“Set Free”

A Sermon Based Upon Luke 13: 10-17

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday after Pentecost, August 25th, 2013

“And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" (Luke 13:16 NRS)"

Philippe Pozzo di Borgo is a wealthy aristocrat who has everything.  He lives in Paris.  He is owner and producer of a fine French wine.   A Maserati sets in his garage.   People wait on him hand and foot.   He has breakfast in bed.   He gets a massage every day.   But there is only one problem.  Philippe is a paraplegic.  He can’t do anything for himself and has to have help to eat, to get his bath, even to go to the bathroom.  He has to have people helping him 24/7.

One person Phillipe hired to help take care of him came out of a low-income area of Paris, a place filled with all kinds of crime and drugs.   This man was living about as low as a person can.  He had come out of bad situation in Africa and now, due to his lifestyle and poor choices, he had been thrown out of his home.  He had no hope of getting a job, until he answered the advertisement of becoming a care-giver.  He was strong, but he wasn’t really emotionally ready for the job.  He had an ‘attitude’.  He thinks he can do anything.  Phillipe should not have hired him, but since he had gone through several care-givers who could not ‘stomach’ the job, he took a chance on this strong willed man named, Abdel Sellou.  

It is most amazing is what happens next.  The man who was crippled gives this strong man work to do that no one should have to do.   It will either make or break a person who has to give constant and complete care to another person.  It this situation it made Abdel Sellou.   He not only mastered the job, but his work and relationship caring for Phillipe saved his life from crime and drugs.  Even though Phillipe was the crippled man who needed help, it was the ‘strong-man’, Abdel, who was most in need of healing.   When the strong man helped the weak, they both received the healing they needed as cripples in life.   Today, Phillipe and Abdel remain close and live in Morocco. (Based on a true story, made into a documentary and then a film in France entitled, “The Intouchables” http://republicanherald.com/news/2-worlds-collide-in-intouchables-1.1247857).   

THE HEALING WE ALL NEED

The crippled woman in this gospel is also in desperate need of healing and help.   Do you see her struggling to move along?  Luke tells us that she has been crippled for over 18 years and that her body is ‘bent’ out of shape and she is unable to ‘straighten’ up (13: 11).   While Luke does not tell us exactly what happened to her, he does attribute her crippling to a ‘spirit’ that had taken over.   This description might sound strange to those of us today who know about the crippling powers of polio, arthritis, or spinal degeneration.  But Luke wants us to know that the crippling power that took over was mysterious and real.  It was a power that came from outside her, beyond her, and now has her firmly in its grip.   This ‘spirit that had crippled her’ stands for the very personal and emotional side of this woman’s physical infirmity.   It’s a side that medicine and science seldom sees.  It’s the side of the crippled or sick person that asks, “Why is this happening to me?”

Preacher Brent Younger tells about this ‘spiritual’ side of sickness in a biographical sermon he wrote about a woman he named “Kimberly Rush” who was an over-the-top perfectionist in all she did.  She made top grades through school.  She finished both high school and college early.   Then she went to Harvard Law School, where really smart people go.  After graduation, she was invited to be a part of a famous law firm, and the first question she asked was, “How long will it take me to become a partner in the firm?”  The was: “You will have to work no less than 7 years.”  She did.  She always took her work home.  Doing the best at what she did was what she did every day, but it was more than that.  She wanted to be the best.  She took the hardest cases.  She won many of them.  But then, one day she noticed that her back was hurting.  She was in church that day, listening to the pastor talk about how we all need the Sabbath to remind us that we are not gods.  We need something bigger than ourselves to help us be ourselves.  She thought the sermon was good, but she didn’t realize it was for her.  It wasn’t until she went to the doctor with her back and the doctor told her that if she didn’t slow down, take breaks, and take care of herself, she would end up crippled the rest of her life.  Through the doctor, the woman finally heard the preacher’s sermon loud and clear.  She heard him saying, “We all need the healing that only God can give!”  We need not live to work, but we need to work and take time to live.  The Sabbath and our worship of God keeps us from the spirit that can cripple (From Brett Younger’s sermon, “Being Set Free”, at www.lectionaryhomiletics.com, 2013).

I think any of us who are achievers can how any of us can easily become emotional or physical cripples.  The pressures of this world to kill ourselves trying, achieving, winning or striving can be very great.  How many people end up bearing the weight, not only of bad choices, but of bearing the burden of even good, hard, work?  No matter who we are, how good we are, life can cripple us.  The recent death of actor Cory Monteith is an example of someone who looked healthy, was gifted, smart and very lucky on the outside, but was an emotional cripple on the inside.   That’s always the problem with success; you can cover up the healing that you really need.    

