I've written on this before, but it has come up again, so here we are once more. There are a few very basic and very different theologies that compete with one another around the topic of omnipotence, control or total power. These theologies do not divide across denominational lines: Christians (and really people of every faith) of every denomination argue on both sides of this issue. But it comes down to the same thing. Frederick Buechner (Protestant), Richard Rohr (Catholic), Elie Weisel (Jewish)... they all basically say the same thing: that there are three statements that cannot be reconciled:
God is all-powerful.
God is all-good.
Terrible things happen.
One of these has to go.
If God is both all good and all powerful, then even things that we feel are terrible must, ultimately, not be. But in order to believe this, you have to somehow convince yourself that rape, children being murdered and tortured and kidnapped, people destroying one another - somehow these are not actually bad things. Somehow God "has a plan" and "has mandated it from the beginning" and "everything happens for a reason." All I can say here is that if you actually believe that these things are not genuinely evil, and horribly wrong, then either you have never experienced genuine trauma, or your morality is completely different from my own.
So maybe, instead, you decide that God must not be all good. Well, this is the only option if God is in control of everything and terrible things really do happen. What kind of monster-god would allow for children to be separated from their parents, tortured, left to die of dehydration and neglect? What kind of monster-god would mandate that some people should be born with riches to fill the world while others cannot get enough to eat or drink? What kind of god feels rape is acceptable?
No, the above mentioned theologians, as well as many people across denominations and faiths who love God and spend time with God come to the conclusion instead that the "God is all-powerful" statement is the one that must be rejected. Instead they point out that God wants genuine relationships with us. And that means that we must be given free will, a free-will that allows people to make choices. Sometimes that means people make terrible choices that in turn lead, at times, to terrible tragedies. And because God is committed out of a deep, deep love for each of us, to letting us be who we choose to be: real people (not puppets, not dolls, not micromanaged robots) in real relationships, sometimes we do things that break God's heart. OFTEN we do things that break God's heart. And when that happens, God grieves with us as much as we ourselves grieve. God cries with us, holds us, mourns for and with us. But God still loves us too much to take away our ability to choose to be who we choose to be. I believe the stance of not being all powerful is something God has chosen, for the sake of giving us genuine life, for the sake of choosing real relationship with us.
Sometimes this makes me angry, just as it does for all of those who choose genuine, honest, real relationships with God. Sometimes I become furious at God for not stepping in, stopping the wars, stopping the torture, stopping death and destruction. But I also believe in a God who is big enough and loves me fully enough to be able to handle that anger. Read the Psalms if you aren't sure. They are full of words of anger at God, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!" the psalmist shouts as he invites us to likewise raise our voices honestly to God. Jesus echos this from the cross as well, again, giving us permission (as we are called to follow in every way) to likewise express our pain and anger to God. Does God want you to suppress your feelings? Does God want you to lie about what you actually feel? Of course not! The God who loved us into being is big enough to be able to hear and see and love us for ALL that we are, with all our pain, all our anger, all our pride, and all our misunderstandings. That is the God who chooses us, chooses relationship with us, chooses to love us, and to stay with us despite what we do, what we say, what we feel and what we grieve.
Let me be clear that I do not believe that God therefore leaves us alone. We have been sent the Spirit, the advocate, who offers counsel and guidance. God is with us to talk to, to listen, to respond. God works through people, through nature, through scripture, through other writings, to all who are open to God's love, guidance, compassion, movement, encouragement, and wisdom. But God does not compel our choices in any way.
My God is big, big enough to love all of us with all of our faults, our mistakes, our tragedies, and our flaws. My God is all good, love beyond measure, hope beyond despair, and compassion beyond rage. Terrible things still happen. And God is not responsible for those terrible things. They happen, and God cries as her children are crucified again and again. God cries as his beloveds suffer. God weeps as we stumble our way through life sometimes hurting one another in awful ways. AND God laughs with us when we learn, delights in us when we triumph, celebrates with us as we grow and move and expand in our ability to love and care and share and be the people God hopes for us to be. This is the God I love. This is the God I know. This is the God I can count on to love me exactly as who I am, with my anger, and my grief, as well as my gratitude and my joy and my growing. And for all of that I am, indeed, grateful.
