Meeting the Holy

Lent; Sunday 3 – 12^th March 2023

[John 4:5-42]

That Samaritan woman had good reason to be astonished. At midday she had gone out as usual to the well, to fill her water jar. The other village women came out in early morning or at sunset, but she avoided them, because they would not speak to her. It was the divorces – which had not been her choice – and the other men. But that’s another story.

It seemed like an ordinary day, but then this Jewish traveller came up to the well. He was hot and tired, and asked her for a drink. She had never spoken to a Jewish man before, but this one was friendly and started a conversation. He soon showed that he knew about her husbands. She saw that he was some kind of prophet, and when he told her that he was the long-awaited Messiah, she could believe him. She dropped her jar and hurried back back into the village, calling out her news to everyone.

That Samaritan woman had not just learned a theological truth. She had met someone who accepted her, as she was, with all her shame, and showed her that God accepted her, as she was. To know that she was loved, truly, set her gloriously free.

Does our Catholic church today always do what Jesus did for that woman? Sadly, it doesn’t. A priest who died recently in Sydney had asked that Deirdre Browne’s hymn Come as you are be played at his funeral. However the presiding archbishop refused to allow it to be sung. Why not? Some Catholics have expressed doubts about its “orthodoxy”. Could they and the archbishop have been troubled by the lines:

Come as you are, that’s how I love you…

Or perhaps:

Nothing can change the love that I bear you…

Each time you fail to live by my promise
Why do you think I’d love you the less?

Do those who would censor this hymn think that if we have sinned, as we often do, God does not love us until we have confessed to a priest? This would be serious confusion about the God that Jesus has shown us. How could Infinite Love ever cease to love what it has made?

We need to think deeply before we presume to censor what others are saying, whether in ordinary speech or in poetry. Thomas Bowdler’s sister, in the 19^th century, removed from her edition of Shakespeare all the words that could not be spoken aloud in a family setting. Perhaps this could be justified by the desire to “protect children”, but the same argument can hardly be used today to justify publishing bowdlerised editions of Roald Dahl and even Enid Blyton. Don’t children need to hear and learn about real life, so as to prepare to live in it?

In 2020 the USA Catholic bishops published a list of hymns that should not be used in liturgy. Astonishingly, their list included the much-loved God Beyond All Names, The Lord of the Dance, St Francis’ Canticle of the Sun, All Are Welcome, City of God and Table of Plenty. How can bishops presume to dictate to other mature followers of Christ, many of whom have more artistic talent than the bishops, what words we may use to thank and praise The Holy One? Their invasion of others’ natural rights showed similar arrogance to that small group of men who in 2011 imposed on every member of our church a Mass translation in second-rate English.

How many Plenary Councils must pass, before we can question the right claimed by a few to force us into this kind of crippling uniformity, by using the totalitarian structures that have been allowed to develop in our church-institution?

How far this has taken us from Jesus’ promise to that Samaritan woman that we need to worship God “in spirit and in truth”?

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‘… and they become one body.’

Sunday 27B 3^rd October 2021

[Genesis 2:18-24, Mark 10:2-16]

What else can Jesus’ Good News mean, unless that God’s infinite Love, is guiding us to use our gifts to heal all human relationships and bring peace to the world? We need faith to believe this, looking around the world today; but Jesus describes our future, the coming Reign of God, as a great party, a wedding feast, in which all are welcome. It is happening slowly, Jesus tells us, as yeast leavens dough and a seed germinates in darkness.

This story from the book of Genesis is colourful and child-like. It is about the earliest stages of God’s Kingdom. This first human being is like God: Adam can think, and take care of the garden. In God’s amazing new world everything is said to be ‘good’. But suddenly something is wrong. God sees that ‘it is not goodfor the man to be alone.’

In this quaint myth, God brings to the man all the different animals, one by one, to see if there is a match. Adam has the privilege of naming them, but finds no relationship there. Nothing suitable. Dogs may be wonderfully friendly and sympathetic; horses faithful and extremely useful, but there has to be something better.

The wise Creator goes to work again. He puts the man to sleep, takes a part of the man’s own body and forms a new creature. It is to be equal to the man, but remarkably different. When Adam wakes and sees her he is overwhelmed. At last! A mate; someone I can relate to. A helper. The Hebrew word [’ezer] does not suggest an inferior servant or slave, for the Bible often speaks of God as the ’ezer of Israel. But a patriarchal society wrote this story, and it is hard to let go of male superiority, so Adam gets to name the woman, as he had named the other creatures.

We believe that the books of the Bible contain inspired wisdom from God, written by human minds and hands. No other Middle Eastern culture has stories which dignify woman by saying she was created separately like this. Perhaps some Indigenous cultures do? Genesis says she shares the man’s bone and flesh – his strengths and weaknesses? The author then adds an important footnote: ‘this is why a man leaves’ even his patriarchal home ‘and becomes one with his wife’: naked, hiding nothing from each other, without guilt or shame, in full relationship.

This beautiful human relationship is surely the foundation stone of the Reign of God. And it foretells something even more beautiful: St Paul sees that marriage is a sort of weak reflection of the relationship that each of us has with God. [Ephesians 5:31]

This particular Genesis story focuses on the mystery of a lifetime partnership without mentioning having children to extend the human family. Partnerships where there are no children, and between couples who are long past child-bearing have always been accepted as true marriages by Christian theologians and canon lawyers. Isn’t there room here also for life-long partnerships between those people on our human spectrum who are attracted to the same sex as themselves?

Genesis leaves no doubt that the partnership of man and woman is meant to be life-long. When the Pharisees challenge Jesus about Moses permitting divorce, Jesus quotes Genesis, reminding them that God’s authority is greater than Moses. Is Jesus harsh in saying that remarrying after divorce is as bad as adultery? As usual, Jesus is showing us the best that we are capable of: the beautiful possibilities of the ideal marriage. Perhaps we must read this as we read Jesus’ other metaphors advising us to escape temptations by cutting off our hand or plucking out our eye: or that God will torture some of us forever, in fire?

Jesus urges us to strive for the ideal, but doesn’t expect us to take his metaphors literally. Most human partnerships make huge mistakes: and the Genesis myth soon describes Adam and Eve’s huge mistake. But God always offers us ways out of our failures. We all know people who enter, too young, into a foolish, unprepared marriage. When they fall apart, painfully, the second try is often much more successful. God’s mercy is infinite, and Jesus brings that mercy among us.

Mark’s gospel is just one Christian community’s effort to recall what Jesus did and taught. Matthew’s gospel is another. It allows an exception, when certain marriages can be ended, and theologians are still arguing about what it means! The letters of St Paul and St Peter mention other exceptions when marriages can be dissolved. Catholic marriage tribunals take all these into account when judging whether a marriage is valid. In discerning when a marriage is not a marriage, our church is now much more merciful, less legalistic than it once was.

Every human person fails, often. We build God’s Kingdom by dealing with them by forgiving each other and growing in love. It is helpful to return to that inspiring scene where the first man sees the first woman for the first time. It is our first picture of human love.

Whether we are married or single, widowed or divorced, can we look today at the many people in our life with the same awe and thanks that the first couple expressed when they first saw each other?

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