Moving Toward A Horizon of Hope

Long before the oral tradition that gave birth to Scripture, women were responding to the generative voice of the Divine, as we do today, as we have always done.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

My sisters and brothers, in the papacy of Francis, we, the Universal Church, are in a kairos moment. The time marked by the Synod on Synodality is pregnant with shared hope, anticipation, and potential. It offers a fertile invitation to deep listening, discernment and awe.

This same invitation is offered to us as we ponder the Gospels. Today, Matthew leads me to ask, “To what am we being invited?” “What does Jesus the Christ want us to hear?” Of all the parables he used to liberate people from the bondage of injustice, the one proclaimed today raises many questions.

We initially hear the words through the systems that have had the greatest impact on our lived experience. For me, these include American exceptionalism, anti-black racism, capitalism, colonization, patriarchy, intergenerational trauma, white body supremacy, and the Doctrine of Discovery. If I hear Jesus teaching and think he is promoting one of these systems, I am remaking God in my image. How do we move beyond these dualistic traps to encounter the heart of Christ?

To begin, it is important to have some insight on the history and systems that impacted his lived experience. How did he perceive these structures and the language used to reinforce them? How did he understand his personal relationship with God?

Jesus and the people who heard him speak shared a common context that gave them the capacity to understand the significance of his teachings. Through parables he used language to weave compelling and often jarring narratives that were clearly counter cultural. They elevated the dignity of the marginalized and downtrodden, while expanding the heartspace of those who could grasp a third way. He knew that everyone would neither choose to embrace nor to ponder his wisdom. We know that even the men identified as those being closest to him questioned and wrestled with both his teachings and his ways of being.

Like Jesus, each of us is born into this world with characteristics and into circumstances beyond our control. Upon my birth, the State of Alabama identified me as colored and female on my birth certificate. As a child of the Civil Rights Movement, I came to realize how each of these binary terms supported the systems in which I lived - systems designed to control and limit my ways of being.

These systems also operate within our beloved church. Many years ago, our pastor visited my Sunday morning CCD class to recruit altar servers. I was the first to raise my hand. He gently chuckled saying that it was only for boys. Now, it delights my heart each time I see a girl serving at the altar. Yet, sadly, this week I learned of a pastor who only permits boys to serve in this capacity. Much like racism, resistance to change is complex, multi-faceted and possesses the capacity to shapeshift.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, a wealthy landowner prepares to travel. Before departing he temporarily transfers responsibility for some of his financial assets to three of his servants. Upon his return, he is very pleased that the first two servants somehow managed to double his assets. He is angered by the servant who returned what had been handed to him. What is the significance of this servant’s words? “Knowing your ruthlessness - you who reap where you did not sow and gather where you did not scatter…”

What does Christ want us to hear? Am I driven by economic gain like the landowner and the first two servants? Am I like the third servant who is marginalized for not pursuing financial gain? Is the landowner ruthless? Or is there something else? What am I not seeing? What am I not hearing? What is clouding my perception?

Five years ago, I was in Rome with Catholic Women Speak. During an interview with a reporter from Vatican Radio, the interviewer mentioned that I was from the US and a native of Alabama. She prefaced a question by saying that Alabama was known as a place where African-Americans resisted oppression. I was stunned - a place where we resisted oppression. How lifegiving is that perspective? By speaking from a different vantage point, she affirmed my inherent dignity, the dignity of my ancestors, and our lived experience of struggle in an oppressive system. She saw a third way.

The struggle for liberation and equality is neither linear nor is it confined to a single generation. Transformation happens even in the Catholic Church as we allow the sweet Holy Spirit to breath among us, through us, and within us.Two thousand years after Mary Magdalene encountered her beloved Rabboni in the burial garden, we encounter him in the holy ordinariness of our lives as women - daughters of the Most High moving toward a horizon of hope.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

(This homily was written for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Liturgy

in honor of the 48th anniversary of Women’s Ordination Conference.)