Showing posts with label freedom in faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom in faith. Show all posts
Monday, July 22, 2019
Monday, February 9, 2015
Sunday's Sermon - Giving up Freedom to Live as God Intended
Isaiah 40:21-31, Mark 1:29-39, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23
As with last week’s passage from Corinthians, Paul is continuing to talk to the Corinthian community about the challenges they face as they live in the tension between the new freedom they have found in Christ, and trying to live loves that show the love, caring and service of Christ. Yes, he says, we have been given freedom, but that does not mean that we are invited to be so self-centered that we exercise that freedom when it harms other people or, for that matter, any of creation. Once again, our call to follow Christ is all about relationships, living in love with God and with one another. And we are called through those relationships to not just sympathize with those who are struggling, who are poor, who are outcast, who are disenfranchised, who are suffering, who are lost, who are confused, and even those who disagree with us. We are not just called to sympathize with them but instead we are called to IDENTIFY with them, which means understanding them, having compassion for them because we can put ourselves in their places and really understand, at a core level, what it is they experience. That goes way beyond having sympathy or even empathy for their plight. And I don’t think as a culture we are good at this. Instead of putting ourselves in others’ positions and striving to understand where they are coming from or their suffering, we tend to blame and condemn those with whom we disagree or who are different from us, especially when their circumstances are worse than our own. We blame the poor for their own poverty. We blame the outcast for their exclusion. We blame those who have been killed for being killed. We blame and convict and condemn. We don’t struggle to understand or have compassion or to identify with these, our neighbors, these, our brothers and sisters, these – the people we are called to LOVE, not condemn.
In both letters to the Corinthians, Paul is talking to a community of people who are in conflict, who are disagreeing with one another over issues such as the eating of meat and circumcision. And he is admonishing them to stop fighting and start identifying with one another as Christ identified with every single person he met. Jesus had compassion, he opened his heart to them, he did not condemn, but included and healed and loved those everyone else judged and condemned. And he calls us to do the same.
I absolutely love what Bruce Rigdon says about this in his commentary on this passage in (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year B, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.) He says, “The church is, therefore, not a community of volunteers, but is itself a part of the gospel, the good news. … What Paul asks is that those on each side identify with those on the other side, in order to become as if they were the ones with whom they disagreed. This will not involve a change in conviction, at least not at first, but it means that they are to recognize what it would mean to act in behalf of those to whom they are opposed. What an intriguing strategy for people in conflict, the more so because it is grounded in Paul's understanding of what God is doing in the world. What would happen if congregations were to attempt this in the pastoral life of the church? Perhaps it would help to set new terms for the conflict itself. Unimagined possibilities might appear, creating greater flexibility and new diversity in place of the increasing hardening of positions. People might learn new ways to speak and listen to one another, thus changing the character of the conflict. Indeed, such an experience might help American Christians in particular, given our culture of individualism, to rediscover Paul's point that the gospel envisions freedom as the right of individuals, not to do as they choose, but rather to relinquish their rights for the sake of others. True Christian freedom therefore expresses itself in service.” He continues by saying this, “One final word. In a world as conflicted and violent as ours, if the church were to be a place where Christians learned to identify with their opponents and to experience God's power to bring about transformation, the church would realize its calling to be a sign of hope and a witness to God's offer of life to the world.”
