Luke 13:10-17
August 22, 2010
Church: Week after week after week we come. I assume that all of us must get something out of church at some point, or we wouldn’t be here. In this day and age, the societal pressure to be a church go-er isn’t as strong as it used to be. It used to be that the societal pressure was enough to bring people to church week after week after week – even if it did absolutely nothing for them. Now, if we are getting nothing out of church – or worse, if we are being hurt by the church – we’re pretty much free to leave without much consequence. But even though we’re here by choice, I suspect that sometimes coming to church feels much more like an obligation than a joy. And at those times, we can probably relate to the crowd of people sitting in the synagogue when Jesus came in to preach.
They were there because they were supposed to be – not because they wanted to be. To not attend was to break Jewish law – and one of the top 10 laws at that: if you didn’t come, you were not keeping Sabbath. And breaking Jewish law had major consequences: it got you kicked out of the community. You became isolated, vulnerable – an outcast. You were no longer cared for or protected like those on the inside. So the people went week after week after week to synagogue whether or not the worship service helped them, hurt them or bored them silly.
Then, one week, they came to the synagogue as usual, and Jesus was the preacher. This was not going to be the same ole, same ole. In the middle of his sermon, a woman appears at the back of the sanctuary. Imagine how odd it must have been for people to have Jesus stop mid-sermon, point to the back of the sanctuary, and call for this woman to come forward. Imagine how terrifying it must have been for the woman. All eyes were on her. But, brave soul that she was, she walked forward. Well, actually, she hobbled forward because she couldn’t stand up straight. She had been crippled for 18 years. Eventually, she made her way down the aisle to the center of the sanctuary, where Jesus was standing.
The number of Jewish laws that were broken at this point already must have brought forth a collective gasp from everyone there. She was a woman and she was ill – both qualities that kept you banned from the sanctuary. Jesus was talking to her, male to female, in the sanctuary – a big no-no. And Jesus hadn’t even done the biggest sin of them all yet. After she came to him, he healed her…on the Sabbath. He did work on the Sabbath – a top ten violation. And he did it right in front of the religious authorities! He knew this went against their rules. He knew he was going against the current interpretations of the laws. He knew exactly what he was doing.
And the people sitting there that day watched the whole thing unfold. As they did, something happened to them that rarely – if ever – happened when they came to worship. They were freed. They were healed. But why? What happened? They weren’t the ones Jesus called to – Jesus didn’t lay his hands on them.
The Jewish faith at that time meant laws – lots of them. And for most people it was literally impossible to follow all of them. They lived constantly in fear of the law – a law they truly believed in and wanted to live up to because they loved Yahweh and wanted to please God. But the law had betrayed them – or rather the keepers and enforcers of the law had betrayed them.
The law as it was used weighed so heavy on most people, it probably felt like they could barely stand up. They saw what Jesus did literally for the woman, and somehow realized he was doing the same thing metaphorically for them. Somehow Jesus lifted the weight off their shoulders that had been there since they were children, and they felt like they could finally stand up straight. They rejoiced, it says in Luke. They rejoiced because they realized that the law didn’t have to be a burden. The law, the way Jesus practiced it, could heal them – it could free them.
When Moses lived, right after the people had been freed from slavery in Egypt, God gave them their first laws – the 10 commandments. And it was a pretty good place to start. These laws were founded on freedom – they were meant to keep the people from building their own Egypt – from finding themselves as either slaves or slave owners. But somehow, over time, those 10 relatively general laws became 613 laws. Each new law undoubtedly had a good purpose at the time. Each one was likely the best possible interpretation of the 10 commandments they could make for a given issue in a given moment. But what started out as well intentioned interpretations became strait jackets that just created new kinds of slavery for the people, who had only recently been led by God out of Egypt.
Eventually, the laws were more about control than freedom. They were more about maintaining institutions and power than caring for one another. They were tools of oppression for some and a heavy, heavy burden for others. This is what Jesus undermined when he healed the woman on the Sabbath. He put the spirit of the law ahead of the letter, and all of a sudden, the people there saw a cloud disappear; they felt weighty, painful laws lift from their shoulders.
The truth is mostly we like rules – they are clean, clear and enforceable. They keep us safe and keep society ordered. We need them to live well in community with one another. I think this spills over into our religious lives as well. We like the bible to tell us exactly what is okay and what isn’t. We like Paul’s lists of rules for the church because they are clear. They can order our lives and communities because they tell us exactly what’s acceptable and what’s not in the community of faith.
