Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] August 21, 2022 “Why Wait One More Day?” Luke 13: 10-17 – Common English Bible Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. 11 A woman was there who had been disabled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and couldn’t stand up straight. 12 When he saw her, Jesus called her to him and said, “Woman, you are set free from your sickness.” 13 He placed his hands on her and she straightened up at once and praised God. 14 The synagogue leader, incensed that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, responded, “There are six days during which work is permitted. Come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath day.” 15 The Lord replied, “Hypocrites! Don’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from its stall and lead it out to get a drink? 16 Then isn’t it necessary that this woman, a daughter of Abraham, bound by Satan for eighteen long years, be set free from her bondage on the Sabbath day?” 17 When he said these things, all his opponents were put to shame, but all those in the crowd rejoiced at all the extraordinary things he was doing. Whenever I encounter this text, I think of Alice Farnam. Alice was a member of my church in Cleveland. She was famous for two things. She was the daughter of the architect of Archwood’s beautiful colonial style sanctuary where she sat every single Sunday under the high barrel-vaulted ceiling next to the tall plain windows that filled the room with light. More importantly, she was famous for bringing her homemade potato chips to every potluck. Alice was barely a hundred pounds, short and slender, and had been severely bent over for most of her life. Her 80-year-old body was so rigid that if you hugged her too hard, you were afraid of breaking her. She had to lean backward to look you in the face. To make her famous chips, she rode the bus to buy potatoes at the West Side Market a huge, hundred-year-old, open-air market crowded with people bumping into each other while they move among dozens of fruit and vegetable stands. Alice wasn’t very strong so she couldn’t carry a lot. She’d buy maybe 6 or 7 small potatoes, ride the bus a few miles back home, walk several blocks to her house, walk back to the bus, ride it to the market again, and slowly repeat all day. Then she used her gnarled hands to cut thin slices and put them in boiling oil. I can’t even imagine how much effort it took, but she didn’t do it for admiration or attention. It was a very laborious labor of love like few others would do and she was loved and appreciated in return. The bent-over woman at the synagogue that day wasn’t looking for attention either. She was simply among the faithful who went to the synagogue every sabbath. I doubt very many people ever noticed her in the crowd. She hadn’t gone there that day seeking healing. But for some reason, in the crowd, Jesus saw her. That’s all it says. Jesus “saw her.” He called her over, placed his hands on her, and said, “Woman you are set free.” She stood up straight and began praising God. Stories about healing in the Bible are complicated. Among other things, they often involve the tension of why her and not someone else. For example, why not Alice? How many times in 80 years of faithful church attendance had Alice heard the story of the bent over woman and wondered what that would be like? What would it be like to look someone straight in the eye? To drive. To swim. To have no more back and neck pain. We celebrate healing stories as wonderful acts of God even as we are confounded by such difficult questions as why God doesn’t act like that for everyone. But her healing is not the end of the story. For the first time in 18 years, the woman could stand up straight – maybe even raise her hands above her head in praise. But this miraculous act drew condemnation from the synagogue leader, who spoke to the crowd, not directly to Jesus, about how he broke the rules about sabbath. Faithful observance of sabbath meant there were 39 kinds of labor one should not do. Anything done to save someone’s life was permitted but rabbinic authorities were divided on whether non-life-threatening conditions were permitted – such as the condition of the bent-over woman or the man with a withered hand Jesus had also healed on the sabbath earlier in Luke, which drew condemnation, as well. And why these prohibitions? Because of the 4th of the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20 it says, “Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy. Six days you may work and do all your tasks but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not do any work on it – not you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you. Because the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. This is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Once a week, rest is a sacred duty more important than even work. Think how radical that is. Rest is a holy activity, a gift directly from God. It’s not about rules. It’s love for us. But did you know there are two lists of Ten Commandments? There’s the one we’re most familiar with in Exodus tied to the creation story focused on resting on the 7th day because God rested. But there’s also a list of Ten Commandments in the Book of Deuteronomy, the same commandments, but with a different focus. In Deuteronomy it’s not about honoring the 7th day of creation but rather “Keep the Sabbath…You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, but the Lord your God brought you out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. That’s why the Lord your God commands you to keep the Sabbath day.” Sabbath is tied to freedom from bondage. When Jesus responded to the synagogue leader about sabbath, Jesus was talking about the 4th commandment in Deuteronomy because he described his actions as liberation. You are set free. He released her from bondage. By healing on the sabbath, Jesus wasn’t disregarding the importance of the Law. He wasn’t criticizing the observance of sabbath but that their interpretation was too limited. Sabbath, Jesus demonstrated, is to commemorate the freedom of slaves. Therefore, freeing this woman from her bondage is completely in line with the intention of the sabbath commandment. Yes, rest is a holy activity, a sacred duty. But it’s more. It is liberation from that which keeps you in bondage all week. Who holds you back? What holds you down? Take a day off from that every week. If only for a day, we are released from stress with the practice of gratitude in worship. If only for