I think about debate teams in high schools and colleges. When you are part of a debate team, you are often asked to take a position contrary to the one you actually believe, to fight for exactly that position with which you disagree. You are trying to win the debate, and so you are forced, in fighting for a position and a belief that you don’t hold, to really dive into the arguments and positions of those who disagree with you. Studies have found that while arguing the opposite side doesn’t always or even most of the time change a person’s beliefs, that arguing the other position does give a person compassion for what others believe and a deeper understanding of why they hold the beliefs they do. I found myself wondering, as I reflected on Bruce Rigdon’s article and on today’s scriptures, what would happen in our congregations and indeed in our larger denomination, if we were to ask people to do the same thing, to research and argue the opposite position to the one they hold dearly. I wonder if it might not open us to doing exactly what Paul asks us to do – to identify with each other in a way that creates compassion and a willingness to give up some of our individual freedoms for the larger good of the congregation and of the individuals within a congregation.
The gospel passage gives us another example of how the healing invitation of Christ, while giving us freedom, calls us to something different. When Simon’s mother-in-law was healed, we are told that she immediately got up and began to serve them. They had just left the synagogue, this was the Sabbath once again, and once again Jesus and Jesus’ disciples are breaking the Sabbath law by healing and serving on the Sabbath. But she gets it, at a level that the disciples really don’t until after Jesus has died and returned. She, too, gets that her salvation from death through Jesus’ hands gives her the freedom not to spoil herself or luxuriate in self-gratifying abundance, but to serve, love and care for others. Her call, her joy, her way of rewarding, celebrating and following Jesus was to serve and love his people. Imagine if each of us had been given a death sentence and suddenly it was waved and instead we were given freedom and new life instead. What would we do with our new lease on life? Go travel? Go exploring the world? Spend more time with family and friends?
Disciples of Jesus do what this woman did. They see the high honor, the privilege and the gift it is to care for one another, to identify and have compassion for one another. They use that new life to love and serve God’s people. Just as Jesus ministry was both healing and teaching, we are called to love with both our words and our actions.
Richard Selzer tells this story: (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year B, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.) "I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted—palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed … to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve. The young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private…. "Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks. "Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut." She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says. "It is kind of cute." He bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close that I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate her, to show her that their kiss still works…. I hold my breath and let the wonder in."
Seeing one another, identifying with one another, putting ourselves in the other’s shoes so completely that we could argue their case for them, and then choosing out of that understanding to love, have compassion and act with care and service towards the other, even towards those with whom we disagree completely. That is what we, too, are called to do. Amen.
As with last week’s passage from Corinthians, Paul is continuing to talk to the Corinthian community about the challenges they face as they live in the tension between the new freedom they have found in Christ, and trying to live loves that show the love, caring and service of Christ. Yes, he says, we have been given freedom, but that does not mean that we are invited to be so self-centered that we exercise that freedom when it harms other people or, for that matter, any of creation. Once again, our call to follow Christ is all about relationships, living in love with God and with one another. And we are called through those relationships to not just sympathize with those who are struggling, who are poor, who are outcast, who are disenfranchised, who are suffering, who are lost, who are confused, and even those who disagree with us. We are not just called to sympathize with them but instead we are called to IDENTIFY with them, which means understanding them, having compassion for them because we can put ourselves in their places and really understand, at a core level, what it is they experience. That goes way beyond having sympathy or even empathy for their plight. And I don’t think as a culture we are good at this. Instead of putting ourselves in others’ positions and striving to understand where they are coming from or their suffering, we tend to blame and condemn those with whom we disagree or who are different from us, especially when their circumstances are worse than our own. We blame the poor for their own poverty. We blame the outcast for their exclusion. We blame those who have been killed for being killed. We blame and convict and condemn. We don’t struggle to understand or have compassion or to identify with these, our neighbors, these, our brothers and sisters, these – the people we are called to LOVE, not condemn.
In both letters to the Corinthians, Paul is talking to a community of people who are in conflict, who are disagreeing with one another over issues such as the eating of meat and circumcision. And he is admonishing them to stop fighting and start identifying with one another as Christ identified with every single person he met. Jesus had compassion, he opened his heart to them, he did not condemn, but included and healed and loved those everyone else judged and condemned. And he calls us to do the same.
