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Trinity Episcopal Church Hattiesburg, Mississippi Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 16) August 26, 2007 Go To Trinity's Home Page

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17
Collect of the Day

From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 75 th General Convention of the ECUSA

Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared 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 and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept 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.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 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?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing. (Luke 13:10-17)

Incarnational Grace
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop

     In my earlier career as a medical research scientist, I worked at the University of California at San Francisco. One of my mentors told me about a time when he was a medical resident assigned to the emergency room. A young woman in hard labor was driven by her panicky husband to the hospital in the very early morning hours one cold, wintry night.

     He left her in the car and rushed into the ER looking for a wheel chair to bring his wife into the hospital. The ER coordinator grabbed him by the arm and asked him for his insurance card and other personal information. He explained that he didn’t have insurance, but that his wife was in labor in the car, and he wanted to get her out of the cold right away; the baby was coming soon. The ER coordinator sternly pointed to a big sign on the wall behind her that read, “This is a fee for service facility. Payment is due upon completion of services.” She asked him for proof of payment. He pleaded with her. “Please. My wife is having a baby! She needs help now! Let me bring her in.” The coordinator refused, and told him that he would have to go elsewhere.

     My colleague overheard all of this and told the coordinator that the pregnant woman needed to be brought in. Using a few expletives, the coordinator told my friend that when he became the head of the hospital he could make the rules, but until then, this was a fee for service facility. My friend then went into the parking lot, and, using his own lab coat as a clean work surface illuminated by a flashlight held in shaking hands by the husband, delivered the couple’s first child.

     Things haven’t changed much since Jesus’ time, have they? The last time that Jesus appears in a synagogue in the Gospel of Luke, he happens upon a woman who for eighteen years had not been able to straighten her bent body. And like the ER coordinator, there was a synagogue official standing by to monitor Jesus’ actions. When Jesus began to intervene, the synagogue official pounced on the situation. It is curious though, that he did not address his concern to Jesus, but rather appealed to the waiting people. Jesus had healed on the Sabbath.

     Technically, healing was considered work, and work was prohibited on the Sabbath. But, Jesus answered his opponents with their Law.[1] The Rabbis abhorred any kind of cruelty to animals, and even on the Sabbath, allowed people to feed and water their beasts of burden. Jewish law also stated that it was perfectly all right to do work on the Sabbath for someone whose life was in danger. Jesus logically claimed that if it was acceptable to loose a beast from its stall and provide for it, then surely it was all right in God’s eyes to free this woman from her infirmity.

     The ER coordinator and the synagogue official were both people who were more attached to their systems and procedures and their positions of authority than to the love of people. In the modern world we are surrounded by many overlapping kinds of systems – each with their own rules of behavior; while it may be permissible for children to chew gum at home, it may not be not permissible to chew gum in school. I used to complain all the time about the administrations at the medical schools where I taught, claiming that it seemed that the administrators had lost sight of exactly who they were to serve. It often seemed that the sole purpose of administration was to perpetuate itself, perhaps even to the exclusion of the students, staff, and faculty.

     But Jesus taught us a different way. Jesus taught that the individual comes before the system. Look at our Baptismal covenant on page 305 of the Book of Common Prayer where we state the fundamental tenets of our faith: We state that with God’s help we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves, and that we will strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being. Every individual matters, every member, every cell of the Body of Christ matters – a lot.

     Sadly though, the worship of systems often invades the church. Sometimes legalistic details of how things are to be done take precedence over why we do them. But, we are called to be there for one another; we are called to show mercy. Jesus’ action in the synagogue tells us that we are called to do what we can to stop suffering as soon as humanly possible. If Jesus had postponed the healing of the crippled woman until the following day, no one would have criticized him. But, Jesus insisted that suffering not be allowed to continue into tomorrow if it can be stopped today.

     We can all think of examples of situations where a good thing has been held up until some condition of the law is satisfied or a regulation is fulfilled. But Jesus wants us to work quickly to alleviate suffering, because when we do, we allow God’s healing grace to become manifest.

     But there is another side of this story. And that is that we must also be prepared to let God’s grace heal us. We have to be willing to ask for help from our neighbors when we need it, or to ask God for help. We need to trust in each other and to trust God.

     Anne Lamott tells the story of how she experienced God’s healing grace after years of drug and alcohol addiction and a botched abortion attempt that nearly killed her.[2] She had kept God away from her because she did not feel that God could love someone who had made such a mess of her life. She felt unworthy.

     She found herself in church one Sunday, so hung over she couldn’t stand up for the hymns. She stayed for the sermon, which she felt was ridiculous. She felt like the preacher was trying to convince her of the existence of extraterrestrials! But then something extraordinary happened.

     As the final hymn began to fill the church, Ann felt as if “the people were singing between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and [she] felt like their voices or something was rocking [her] in [her] bosom, holding [her] like a scared kid. [She] opened [herself] up to that feeling and it washed over [her].” She began to cry, and she left before the final blessing. She raced toward home. She felt like God “was a little cat running along at [her] heels. She walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams. She opened the door of her house, stood there a minute, and then said, ‘That’s it! I quit! She took a long, deep breath, and said out loud, ‘All right. You can come in.’”

     Jesus healed a woman in the synagogue. My doctor friend delivered a baby in a parking lot. Jesus came into the heart of a woman who felt unloved by everyone. These stories remind us that God’s grace is infinite. They remind us that when Law, tradition, or cultural norms inhibit the giving of mercy, God will stand with the pained victim every time. And that is why we must see to the needs of ourselves and of the people in our lives, our community, and in the world. Because when we see to those needs, we allow God’s loving grace to enter our world yet once again.

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Jeremiah 1:4-10

The word of the LORD came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.” 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. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

Psalm 71:1-6 In te, Domine, speravi

1 In you, O LORD, I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame.

2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;
incline your ear to me and save me.

3 Be to me a rock of refuge,
a strong fortress, to save me, |
for you are my rock and my fortress.

4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of the unjust and cruel.

5 For you, O Lord, are my hope,
my trust, O LORD, from my youth.

6 Upon you I have leaned from my birth; |
it was you who took me from my mother's womb.
My praise is continually of you.

Hebrews 12:18-29

You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. (For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”) But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking; for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven! At that time his voice shook the earth; but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what is shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire.

Luke 13:10-17

Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared 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 and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept 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.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 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?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

Collect of the Day

Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

[1] William Barclay. The Gospel of Luke, Revised Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1975, pp. 177-178.
[2] The story of Ann Lamott comes from Synthesis, Year C, Proper 16. Moyds, MD: Sedgwisk Publishing Co., 2004.

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Copyright © 2007, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
23 August 2007

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