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13th Sunday after Pentecost

The Good News Written

Deuteronomy 5.13-14 (NAB)

Six days you may labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is the sabbath… No work may be done then…

Deuteronomy 22.4 (NAB)

You shall not see your [neighbor’s] ass or ox foundering on the road without showing concern about it; see to it that you help… lift it up.

Luke 13.10-17 (NRSV)

¹⁰Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. ¹¹And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. ¹²When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” ¹³When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. ¹⁴But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” ¹⁵But [Jesus] answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie [your] ox or donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? ¹⁶And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham [and Sarah] whom [Misfortune] bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” ¹⁷When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

The Good News Proclaimed

Preached by the Reverend Michael A. Diaz at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, August 22, 2010.

Now, before you begin to typecast me for being a typical gay guy who watches and is able to speak every line from the Golden Girls, I must admit that I never for once watched the Golden Girls until I went to seminary. It was in seminary when I would constantly pester an older lady who lived downstairs, nicknamed Big Mama. You all know Big Mama, but today we know her as Rev. Dr. Robert Griffin. Being fresh out of college and full of energy to go out and just live, I would always bug Mama Griffin in the late afternoon to come out with me, visit a local watering hole, and enjoy happy hour. Mama Griffin would always have the same response: “Boy, don’t you know the Golden Girls are on right now?” And so, I’d have to sit and watch and wait for the Golden Girls to be over. The show itself was very entertaining. I mean really? Who knew that before Sex and the City, there was another show about four women and their life escapades, the Golden Girls? (I didn’t.)

In the “Love, Rose” episode of the Golden Girls, poor Rose decides to try something new to spice up her non-existent dating life. How many of us have had to try something new a time or two in our lives? Rose takes out a personal ad in the paper, but to her dismay not one person responds. It’s sort of a shock to Rose. After all, surely there is one person out there who would find the person described in her ad attractive. It’s bad enough to get rejected in person, but to be rejected through a newspaper personal ad, that’s rejection gone too far. Rose begins to internalize her rejected status, and falls into an emotional dump. . Not even Blanche’s comedic misguidedness can lift Rose’s head. In her mind, everyone’s rejection of her naturally means she has to reject herself. How many of us have played out this scenario a time or two in our lives?

This storyline isn’t that unfamiliar to us. In fact, it’s not even unfamiliar to scripture. In Luke’s Gospel today, we read of a woman who is in a ceaseless state of being bent over, of not being able to stand up straight. She walks into a synagogue while Jesus is teaching. Jesus notices her and heals her and gets in trouble with the religious authorities for doing so. End of story right? Pretty straightforward? Another sick person is healed. Jesus puts the smack down on the religious authorities and shows everyone who’s boss. Hallelujah. Let’s go home, right? This may seem like just another typical healing story of Jesus, but there is something deeper going on in this ancient story.

The bent woman in Luke’s Gospel may be dealing with a disease or she may be dealing with an illness. What’s the difference you might ask? In the anthropological sense, Bruce Malina considers a disease to be a biomedical malfunction that afflicts an organism whereas an illness is a disvalued state of being where social networks have been disrupted and meaning has been lost. In Jesus’ day, folk healers like Jesus would have paid more attention to the social causes of illness rather than on organs or biotechnical functions of the body. Because humans are social beings, it was natural for ancient societies to attribute one’s sickness to forces outside of the body. So when we deal with Scripture and read about Jesus healing people, let’s remember that more than likely, Jesus is healing an illness, not a disease. This realization is hard for many to see because we want to deal with the physical, but the stories in scripture go beyond the physical to the metaphysical.

By viewing the bent woman as being in a state of illness rather than disease, we begin to see a story that hits so close to home, maybe too close.