RELGION THAT KEEPS PEOPLE CRIPPLED

The woman in Luke’s story is probably a ‘cripple’ at no fault of her own.  But now she’s bent over and can’t straighten up.  So, what does she do, she goes to the synagogue to worship.   That’s something we can all admire about her.   Seeing this woman in worship, in spite of her condition, reminds me of a story about two fishermen out on the lake on Sunday morning.  

One fisherman said the other, “You know, I feel a little guilty about being out here on the water and not in church.   

            The other fisherman answers:  “I know what you mean, but I wouldn’t be in church today anyway”

            “Why’s that?” his friend asks.

            “My wife’s at home sick.”

This woman was sick and crippled, but she went to church anyway.  Maybe she went in hopes of seeing Jesus, having heard that he was a healer.   What is most interesting about this story, as Luke tells us, is that the woman never directly asked Jesus for healing and we are never told anything about her faith.  Some people will think that they don’t receive healing because they don’t have enough faith.  There is no doubt that this woman had faith, or she wouldn’t be here.  But the story does not make any big deal about her faith.  The story also does not make a very big deal about Jesus’ power to heal the woman.  It’s all done in a matter-of-fact way.   Luke says that while Jesus is teaching, this crippled woman appears in the synagogue.   Seeing the woman, Jesus calls her over and announces that she is ‘set free from her ailment’ and he then lays hands on her and she is able to immediately stand up and praises God.   After 18 years of living life bent over, everything is instantly healed. 

You would think that this miraculous ‘healing’ would be the main part of the story, but it’s not.  The climax of the story comes as the religious leaders begin to object to her healing.  We read that they are ‘indignant’ because Jesus healed this woman on the Sabbath.  “If people want to be healed, they need to come back another time!”  It is in response to their negativity Jesus names them Hypocrites!  Jesus attempts to reason with these very unreasonable religious leaders: “You take care of your need of your animals on the Sabbath, shouldn’t I take care of the needs of this crippled woman?”   Jesus is determined to point out how their own legalistic, heartless religion would rather have kept the woman crippled for another day, rather than immediate attend to her needs. 

There are people today who take part in such legalistic, heartless and compassionless religion and don’t even realize it.  Some of them claim not to be religious at all.   Christopher Hitchens, the avowed atheist was like that.  His religion was that he did not believe in God and thought no one else should either.  He was so convinced of his own belief, that after he lived a life of compulsive and obsessive chain-smoking, indulging in various things that destroyed his body, he did nothing healthy for himself until the doctors told him he had cancer.  Then he spent his money on all kinds of attempts to save his life, but he could not.  It was too late.  But his faith, we might say, was true to the end.  He did not want anyone to pity him or pray for him.   He was completely convinced of his belief that there was no heaven, no hell, no judgment and no God.  

What Luke’s story tells us is that there is still “religion” in the world that does not want healing on God’s terms.    Some people have a religion that does not believe in God and this keeps people crippled.   But also, in even in the church of Jesus Christ, there are those who would follow their belief, their ideas, their opinions, and their interpretations of the Bible, even at the expense of hurting others and continuing to block the healing of those who have the greatest need.   There are expressions of religion and belief that seems to be just as bent on keeping people crippled; crippled in fear, crippled in anger, crippled in hate, and crippled in despair.    The irony of Luke’s story is that it isn’t only the woman who needed to be ‘straightened out.’  It was the religious belief of many of the religious in Jesus’ day.

In her book, In her book Strength for the Journey  (Jossey-Bass 2002), Diana Butler Bass tells the stories of several congregations that she has been a part of.  Some were quarrelsome, including the one she was a member of while she was a student in seminary.   Many studious people were a part of this congregation.  Many were quite articulate, able to express matters of faith really well in words.  There were several subgroups in this church: some were generational in nature, while others centered on differences with each other over various issues of faith and practice.

Whatever camp people were in, being right, being correct was very important to them. Indeed, at that time it was very important to Diana herself.  She wanted matters of faith and practice to be black and white. One pastor remarked to Diana much later that he had never served another congregation where so many people were obsessed with being certain.   Folks felt that if they were right, then others must certainly be wrong.

Now this was an Episcopal church, that had a newly elected bishop who was making the rounds getting to know the congregations.  When he came to this congregation where everyone insisted on being right, a number of folks in this congregation got ready to challenge him.   As he arrived to visit, these people were primed with questions, which on the surface is fine.   Christians should be able to approach their leaders and raise questions.  But they came with an adversarial stance. The truth was they wanted to catch the bishop making a mistake. Like the religious leaders trying to catch Jesus making a mistake, they wanted to be able to say, "See! We told you he doesn’t believe the right things!"

The bishop got a hostile reception, but he held his own fielding the questions. Then Diana’s husband raised his hand and said, "Bishop Johnson, it says in the book of Timothy that the bishop is to guard the gospel. Sir, listening to you, I cannot discern what you are guarding. Can you tell us, please, exactly what you think the gospel is?" 

