, no protection at law, and no inheritance. While young, their protector was their father; and when married their husband. This woman was a widow – no husband, and her father probably long dead. Her only hope would have been her son; and now he was dead. Women were already at the bottom of the pile, and widows lower still, if possible; and widows without male sons, totally alone, abandoned, helpless and without hope. And generally, no one really cared.

No wonder, then, that when Jesus came upon the scene, he felt sorry for her - as the Gospel put it. The translation does not do justice to the complexity of his reaction. The Greek word used in the original text meant “deeply emotionally moved” – a complex mix of compassion, hurt and anger at the whole gamut of insensitive cultural attitudes and suffocating systemic structures. Jesus’ response was immediate, and radical. He brought her son back to life; and, as the Gospel related, “he gave him to his mother’. In giving her her son, he gave her hope, and, I would expect, an overwhelming sense of having been noticed, taken seriously, of being someone, perhaps, even, of being loved. Nothing is said of her reaction – just inexpressible silence.

I don’t know how you women in the congregation hear today’s story. I don’t live inside your skin. But, though some things have changed, some haven’t. Women still have to struggle to be taken seriously. I wonder where Jesus is in all that – whether, as on that occasion at Nain, he feels hurt and anger at constricting institutional structures and cultural immobility – so far from his dream of the Kingdom of God.

The world that I know best is the Church. Without women ready to step up, the Church in Australia would have fallen apart years ago. The picture is patchy, but for all their indispensability, few women have much scope to participate in decision-making at the centre. I’ve heard the question raised, “Would the sexual abuse tragedy have developed as it did if women had been among those making the decisions and those advising them?” What can we do? Keep working for change, I suppose, somehow. Personally, I live in hope. For a while, in my case, hope had been in short supply. But I notice a change happening in myself with the election of Pope Francis. I don’t expect the impossible, or even the too unlikely, from him; but his election has given me the ability to hope more strongly – less of the “hope against hope” – of previously. It has been a welcome reminder to me that the Spirit breathes where it will; and perhaps a gentle rebuke as well.

It is a big Church to turn around, or even to fine-tune –1.2 billion members spread everywhere around the globe. But half, or more, of the members are women. And women around the world are becoming more aware of their dignity, more indignant at their indignity, better educated and more assertive of their rights, their giftedness and their possibilities. Who knows what the Spirit is up to?

May this Eucharist, like every Eucharist, be a heartfelt “Thank you” to God.