It began a week or so ago. There was a tear in
the universe and various events unfolded bringing new hope. There was a shift
in the cosmic arrangement of the cosmic arrangement and new beginnings snuck up
on us.
For Barrett, it was his ordination to the
ministry of Word and Sacrament. For Bob and Gene, it was heart surgery. For the
Genesis campus, it was major air conditioning repairs and a pesky water leak
that has come back. For others it will be the first day of a new school year
tomorrow.
With fond memories from Barrett’s ordination
and installation this past Sunday where the church gathered to bestow upon
another of our little ones we have worried over and watched grow the high and
exalted call to adulthood, to our celebration for Bob and Gene that they are
now better, to our heavy sigh at yet another series of repairs to our beautiful
but ageing campus, to the high hope and anxiety of another the school year, we
find life moving on with unpredictability and a sameness we have come to
expect.
Of course, summer has not ended. We have more
heat and less rain to contend with. Time seems to really drag these hot days.
They are so bright and seem to take any energy we have left.
But we know change is upon us. Choir begins
practice this coming week, their retreat is Saturday, and our new and familiar Carol
is here bringing a friendship of comfort and a right ordering of those forever
moving stars. Soon Labor Day will follow and before we know it we will be
reaching for our sweaters and coats. Ok, I dream a bit. It’s cheaper than
driving to the mountains.
But like many of you, I am ready for the fall.
I am ready to get ready for a change. That is the thing to do isn’t it? Through
graduation, and healing, and fixing things up, and the start of school, and the
coming of fall, and the return of choir we mark the end of one season and the
beginning of another.
I know, I know, we are getting older. But getting
ready is the right thing to do. We do not want to be surprised by the
surprising unfolding of time and circumstance, though that is exactly what it
does to us.
Jesus, for one, was seldom surprised by the
surprising. Throughout his life God had been preparing him for his adult
ministry. God was filling him with the knowledge of God’s Holy Word and God’s
ways in the world.
Jesus was ready for what lay in store and he
was not disappointed when people acted like people. No, Jesus was prepared and
there were few surprises in his life.
In Luke this morning, Jesus was teaching in
one of the synagogues. It was Saturday and the synagogues were the center for
all manner of life. There we would find high religious hyperbole surrounded by
the energy and surging of all of life. There, in the synagogue, Jesus was
prepared for all imaginations of social ills and political parlays and mystery
and intrigue.
All of first century life, at its best and
worst, whether friend or foe, ultimately found its way to the synagogue, because
that is where the action was. Jesus knew he would always be in the mix with the
push of his theology and the tussle with the law and the power players there in
the holy place, especially on Shabbat, on Sabbath day.
The drama for this particular day was to be no
different, for there came a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for
eighteen years. She was bent over and was unable to stand straight. Spirits,
especially in first century Israel, were common place presences in the lives of
many of the people Jesus came in contact with. Actually, at times, it seems he
sought them out.
These people with spirits were woven
throughout all of society and there was a cottage industry of sorts that formed
to respond to them. Some folks tried to contain them for prophecy and profit.
Others tried to exorcise them, to cast them out.
Yet many who were so afflicted where seen as a
sign of God’s judgment, or as a consequence of particular willful disobedience
to God’s law. And I suppose, like today, many saw reminders of their own
afflictions in those seriously possessed or affected.
Whatever their case, folks were just as used
to the presence of those under the influence of spirits as we are to the
homeless folks on the street corners.
Some we see through, others we stop to consider, and some we reach out to help.
These were just the sort of folks Jesus waited
for. He used the most difficult cases, in the most shocking places, to teach
his most revolutionary ways to change, to restore healing, to bring hope in the
midst of hopelessness.
This particular woman was apparently sought by
Jesus for he called her over and surprised everyone saying, “Woman, you are set
free from your ailment.” Then he laid his hands on her and immediately she
stood up straight and began to praise God.
The leader of the synagogue took high offense
to this act and he began to incite the people. “There are six days on which
work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath
day.” We do not know how the people responded, but we do know Jesus’. He did
not hesitate. “You hypocrites!” he yelled.
Jesus knew what to expect from the leaders of
the synagogue and they did not disappoint. He knew the undercurrents of the synagogue
scene. He knew how these leaders where.
We quickly learn from the scriptures Jesus
knows what to expect from us too. Jesus knows our every thought, our uniqueness,
our tendencies, because our human predictability is ever before us. Jesus knows
us better than we know ourselves.
He would not be the one to say, “Why did he or
she do that?” No, he knows us so well he can explain us before we can explain
ourselves.
The woman who appeared there in the synagogue
was doing what she had always done. She had gone there as she had many times
before. Who knows, after eighteen years, all she had left was her hope in being
healed. Or perhaps she had long ago lost any real hope and was just hanging on.
Eighteen years is a very long time.
Jesus, on the other hand,
may have entered there with his eye open for the predictable. Knowing the
hypocrisy surrounding Sabbath, his corrective vision waited patiently for the
inevitable. This woman, this day, this Jesus, had final come together.
Perhaps today is to be our day too. Perhaps we
are to be the person Jesus is looking for. Perhaps ours is the heart that Jesus
is waiting to enter, the one to whom he will center his ministry.
When Jesus laid his hands on the woman,
immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. Have we been the one
stooped over by the weight of our sin, the weight of our tired and worn love
for God, the weight of our weariness at waiting for God’s peace, God’s kingdom?
In his book, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God, the great theologian Karl
Barth helps us know how to lift such weight from our stooped life.
He said, “In the church to act means to hear.
That is to hear the word of God, and through the word of God revelation and
faith. It may be objected that this is too small a task and one that is not
active enough. But in the whole world there exists no more intense, strenuous
or animated action than that which consists in hearing the word of God – hearing
it, as is its due, ever afresh, better, more loyally and efficaciously.
Everything beside this is a waste of time
here. It is in this act that the content of the church service consists. It is
because the church hears the word of God and must hear it again that she meets.
It is by listening to God that she serves God.
And it is by listening together that her members serve one another, as of
course they must do.”
We hear God’s word as it is read from the
scripture and we hear God’s word as it is spoken by God directly to each of us.
When we are seen by God we may be called over and hear, “Woman, you are set
free from your ailment.” We may feel Jesus lay his hands on us and immediately
we will stand up straight and begin praising God.
Hearing
God’s simple yet powerful word, feeling Jesus’ hands upon us, will straighten
us from our stooped ways. These words of God give us the love, grace, and power
of God setting us free. Free to live in service to God, to this faith
community, and to our brothers and sisters who are stooped and longing for new
hope. Longing for a new Sabbath hope where all will stand and praise God.
We
therefore stand with joy this day for Barrett’s ordination and installation, for
the healing for two of our members, for the funds we have to repair our broken
parts, and for the return of school. For in our joy we find our freedom, our
hope restored.
We also praise God who straightens our stooped
ways because that is what God does. Jesus sees us and comes to us, especially
in the midst of the new changes God brings through our predictable and
unpredictable seasons, to show us how to live the faithful life, and to assure
us we are forgiven, loved, and risen to kingdom living.
Such are the powers of the word of God.
In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one
God, now and forever. Amen
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