I absolutely love what Bruce Rigdon says about this in his commentary on this passage in (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year B, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.) He says, “The church is, therefore, not a community of volunteers, but is itself a part of the gospel, the good news. … What Paul asks is that those on each side identify with those on the other side, in order to become as if they were the ones with whom they disagreed. This will not involve a change in conviction, at least not at first, but it means that they are to recognize what it would mean to act in behalf of those to whom they are opposed. What an intriguing strategy for people in conflict, the more so because it is grounded in Paul's understanding of what God is doing in the world. What would happen if congregations were to attempt this in the pastoral life of the church? Perhaps it would help to set new terms for the conflict itself. Unimagined possibilities might appear, creating greater flexibility and new diversity in place of the increasing hardening of positions. People might learn new ways to speak and listen to one another, thus changing the character of the conflict. Indeed, such an experience might help American Christians in particular, given our culture of individualism, to rediscover Paul's point that the gospel envisions freedom as the right of individuals, not to do as they choose, but rather to relinquish their rights for the sake of others. True Christian freedom therefore expresses itself in service.” He continues by saying this, “One final word. In a world as conflicted and violent as ours, if the church were to be a place where Christians learned to identify with their opponents and to experience God's power to bring about transformation, the church would realize its calling to be a sign of hope and a witness to God's offer of life to the world.”
I think about debate teams in high schools and colleges. When you are part of a debate team, you are often asked to take a position contrary to the one you actually believe, to fight for exactly that position with which you disagree. You are trying to win the debate, and so you are forced, in fighting for a position and a belief that you don’t hold, to really dive into the arguments and positions of those who disagree with you. Studies have found that while arguing the opposite side doesn’t always or even most of the time change a person’s beliefs, that arguing the other position does give a person compassion for what others believe and a deeper understanding of why they hold the beliefs they do. I found myself wondering, as I reflected on Bruce Rigdon’s article and on today’s scriptures, what would happen in our congregations and indeed in our larger denomination, if we were to ask people to do the same thing, to research and argue the opposite position to the one they hold dearly. I wonder if it might not open us to doing exactly what Paul asks us to do – to identify with each other in a way that creates compassion and a willingness to give up some of our individual freedoms for the larger good of the congregation and of the individuals within a congregation.
The gospel passage gives us another example of how the healing invitation of Christ, while giving us freedom, calls us to something different. When Simon’s mother-in-law was healed, we are told that she immediately got up and began to serve them. They had just left the synagogue, this was the Sabbath once again, and once again Jesus and Jesus’ disciples are breaking the Sabbath law by healing and serving on the Sabbath. But she gets it, at a level that the disciples really don’t until after Jesus has died and returned. She, too, gets that her salvation from death through Jesus’ hands gives her the freedom not to spoil herself or luxuriate in self-gratifying abundance, but to serve, love and care for others. Her call, her joy, her way of rewarding, celebrating and following Jesus was to serve and love his people. Imagine if each of us had been given a death sentence and suddenly it was waved and instead we were given freedom and new life instead. What would we do with our new lease on life? Go travel? Go exploring the world? Spend more time with family and friends?
Disciples of Jesus do what this woman did. They see the high honor, the privilege and the gift it is to care for one another, to identify and have compassion for one another. They use that new life to love and serve God’s people. Just as Jesus ministry was both healing and teaching, we are called to love with both our words and our actions.
Richard Selzer tells this story: (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year B, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.) "I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted—palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed … to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve. The young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private…. "Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks. "Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut." She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says. "It is kind of cute." He bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close that I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate her, to show her that their kiss still works…. I hold my breath and let the wonder in."
Seeing one another, identifying with one another, putting ourselves in the other’s shoes so completely that we could argue their case for them, and then choosing out of that understanding to love, have compassion and act with care and service towards the other, even towards those with whom we disagree completely. That is what we, too, are called to do. Amen.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Today's Sermon - When can we be set free?