Who is this bent woman? Our translation today says that a spirit had crippled her for eighteen years. Some translations read that this crippling spirit was a “spirit of weakness.” She is crippled in fear and too weak to carry on. Simply put, her life circumstances have worn her down. Who is this woman? She is someone like Rose from the Golden Girls who has been rejected time and time again, so much so that now she has begun to hate herself. Who is she? She is that homeless war veteran who returned after bravely serving in a war that not only debilitated the countries involved, but it crippled her mind, body, and spirit as well. Who is she? She is someone who has always been told to keep part of her life private, to keep her sexuality in check, to recognize that this is a man’s world, and yet, she tried to resist these lies but soon she was no longer able to keep her head up but only look down. Who is this woman?  She is an immigrant who lives in the shadows of an urban society trying to keep her family alive, someone who came seeking the “American Dream” that we so casually flaunt and seduce foreigners with, someone who came believing in the possibilities but instead found an ethnocentric culture that is bent on milking her for the little that her labor is worth. Who is this woman? She is someone who tried to be “somebody” in this world, but people told her she was a “nobody,” that she wasn’t pretty enough, good enough, or worth enough. This woman represents all of us who have been in a downcast state, who have lost control of our thoughts, who have lost faith in ourselves and lost all hope for meaning in our lives.

When this bent woman walks into the synagogue, Jesus sees her, but he doesn’t ask her what’s wrong or if she wants to be healed of the hopeless state she is in. He doesn’t need to. Like we do sometimes, she is wearing her burdens for all to see. Jesus calls her but he doesn’t ask God to heal her nor does he petition God to set her free. “You are set free,” he tells her. And I imagine him telling her this, and then laying his hands on her shoulders, as if to shake her out of her disillusion. Sort of saying, “You are already set free! Snap out of it!” And then this woman, who was in the continual state of looking at herself with a skewed vision, immediately stands straight up and begins to praise God. You know what that means? Almost instantly, she cuts through the fog and the cloudiness. She reaches for clarity and begins to recall who she really is, and she remembers past all the lies, injustices, and the negative thoughts all the way back when all she knew was that God is good and God is within her. She begins to affirm the God within her. “Praise God who lives within me.”

Sometimes we have to cut through the cloudiness in front of us, and remember back beyond the date when we were infected with that illness in order to bring back to our thought pattern the truth that we are defined by the Divine within us. Sometimes it means going back to our childhood days when our parents told us we were the best and we believed them. I officiated at a baptism service for a young girl yesterday, and you should have seen how happy this little child was. She didn’t have a worry in the world. She wore the most beautiful baptismal dress, and she didn’t care what people thought of her drooling all over it. She wasn’t thinking whether or not the dress makes her look fat. She didn’t even care how big her head is. Meanwhile, an hour before the service I was in the mirror putting on my clergy shirt thinking, “Man, I have never grown into my head.” I’m so tired of my best friends calling me “big head” and referring to me as a “walking candy apple.” That’s why I enjoy doing baptisms because I see this child not caring about her big head, and I remember I shouldn’t car about mine.

But of course, the challenges are bigger than a poor self-image. So many of us can’t figure out what to do with our lives. We are in the fog about where our lives are going and where our relationships are headed. We begin to think that since it’s so hard to discern where God is around us, maybe we actually don’t have a good grasp on God within us. We forget that we do not have to let what goes on externally to negatively affect us internally. Why is it that we always allow the external to take a strong hold on our lives and change us? Why do we allow the external to take the initiative? *Why don’t we do what Jesus does, that is to take the initiative to impact the external instead of vice versa? One clue as to why we probably don’t take the initiative can be found in the case of the religious authorities in our story this morning. Jesus takes the initiative and the system chastises him for it. Luckily, Jesus knows that the whole point of the system is to better serve humanity.

If we take the initiative to impact our external circumstances, you can be sure that the systems that have been built in our societies, in our minds, and in our thought processes, will surely push back. As soon as you start affirming God within you, you will be tempted with that voice that says, “You still aren’t good enough. You still have a big head.” And that’s okay as long as we don’t give power

The bent woman is more than a character in Luke’s narrative. I dare to say that many of us in this room have played the part of the bent woman. The good news is many of us have moved on and are moving beyond being the bent person to the person who is truly set free. Amen.

The Good News Affirmed

Today, I am set free.

I am no longer crippled with fear.

I am filled with positive Light.

I love myself.

I love the Divine within me.

Amen.

The Good News Repeated

Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives. -Louise L. Hay

Audio readings and sermon (http://sunshinecathedral.org/sermons/audio/20100822_1.mp3)