Imagine If...

Gospel: Matthew 15: 21-28

Let us imagine this Gospel story from another angle.  Imagine if Jesus had listened to his disciples who tell him to ignore this foreign, pagan woman and the needs of her daughter who is caught in the grips of a demon.  Let us suppose that this version of the story is preserved, recorded, and passed on into the Gospel text, permeating the tradition.  Let us consider the various outcomes and consequences of this rendering of the story.  

Most immediate is the fact that the young girl would still remain in the grips of the demon; she would not have been helped.  Then, we would have a story and a tradition that now can create a theology of exclusion based on prejudice and bias against women, foreigners, and those of different faith backgrounds that can then be used to justify all sorts of animus against the same throughout history, leaving a trail of pain and death across the centuries.

Yes, even with the story as it is, we have still managed to create such ideologies and outcomes in the world.  At least with this story standing as it exists, those who do create such theologies and exact such pain on the world do so in opposition to the example and teaching of Jesus, not because of it.  The world can see that such theologies are utterly false and demonic, and that those who struggle to accept Christianity do so because alleged Christians follow the way of the disciples and not the way of Jesus.

Remembering the Promise

Gospel: Luke 1: 39-56

A Christian feast would not be so were there not some controversy surrounding it.  In a tradition that cannot celebrate the greatest feast of Easter on the same day, so today's feast comes with its own set of disputes, not the least of which is where it took place.  For some, Mary went with the apostle John to Ephesus where she was lifted up to heaven, and shrine exists there.  For others, Mary's dormition took place in Jerusalem, where the Dormition Church marks the locale of that tradition.  

Along the way rival ideas about whether Mary fell asleep and was brought up to heaven or whether she was just brought up to heaven added to the endless minutiae of disputes in Christianity that leave a person tired and exhausted, much like Mary to be sure at the end of her life.  This poor, simple village woman who exists as our model of bearing Christ and bringing him forth into the world by our life, surely did not sign on for such disputatious nonsense regarding the end of her days on this earth.  

In her Magnificat Mary rejoices that God has remembered the promises to his people, the promises of liberation and renewal.  Mary experienced that liberation and new life.  Her life and her final moments on earth invite us to experience that liberation and renewal as well.  Rather than adding to the discord and oppression in church and world, let us instead imitate Mary, bearing the Lord, bringing forth the Lord into the world in our lives, and being transformed by the liberation and new life that his life brings to all. 

Finding the Ideal

Gospel:  Matthew 19: 3-12

Today's Gospel portion is difficult to read if one is a woman.  The entire conversation around divorce is had entirely from the point of view of a man.  The woman is seen merely as property without any say, and the one exception allowing divorce is predicated on the lewdness of the woman, not the man.  The implied message of the teaching is that a man should keep his wife, though the motives for doing so are not stated in the ideal of love, but are left unclear.

Jesus' disciples hear this teaching and immediately say that if this is so, then it is better not to marry at all.  This response is truly horrid.  Their reason for celibacy is based not on any noble ideals or for the kingdom of God, but only on the fact that they do not have the option of divorcing their wives if they so chose.  And it overlooks the reality unmarried women faced in those days - no protection from law, vulnerability, poverty, and resorting to whatever means to survive as noncitizens unattached to a man.  

The decision to marry and remain committed to marriage is a deep and serious one, one that is borne by both men and women equally.  Marriage is not a decision of one day of proposal and another of the wedding day itself.  It is a decision of each moment of each day that both members make.  A marriage can be an inspiring thing to those who experience one longstanding and committed by each person.  This is the ideal to which married people are called to undertake in a partnership of equals in mutual love and respect.