Luke 13:10-17
Jeremiah 1:4-17
The work of transformation – the work of healing people, and communities, and the world. God may use us to help, but this is God’s work alone. When change happens, when transformation happens, it is God at work. When God comes to prophets like Jeremiah, a prophet too young to think he could be influential, to think he could be called or that he could do God’s work, it is God who works through him and therefore transforms those who hear Jeremiah’s words. When a woman who had been crippled for 18 years passed Jesus by, he came to her, not because she called on him, not because someone else called on him to help her, not because of her amazing faith, but because Jesus, God, is about healing and caring for all people. Jesus transformed her – not because of anything special about her, but because of something amazing about God. God chooses to transform, to bring new life, to do something creative and beautiful and good. That is who God is, and that is what God does. The difficult part of this for us is that we don’t have a lot of choice about whom God picks, and God seems to pick the most unlikely candidates to be God’s people, to serve God, to be agents of God’s action in the world, to be transformed, to demonstrate and embody God’s love and grace. God picks a child to be God’s prophet. And God picks a woman who is not even asking for help, not being cured by her faith, not someone who was able to be part of the community to demonstrate God’s love and healing and care.
But it’s not just that we have no choice over whom God calls, whom God picks for healing, for transformation, for God’s work in the world, we also have no choice over when God will do God’s work.
The Pharisees were really upset that Jesus chose to heal the woman on the Sabbath. And I think it is critical to our understanding of this passage to look at WHY Jesus did heal her that day. The laws were strict about what could and couldn’t be done on the Sabbath. And the reality is that surely Jesus could have waited one more day to heal this woman. After all, she had been crippled for 18 years. In the span of 18 years, what is one more day? But Jesus did not wait a day, or even an hour. He chose to heal her then, breaking laws to do so. And it is important to understand why.
There are two answers to this. First of all, Jesus stood by the second Old Testament understanding of Sabbath. The first understanding of Sabbath comes from Genesis 2:2-3 in which God rested on the final day. In this understanding, we are to do the same – rest, completely, as God rested from the work of creation. As Exodus 20:-8-11 puts it, “therefore the people of Israel shall not work on the Sabbath”. However, there is another Old Testament understanding of Sabbath that comes from Deuteronomy 5:12-15. In Deuteronomy 5:14, when Moses reiterates the Ten Commandments, he notes the second thing that we must remember on the Sabbath: "remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD, your God brought you forth from there with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day". (from a web-site on Jewish orthodoxy): What does the Exodus have to do with resting on the seventh day? It is all about freedom. In those times, leisure was confined to certain classes; slaves did not get days off. Thus, by resting on the Sabbath, we are reminded that we are free. But in a more general sense, Sabbath frees us from our weekday concerns, from our deadlines and schedules and commitments. During the week, we are slaves to our jobs, to our creditors, to our need to provide for ourselves; on Sabbath, we are freed from these concerns, much as our ancestors were freed from slavery in Egypt.”
In this understanding of Sabbath, the Sabbath practice or observance is not just about resting – it is a day of doing a holy work, and especially a holy work that is all about freedom. What could be more holy than healing, or freeing a person from their infirmity, from a crippling condition, from a life of estrangement, alienation and isolation from their communities (since they were considered “unclean” and could not be touched or enter many places, including the temple)? What could be more holy than honoring God and God’s people by transforming them from the physical slavery of infirmity into life? For Jesus this was absolutely vital, absolutely important that the healings he did BE done on the Sabbath, on that holy day, on the day when holy works and acts of freeing and freedom are to be done. Yes, he could have waited one more day. But Sabbath was the right day, the appropriate day, for him to do a holy work. Just as the Israelites were freed from slavery, in remembering that, the woman was to be freed from her affliction. As the animals of the Pharisees were freed, even on the Sabbath, to drink, this daughter off Abraham was freed in the kingdom of God to receive life. Jesus transformed Sabbath, even as he transformed the woman. Jesus focused on freedom, even as he freed the woman.
