August 25, 2019
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Luke 13:10-17; Psalm 103:1-8
God’s Holiness Is Perfected in Love
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Feet. Her view was always the same. She was bent over. She had been for quite some time – eighteen years to be exact. As the years progressed, she had become more and more severely bent over. Her body looked more like a right angle than a figure standing erect.
So she was an expert on the ground. She knew the lay of the streets. She knew every uneven stone, each puddle. She didn’t recognize people by their face. She knew them by their feet – their feet and their sandals. She recognized her neighbor’s boy by his dusty, little bare feet that went flying by at 50 miles an hour. The wife of the synagogue’s leader wore the finest sandals she’d ever seen.
Because it was nearly impossible for her to look someone in the eye as they spoke, she wasn’t able read their expressions very well. Instead, she’d learned to pay attention to the tone of their voice.
She made her broken way to the synagogue that Sabbath. For years now, she’d learned to muscle through her pain. The constant pain in her back, in her neck. Gravity played its cruel game on her. But she’d learned that if she didn’t keep on keeping on, the world wasn’t going to stop for her. So she muscled through. At a slower pace than the typical person, but she did her best.
She did her best not to let her bent over condition dominate her life. Her daily goal was to live as much like anyone else as she possibly could. She kept her “chin up,” even if it wasn’t really up in her case.
She arrived at the synagogue. And present that day was that rabbi, Jesus, who was making such a name for himself. The synagogue leader did his best to make a show of welcoming Jesus. But she could detect in his voice a tinge of standoffishness. He welcomed Jesus, but something in his greeting sounded forced.
The woman pricked up her ears to the sound of Jesus’ voice. He had a hearty laugh. It seemed to start in his toes and work all the way up through his chest and out through his mouth. He greeted the people in the synagogue. His voice was warm and, and – how would she describe it – COMPASSIONATE.
As he spoke, the warmth emanating from him seemed to take hold of the rest of the crowd gathered that day. The timbre of the collective tone in the synagogue took on a joyful lilt. But then the call to worship came and the chatter silenced.
When it came time to read from the scriptures, the scroll from the prophet Isaiah was handed to Jesus. She could hear him manipulating the scroll to find the passage he was looking for. Then he began to read:
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
And the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Is. 40:4-5)
And then he gave the scroll back to the attendant. But instead of sitting down to address the congregation, she saw that he began to walk. He walked through the congregation, and as he walked, he came closer to the women’s section where she was standing.
He stopped and called, “Woman, come here.” She looked sideways in his direction. He was looking straight at her. Her heart began to beat rapidly. “Yes, you! Come here!”
She was cornered. She couldn’t possibly ignore him, so meekly she approached him. When she came up beside him, she looked down at his sandal-clad feet. “Woman,” he said, “You are set free from your ailment.” Then she felt his hands on her crooked back.
Something tingled from his hands and up and down her spine. She could feel her vertebrae begin shift. They were moving! And suddenly she had the urge to straighten up. She arched her back and up she went. The old hump in her back uncurled. And there she was, as upright and as straight as she had been as a young girl!
What happiness! “Praise the Lord!” she cried. She couldn’t help it. “Oh, praise the Lord!”
But then she heard the leader of the synagogue clear his throat. She knew that sound. He did it when something wasn’t quite right. He cleared his throat before he made a pronouncement. And her mind had already figured out what he was going to say.
There were numerous laws governing activities on the Sabbath. Although the commandment on the Sabbath was quite simple in itself, with time questions had arisen as to exactly which actions were okay to perform on a Sabbath and which were crossing the line into labor.
These questions had come about for well-meant reasons. People wanted to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. It was a holiness matter. How does one properly set aside this day to honor the divine author of time?
Rabbis and men of great thinking had given consideration to all of the actions of humanity. And as they considered everything, they identified various activities that should not be done on the Sabbath. These included planting and plowing, kneading and cooking. Shearing of sheep and laundering had to be set aside on the Sabbath, as did spinning wool or making two loops with a thread. Trapping and killing weren’t allowed. Construction and writing had to wait. Fires couldn’t be ignited or extinguished.
And among the orders of what was not allowed on the Sabbath, there were those concerning medical practices. For physicians needed to rest, too. There was a matrix of laws governing what healing acts could and could not be practiced on the Sabbath. Of course, if it were a matter of life and death, then people would do everything they could to preserve life. The more critical the nature of the illness, the more leeway was given to act on the behalf of the sick person.
But for something like her chronic malady, the law was clear. She had lived with this disability for 18 years. She could easily wait one more day before she was healed.
The leader finished clearing his throat. “There are six days on which work can be done. Come on one of those days and be healed, not on the Sabbath day.”
Something inside her wanted to curl up again. She wanted to curl up and creep away into a dark corner and not be seen. The synagogue leader was absolutely right. And although, at last, she was able to look him in the eye, she avoided eye contact.
The synagogue leader was right. Her healing had been an infraction of the Sabbath regulations. As the leader, it was his place to hold the line. If not him, then who? If not for the steadfast attention of local synagogue leaders like him, the faithfulness of Israel would slowly erode, one small infraction at a time. They were a holy nation. This was a holy day. Someone must hold the people to the standard of holiness.
But then Jesus spoke. And gone was the warmth in his tone. “You hypocrites!” he raised his voice. “What do you do with your ox on the Sabbath, or your donkey? Don’t you untie them and lead them to water? Don’t you show a little compassion for a dumb animal? Do you make them suffer all day on the Sabbath because you’re not supposed to untie a loop? No!”
He pointed at her. “And here we have this daughter of Abraham. She’s been tied up for 18 years! Isn’t it about time we untied her? And how much the better that her liberation falls on the Sabbath!”
The crowd in the synagogue erupted. Someone in the back of the synagogue began to sing. And as they started the Psalm, the rest of the congregation joined in:
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
He satisfies with goodness as long as you live
And your youth is renewed like the eagle’s!
Jesus took her by the hands and the two of them danced in a circle. And all of the congregation danced in circles around them. While they danced, she looked at him. She looked him straight in the eye. And his eyes, were alive with compassion and joy.
It seemed like her feet danced all the way home. Her spirit floated in her new-found freedom. This daughter of Abraham was free!
She marveled at what had happened. Jesus was right. Somehow it was more fitting that her healing had fallen on the Sabbath. It didn’t take away from the Sabbath’s holiness. Just the reverse. It crowned it.
She would never, ever forget that look he gave her. His deep compassion. He was simply filled with love. And then, it occurred to her. There was a connection between holiness and love. She used to think that holiness was a distant and elevated quality. Holiness was something so perfect it couldn’t be approached. That was certainly what the synagogue leader had modeled.
But Jesus’ overwhelming compassion showed her that wasn’t holiness at all. No, God’s holiness was perfected in love. God’s love flowed through Jesus’ hands. And it had made her new. God’s love made all things new.
She finished climbing the hill near her house. From there, it was possible to see a great distance. Normally, she’d just looked at the dusty path at her feet. She stopped to catch her breath from the hill. She placed her hands on her hips and leaned back. And then she raised her head up, up. She looked at the hillsides. She saw the bright, blue sky above. And a bird soared on its wings across the open sky.