But our love of laws and order has taken Paul’s lists and turned them from well-intentioned interpretations of the law into the laws themselves. And once they become laws, breaking them means you find yourself outside the community of faith. And we’ve done this with not just Paul’s lists either. We – human beings through time – have made more and more rules and regulations until it is impossible for any of us to follow them all. That leads not only to hurt and exclusion of others, but to our own self-loathing and sense of distance from faith and God. The irony is, the laws we thought would help us live good, faithful, Christian lives actually distance us from authentic faith in God.
Jesus was a spirt of the law guy – and that spirit healed and freed many people. He didn’t completely do away with the law; certainly not the big 10. Sabbath was still holy. Sabbath was to be observed faithfully. But the intent of Sabbath – the Spirit- had been obscured by details about what could and couldn’t happen, down to the minutia of life. That day, Jesus reminded them of the intent of Sabbath. Sabbath was made for the people, Jesus says elsewhere, not the other way around.
Sabbath was made by God to give rest, to allow inequalities to straighten themselves out, to free the slaves and laborers from the burden of constant work. Of course he healed on the Sabbath because of course you would love and care for someone who appeared before you who had not had rest from disease in 18 years. In fact, what he did was offer Sabbath to this woman who no matter how hard she tired could not have truly experienced God’s Sabbath day while she was in so much pain and while she had been completely isolated from the community because of her deformity. That’s the spirit of Sabbath.
It’s easy to get bogged down in laws. It’s easy to build up rules based on trying to be faithful to what God commands. It happens all the time. An issue arises that we aren’t sure about, so we do our best to interpret the bible – to apply what we see in Jesus’ life. Then, because it’s human nature, we forget that it’s an interpretation and it becomes immutable truth. Women are subordinate to men. Blacks are subordinate to whites. Christianity is the only true religion. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Christians don’t smoke. Christians vote this way or that.
When I was interviewing with churches five years ago, the thing I heard people say most often was, “I want to know what the bible means for my life and what I should be doing today.” We want to live well, please God, be faithful. But the only way to do this – the only way to truly follow God’s law – is to let go of the minute instructions and rules and be guided by the spirit, not the letter.
When we get bogged down, when we pile the law upon other people, when the letter of the law becomes the law of the land, Jesus teaches us how to live by the spirit – he gives us a way back to the intention. He takes the whole law and sums it up for us. He reminds us of the greatest commandment – the one all laws should reflect. And we all remember the greatest commandment: Love god, love your neighbors, love your enemies. That’s how we measure what we’re doing. That’s how we break free of those things that no longer serve us and only weigh us down. And most importantly, that’s how we free others who have become victims of our laws and teachings.
So…how does our sanctuary compare to the one Jesus was preaching in the day the woman appeared? How are we doing on spirit verse the letter of the law. If we are following Jesus’ lead, this place should be a place where we are freed from drudgery and misinterpretations. When someone appears at our door who has been bent over by the weight of the world, hurt by the systems and laws that they can’t get out from under, can we invite them in to find the freedom and healing we know in Christ? Do we live by the spirit or the letter of the law? The spirit or the letter of the bible? The spirit or the letter of our creeds, liturgies, prayers and hymns?
When you think of church, what’s the first thing that pops into your head? Is it dull sermons, the bible, old songs, long prayers, early morning. Is it obligation, boredom, pain? Or is it warmth, light, rest, hope, engagement, energy, purpose, meaning? We have a choice. We can be a place where people come and experience a very nice, well-articulated, letter of the law – or we can be a place filled with the spirit of God’s law. A place where when someone enters, they know immediately they’ve come to a holy place – a healing place. We can tell people how to live – or we can tell people life is waiting for them here…life in Christ where grace speaks louder than judgment, where normal distinctions break down and community is ordered not by how good (or rich, or talented, or clean) you are, but by the radical love of God.
We have a choice. But let’s be clear. Being a place like this doesn’t mean we will be liked by everyone. It’s pretty darn clear that Jesus was not liked by everyone. The crowds rejoiced that day. But those who thought they had a handle on the law, who thought they knew who was in and who was out, who thought they knew what church should look like – they didn’t like this spirit-of-the-law way of Jesus. It let in the wrong people.
When we live by the spirit, we will be loved by those others judge. When we become a spirit of the law place, the ones rejoicing will be the ones who get a bad rap everywhere else. The outcasts, the heathens, the heretics, the disgusting. A spirit filled place is filled with all the wrong kinds of people. I don’t know about you, but that makes me rejoice. Because when I try to measure up to my and others’ expectations, I often feel like the wrong kind of person.
If week after week our church offers only the letter of the law, it will feel like drudgery, it will feel like an obligation, it will feel like a prison to us and anyone who dares to come in our doors. But if week after week we remember and practice the spirit of God’s law, we will be a place where people are healed and transformed. We will be a place where all can feel, taste, touch and see the love of God all around us. Amen.
