Sunday, November 20

The focus of today's worship on restorative justice resonated very clearly with the work I undertake in my life. I was very grateful in particular for a chance to reflect on the story of Jesus' healing of Jarius' daughter and of the other woman in the story. The story surprised me: it made me realize how little I know of Jesus' work on earth and how much more often I should read the Bible. There is so much in the narrative but it spoke to me in particular as a wonderful affirmation of:
1. the equal value of women to men and of people notwithstanding their social position.

2. the separation between God's law and human laws and social hierarchies: Jesus did not prioritize one person over the other dependant upon their social position; he did not see the woman as unclean or unworthy

3. the fundamentally iconoclastic and un-patriarchal relation of Jesus to the woman: she is defined as "daughter", and not, as patriarchal social structures would posit, by virtue of her relationships to powerful or powerless men. It is also un-patriarchal that she did not wait for rescue but worked her own redemption in faith and through Jesus.

4.the redemptive power of faith

5. The story speaks to the contingency of moments and the importance of self-help: Jesus did not scorn the woman for taking action. She needed to take action; faith did not involve passivity. I was also very grateful that Andrew shared the story of his maternal grandfather, which is a very sad story, but has strong and important resonances for our own times. We are always navigating, when social systems intersect with out lives, between complicity and resistance: it is not a zero sum question. Just as this man was both a member of Germany's state church under a Nazi regime and a member of a resistance to it, so do we at all times have rolese where we resist and roles where we participate in oppressive structure simultaneously.