Sermon for August 25, 2019
Luke 13: 10-17
Who are we in this story? Who are
you in this story?Cast of characters-
- Jesus
- Woman who is healed
- Person in the religious establishment of the day
- Person in the crowd following Jesus
Most adults will not pick to
describe themselves as Jesus in a story as that might be assuming I’m thinking
too highly of myself. Now, kids and youth will be glad to play the part of
Jesus in a story. They know that Jesus gets the fun lines and gets to do the
cool actions. If you are Jesus in this story, you get to speak the words of
healing and lay your hands on the woman as a sign of blessing and healing.
Pretty cool, huh? And later in our story you as Jesus are going to answer the
religious leader and tell that person they are wrong and here’s what they should
be doing. All in all not a bad part to play in today’s story.
Who doesn’t want to be the woman
who is healed? You have been ailing for 18 years unable to stand up straight.
By now you have adjusted to this. You don’t ask to be healed because you
probably just try to blend in with the crowd so no one teases you. Jesus sees
you. That is one of my favorite things about Jesus-he sees people. He sees this
woman who most people probably ignored both because she was a woman and because
she was a person with a physical disability. So you are simply going about your
day and you are seen. With some simple words and a touch of his hands, Jesus
heals you. You stand up for the first time in years and begin praising God.
Although you don’t appear anymore in today’s story, your life is forever
changed because Jesus saw you.
Person in the religious
establishment of the day. It is easy to see this person as the bad guy of the
story. You are described as being indignant. And you share what you know to be
true that anyone can be healed any other day of the week except the Sabbath
because we cannot work on the Sabbath. You are a faithful person who lives by
the Torah. You have studied and worked hard to live in the correct way. And
then Jesus answers you in a way you wouldn’t expect and tells you that you are
wrong. And you feel shame or humiliation at being corrected.
A person in the crowd following
Jesus. Your only line is that you are “rejoicing at all the wonderful things
that Jesus was doing”. A pretty good part in our story. You are following Jesus
and cheering him on.
So who are you in this story? Who
do you identify with?
Probably not Jesus as most of us
want to be like him and yet don’t feel like we can say we identify as him.
Maybe you can identify with the woman
who needs to be healed. Most of us would love to be healed from something.
Maybe a relationship that has left you feeling broken. Maybe your life isn’t
what you hoped it would be. Maybe you are grieving the death of someone and
that emptiness inside you is too much. Maybe you are angry at things beyond
your control and you can’t let go of your anger. Maybe your body is no longer
allowing you do things you used to enjoy. If we think about it for a bit,
everyone would like healing. Everyone would like to have their need
acknowledged and their brokenness restored. And my hope is that if we are
healed, we will react as the woman did in our story. She praised God. She knew
that God is the only one who can heal our wounded souls and so she offered up
her praise.
Who doesn’t want to identify as
part of the crowd following Jesus? What a gift it would be to follow Jesus
learning from him, watching him heal, hearing him teach and preach, and seeing
him see people and things that the rest of us overlook.
You might have noticed that I
skipped over the third person in the story-the synagogue leader. I prefer to
say person in the religious establishment of the day. If we call this person,
the synagogue leader it is easier to think that we have a little less in
common. We could easily call this person pastor, church council president,
Sunday School teacher, youth minister, choir member, person who sits in the
third pew at church every Sunday. That’s right. This person is us. Please
notice that I said us. This person is me and you. I am a rule follower. I love
rules. I love knowing what I am expected to do so I can do it. I pride myself
on doing what I am supposed to do when it is expected to be done. And I am very
hard on myself when I cannot meet those expectations.
And maybe that is why I love the
church. We are a place and a people full of rules. Some of them are written
down in our constitutions and bylaws and covenants. These are the ways we
govern ourselves and what makes everything work in our church. Many of our
rules are unwritten and just the way we do things. Let me tell you about one of
those unwritten rules in a church where I served as their youth minister. The
youth loved to play sardines. Do you know this game? First of all, shut off all
the lights in the church and then one person hides. Everyone else is seeking
that hidden person and when you find the hidden person, you hide with that
person. So as more and more people are crowded into one space, you are like
sardines in a can. The game ends when only one person is still seeking. So I
sent the youth off to play and then was walking through the darkened church to
ensure everyone was okay and having fun. I went into the sanctuary and was
quickly told by one of the youth-we aren’t allowed in the sanctuary for playing
games it is only for worship time. This was an unwritten rule of the church
that was so established that no one even thought to tell me until that moment
as everyone just knew it. Every church has unwritten rules like this.
Don’t worry fellow rule followers. Jesus
isn’t instructing us to throw out all the rules. Jesus is encouraging us to
think about the rules that govern our lives. A day of Sabbath makes good sense
as our bodies need rest and time to worship and renew. And we are called to
love each other. Would Jesus have been loving this woman as he loves himself if
he had not healed her? Jesus could have asked her to come back tomorrow when it
isn’t the Sabbath and then I will heal you. He didn’t. He reacted out of love.
How might we act out of love when
we are living out our faith?
Jesus gives us several ideas of how
to do this in today’s Scripture.
1-See each other. Look at the
people you know and those you don’t yet know when you meet them this week. I
recommend starting slowly as this can be overwhelming. Start by doing something
you wouldn’t normally do. For example, ask your cashier at the grocery store
how her day is and maintain eye contact as she answers. This shows that you are
seeing her and care about her answer. Notice the people who are easy to
overlook as you go about your busy life.
2-Observe the Spirit of the law.
I’m using Spirit here with a big/capital S. Look and listen for how the Spirit
is encouraging you to live as a person of faith. God has given each of us gifts
and we are expected to utilize them. And sometimes God encourages us to use our
gifts on Sunday because it will make life better for someone else. How can you
use the gifts God has given you to lighten the load of someone else? How might
you accept a gift someone else is trying to share with you? How is the Spirit
pushing you to live with mercy, kindness, and love?
3-Consider how we can best be the
church. Where might the Spirit be calling us to change the way we have always
done something because it will make it easier for someone else to fully
participate in the life of faith? Where might the Spirit be breathing new life
into a ministry or idea and helping it flourish and blossom if only someone or
many someones step up to help? And is the Spirit telling us that we need to
thank everyone who supported a ministry and end it because it is no longer
meeting the needs of this congregation?
This Scripture calls us to consider
our actions and our inactions from a variety of perspectives. From the
establishment, where life is good and we are familiar with how things should
work. What do we need to change to make things more accessible for all of God’s
children? From the crowds following Jesus and soaking up his witness-soon they
will be called to go out into the world and proclaim the good news. How do we
take what we hear and experience in worship on Sunday mornings and live it out
the rest of the week? From Jesus who kept his eyes open to see the people in
need and the problems in society that needed to be called out. May we be so
compassionate and brave. And from the perspective of the woman who was healed
who was called a daughter of Abraham and seen as a beloved child of God for the
first time in too many years. May we see ourselves and each person we meet as a
beloved child of the Living God.
One theologian (Karoline Lewis) shared that she imagined this woman praising God with the first eight verses of Psalm 103. I will end with those words and the prayer that we may feel so amazed by the wonders of our God that we too are called to praise God using these words.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
