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22.08.2010_Luke 13:10–17
| 29.08.2010, 15:24 | |
| Rev. Tatiana Cantarella Psalm 71:1–6; Jeremiah 1:4–10; Hebrews 12:18–29 Luke 13:10–17 «Bent and bound» When I read this story I couldn’t help but think about a person that many of you knew. When he was sitting down you could only see that his back was a bit round-shouldered but nothing special and many people are like that. But when he got up it became obvious how burdensome it was for him to stand or walk, as if a heavy burden was pressing onto his shoulders clamping down his small weak body. His spine throughout the years was fixing more and more in a curved position (result of an injury) leaving him a very bent and broken person. He could barely see what was around, almost always looking at his own feet because it was painful to lift his dead, to look straight and especially up. This person was Konstantin Mihkailovich, our dear brother in the Lord who unfortunately was so broken and oppressed both by his physical condition and the rejection of his own family. And it is especially sad that he seems to not have found sufficient comfort and support in his church family, lost his hope of being able to bear his burden… he took his own life in a hope to light up his suffering… It’s very hard for us to imagine what Constantine and this woman in the Gospel story must have felt but we can try to understand their predicament… I invite you to stand if you are able. For those unable to stand, you may still participate in the proposed exercise. I invite you to lean over 45 degrees to have a sense of this woman’s and Constantine’s predicament. Feel the strain on the back, the burden on the shoulders. Then look with your eyes to see how this bent limits your vision of what lies before you. Your perspective is shorter. Stooping, you cannot easily look into the faces of those around you, you can’t be on the same level with anyone, and you can’t see the whole church. You cannot easily look toward the horizon to see a glorious sunrise or sunset. Vistas of God’s wondrous works on earth in daylight and views of God’s awesome stars at night do not come readily. We can only imagine what it is like to live like that all your life….You may be seated. But the condition of that woman was not just medical; her bent over physical position was also a sign of her social predicament – vulnerability before the crowd. She was stuck in a humble and humbling position. For the ignorant around her when noticed she was the butt of derision and cruel jokes. While at other times in the midst of a crowd no one actually saw her. Her illness also had religious implication. The intelligentsia of the day saw her as deformed by sin, and thus as deserving what she got. Luke was a physician and in his gospel he usually gives us quite a detailed medical description of the illnesses that Jesus healed but in this case he does not give us much hint on what exactly was this woman’s physical condition, and by mentioning that Satan was the source of her bondage he is definitely trying to show that this poor woman has more than a medical problem here. Luke also tells us that she was in such condition for 18 years emphasizing its incredible seriousness and despair that it must have caused. And for social and religious reasons already mentioned she is an outsider in the community being first of all a woman and more a woman who is sick for so long – which meant to the people of that day only one thing: this sickness must be the punishment for some sin of hers. And yet here she was in a synagogue, seeking to worship God anyway, longing to hear the stories of how God liberated her people from oppression, from being bent by Pharaoh. And as she was listening to those stories read, Jesus noted her in the crowd. He saw the one who was usually unseen by others. But he saw her not with the eyes that wanted to look away in embarrassment, He saw with the eyes of compassion, called to come forward and proclaimed to her: "you are free from your infirmity” and having laid His hands upon her He healed her immediately. The same moment she straightened up and having been filled with joy began to praise God! We hear the story and rejoice with her and for her, don’t we? And we think that everybody should rejoice, but we see in the story that some were very upset with what has happened revealing that she was not the only one "bent and bound” in the Synagogue crowd that day. The ruler of the Synagogue is quite upset because the healing has taken place on the Sabbath – the day of rest, the day, which should have been free from work; yet, Jesus performed work by healing this woman. You see, for the Jewish people the Sabbath was a matter of one of the Ten Commandments: it was to be kept holy. It was God’s commandment for the people and the ruler of the synagogue is just trying to be faithful to it. He feels strongly that this healing should have waited until tomorrow and is indignant that instead it was done right on the Sabbath and right in the midst of the Synagogue. It is clear that Jesus knew very well the reaction His healing would cause, in fact it’s not the first instance of the Sabbath healing in the gospel. And we also see that the response of the leader of the Synagogue is not just a fluke but a reaction that has become a pattern on the part of some religious leaders – revealing their sin. C.S. Lewis in one of his less known science fiction books tries to describe what Sin is to beings who don’t know. The word his hero finally settles on is "bent”. By bent he means misshapen, not the way we were made to be, and not fit for our intended purpose. And so Jesus responds to the leader of the Synagogue revealing the fact that not just this poor woman but the leader of the Synagogue as well as all those in agreement with him are themselves bent and bound, enslaved by the same force as this woman, although their symptoms might look different. She was visibly bent, and he is misshapen by a false sense of religious piety and obligation. Jesus points to the fact that while the law forbids any work on the Sabbath, including any work done by ox or ass, the law also allows for exceptions: to return strayed animal on the Sabbath, or to lift the animal if it had fallen. And while tying knots on Sabbath was also considered work, it was allowed twice a day to untie the animal so that it could be led to the water. Jesus calls the Synagogue leader and those in agreement with him hypocrites, because while making allowances for "untying” of animals on the Sabbath to give them relief, they believe that this woman – "daughter of Abraham”, should have waited for her "release from bondage” another day. Should this child of God not be considered with more compassion than the dumb animals! In his