10th Sunday Year C
See Commentary on Luke 7:11-17
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.
Homily 2 - 2016
Two of today’s three readings present us with the situation of two widows, each confronting the death of her only son, a young boy in one case, a grown youth in the other. The readings come just a week after a tragic accident in the parish, where a teenage girl was killed and her companion in the car injured, and facing an unthinkable future.
As I reflect with you this morning, I am acutely aware of my ignorance of your personal experiences of death, and of any lingering rawness you carry still in your hearts. I want to speak gently. And yet there is a time when it can be important to think aloud, as it were, and to wrestle with the mystery of death and how we can fruitfully interact together as a caring community.
When death is fresh and people are still in shock, feelings flow freely, their intensity a factor usually of the love and attachment felt for the one who has died. People are hurting, deeply hurting, and pain gives rise inevitably to sadness and a cocktail of other feelings, some surprising and unexpected, even apparently contradictory, from being stunned, to feeling angry, guilty, vengeful, sometimes proud, grateful, and so on. Some will hold their reactions in silence, or tears, others needing to talk, others again questioning indignantly or desperately, or simply confused and empty. It seems to me that people need to be allowed to feel what they are feeling, that their pain be respected, however it be expressed. At that time, questions do not need answering; they need to be heard and honoured. People usually are in emotional turmoil and in no mood for academic discussions. The best we can give is our caring presence, a ready ear – and sometimes our practical help.
Where is God? In the immediate shock and turmoil of death, people sense God differently. God may seem anywhere, or nowhere. As Jesus confronted the sisters, Martha and Mary, after the death of their brother, Lazarus, he was deeply moved. We are told that he wept. As he faced death himself, Mark tells us that Jesus felt that God was disturbingly absent. Somehow, he managed to keep trusting. If we gaze at the crucifix, we see that even the Trinity knows the agony of grief. When we weep, we do not weep alone.
But time passes. Emotions can lose their rawness, even though they may never disappear. This can be the time to face the God-questions. I believe that God is present to us always; God is helping us. In every situation, I hold firmly to the conviction that Paul once expressed in his letter to the Romans, “God makes all things work together for the good of those who love him”. The important task is to ask myself, “What is God doing now, in my life? How is God helping me, right now, to grow? to become more alive? to mature? How do God and I work together?” What God is doing may not be obvious or we would not need to search. Perhaps we are not used to asking the question. It is not a theoretical question seeking a theoretical answer. The answer will be different, tailored to each of us. It will change as time passes, and weeks become months and months become years.
There is a second conviction I hold. Jesus said to his disciples not long before he left them, “My own peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you.” It is there. We may have to look for it, sitting lightly with our expectations, not knowing precisely what we are looking for, because “his peace” is somehow different from what he calls “the world’s peace”. Finding it is the satisfying fruit of our determinedly taking a contemplative stance towards our life and our world. It does not replace grief, but allows it to be life-giving.