Naming Women

Gospel: Luke 8: 1-3

Luke is the only Gospel writer who names the women who accompany Jesus in the ministry, and for him naming is a significant component to discipleship.  Peter, Andrew, James, and John are identified when Jesus calls them, as was Levi.  Luke goes on to name the Twelve as well, and here he names the women of the group in a way that is equal to the naming of men in these previous passages that identify those called and engaged in the ministry of Jesus.

This naming continues the Gospel's profile of women in the prominent roles of salvation history.  Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna play significant roles in the opening chapters, overshadowing the men in these scenes.  Peter's mother-in-law is made the ideal of discipleship and response to the healing of God, an example against which all other encounters will be measured.  Now we have these women engaged in the work of Jesus fully identified, placed side by side with men in the work of healing, liberation, and feeding of others.

It is obvious what all this means for us in the life of the Christian community.  While people in the world have great needs of infirmity, grief, addiction, and hunger that need attention, the Church will respond with yet another study commission on who can minister and who cannot in various roles.  Let us - all of us - instead just be about the work of Jesus.  Let us go into the world and bind up wounds, lift people up, free them from their demons, and feed them in their needs.      

The Greater Sin

Gospel: Luke 7: 36-50

This interaction between Jesus, a Pharisee, and a prostitute contain a great deal of irony.  The Pharisee objects to the woman's presence in his own house, first irony, and her interaction with Jesus.  In the mind of the Pharisee her sinfulness is greater than any other, and he cannot believe that someone allegedly a prophet would interact with her and even allow her to touch him by washing his feet.  No man could be a legitimate prophet and allow such a thing.

Jesus asks the Pharisee who is more grateful for their debt forgiven - the one with a greater or lesser sin - and the obvious answer is the one with a greater sin.  Now comes the second irony.  Jesus implies that it is the Pharisee who is guilty of the greater sin.  One so zealous for the law neglected the laws of hospitality.  He did not provide Jesus with the required ablutions before a meal at table.  It is the self-righteous hypocrite who is the greater offender than the prostitute.  

The one who is self-righteous and hypocritical is so by choice.  The prostitute is coerced into the profession either through the machinations of men who exploit her or through poverty that forces her to make a living somehow.  Jesus has compassion on her situation, extending mercy to her, and so should we.  He has little room for hypocrisy and self-righteousness, and neither should we.   Yet Jesus eats at the table of the self-righteous and hypocrite, keeping the relationship open to possible transformation.  And so should we.

Underlying Motives

Gospel: Luke 7: 31-35

Today's Gospel portion reveals our hypocrisy and hidden motives behind judgments we make about matters of the spirit.  The judgments we make are largely superficial about externals, and they are often contradictory in nature.  We mock John the Baptist's fasting; we belittle the feasting of Jesus.  But our judgments have little to do with their culinary habits or even their exterior appearance.  Our unspoken motives run much deeper than we care to admit.

John the Baptist called us to repentance.  Jesus came to invite us to a life of extending mercy and love for others.  We want to do neither of these things.  We have made peace with our sins over the years and comfortable with who we are.  We have established biases and resentments toward others that we would rather not set aside to care for others and extend mercy to them.  We cannot say these things aloud.  So we invent other reasons for not following the messages of John and Jesus, contradictory though they may be.

We so desperately want the world to change while simultaneously not wanting to change anything about ourselves.  If we will not repent of our sins and end our animus toward others, we cannot expect others to do so.  So, neither we nor they change and make progress in the life of the spirit.  The world goes on as it has always done.  We will put John and Jesus to death again and again in many different ways and in the many we consign to death each day.