Listen to Readings and Sermon

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 Doctor Durrell Watkins at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, August 22, 2010.

In our gospel story today, a woman has been waiting for something wonderful to happen for a long time, and she finds out that it is never too late to hear and respond to good news. But let’s back the story up just a bit.

Luke 4 (Jesus ministers to Simon’s sick mother-in-law, and then lays hands on and prays for a number of people who had healing needs)

Luke 5 (a man with leprosy approaches Jesus and Jesus touches him with compassion)

Luke 5 (a man is paralyzed and Jesus encourages him, tells him he is free from any notion of being a sinner, perhaps it was guilt and shame and low self-esteem that had rendered the poor man immobile, stuck, paralyzed to begin with…and after the man accepts Jesus’ empowering words, and Jesus receives criticism from the religious traditionalists who think he is committing blasphemy with his progressive message, the paralyzed man stops being paralyzed and with Jesus’ encouragement stands up and walks away.

Luke 6 (Sermon on the plain – Jesus promises comfort, blessings to the poor, the depressed, and the oppressed)

Luke 7 (A Roman, pagan centurion comes to Jesus on behalf of his “servant” – probably his lover – and Jesus praises the centurion’s faith and affirms healing for his lover)

Luke 8 (Jesus heals a man tormented by “Legion”)

Luke 8 (Woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years approaches Jesus)

Luke 9 (Jesus sends his apostles out to teach and heal people)

Luke 10 (Parable of Good Samaritan offering aid to a man who had been left for dead)

Luke 11 (Jesus is attentive to someone who can’t speak)

And now in Luke 13 we see him lifting up a woman who has been bent down for 18 years. The theme continues, doesn’t it?

Luke’s vision of Jesus, Luke’s understanding of Jesus, the way Luke chooses to imagine Jesus is as one who demonstrates compassion and optimism and caring as the supreme spiritual values.

Today we see a woman stooped over, defeated by life, unable to hold her head up at all…what, we must wonder, has caused this woman to be so overwhelmed, so weighed down, so stooped over in life? What neglect, what depression, what abuse, what hardship has she endured without ever hearing that she has sacred value? How many religious people had ignored her plight or even found some verse of scripture to use against her to suggest that her ailment was divine punishment against her? Did she have no friends who could be bothered to help lift her up? Did she have no family who could affirm her dignity and tell her that she was loved and who would encourage her until she could stand tall with confidence once more?

Well, whatever caused her plight, Jesus takes notice of her and he offers her his ministry of compassion. He touches her. He affirms her dignity and sacred value. He proclaims her freedom and her worthiness to experience hope and joy in her life. And because he took the time to share a message of empowerment with her, she was lifted up, she was comforted, she was strengthened, and for the first time in almost 2 decades she stood tall and proud and began rejoicing, as one would!

Of course, the religious people…why is it always the religious people?! Now, obviously, Jesus was religious, but his understanding of religion was very progressive, positive, practical…it was liberating, it was life-giving. But the religious establishment, the traditionalists, the “orthodox”, the heresy hunters, they see Jesus healing this woman and instead of saying, “Well done! Jesus you made religion useful and life-giving to someone else today!” They said, “Hey! Healing is work, and work isn’t to be done on the Sabbath, that’s right in the ten commandments. Don’t you know the bible?! Don’t you know that God doesn’t want you doing stuff on the Sabbath? You are going against the faith!”

Really? By helping someone? By helping someone feel better about herself? By helping someone love her life again? Any religion that is against that can’t be the one for me, or so Jesus seems to say.

Religion isn’t meant to make us hate ourselves. It isn’t meant to make us hate other people who practice their understanding of the divine differently. It isn’t meant to make us condemn the unchurched, or those of other churches, or those who worship in synagogues, or in mosques…Religion is meant to help us stand tall with hope and dignity. Religion is meant to bring us together so we can help one another stand tall with dignity and hope and love.

But the religious folk, they had a verse…don’t they always.

“Six days you may labor and do all your work; but the seventh day is the sabbath… No work may be done then…”That’s right in Deuteronomy 5, Jesus. Don’t you believe in the bible, the scriptures, the torah, the holy word?

Well, Deuteronomy 5 does say that we need a time of rest and worship…that’s good for our emotional and physical and spiritual health; but that isn’t meant to be a weapon used against us to control us or keep us down for goodness sake. And yes, Deuteronomy says keep a Sabbath day, but it also says in chapter 22, “You shall not see your [neighbor’s] animal sick or injured on the road without showing concern about it; see to it that you help… lift it up.” If our sacred texts would have us show compassion to our neighbor’s animals, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the spirit of those texts wouldn’t condemn our showing compassion to people themselves? If we are allowed to lift up a lamb or an ox or a donkey, how much more should we try to life up one another, regardless of what day the calendar says it is?!

How ridiculous that a woman would walk into a worship space bent over with pain and sorrow and a religious person would have the temerity to say out loud, “Don’t help her! Not today! I’ve got a verse that says we shouldn’t.”

And Jesus says, “you go play with your verse, I’m going to love this woman into wholeness and show her that God is love and right where she is, God is, no matter what anyone says that any book says. We’re just going to do right, and when you see someone suffering, you don’t need to look up what is right in a book.”

How ridiculous to worship our chauvinism and dare to claim that we are merely following the dictates of scripture. How dare we quote an isolated portion of an ancient text to silence women or keep them from altar and pulpit? If we are using scripture to oppress others we are misusing it.

How ridiculous to worship our homophobia and hide behind isolated proof-texts to celebrate our ignorance of the complexities of human sexuality. God forgive us for ever using the scriptures in so abusive a fashion.

How ridiculous to worship our tribal tendencies and quote a verse here and there to justify our ignorance of and discomfort with other religions.

How ridiculous to worship our own prejudices and try to insist that we are just following the marching orders from a book. Rather than worshiping the texts we should be wrestling with them, holding them accountable when they fall short of Jesus’ example of compassion and justice, and liberating them from centuries of abusive use that was meant only to keep certain people bent down with shame, fear, and self-loathing. The spirit of Isaiah’s text that proclaims, “Rise up in splendor, your light has come!” is the spirit through which we should view scripture and the spirit with which we should share it. Anything short of lifting us and all people up is unworthy of any text we would call holy.

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan said, “We affirm that the Torah reveals God, not that God revealed the Torah.” Rather than using scripture to protect our privilege or justify our prejudices, we need to be a bit more mature with our spirituality and take more responsibility for our own beliefs and actions. Rather than idolizing the bible or using it as a weapon of oppression, we should use it, and the sacraments, and the pulpit, and our music, and our architecture, and the arts, and every tool at our disposal to life people up.

When the world bends the truth about the sacred value of women, of same-gender loving people, of gender variant people, of our brothers and sisters in or from the middle east, when the world bends the truth of God’s unconditional love while using the language of vengeance and hatred…when depression, homophobia, illness, abuse, slander, or any condition bends us down, we can be sure the will of God is for us to return to wholeness and for us to be raised up to hope and joy and empowerment…and no abusively misused biblical text can change that truth.

As followers of Jesus, we are in the lifting up business…not tearing down, not wearing down, not breaking down, but lifting up. And as we lift up others, we ARE the good news. Amen.

The Good News Affirmed

When I am down, I can be raised back up.

Nothing can keep me down forever.

The power of hope lifts me up today.

And I share hope to uplift others.

Amen.

The Good News Repeated

“I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing Light of your own Being.” Hafiz

Audio readings and sermon (http://sunshinecathedral.org/sermons/audio/20100822_2.mp3)