11th Sunday Year C - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2013

There are fascinating undercurrents in today’s Gospel story.  I would like to think aloud with you about one that, for some reason or other, strikes me more clearly today.  Jesus compares the Pharisee and the woman with the reputation.

As they are presented in the Gospels, Pharisees were professionals on matters of law – not just knowing the laws but also keeping them - very much the law-abiding, upright citizens so often extolled in the Psalms.  Simon the Pharisee of today’s story would have been no exception.  But he obviously lacked something – obvious, at least, to Jesus, though probably not obvious [or appreciated] by himself.

He had gone out of his way to invite Jesus to share a meal with himself and a few of his Pharisee friends.  Yet, we could wonder why.  He invited Jesus, but showed him none of the customary courtesies expected for every guest – no welcoming embrace, no washing his feet, no refreshing oil to soothe his sun-dried skin.  He no doubt had some purpose in inviting Jesus, but it was clearly not deeper relationship or friendship.

The woman with the reputation, on the other hand, was no expert in the law nor, apparently, scrupulously observant of it.  But she was very much into relationship, and in no way inhibited in expressing it extravagantly – she trusted, she respected, she responded.

What is important for me is Jesus’ assessment of the two.  His clear preference is relationship.  

Behaviour has relevance to the extent that it expresses relationship and respect that reaches out in trust to personal engagement.  Jesus made that quite explicit with his comment to her: Your faith has saved you.  And it is the same for us.  We are saved from sin, from self-absorption, from the world’s competitiveness and violence and exclusion to the extent that we have faith.  And the faith in question, the faith that saves, is not assent to ideology any more than it is observance of law, but trust in Jesus and in everything that he was on about, and reaching out to him in love.  Certainly saving faith has a practical component – but doing the right thing for any reason other than the expression of love is irrelevant.  That was where the Pharisees missed the point.  The Kingdom of God consists in relationship.  Sanctifying grace is relationship.  The Holy Spirit is the energy of relationship.

Paul was exploring the same thing in today’s Second Reading, when he wrote:  … what makes people righteous is not obedience to the Law but faith in Jesus Christ – and not mere 100% for Catechism but … faith in the Son of God who loved me and even sacrificed himself for my sake.    What matters for Paul is relationship.  Again, he wrote: I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me…  Incredible relationship!

This week we mark the World Day for Refugees.  The whole question of Australia’s response to refugees makes me so sad, so ashamed.  Refugees are persons – like us - so many of them fleeing for their lives, leaving family, abandoning home; many of them deeply traumatised; hoping for the freedoms we so blithely expect and take for granted.  Much public discourse seems to choose to overlook the basic reality that they are persons – desperate persons in need.  There are hundreds of thousands of them presently in our world; and their numbers are growing, as they flee from armed conflicts made possible by the profusion of weapons, most of which are manufactured and sold by Western nations.

They are not just a problem – though their existence does present a problem.  They are not just a nuisance disturbing our “business as usual”.  They are, firstly, people in dire need.  And to respond to their needs will mean adjustments for us and have its price.

What was Jesus getting at …?  this Jesus whom you and I are trying so hard to get ever closer to.  What was he getting at when he said: I was a stranger and you made me welcome ?  He meant something.  Political answers are complex; but surely the underlying motivation of the whole debate needs to spring from a clear sense of human dignity and personal engagement and to be conducted in an atmosphere of profound respect.

As Jesus showed in today’s story, salvation is a factor of relationship.  And our sharing of the one bread and the one cup will symbolise precisely that, and invite us to join in.