PENTECOST 13C – AUGUST 26, 2007 (PROPER 21)
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Ps 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17
One can just imagine the poor old rabbi. Here he had invited this nice young man who has been getting all the crowds around him to speak at his synagogue, and he goes and takes this liberty - flouting the law; teaching heresy! What will he say to his congregation? What will be the repercussions when others find out what has happened? What should have been a nice, ordinary Sabbath has been turned into a spectacle. People won’t come back. They’ll be taking their support for the synagogue some place else. Oh dear, oh dear!
Jesus, of course, being particularly attentive, it seems, to the Divine voice, simply reacts with impulse when he sees the woman among the people in the synagogue – a “woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over…” Jesus, not thinking about the reputation of the synagogue or apparently about the opinion authorities might have of him, hears God’s name for this woman, “daughter of Abraham”, and knows that she is meant to leave her bent years and stand tall.
How do we get so bent out of shape? This unnamed woman is a victim of an evil spirit – Satan – in the eyes of her culture. This meant, of course, that somehow she or someone in her family had invited the spirit in. She deserved it and was suffering for it and would have to live with it. This put her outside, part of the vast marginal crowd without identity that would have to wait on the mercy of God and God’s community. Even in the modern setting, long-term illness or disease can begin to feel like a curse. After so much debilitating time spent with the illness – perhaps after attempts to find relief through the ministration of doctors and other healers – when there is no relief in sight, it starts to feel like a judgment. It can render the person apparently of less value since others are granted good health while he or she continues to suffer. Perhaps she or he deserves no better. Others sense their helplessness in the presence of the ongoing illness and start to drift away from the individual, shunning him or her not necessarily by intention but by deed. And, of course, we get bent out of shape by so many afflictions; not just physical ailments. We are bent over by circumstances, by oppressive culture, by self-deprecation and by guilt. So many of us walk about invisibly bent over, possessed by that same spirit that will not relent from this woman.
Jeremiah is a bit bent out of shape, by his apparent uselessness as a young person in a world of adults. Although moved by indignation at the injustice around him, he is afraid of those with whom he would have to deal should he decide to speak his heart. There is a voice speaking deeply at the core of his being: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you…” But from his bent posture, he rejects the voice: “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” The spirit of the curse of his youth and fear fights to keep him from standing up straight. It is finally, what Henri Nouwen calls “the Inner Voice of Love”, alone that breaks through Jeremiah’s personal judgment and the judgment of the world around him. Nouwen wrote to himself in a journal during a time when he sought emotional and spiritual healing for a deep wound: “Conversion is certainly not something you can bring about yourself. It is not a question of willpower. You have to trust the inner voice that shows the way. You know that inner voice. You turn to it often. But after you have heard with clarity what you are asked to do, you start raising questions, fabricating objections, and seeking everyone else’s opinion. Thus you become entangled in countless often contradictory thoughts, feelings, and ideas and lose touch with the God in you. And you end up dependent on all the people you have gathered around you. Only by attending constantly to the inner voice can you be converted to a new life of freedom and joy.” Attentiveness to the inner voice of love is what defeats that spirit of Satan. “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth…” The inner voice of love speaks louder than the voice of the evil spirit. Before anyone or anything else gets at us, it is God who has laid the hand of identity upon us. It is with this voice that Jesus speaks, first to affirm that this woman is set free and then in the hearing of the congregation, to speak her identity as a “daughter of Abraham”. Jesus brings the reminder of something that both she and the congregation have forgotten in the face of the power of the evil spirit of Satan: before her affliction and during and now she is in a relationship with the Divine One who is the source of her life and the source of her dignity. This Voice of Love speaks to heal and will not be delayed by external judgments of appropriateness. She does not need to go to them or wait for their permission and Jesus most certainly will not wait. In another time and another place, she and Jesus do not need to wait for canon law or theological and liturgical correctness, for the Church or any other person – doctor, priest, friend, family member, lover: “Be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day!”
This is such a wonderful invitation to each heart: Be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day – today. Whatever is bending us out of shape – illness, anger, guilt, sadness - the inner voice of love is speaking to us, telling us who we are. God embodied in the experience of Jesus as Christ, places in our hands the gift of life “given for you.” There is no wait time placed on these words and they require no confirmation of this or any other congregation of people. Sons and Daughters of Abraham – children of God – be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day!
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