This passage is not about breaking the
rules, it is about the question, “What is the right thing to do?” Is it to read
scripture and say, “We don’t do that around here” or say, “This is my act of
praise and worship of God?”
The leader of the synagogue takes
issue with Jesus doing this work of healing. “Jesus, you have six days of the
week to cure this woman. You should respect the sanctity of the Sabbath.” Isn’t
he saying, “We don’t do that around here.”
But biblical experts are puzzled by
this story. Some see symbolism in the
woman, the daughter of Abraham, who had been crippled for 18 years. Is she a
stand-in for the people of Israel, or does she symbolize the Church opposed to
the religious leader who is a stand-in for the “fig tree” or the Jerusalem
Temple? Experts don’t seem to see the forest for the trees.
Luke gives us a straightforward story
which means something is probably hidden. Jesus is “minding his own business”
worshipping in the synagogue on a Sabbath when a woman burdened by sin appears.
(In those times Illness and affliction were thought marks of an evil spirit or
sin.) She did not ask for relief, there was no “Please heal me.” Jesus just
decided to release her from the bondage of her affliction. “Woman you are set
free of this ailment,” a simple, yet dramatic act of grace by Jesus.
All of the pundits agree this is a
story about the healing grace of God for a woman who was ill for a long time.
They recognize the conflict between Jesus and the leader of the synagogue
overlook the deeper and important matter about the Law that the conflict
between religious leader and Jesus in this story touches.
Jesus characteristically turned events
with obviously plain meaning into something quite contradictory to reveal a
deeper truth. Jesus used riddles, parables, and everyday encounters of life to
reverse our common-sense way of thinking. After all, he said following him requires living a
life contradictory to the world’s expectation.
Jesus said, “If you want to lead you
must be a servant.” The sayings
of the Sermon on the Mount are reversals of ordinary thinking. And we have
the greatest reversal: “If you want to live you must die…” He died to achieve
that reversal, the defeat of death in his resurrection.
Jesus said he did not come to
abolish the law but to fulfill it. But on almost every occasion where the
religious establishment interpreted the Law, Jesus turned that interpretation
on its head, our present case being a good example.
Jesus followed the tradition of Isaiah and Jeremiah that the Law is not
found in a scroll or stone tablets, but in one’s heart. It is revealed not by
words, but by one’s action towards one’s brothers and sisters.
Look deeper into this story. Put aside
all the issues of plots by the authorities against Jesus, and our tendency to
view Jews in a lesser light. We, especially those among us who put the Ten
commandments in their front yard today, have to admit that the Law given in
Deuteronomy 5:13, says, “Six days you shall labor and
do all your work.” This justifies
the upbraiding of Jesus by the religious leader, “We don’t do that around
here,” that is, “work on the Sabbath” because the Scriptures tell us we
shouldn’t. The Sabbath is the day set aside for honoring the Lord our
creator.
Can we fault this priest
for defending the law? Would this woman who by the way, never asked for help,
begrudge Jesus waiting one day to be healed after 18 years of suffering, in
order to follow the Law?
How many times have you heard someone
say, “We don’t do that around here?” I don’t know about you but I heard it a
lot growing up. My guess is most of you, even our little children whom we just
talked to, have heard the statement at home or at school.
I heard it from parents, pastors, school
teachers, and elected leaders until it wore quite thin. When it was used to
press for action or inaction in a situation that sounded contradictory to
anyone who took Christian action seriously, it sounded like hypocrisy.
Frankly I experienced it most painfully
in arguments within the Church about African-Americans and desegregation. The best examples are the pastors and
politicians with vested interest in the status quo who soundly criticized
Martin Luther King, Jr. for his non-violent tactics in the civil rights
movement. They said he was pushing too hard, too fast, and rocking the boat
when it wasn’t the right time to do it. Dr. King wrote a refutation to them
called Letter
from a Birmingham Jail while he cooled his heels there.
