Preached August 22, 2010
Luke 13:10-17:
When I was young I believed that being a good Christian, a follower of Christ, was all about following the rules: They taught me that if I wanted to go to heaven I had to keep all of the rules. They would tell us that once you became a Christian you could never lose your salvation. But they also taught me that if you were breaking the rules, then you probably never had really become a Christian anyway and you were going to hell unless you decided to ask God to forgive you, pledge your life to God and start keeping all the rules.
Here is a short list of some of the rules I grew up with:
Read one chapter of the Bible every day. Memorize a verse of the Bible every week. Attend Sunday school and worship every Sunday morning. Attend evening Sunday School and worship every Sunday. Go to church for mission study and worship and prayer meeting every Wednesday. Attend youth group devotions every Friday night. Add to that the following: You can’t smoke if you are a Christian. You can’t drink alcoholic beverages if you are a Christian. You can’t dance or go to a school dance if you are a Christian. You can’t go to movies if you are a Christian. You have to be in church every time there is a worship service, bible study, or other event, even if it happens at the same time as a school or community event. You have to show you are loyal to God by not letting anything else interfere with your going to church! Church was more important than school homework. If I had a research paper due in school but there was a full evening of events at church, then I was not allowed to do the research paper since it would take me away from church if I went to the library. No arguments. I used to ask my parents to let me stay home one Sunday evening a year to see the Wizard of Oz movie on TV. It only came on once a year, always on a Sunday night. But my parents always said, “No. Missing church is a sin. You will go to church.”
I’ve come to understand that for many so-called Christians it is following the rules that make them believe they are leading a successful Christian life, the life that God wants them to live.
But I know, regardless of what anyone says, that there is absolutely no way that anyone of us can keep all of the rules that the Bible states one should follow. How many of you eat shrimp? Sorry, that’s an abomination. You are going to hell. How many of you right now have an article of clothing or shoes on that was made out of more than one kind of fabric? Why that would be everyone of us since all of us are wearing shoes and all shoes are made out of more than one kind of fabric or material. Sorry. Abomination. You broke the rules, you are going to hell.
Living by the rules is a horrible way to live! Because sometime, somewhere you will fail to follow one of the rules. It’s human nature. At the time of Jesus’ ministry they had codified over 600 rules that one had to follow if one wanted to say you were a good Jew serving God. One of those rules was that you had to keep the Sabbath holy by not doing any kind of work on the Sabbath.
Living by the rules means that I am mostly concerned with myself and keeping myself under control all of the time. Living by the rules means I have little time to be concerned about other people and their problems or situation. Living by the rules means that I spend all of my time looking at me and have no time left to look at other people, to really see them and to realize that I am part of a greater community.
One of the things I’ve taken to heart over the years are the words of Henri Nouwen, "love Jesus and love (others) the way Jesus loved." Today’s scripture lesson is an example of how Jesus loved.
On this particular Sabbath Jesus is teaching in the Synagogue. Suddenly he stops his teaching. He has seen a woman bent over suffering from what many believe to be scoliosis a developmental deformation of the spine. She has had this affliction for eighteen years. By now she is crippled, probably can’t stand up straight, probably has a twisted and hunched appearance, may not be able to look up any longer, only down at the ground. But like a faithful woman of her time she is at church with her family and friends. Maybe she has heard about this rabbi, maybe this is the first time she has met him. But no one is clamoring for her healing because she has always been this way and her family and friends have stopped noticing her horrible situation. But Jesus sees her, really sees her and Jesus calls her to come to him. Jesus sees her as a captive to her disease and Jesus is going to set her free to be all that God wants her to become.
He places his hands upon her in the sign of a blessing and he pronounces her healed, set free from her ailment. Jesus recognizes within her something holy and divine and with his touch he pronounces her to be a beloved child of God. The scripture says that she stood up straight and began praising God. Can you imagine her joy at being set free?
But there were the rule followers there that day and they weren’t happy with the situation. Healing someone on the Sabbath was considered to be work. You could take care of a sick person on the Sabbath, but they couldn’t get better or you would be accused of working if you helped them. I remember staying home from school as a child, faking my illness, and then being so upset when later in the day I wanted to play but my parents kept telling me that I was sick and had to stay in bed.
So the leader of the synagogue lets everyone know that this isn’t following the rules. “Come back on Monday, after the Sabbath, that’s the time for healing. You should not expect healing on the Sabbath, because the Sabbath is a holy day set aside for worshipping God.” His message was clear: Jesus has broken the rules. Jesus has put the welfare of a crippled woman over the religious obligation to following the rules. Now isn’t the time for healing. Wait! Come back another day!
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He is teaching his disciples what it means to be a follower of Christ and what it means to be a citizen of the New Community of God. Jesus isn’t going to let anything, even religious rules, keep anyone out of God’s New Community, nor allow anyone to be abused or rejected or ignored in this New Community.
