Luke 13:10-17
Today, we travel back in time to join a congregation of ancient Israelites as they worship in their synagogue on the Sabbath. Go ahead, take your seat in one of their pews and start fanning yourself because it’s summertime in Palestine and that means one thing: it’s hot. But, before you get too comfortable be sure to mark your hymnal with the morning’s three hymns and Old Testament readings. Next, take a deep breath, clear your mind from whatever has happened this week. Then, settle in because the synagogue leader is about to stand up to introduce this morning’s guest preacher.
The gospel writer Luke tells us that as Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, he taught in the local synagogues. Luke doesn’t say where he is at today. Most likely he’s in one of the little villages that dot the dusty road on the way to holy city.
What was his message to the congregation that morning? Did he have a good sermon? Was anybody paying attention or were the afternoon’s to-do lists on their minds?
Luke doesn’t answer these questions for us. Instead, our attention is immediately focused on a woman who is severely hunched over. Jesus saw her probably before any of us did. He watched as she searched for her pew and painstaking took her seat. She hasn’t been able to lift her head up for a long time, even to see the altar. To you and I and everyone else, it looks as if she might be bowed over in a constant, reverent prayer of confession. But, she was in no more need of forgiveness than anyone else in the pews that morning. Rather, Luke records the cause of her misfortune as this: she has been “crippled by a spirit for eighteen long years.”
You and I might scoff at the ancients for blaming this woman’s hunched back on the spirit world. Doctors today might look at her and say that she suffered from severe scoliosis or kyphosis – the abnormal curvature of her spine in her upper, middle, or lower parts of her back. But, the ancients didn’t think scientifically, at least not the way we think we’re thinking scientifically. Maybe they didn’t know better or maybe they saw the world completely different, but for them not every physical effect had a physical cause. For Luke’s first readers, this woman’s condition was just as much spiritual as it was medical. And, that meant that her healing would require nothing less than the liberating power of God.
What did Jesus see when he saw this woman? Did he see a victim? Did he notice pain visibly written on her face? Did he see an outsider, someone who was relegated to sit in the back corner of the sanctuary, away from all of the clean, ‘normal’ people in church that morning? We don’t know, but what we do know is that unexpectedly Jesus called her forward. You can imagine the sinking feeling she has as everyone’s eyes suddenly turn to look at her, this woman with the disfigured back. Everyone in the village knows about her, but nobody really knows her. Most people just gaze at her with a combination of pity and fear. But, now this morning at church, she is the center of attention. The Lord Jesus has called her forward.
She can’t really see him, or where she is going for that matter, her back is too bent to see more than a few feet in front of her. She just does her best to scurry down the aisle as fast as she can, maybe slightly or majorly embarrassed, but totally unsure of what is going to happen. But, then she hears a voice. It’s the voice of the Lord, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” That’s his word to her. You are free. Then his word is followed up with a deed. He lays his hands on her and immediately, Luke records, she is straightened up and begins praising God.
At first glance, you and I would say that this is your run of the mill healing and miracle story. They all follow a similar pattern: a person with a severe condition comes into contact with Jesus; Jesus touches them or pronounces them healed; and then they go on their way rejoicing because they have been made well.
We may scratch our heads over stories like these and approach them with a measured level of suspicion. We’ve all seen one too many televangelists spin their magic in the name God when their purposes are really profit and power to not look with skeptiscm on miraculous healings. But, somehow we must deal with the fact that Jesus’ ministry was one of healing the lame, curing the sick, and freeing the oppressed.
Unfortunately, we won’t be doing that in this morning’s sermon. That’s because this story takes a sharp right turn. It happened when the synagogue leader stood up to give his opinion of the whole affair that morning. Luke says he was ‘indignant’. That’s a fancy way of saying he was ‘displeased’ with what he saw. You can use your imagination to fill in all of the choice words he may or may not have used to chastise Jesus and this woman. Here’s what Luke says he said, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath.” In modern English, what were you both thinking?
This man certainly isn’t a model of good pastoral care. Can you imagine making an appointment with him to bear the troubles of your soul and what your conversation would be like? But to be fair, in this instance he was simply paraphrasing what the Ten Commandments said. Here is the 4th commandment word for word: “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your town.” i.e. Keep the Sabbath holy by not doing work.
Few of us practice anything close to what an ancient Jew would call ‘Sabbath.’ For them, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday all work was to stop. Literally. The rabbis made exceptions for things like taking care of your animals and eating meals, but that’s about it. They didn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room for any kind of extra-curriculars: on the Sabbath you were supposed to rest. Period. The closest thing our culture comes to practicing this holy rest is not being able to eat at Chick-filet on Sundays. Maybe it would do our society some good to practice something like a Sabbath and bring the rat race we run to a screeching halt for a whole twenty-four hours. It might relieve some of the stress and reduce some of the anxiety that is churning out there. Still, with all of that said, this story is not about proper Sabbath keeping.
The story reaches its low point in the verdict Jesus has to pronounce on the synagogue leader. He does not mince words. He calls him a ‘hypocrite.’
Few words in the English language have more power to send shudders down our spines than the word ‘hypocrite.’ It just about a cardinal sin today to be one. The church is particularly allergic to the word: for a whole host of reasons, most people thunk Christians and Christianity are hypocritical. And for good reason, we have been and are. But, before we condemn all of the hypocrites out there, let’s take a step back and try to understand why Jesus called him a hypocrite.
Somewhere along the way in the synagogue leader’s life, being right became more important than being compassionate. Did he really that think there was a wrong time to do good? Even more, he confused himself because Sabbath was not his gift to God, but God’s gift to him and the woman. God is the judge of what is allowed on the Sabbath and no one else. Except the man fell into the trap of what the theologian Karl Barth calls the origin of all sin: the pastor wanted to be his own judge. He wanted to decide for himself what is right and wrong and what is right and wrong for everyone else. He wanted to pronounce himself blameless and everyone else guilty. He wanted to look for his justification in life in himself and not in God. He couldn’t put down his gavel.
At a UCC conference a number of years ago that I attended, one of the guest speakers was a UCC pastor who is a prison chaplain at a women’s correctional facility in Virginia. She told the story of one of the prisoners she worked with named Hope. Here is a condensed version of Hope’s story.
Hope was sentenced to a two-year prison sentence at a maximum-security prison in Virginia. Hope’s crime: she stole $210. Hope fully admitted that what she did was wrong, but her reasoning for stealing the money will call into question simple notions of right and wrong. You see, Hope’s husband was killed by a drunk driver a couple of years before this. Devastated, Hope was left to care for her three small children alone. Without his income, she struggled to even put food on the table. She had no money and in the heat of the moment, she stole $210 to feed her children.
Who failed in this case: Hope or our society? It’s easy to judge people by their appearances, story, education, politics, what they’ve done or what they haven’t done, or the way they live their life. It’s easy to pick up the gavel and render your verdict. But, the story is always more complicated. Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t right and wrong, good or bad, but what is more important – being right or being compassionate?
Jesus called a pastor out today for trying to stand in the way when a woman was restored to fullness of life by the very power of God. That’s because Jesus is the Judge who has been Judged in our place and he has rendered our gavels obsolete.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.