Additionally, after 18 years, for God, that one day mattered, that one hour mattered. Laws be put aside, or as Jesus said it, “The Sabbath was made for humans, NOT humans for the Sabbath.” Therefore, if the day of rest is not serving the needs of the people, then it is not observed in the way the Pharisees understood it needed to be. God’s timing is not our timing. God’s creative, transforming love comes every day because every day is holy for God. God’s understanding of law is always to be surpassed by God’s commitment to love. And on this particular holy day, Jesus would not and could not wait to heal this woman whom God loved.
The Pharisees hated this. They hated it for many reasons. But I want to read you a quote from one of my favorite commentaries, “Feasting on the Word” about the Pharisaic understanding in all of this.:
The desire to control Sabbath observance is critical for maintaining another social order as well. The slavocracy of the American South was in part maintained by the restriction of "doing good" on the Sabbath. Reflecting on religious practices in the slaveholding South, Frederick Douglass notes:
It was necessary to keep our religious masters at St. Michael's unacquainted with the fact that, instead of spending the Sabbath in wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to learn how to read the will of God; for they had much rather see us engaged in those degrading sports, than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and accountable beings.
While enslaved Africans desired to worship God and to educate themselves, literally to "do good," they were prevented because their improvement represented a threat to the social system that circumscribed their lives. Although the plantation setting is clearly not a direct parallel to the situation Jesus faces, similar issues of power, control, and order are present in both cases. The control of Sabbath practice in both instances represents a convenient way of maintaining an oppressive system whereby some people are forced to endure perpetual suffering by others who are more concerned with sustaining a system that benefits them than alleviating the burdens of those it cripples.
(Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season After Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16).
For the Pharisees control of religious laws and rules was very important. But God cannot be controlled. God cannot be contained by our rules and laws and even our understanding of who God is or what God is about, who God can use, when God can use them and why. None of this can be controlled. I’m reminded of the quote from C.S. Lewis’ the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, in reference to Aslan who is the Jesus character, “He is not a TAME lion, you know. He is very good, but he is not Tame.” We want God to be tame – or rather contained. We want to be able to understand, to expect certain things and to count on them. But that is not who God is. God is not TAME. God can’t be controlled by our prayers, our thoughts, our wishes, our hopes, or even our ideas of who God really is. And the truth is that ultimately I’m not sure we would want a God who could be because that God would not be big enough for all of who we are, all of our needs, all of our hopes, and all of our lives. God’s dreams for us are bigger than our own, and that is VERY good news. Just as the woman in today’s story could not look up, hunched over for 18 years, she could only see the dirt in front of her and could not imagine a life free from her infirmity, Jesus had bigger plans for her, bigger dreams for her.
Again, from ‘Feasting on the Word,’ “We are like the woman bent over and unable to look up and see the sun. We know only the dust and dirt underneath our feet. We struggle to see the path before us by straining and twisting, because we cannot look straight ahead. To ask for healing helps us step into Jesus' invitation to mend our souls as we mend creation. There will be times when we will "know" this in ways that are too profound for words or reason. There will also be times when God
seems far off and the pathway unclear, but seek healing we must.” Yes, we must. We must seek freedom from all that binds us, whether it be physical, emotional, social, psychological or even political. But again, we have to remember that God is not a tame lion – and therefore God’s plans for us and God’s timing for those plans will remain in God’s hands, even as we are called to seek healing. The good news is, though, again, that God’s dreams are bigger than our own. And God’s call for us to find life is more insistent and immediate than we could even hope. It comes down to this…”Where Jesus is, things begin to be made right…. In the reign of God, the world will be repaired.” That is a promise we can count on. That is the good news. The challenge then for us is two fold – one to take the Sabbath seriously as both a time for rest and a time to do a holy work towards the freedom of all God’s people. And second, to trust that God is the force and power behind any transformation towards freedom. But that God will use us, no matter what our condition, our age, our situation, if we are open to God’s calling. Amen.
