[Propertalk] Homily for Proper 20 B - Draft -- Part 1 of 3

[Joe Parrish]

Forwarded:




From
robertpmorrison robertpmorrison at charter.net




THEEPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                            
THE TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
PROVERBS31:10-31                                                                                                                                
PROPER 20 B
JAMES3:13 -4:3, 7-8a                                                                                                               
20thSEPTEMBER, 2015
MARK9:30-37                                                                                                                                                    PSALM 1
 
            In a cartoon sent to me this weekthere was a picture described as “An Irish Sense of Humour”. A woman stood at asink overflowing with dishes waiting to be washed, the back of her hand wipingher forehead. She said, “I almost had an ‘I need a man’ moment ….. but then Iwas able to get the whiskey bottle open myself.”
            How many people can you offend atone time? Why was there a woman standing at the impossibly full sink, and noone else appeared to be there to help? Did someone think that was where she wassupposed to be? It’s not guaranteed, but surely there had been at least one manat the dinner table.
            And what’s with this “I need a man”moment? Perhaps a second person CAN help, from time to time,especially if you or I have arthritis, or a bruised finger or hand. But thinkof the number of times when the gender of the second person helping has beenentirely insignificant, no matter whether it’s working through that load ofdishes, or opening a bottle, or changing the baby, or just about anything elseyou care to mention.
            And what’sa bottle of whiskey, Irish, Scotch, or otherwise, got to do with completing thejob at hand?
            Was the point of that cartoon tooffend, or, like so much else we see and hear, something which grew out ofignorance or unwillingness to think about the impact of a statement or anaction? Doesn’t it attack the very nature of what it means to be human? Don’tthings like the cartoon simply reinforce stereotypes while, at the same time,saying that it’s O.K. to single out one person, one group, one nation, and makedisparaging remarks about them? And have I contributed to this simply bytalking about what was sent to me? 
            Where does this start? Where does itstop? When do we realise and accept what it means to be fully human and torejoice in all the possibilities God offers?
            The church has been criticized,rightly, for its history of intolerance, prejudice and abuse. Yes, there havebeen some wonderful people, people willing to look and listen to what’s goingon around them, and been willing to respond on behalf of others, often at greatpersonal cost to themselves. Thank God for those faithful followers of Jesus.But we have to confront ourselves and others about all the times Christianshave been instigators of shockingly poor theology and perpetrators of themisuse of scripture to harm others.
            Take the first reading, for example.
            “The chapter on the woman of noble character (or the wife ofvalor or whatever she’s called) is a poem that closes Proverbs. Unfortunately,the passage has been used to oppress women, demanding a wife have all thecharacteristics listed in the poem. But the beauty of the passage is that thespeaker of the poem praises his wife not simply for her physical beauty, butfor her strength. He admires her fortitude, her wisdom, and her goodness. Herecognizes that beauty is not in the eye but the heart.” 1
            Butwe can’t stop there. If we do, we fail the writer of the passage; we fail womenand men everywhere; we fail God, the Inspirer of the poem.
            Ifwe look behind the words to what is left unspoken, we discover that what thenarrator is praising, what WEshould be praising, what GODpraises, is the shattering of the stained-glass ceiling, or however you want tocharacterize the way in which women have been inhibited, have been oppressed,haven’t been allowed to advance and challenge themselves to reach greater andgreater levels of capability and skill


===>Continued in Parts 2 and 3
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