Jesus spends a lot of time in conflict with the religious leaders of his day about what the Sabbath was supposed to be. Remember that in last week’s scripture lesson from Luke Jesus said following him would result in division among people as people realized that doing things God’s way meant doing things differently than they have ever done them before. Following Jesus means changing and no one likes to change. I believe that Jesus was attempting to teach people that he believed that the Sabbath should be an example of what the New Community of God was to be like, a little-bit-of-heaven on earth. And Jesus wasn’t going to wait until a more favorable day if there was a need today. Jesus by his act of healing on the Sabbath demonstrated to the people exactly what the New Community of God was like, and then he went on to talk about it, too, in the following verses. These weren’t just empty words. Jesus knew that actions were the concrete demonstration of your words and your beliefs. Put your words into action! It’s easy to say a word of blessing to another person, it isn’t always so easy to put those words into action, to take your hands and make something happen that will really bless another person’s life.
I’m sure that the Synagogue leader, probably a Pharisee, didn’t really have a problem with Jesus healing this woman, it was a matter of timing. It was a problem of when it happened, not to whom or by whom it happened or how it was accomplished. Just go away today and come back tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day when healing can happen. Tomorrow you won’t be breaking the rules. Just wait a little longer. We in the Queer Community are used to hearing these kinds of words. Just wait a little longer until everyone can agree that marriage equality is the right thing to do, then you can get married. Just wait a little longer until everyone in congress and the Senate can agree and then we’ll put an end to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Wait until we can get everyone on board and then we’ll pass laws that say that gay and lesbian and transgender persons can’t be harassed and fired from their jobs.
There is a tension in the story between Jesus and the leader of the Synagogue. You can feel it as you read the story. Here are two faithful Jewish men who are both struggling with what it means to be faithful to God. I don’t think the Synagogue leader is a bad man; he’s pressing the case for obedient faithfulness to God. But so is Jesus! They both want to keep the Sabbath holy, they just disagree about how to do that. Jesus says the time for salvation, for healing, for being set free isn’t tomorrow, it’s right now, today, no matter what day it is. In fact, Jesus is saying, that the Sabbath is the perfect day for healing, the perfect day to be set free from whatever binds and cripples you in your life.
If we are called to love Jesus and love others the way Jesus loved, then its very clear to me that this story gives to us a model of what it means to be the church—to be the body of Christ—not just on Sunday, but every day of the week. Jesus is the model for us…for all of us…in our daily lives…in our homes…at our places of work…out in the community that surrounds us.
Look around you at the people in this place today. Who is the bent over woman you have stopped seeing? Do you really see these people? Do you know the troubles and tear-jerking problems that many of them are facing? Have you taken the time to get to know them, really know them? Or do you just see them as they appear to you in church on Sunday and think that is all there is to them? Who in this room have you blessed with your presence in their lives? Who has felt your hand of blessing and healing upon them? Will you love each other like Jesus loves you?
As you walk through this city this week who is the bent over woman and will you open your eyes and see, really see the people around you? Can you love them like Jesus loves them?
The bent over woman we have stopped seeing could be our neighbors of color. We can be proud of the progress we have made in our society. But there is still much progress to yet be made. Take for instance the plight of the African American whose house is up for sale and who asks their real estate agent if they should remove their family pictures from the walls of the house so no prospective buyer will know they are black? Is their question unreasonable?
The bent over woman we have stopped seeing could be the homeless on the streets we walk by without feeling compassion for and from whom we avert our eyes and avoid speaking to lest they ask us for help. Why don’t we decide to do something for the folks living in the Nicklesville tent city one block up the street? If nothing else we could take sandwiches and nourishing drinks to them once a week.
The bent over woman we have stopped seeing could be the Queer teenager that has been kicked out of his or her home by their so-called tough loving parents to fend for themselves on the streets and face exploitation and harm as well as disease and discomfort. It is estimated that 40-60% of youth on the streets are LGBT. Many of them have attempted to take their own lives, many have succeeded just because they are gay. We could volunteer to help those teens right here every single night of the week in the ROOTS program housed in this very building.
The bent over woman could be one of our own who has trouble understanding his or her own sexuality or gender identity and has not yet come to understand that he or she is a beautiful and beloved child of God who doesn’t have to do anything or change anything to receive God’s acceptance or ours. We have a mission as a church to speak to the needs of those in the Queer community in clear, strong voices that counter the message of hate and revulsion that is broadcast so loudly by the fundamentalist Christian right. It is our heritage as the oldest LGBT congregation in the Pacific Northwest and it is a heritage that we must live up to and live into.
When we stop seeing the bent over women and men of our day, when we stop believing that it is part of our responsibility to touch them, to bless them, to set them free then we have stopped being the church that God called us into being 38 years ago. When we stop seeing and stop loving and stop caring and going and doing for others, then we stop being the New Community of God.
We have a lot to be thankful for this year. We have a new place of worship. We have new friends in the University District Ecumenical Parish and Campus projects. We have a new opportunity to become a growing, caring, loving church. Nothing stands in our way of achieving the vision that God has implanted in us except we ourselves. Let us renew our commitment to seeing and doing, to loving and touching, to blessing and freeing others to be all that God wants them to be.
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