A Good News Story
Unlike last week, we certainly have a Good News story in our Gospel reading for today. Jesus heals a woman, a woman who has been severely crippled -- bent over and unable to stand up straight for 18 years. She doesn’t ask for healing. No one brings her to Jesus for healing. But he notices her and heals her. This woman can now freely look up, stand tall and voice praises to God. A real Good News story!
Those of you who read The Globe and Mail saw a real Good News story of healing in last Thursday’s issue, healing not in the sense of a cure but healing in the sense of kids having fun at a summer camp where they can make friends with other kids like them – kids with facial or limb differences, kids with skin conditions, Tourette syndrome, dwarfism, hair loss—all the physical differences that make being a kid far from easy. When free to have fun without stigma or social isolation, these kids can build their resilience and self-esteem for their enduring life challenges. There is much healing in all that.
Back to our Gospel story. Jesus doesn’t minister in a vacuum, so to speak. There is more to this healing story than a bent over woman now able to stand up straight and praise God. The whole story dramatizes what we focused on last week. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” When the kingdom of God breaks into our world, both then and now, conflict so easily comes with it. To repeat from last week: it’s vested interests, the status quo, short-sighted leadership, “We’ve always done it this way” that get in the way. That’s what can make working for the kingdom of God such hard work.
In our Gospel reading from Luke for today, Jesus is in the Synagogue on the Sabbath Day, as every devout Jew was to be. Jesus is a devout Jew. And he is teaching, as any learned male Jew could do on the Sabbath, teaching those gathered for worship in the synagogue. He notices the bent over woman. That in itself is remarkable. When I am up here speaking, I am so focused on what I’m saying that I really don’t notice anything else. Maybe an alarming sound or some frantic movement might get my attention, but that’s about all. And depending on what it was, I might possibly resent the interruption.
Jesus notices the bent over woman, and he is fully cognizant of the Sabbath commandment. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You shall not do any work.” Healing is work.
In addition to this commandment, Jesus also knows what he is to be about. We have read earlier in Luke where Jesus reads aloud from the prophet Isaiah in another synagogue on another Sabbath day. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” For Jesus, the bent over woman’s need -- her pain – takes precedence over everything else. Jesus has no trouble remembering purpose over form or practices – purpose over form or practices.
A real celebratory commotion must have resulted. The leader of the synagogue is indignant, we read, and keeps on 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.” The status quo has been disrupted. Rules have been broken. The powers that be are not happy.
Douglas Hambidge was our Metropolitan, our Archbishop, when I was a student at VST and first serving as an ordained minister. Archbishop Hambidge had many stories and reflections to share from his time as priest in the Diocese of Caledonia in northern BC. That is where he went to serve when he first came from England. One of his reflections was about how church service attendance records were being kept when he first arrived.
Just like we do today, records were kept of how many people attended each service, and, if it was a communion service, how many received communion. Except when Hambidge first arrived, there was an additional designation always to be recorded: the number of heathen at each worship service, heathen being indigenous worshippers. While not a commandment, per se, this practice no doubt reinforced injustices for generations in an institution which was not to be about injustices.
It is easy, certainly not threatening, to point to mistakes of the past that got in the way of the kingdom of God. We are to further the kingdom of God in our time and in our place. That can be challenging. A few weeks ago ignorant, hurtful, hateful words were scrawled on the exterior of the beautiful synagogue building downtown on Blanchard Street. You may have heard or read about it.
I was just heart-broken, and disgusted. I wanted to do something. So, I wrote a card to the members of Congregation Emanu-El, expressing my sadness and also my thanksgiving and support for their presence in our diverse city. I included a small monetary gift. But what I didn’t do was send a copy to the editor of The Times Colonist for a public witness , with the added line that Congregation Emanu-El has no more connection to the current policies of the Israeli government than I do to the Trump administration with my American birth yet living here in Canada for the last 58 years. Having that letter published could have been a real effort for the kingdom of God, I think. Maybe I will still do that.
The leader of the synagogue in our Gospel reading is not a bad person. People in leadership positions in any organization have to be concerned about the agreed upon rules. Otherwise the organization cannot survive. But leadership especially in religious organizations, both lay and ordained leadership, has a unique challenge. There is the all-too-common trap of placing form before substance, practices before purpose.
At St. Matthias right now we have a lot of very real challenges in the area of form and practice. Our small and aging congregation can feel overwhelmed by the demands of our physical plant. There are not the numbers we’d prefer to have to fill all the roles necessary for Sunday morning worship and coffee time, let alone for any receptions or other parish events. We even now have the mundane but critical issue of, shall I say, a handicapped sewer line.
With these challenges always comes the more important challenge: to keep the purpose of our faith community firmly in sight. We have a higher calling than just to keep viable buildings on the corner of Richmond and Richardson. If and when we might let ourselves get so bent over, so to speak, bent over from our burdens that we cannot see the true path forward, we can recall the truth from today’s Gospel. God’s healing power through Christ is readily available. That may mean doing things as differently as all the changes that I am sure came to the life of the bent over woman once she could stand tall. Such life giving changes can be the ways of God. Amen.