(Please read this Scripture passage first, before the homily.)
In many poorer countries of the world, sex workers are shunned and are considered untouchable. What drives women into the sex trade is the extreme need to feed their children. In ancient warfare, when people fought with spears and swords, it was common practice for the victorious army to rape the women of the losing side, symbolically killing them. Since we invented bullets and fighting from a distance, this devastation of the women on the losing side has mostly ceased.
The reading from the prophet Ezekiel is rather graphic. The verses omitted in the reading (16:15-59) are even more graphic. The passage prompts this question to me: would we take back into a relationship someone like the person described in the reading? God does. God remembers the covenant and remains faithful. He has more understanding of us than we have of the untouchable people in our lives.
We wrestle with untouchability. It may be a practical necessity that we quarantine people with the coronavirus, but the isolation can be frightening and debilitating to sick persons. In my lifetime I have seen people with AIDS and Hispanic migrants treated as untouchables. I have heard of people who want “America for the Americans”, who seem to have forgotten that the original inhabitants of the present-day United States are the indigenous population we have tried to relegate to reservations, and that the continents called America are bigger than one group.
We used to shun divorced people. We no longer do, but once we did. We know more deeply the complexity of the stresses and tensions in the family today and have more empathy for divorced people and those of broken homes.
God will take the untouchable back. God will take us back. In our wanderings away from God, in our lack of fidelity to God, in our crimes against God, we could consider ourselves as untouchable. We could, but we need not because God has reached out beyond our sins to embrace us.
God embraces us. God sent God’s own Son to live among us and have the same human nature that we have. God sent the Holy Spirit to continue the work of the Son. God sent the Church as the visible sign of God’s presence in the world.
God touches the untouchables of the third world countries, the untouchables of our lives, the untouchables that we abhor. God even has touched us to remove all untouchability from our lives. God chose us for birth, chose us for baptism, and chose us to live in God’s presence forever.
The reading today may be quite graphic. It underscores the graphic greatness of God’s love for us and all human beings. If we have lived with the graphicness of sin, we can now live with the graphicness of God’s love and grace.