Jeremiah 1:4-17
The work of transformation – the work of healing people, and communities, and the world. God may use us to help, but this is God’s work alone. When change happens, when transformation happens, it is God at work. When God comes to prophets like Jeremiah, a prophet too young to think he could be influential, to think he could be called or that he could do God’s work, it is God who works through him and therefore transforms those who hear Jeremiah’s words. When a woman who had been crippled for 18 years passed Jesus by, he came to her, not because she called on him, not because someone else called on him to help her, not because of her amazing faith, but because Jesus, God, is about healing and caring for all people. Jesus transformed her – not because of anything special about her, but because of something amazing about God. God chooses to transform, to bring new life, to do something creative and beautiful and good. That is who God is, and that is what God does. The difficult part of this for us is that we don’t have a lot of choice about whom God picks, and God seems to pick the most unlikely candidates to be God’s people, to serve God, to be agents of God’s action in the world, to be transformed, to demonstrate and embody God’s love and grace. God picks a child to be God’s prophet. And God picks a woman who is not even asking for help, not being cured by her faith, not someone who was able to be part of the community to demonstrate God’s love and healing and care.
But it’s not just that we have no choice over whom God calls, whom God picks for healing, for transformation, for God’s work in the world, we also have no choice over when God will do God’s work.
The Pharisees were really upset that Jesus chose to heal the woman on the Sabbath. And I think it is critical to our understanding of this passage to look at WHY Jesus did heal her that day. The laws were strict about what could and couldn’t be done on the Sabbath. And the reality is that surely Jesus could have waited one more day to heal this woman. After all, she had been crippled for 18 years. In the span of 18 years, what is one more day? But Jesus did not wait a day, or even an hour. He chose to heal her then, breaking laws to do so. And it is important to understand why.
There are two answers to this. First of all, Jesus stood by the second Old Testament understanding of Sabbath. The first understanding of Sabbath comes from Genesis 2:2-3 in which God rested on the final day. In this understanding, we are to do the same – rest, completely, as God rested from the work of creation. As Exodus 20:-8-11 puts it, “therefore the people of Israel shall not work on the Sabbath”. However, there is another Old Testament understanding of Sabbath that comes from Deuteronomy 5:12-15. In Deuteronomy 5:14, when Moses reiterates the Ten Commandments, he notes the second thing that we must remember on the Sabbath: "remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD, your God brought you forth from there with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day". (from a web-site on Jewish orthodoxy): What does the Exodus have to do with resting on the seventh day? It is all about freedom. In those times, leisure was confined to certain classes; slaves did not get days off. Thus, by resting on the Sabbath, we are reminded that we are free. But in a more general sense, Sabbath frees us from our weekday concerns, from our deadlines and schedules and commitments. During the week, we are slaves to our jobs, to our creditors, to our need to provide for ourselves; on Sabbath, we are freed from these concerns, much as our ancestors were freed from slavery in Egypt.”
In this understanding of Sabbath, the Sabbath practice or observance is not just about resting – it is a day of doing a holy work, and especially a holy work that is all about freedom. What could be more holy than healing, or freeing a person from their infirmity, from a crippling condition, from a life of estrangement, alienation and isolation from their communities (since they were considered “unclean” and could not be touched or enter many places, including the temple)? What could be more holy than honoring God and God’s people by transforming them from the physical slavery of infirmity into life? For Jesus this was absolutely vital, absolutely important that the healings he did BE done on the Sabbath, on that holy day, on the day when holy works and acts of freeing and freedom are to be done. Yes, he could have waited one more day. But Sabbath was the right day, the appropriate day, for him to do a holy work. Just as the Israelites were freed from slavery, in remembering that, the woman was to be freed from her affliction. As the animals of the Pharisees were freed, even on the Sabbath, to drink, this daughter off Abraham was freed in the kingdom of God to receive life. Jesus transformed Sabbath, even as he transformed the woman. Jesus focused on freedom, even as he freed the woman.