a day, we are free from domination by the people who control our lives by remembering we are the children of the Most High God, who desires our freedom. What more could we ask for? While all the action between Jesus and the synagogue leader is going on, the woman is off to the side, still in wonderment about how she can move her neck. Has the sky always been that blue? She could always hear the birds but now she can watch them flying by without moving her whole body. She can take a full deep breath again after nearly two decades. What had happened to her 18 years ago? Was it an accident? Some kind of illness? Jesus told her she was set free from your “sickness,” but that can mean a lot of things. Eugene Peterson described her as “twisted and bent over with arthritis.” But the original text speaks of her being afflicted by a spirit. What kind of spirit? Perhaps a spirit of grief. A spirit of grief over the loss of someone she could not bear losing 18 years ago, like a child. Perhaps a spirit of rage. A spirit of anger at something that was done to her. Or a spirit of guilt over something she had done to someone else. Or maybe a spirit of worthlessness. A spirit of insignificance after being condemned by harsh words or physical abuse. Feeling as though you have no value can physically bend you over, perpetually looking down not only on the ground but upon yourself. There are many spirits that can weigh us down. Well, from whatever spirit held her back from flourishing, Jesus saw her, spoke to her, and set her free. But, if only it had happened the next day. Jesus healed her on the wrong day. The religious authority asked, what’s your hurry? Why couldn’t she wait? Afterall, she had been bent-over for 18 years. Do it tomorrow when it’s legal. How often are people who seek their liberation told to wait or do it a different way? Has anyone ever asked you, “What’s your hurry?” A man in Texas wrote a letter to Dr. King that read, “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry?” But Dr. King noted that “wait” often means “never.” On April 3rd of 1963, a series of actions began in Birmingham, Alabama, to bring national attention to efforts to desegregate public facilities – lunch counter sit-ins, sit-ins at the library, kneel-ins at churches, marches on city hall and the county courthouse, and a boycott of downtown merchants. After every other legal avenue or attempt at moral persuasion had failed, all that was left was direct action. Eight clergymen responded by issuing an “Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense,” published in the local paper, which read in part, “We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But demonstrations to realize those hopes are unwise and untimely.” On April 10th the city obtained a state court injunction against the protests and two days later, on Good Friday, Dr. King was arrested for violating that injunction and placed in solitary confinement for 10 days. From the Birmingham jail he asked those eight clergymen why they deplored the demonstrations more than the conditions that made them necessary. Just like the synagogue leader. If he had only expressed as much concern for the woman as he did for the rule. Actually, however, he simply didn’t understand that it’s not a commandment to keep someone down with burdens but a commandment to help us stand back up with freedom. That’s what Jesus demonstrated. But the leader didn’t understand and instead criticized Jesus. By the logic of the synagogue leader, there had been 5,634 previously acceptable days to heal the woman. One more can’t hurt. We might tend to agree. That seems reasonable. Why can’t Jesus wait one more day? But if Jesus couldn’t wait, why would we? For example, what’s the rush with affordable housing? We have rules to follow. But why are the needs and fears of property owners of more value than the unhoused, than teachers and firefighters and students graduating from college who can’t afford to live here? What’s the rush with asylum seekers? Why can’t they wait? What’s the rush with climate change? As the temperatures rise to unbearable levels, as the seas rise to drown island villages, as forests burn and choke the air, what’s the rush? What’s wrong with one more day? Decades of one more day have shown us. Even as The Rev. Dr. William Barber asks these same questions, he can sympathize with the bent-over woman. He has the form of arthritis known as ankylosing spondylitis (ang·kuh·low·suhng spaan·duh·lai·tuhs) that leads to the fusion of the spine. It tries to close your chest cavity over time. Some days his eyes turn red and he loses his vision. Inflammation in his neck, spine, and hips causes immense pain throughout his body. To watch him move is to grimace in sympathy. And yet he’s everywhere all the time, relying on his old beat-up cane. He’s the closest we have to a modern-day Dr. King – a preacher, prophet, and prolific organizer. He started the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina in 2013 and this past June organized the Poor Peoples Campaign in Washington, DC. Holding up his cane, he says, “This has marched in marches, it’s been in the jailhouse, the White House, and Senate confirmation hearings.” And despite his body’s crushing pain, for the rest of his life he’s committed to continue to the cause of low wage people – Black, brown, and white – housing, immigration reform, Christian nationalism, and LGBTQ rights. He also always talks about health care access, grateful for his, and insists the United States needs a “heart transplant.” How does he keep going? He said, “If the pain says I can’t, even then I’m going to find a way to do something to be with those in this country who every day have inflicted upon them the restrictions of a democracy that’s full of the arthritis of inequality.” How can he do that? He said, “I was taught in my faith tradition that you don’t live life and rust out. You wear out. You fight on. You walk by faith and not by sight. You take the life you’re handed and make a difference with the life you have.” What does it say that Jesus didn’t delay? It says that the time for freedom for the oppressed is not tomorrow. The only day for liberation is today. No more excuses. Alice Farnam, William Barber, and the woman bent over for 18 years didn’t wait for better days. Whether we feel limited by pain in our body or a spirit of fear or a spirit of guilt or a spirit that says we lack worth, what are you waiting for? There is so much you can do. Why wait to act even one more day?
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