Is there ever any justification for a man to treat a woman disrespectfully? A Pharisee in this Sunday’s Gospel thinks there is. The Pharisee considers himself just and judges others as unjust. He judges a woman who touches Jesus as unjust, meaning sinful. The “sinful woman” is less worthy than he. He is a man, a Pharisee, who forces people to justify themselves before him. He is unfortunately not alone. He is part of a whole system of justification. The system consists of supremacists forcing ‘sinners’ to endure a degrading justification process. The process includes shaming, fines, exile, even death. The suffering redeems the sinner, or, justifies them. The Pharisees’ justification system is drawn from the religion of Militarism in which ranked superiors demand subordinates justify themselves. It is Military Justice and it is embedded in the Old Testament. It is unfortunately promoted periodically in the New Testament. For example, a long speech on justification is given by Paul in this Sunday’s second reading. Paul is a person some self-titled Christians follow instead of Jesus. Jesus is a commoner who rejects the justification system. He does not judge people as less worthy than him or demand they justify themselves before him. Jesus is instead loving. He is loving with the “sinful woman” judged by the Pharisee in the Gospel. The Pharisee thus determines that Jesus too needs to justify himself: “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”
It is a great problem that supremacists like Pharisees and Paul force people they subordinate to justify themselves. Worse, they have projected themselves and their unequal justification system onto a deity. It is for this reason that ‘God’ has long been imaged as a supremacist male deity who demands lesser beings justify themselves before him, certainly women. The Justification system has nothing to do with Jesus. It is a man-made doctrine from a man-made religion, Militarism. It is supremacists devising theological justification for the inequality they inflict upon humanity across cultures – it justifies the political inequality between rulers and commoners; it justifies the financial inequality between owners and workers; it justifies the social inequality of whites over blacks and men over women. Militarism’s justified inequality helps explain the case of a male student swimmer at Stanford who raped a woman. It allows the male student to rape an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, attempt to run away when caught in the act, and, after being convicted, have a male judge reduce the sentence to 6 months in jail out of concern this would “have a severe impact on him.” Militarism’s Justification system is the foundation upon which this society and virtually all societies have been built. Supremacists, in this case men, benefit from a millennia old system of ranked inequality they have constructed and have made sacred. In it, beings judged lesser, such as women, need to justify themselves – look at her clothing, what did she expect from flirting, how much did she have to drink, she shouldn’t have been walking alone, she was asking for it, etc… – while men rarely, if ever, have to justify their sexual desire, or their clothing, or their drinking habits, or even their violence. More so, men are rarely encouraged to address feelings of superiority toward women, or deal with rejection, or come to grips with a desire to control, or understand cravings they develop for revenge; any of which can drive rape.
Jesus rejects the Justification system for Love. He is willing to be in touch with a Pharisee to help in his conversion and in touch with a woman judged a sinner, “she began to bathe his feet with her tears … wipe them with her hair, kiss them, and anoint them.” Every person can be so open with every human being. If we lean toward being a Pharisee we can be willing to learn about others and about ourselves. We can learn from doing the necessary inner work our conscience needs. We can learn by listening to those who tell us things about ourselves we might not want to know. We can learn from people who reach out to us from the shaming they are put through and touch our humanity. We can thus learn from the woman who was raped and is reaching out to us. We can also learn from the Stanford students who caught the rapist, Carl-Fredrik Arndt and Peter Jonsson, who reached back.
Prayer: Christ, may we grow in conscience as we let others touch our common humanity.
Question: In what ways have others forced me to justify myself before them? Have I ever demanded anyone justify themselves to me?
June 12, 2016 Gospel Luke 7:36-8:3 Eleventh Sunday In Ordinary Time