Silence. Nobody moved. The bishop didn’t rush to answer. He looked at the questioner, and looked around the room. Then, Diana writes, "he unfolded his arms—which he had held across his chest—and stretched them out so widely that he almost looked like Jesus hanging on the cross. ‘God,’ [the bishop] said deliberately. ‘God loves everybody.’

"’Well, yes,’ [Diana’s husband] started to protest, ‘but…’

‘God loves everybody,’ [the bishop] replied. ‘That’s it.’

‘But…’

‘God loves everybody.’"

It was clear that this answer did not please most of the audience. It sounded wishy-washy. It sounded like "anything goes."  But Diana said herself that she was put to shame.  She wrote, "Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, I knew that [the bishop] was right, and I was wrong. God’s only boundary is love...and there, on that day in [the church] parish hall, I began to understand that being right is not faith, and certainty is no substitute for grace."

THIS JESUS WHO CAN STRAIGHTEN US OUT

We need Jesus to point out our blind spots and correct them.

We need Jesus to show us where we need to grow in love.

We need Jesus to straighten us out. 

And he can.  Just like he straightened out the crippled woman and challenged the status quo of the kind of religion that keeps people crippled, Jesus can straighten us out and point out where we need to know and experience God’s love and grace.

“It may be possible theologically to overstate God’s power,” says Jana Childers, “but it’s an interesting theological problem.”  But according to Luke, there is no overstating the God’s love”---a love that desires to bring hope and healing to those who have been crippled by life or, unfortunately, even by the church.  Jana Childers goes on to tell about a little girl living in a rural community.  It was just a few years ago, but it was one of those where driving down the road was like driving back into the thirties.  This little girl lived in a little house and went to a two-room school.  She had loving folks and, from time to time, a good teacher. But the way she was growing up was not the way you would want your little girl to grow up. She had a cleft palate and the money for the repair hadn’t been there.  By the time she was seven, she knew what the world was. She had heard the phrase, "only a mother could love someone like that" and she understood it.  She had to take her place among the crippled of the world.

One day a special teacher visited the school and put the children through some basic speech tests. When it was her turn, the little girl went into the classroom that had been set aside for the exams. "Just stand over there by the door," the teacher said from her desk at the far end of the room. "I want to test your hearing first. Turn your back, face the door and tell me what you hear me say."

"Apple," the teacher said in a low voice.

"Apple," the little girl repeated.

"Man," the teacher said.

"Man," the little girl repeated.

"Banana."

"Banana."

"Okay," the teacher said, "Now a sentence." The child knew that the sentences where usually fairly easy—she wasn’t the first child to take the test, after all. She’d heard you could expect something like, "The sky is blue" or "Are your shoes brown?" Still, she listened very carefully.   So it was that standing with her face against the door, she heard the teacher’s whisper quite clearly, "I wish you were my little girl."   It was then that the healing power of love flooded her soul.  (From a sermon by Jana Childers at www.30goodminutes.org)

 Jesus saw in this crippled woman of our text, not a crippled person, but a daughter of Abraham, who was as much a child of God as any son of Abraham.   Now, she has met the God who loves her and wants her healed, no matter what time it is.   In this ‘crippled woman’ we also meet the God who is reaching out to us.  We are children of Abraham too.  God has loved us, no matter what crippling spirit has overtaken us, and his love can set us free, even when there are human or divine ‘limits’ to what can be done.

Are you willing to bring your crippled self to God?   Are you also willing to bring your crippling attitudes to God? 

Lord, when I’m impatient with people and unkind, Lord, straighten me out.  

When I find myself laying blame instead of accepting part of the responsibility, Lord, straighten me out.  

When I find myself growing arrogant, Lord, straighten me out.

When jealousy and pride come creeping in, Lord, straighten me out.

When I find myself keeping a record of someone else’s wrongs, and rejoicing in someone else’s mistakes, Lord, straighten me out.

When I start thinking I can see more clearly than others can, Lord, straighten me out.

When I think I already know it all, Lord, straighten me out.

When my need to be in control is more important than the person that is before me, Lord, straighten me out.

When I think I’ve arrived, that I’m perfected in love, Lord, have mercy. Lord, straighten me out.

Lord, straighten us all out.  It is not always the ones who appear crippled who are crippled the most. (Adapted from Mary Harris Todd’s sermon, “Straightened Out” at www.goodpreacher.com).

I hope that it is not our attitude or our beliefs that block the healing and hope people need in our day.  Luke wants to put all of us in this story, not only those of us who have been crippled by life, but also those of us who have attributed to crippling the souls of others.  Jesus wants to straighten us all out, and he can, if we will answer him, like the woman did, when he ‘calls us over’ to receive the healing that can straighten us out and set us free.  Amen.