Additionally, after 18 years, for God, that one day mattered, that one hour mattered. Laws be put aside, or as Jesus said it, “The Sabbath was made for humans, NOT humans for the Sabbath.” Therefore, if the day of rest is not serving the needs of the people, then it is not observed in the way the Pharisees understood it needed to be. God’s timing is not our timing. God’s creative, transforming love comes every day because every day is holy for God. God’s understanding of law is always to be surpassed by God’s commitment to love. And on this particular holy day, Jesus would not and could not wait to heal this woman whom God loved.
The Pharisees hated this. They hated it for many reasons. But I want to read you a quote from one of my favorite commentaries, “Feasting on the Word” about the Pharisaic understanding in all of this.:
The desire to control Sabbath observance is critical for maintaining another social order as well. The slavocracy of the American South was in part maintained by the restriction of "doing good" on the Sabbath. Reflecting on religious practices in the slaveholding South, Frederick Douglass notes:
It was necessary to keep our religious masters at St. Michael's unacquainted with the fact that, instead of spending the Sabbath in wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to learn how to read the will of God; for they had much rather see us engaged in those degrading sports, than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and accountable beings.
While enslaved Africans desired to worship God and to educate themselves, literally to "do good," they were prevented because their improvement represented a threat to the social system that circumscribed their lives. Although the plantation setting is clearly not a direct parallel to the situation Jesus faces, similar issues of power, control, and order are present in both cases. The control of Sabbath practice in both instances represents a convenient way of maintaining an oppressive system whereby some people are forced to endure perpetual suffering by others who are more concerned with sustaining a system that benefits them than alleviating the burdens of those it cripples.
(Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season After Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16).
For the Pharisees control of religious laws and rules was very important. But God cannot be controlled. God cannot be contained by our rules and laws and even our understanding of who God is or what God is about, who God can use, when God can use them and why. None of this can be controlled. I’m reminded of the quote from C.S. Lewis’ the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, in reference to Aslan who is the Jesus character, “He is not a TAME lion, you know. He is very good, but he is not Tame.” We want God to be tame – or rather contained. We want to be able to understand, to expect certain things and to count on them. But that is not who God is. God is not TAME. God can’t be controlled by our prayers, our thoughts, our wishes, our hopes, or even our ideas of who God really is. And the truth is that ultimately I’m not sure we would want a God who could be because that God would not be big enough for all of who we are, all of our needs, all of our hopes, and all of our lives. God’s dreams for us are bigger than our own, and that is VERY good news. Just as the woman in today’s story could not look up, hunched over for 18 years, she could only see the dirt in front of her and could not imagine a life free from her infirmity, Jesus had bigger plans for her, bigger dreams for her.
Again, from ‘Feasting on the Word,’ “We are like the woman bent over and unable to look up and see the sun. We know only the dust and dirt underneath our feet. We struggle to see the path before us by straining and twisting, because we cannot look straight ahead. To ask for healing helps us step into Jesus' invitation to mend our souls as we mend creation. There will be times when we will "know" this in ways that are too profound for words or reason. There will also be times when God
seems far off and the pathway unclear, but seek healing we must.” Yes, we must. We must seek freedom from all that binds us, whether it be physical, emotional, social, psychological or even political. But again, we have to remember that God is not a tame lion – and therefore God’s plans for us and God’s timing for those plans will remain in God’s hands, even as we are called to seek healing. The good news is, though, again, that God’s dreams are bigger than our own. And God’s call for us to find life is more insistent and immediate than we could even hope. It comes down to this…”Where Jesus is, things begin to be made right…. In the reign of God, the world will be repaired.” That is a promise we can count on. That is the good news. The challenge then for us is two fold – one to take the Sabbath seriously as both a time for rest and a time to do a holy work towards the freedom of all God’s people. And second, to trust that God is the force and power behind any transformation towards freedom. But that God will use us, no matter what our condition, our age, our situation, if we are open to God’s calling. Amen.
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