strife to keep his religious duties he demonstrates his enslaved spirit that does not know the heart of God’s compassion for the world and His desire to liberate the world from slavery to Satan. His misshapen spirit does not realize that while the Sabbath was to be a "rest”, it meant that it was to be a time of "liberation” from burdens as the notion of the Sabbath year showed when debts were redeemed and slaves were freed. We can all see the obvious weight of a spirit of illness that weighed a woman down. Yet, when we read such stories we have a hard time identifying with them since very few of us experience anything of a kind. When we see and hear about people like that might be moved with compassion and pray for them, for their body and soul. And if we are truthful enough we are probably saying a prayer for ourselves, thankful that we are not bent and broken like that. Yet, in the moment we say such prayer, we say a lie, because closer to the truth is that we are thankful that our bent and broken nature is not visible to any but the most trained of eyes, perhaps visible only to the eyes of God. And it is visible to Him, like this Synagogue leader’s spiritual bent-ness and slavery was obviously seen to Jesus. If we look honestly into our hearts, what kind of our bent-ness do they reveal? For some of you it can be the slavery of addictions that drown you in your desperate search for relief from life’s pains. For others it can be the dark lords of depression that ensnare you in a swamp of shame and self-loathing. And for others of us it is the missing delight in God’s mercy, in Jesus’ power, in the people that come to God to be restored because they "upset” what we consider and try to preserve holy. The leader of the Synagogue appears silly to us missing the joy of this woman’s transformation because it upsets his system of what he considers "spiritually proper”, in trying to protect the holy, he sees the broken woman as an intrusion and confuses his own interests with God’s interests. You see one of the greatest problems of modern humanity is our attitude towards "systems” and "order” which we often value more than an individual. It becomes especially obvious during times of war when individuals disappear and become just members of a particular group, united to make up a human part of armament and military production (what has been brutally named "cannon fodder”). Or a person often becomes just a line in a registry. Herbert George Wells spoke of Beatrice Webb (a remarkable economist and statistics expert) that the worst thing about her is that "she views people as no more than walking numbers”. In the light of our own personal "systems” and "orders” that we live by, how do we view people? In the eyes of Jesus individuals always have higher importance than systems and rules. But honestly, do we see a needy person as one more interruption or as a child of God longing for freedom, restoration and healing? Does Jesus see in us that same spirit of Satan, whose weight of pride is bending us out of shape, making of us creatures that seek to have God and God’s laws serve us rather than the opposite? Do we allow the tyranny of comfort of our practices or comfort of keeping to some type of predetermined schedule prevent us from being sensitive to others around us? What guides our lives and actions? God’s will for the whole humanity or our own rules, orders, comfort and systems? Are we too caught up in personally living right with God, make sure that we regularly attend church, bring tithe and offerings, stick to our daily Bible reading, regardless of anything else in the world? Do we strive to live a "good” Christian life for ourselves and in the process lose sight of the lost, the suffering, and the "least of these” that we encounter in our daily lives? Are we so caught up in this that our own "animals”, "interests” and orders become more important than the people that God so dearly loves and sends our way but we only see them as interruptions, as upsetting our order, as obstacles on our spiritual journey? In this story the woman was set free by Jesus but what about the leader of the Synagogue? Having been shamed for his misshapen heart, was he also set free by Jesus’ words? Just like God freed this woman of her physical and social bent, He desires to free our hearts as well, so that our rules will become less important for us than living in God’s will and looking to Jesus for the example of a life to be lived. He desires to free us from bondage of a comfortable system we created for ourselves, so that our heart will break for the single mother struggling to put food on the table for her kids while working two jobs, as the heart of Jesus breaks over her plight. And one day we will decide to anonymously send her a bag of food, seeing her as Jesus sees her. When the summer will be over and our kids show up for Sunday School and kids’ club to hear the gospel, we will no longer see boisterous and mischievous children but children in need of the kind of love only Jesus can give, we will see our children the way Jesus sees them. And when people come to our Compassionate Ministry hair saloon we will no longer see a bunch of annoyances who only dirty the floor that we just washed and who argue with one another disturbing our peace but as individuals in need of God’s love and the words of blessing, we will see individuals that are in need of inner healing, individuals that God loves so very dearly. We will see them as God sees them. Just like that day in the Synagogue, God didn’t wait for the woman to come seeking healing, He sought her out and called her over and set her free. In Jesus Christ, God is doing all of that for all the humanity, including the leader of the Synagogue with his sin of self-righteousness and including us who are bent and enslaved with our orders and systems, which blind us to the needs of the people. God does not wait for us to come to some clear understanding of our bent shapes; He joins us here this very day. We are not told if for the ruler of the Synagogue that Sabbath became the day of liberation, like for the healed woman. But it can be the day of liberation for us. Today God meets us in worship, frees us from the weight of our Sin and then binds us together with others to be a community that is let loose upon the world; the community that is liberated to see and deal with the world with love and compassion of God. God desires to free us to be honest about how bent and broken we still are, about the bondage that still enslaves us. And we are free to welcome Christ who comes and sees in us the people who are bent and are not the way they we were meant to be, and He bids us come and be made whole, be like Him and to see others like He does. | |
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