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Boy Scout Tr #240

Scripture: Luke 13:10-17

Jesus said some pretty alarming things in Luke 12 before the story that was read today. Such as, “I came to bring fire to the earth. I came to bring division not peace.” Jesus said: “I’ve come not to bring peace but to set the world on fire!” And in today’s passage he does just that with a bent-over woman!

Now, let me warn you that all my life I have read this passage as a sort of emancipation proclamation. So, one time I was reading what The Rev. Mark Trotter said about the bent-over woman. Mark Trotter used to be the pastor of the San Diego United Methodist Church. A fine preacher, in my opinion, I still remember when he preached at conference several years ago.

He wrote this about today’s text: “I had always read this text as a story against Sabbath laws. This story is about the woman. Yet, for many centuries of religious commentary, she has been ignored.” Well, I say, that Jesus finally had set a little fire under the Rev. Mark Trotter because he actually noticed the woman in the story.

Now, I could really get on my soap box here. But, thank you, Jesus, I don’t have to. Because right here in today’s Scripture lesson, Jesus gets up on that soap box for me! No wonder the leader of the synagogue was so upset. “He has broken the Sabbath law!” he said to the crowd, indignantly! To which Jesus replies, “You hypocrites! Don’t you untie your ox or mule from the manger and lead it to the water?” Jesus isn’t discussing the Sabbath laws here. He is directing the crowd’s thinking to something very familiar to them. He is making a reference to the tenth commandment, which all of you know, I’m sure, but just in case you don’t know it, let me jog your memory just a little. This is the 10th commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thy neighbor’s wife, thy neighbor’s manservant, thy neighbor’s maidservant. Thou shalt not covet his cow, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s property.” According to this commandment, women are the property of men and according to the order, they are more important than the servants, cows and donkeys, but not as important as the house.

So, let me explain, just in case I have lost you here. Jesus said to the religious leader in the synagogue, “You water your ox or your mule on the Sabbath, but you disapprove of the healing of this woman.” Jesus was saying that there is something terrible wrong with this picture. When he healed her, he was saying to her, you are not property, you are a child of God. He gave her a title to be proud of: “You are a daughter of Abraham.” Jesus told her, count yourself equal to men. After all, men were the “sons of Abraham,” men were the members of the covenant.

God had entered a covenant of grace with Abraham, long before Moses got those Ten Commandments. Men, therefore, were the recipients of this grace, this goodness of life given to them as a gift by God. So, Jesus proclaimed to this woman who had been bent-over for a long time, “You are a daughter of Abraham,” you are equal with men and entitled to all the grace and goodness of this life that they are entitled to.” He said this and did this on the Sabbath, in the synagogue-- something extremely important and sacred.

I tell you, this passage is not about the rules of Sabbath. This passage is about emancipation. “Jesus came upon a woman who had been bent over for eighteen years.” What do you see when you picture this woman? Do you see a physical ailment? Maybe you do. But I don’t. I see her bent over with the burdens of trying to survive in a world where she was considered property. And when Jesus saw, he called her and said to her, “Woman, you are free.” He laid hands upon her. Immediately, she stood up straight. Immediately, when Jesus touched her, she stood tall, she gained dignity, she became a free woman, free from all the burdens that had weighed her down. Emily Dickinson wrote:

We never know how high we are/ Till we are asked to rise,/ and then if we are true to plan/ Our statures reach the skies.

Jesus asks all of us, everyone of us, to rise, to stand up. Jesus was talking not to just one woman, but to anyone and everyone who felt that they were not who they were created to be. In the first century, foreigners, slaves, women, children, all were less, were subordinate, inferior, some even considered to be contaminated. They had to go through rituals of purification before they could associate with the so-called “righteous.” Society treated them as inferior. As a result, they believed they were inferior. And they acted that way in their lives, until they encountered Jesus, and were told something different. Jesus freed them, and they changed and stood tall. “You never know how high you are, till you are asked to rise.”

Sound easy? Well, you and I know it is not easy. Jesus was going against every law, custom, tradition, attitude, belief around him. He was offering another way. But for those who were engrained, stuck, or satisfied with the old ways—Jesus was rocking their boat, he was setting the world on fire, he was not bringing peace, he was bringing change. And change, even good change is hard. You have to use muscles that have atrophied into a certain position. Stretching out of that position is tough, painful. Even if you are being trampled on.

Jesus wasn’t saying anything new here. The prophets had been saying the same thing centuries before that. Every generation since has heard the cry of some group of people who are oppressed, discriminated against, bent-over by the cruelty of labels. And God’s reply has always been, “Let my people go!”

Isaiah, the prophet of the exiled Jews spoke to his people about true worship. He linked the keeping of the Sabbath with acts of justice. Isaiah warned them that when they pursued their own interests above God’s interests, they were trampling the poor and trampling the Sabbath. For behavior on the Sabbath, the day of worship, can not be separated from behavior on any other day. That’s why Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites. He saw a woman bent-over and set her free. She stood up straight and praised God. But the leader of the synagogue said this transformation happened on the wrong day. Jesus was disrupting the usual activities of the Sabbath. As if the Sabbath belonged to the Pharisees. Yet it wasn’t just the wrong day, it was the wrong person. Jesus took an invisible, insignificant, broken woman and placed her at the center of a tradition that the Pharisees were trying to preserve. “Excuse me, Jesus, you did what?

And oh, the talk the next day! Can’t you just hear people talking at coffee the next day. “Excuse me….Jesus did what? In your synagogue? Wait until the Bishop hears about this. You’ll get re-appointed for sure! Wasn’t there anything you could do? You lost control? The congregation took Jesus’ side? Oh my, this is worse than I thought. Next thing you know they will ordaining women. We’ve got to do something!”

The woman was set free from her bondage. The leader of the synagogue was not. For he, too, was bent-over from the burden of the law. Rules and regulations were blinding and binding him. He couldn’t even see what was in front of him; he couldn’t remember the words of Isaiah, “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then, your light shall rise in the darkness ..…If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the Lord.”

This is an emancipation story. But you know what? It is also a Sabbath story. Because you cannot keep the Sabbath holy when people are being oppressed. You cannot keep the Sabbath holy when people are hungry. You cannot keep the Sabbath holy when the bonds of injustice are not loosened. Another way to look at this is: God does not want us to postpone the work of justice until the Second Coming. The worship of God and the work of justice are intertwined activities. That’s what Jesus has been saying all along. “I have come to set the world on fire, so rise up to your full stature, because I need your help. Things have got to change around here, and I can’t do it by myself. And, preacher, get out of my way, because most of the time you are trying to take care of your own business when there’s a whole world out there needing your help.”

When we choose to encounter Jesus with our heart and soul, look out, because encountering Jesus is about freeing people, about doing justice, about sharing bread with the hungry, about learning Spanish and helping teach English as a second language in our church, about being merciful and setting the world on fire with God’s goodness. Stand up, sons and daughters of Abraham. This is a Sabbath story and this is an emancipation story. Amen.