I am not about to use this opportunity
to bludgeon us about past mistakes on desegregation or racism, or poke at
people for their hypocrisy, though I do suggest these are still serious issues
for all of us.
The contradiction in Luke’s story
between the religious leader and the act of Jesus is too obvious to miss. It is
between “the right thing to do” and “We don’t do that around here.” We ought to
consider the story to be a primer on deciding what is the right thing to do
when conventional wisdom tells us to do something different.
Because it is so obvious, like a
parable, we must be missing the real message.
There are certainly tumultuous and
threatening times when the desire to preserve stability (The “we don’t do that
around here” position) seems the right thing to do.
My problem with too much reliance on
stability is that it easily blinds us to looking carefully for the right answer
in times when the status quo has lost its constructive nature or suborns
injustice.
What do we do when the contradiction
between acting one way or the other isn’t so obvious and clear cut? The message
tightly woven into this story is that scripture, or the Law, can only guide you
properly when you take the effort to understand its meaning. Remarkably, Jesus
is talking about a core principle of Reformed theology, the basis of our
Presbyterian perspective called discernment.
This is what I mean. The early
Christian believers were mostly illiterate, Dr. Rader says the literacy rate
was only about 1%. Being illiterate doesn't mean being ignorant or unfaithful.
Most Christians had to rely
upon their religious leaders to explain the essence of scripture, knowledge of
the life of Jesus and the good news that is the basis of a righteous life doing
the right thing.
This early reliance and trust in
ruling elders was justified. The elders either knew Jesus first hand, or were
the next generation of believers taught by those who heard and were taught by
Jesus. These “elders” or “bishops” were the only source for supportive
interpretation and became the foundation of the universal Catholic Church.
Over time that reliance and trust in
others’ interpretation of scripture encouraged a rigid and authoritative
mentality that formed the beginning of schisms in the Church over dogma. What
began as a way to choose the right actions based on scripture became an end in
its self.
1500 years later the
printed word became available and it changed the world. Literacy improved
rapidly as texts became more widespread. A natural desire for the literate
Christian is to read Scripture and compare what is written to what it is
observed in the actions of religious leaders.
That is how Martin Luther launched
the Reformation. He read scripture and could not find in it justification for
some of the actions of the Church. Action inspired by scripture seemed to
contradict the practice of his pastoral leaders. He faced an unwanted
predicament. He had to ask, “Why do we
do that around here?” and, “What is the right thing to do?”
He concluded that if Scripture alone
is authoritative even when life and scripture resist reconciliation to a plain
understanding, one must find meaning through prayerful meditation and
illumination of other relevant scripture. Today we call this process by the
fancy words, “discernment of action guided by conscience and the Holy Spirit.”
Martin Luther had a humble desire to use
scripture as a guide to righteous life. What he did was make all Reformed
believers today heirs to a troubling and difficult reality. We deny the
authority of another human to provide us with absolute interpretation of
scripture. We rely instead upon conscience and the Holy Spirit.
This is a profound and unsettling
predicament often lost on us. The entire Protestant Reformation rests on the
premise that God alone inspires scripture and we alone must interpret its
meaning by reading perhaps large sections of related scripture with prayerful
and humble discernment guided by the Holy Spirit.
We resist admitting the reality that a
Protestant protests literal absolutes
of scripture made by other humans. Protestants read scripture as a relative
activity ruled by one’s discernment revealed by the Holy Spirit.
We often compromise saying our
judgment must be mediated by the judgment of our fellow believers. However, if
Martin Luther King, Junior had relied upon the judgment of others, he would
have gone straight home when he got out of that Birmingham jail and stopped his
work. Ultimately the decision about the right action falls upon us. In the end,
we cannot rely upon another human to interpret scripture for us.
I’m not preaching to you with some
holier-than-thou attitude. I am as daunted by this predicament as any of you.
Do you see the irony in my words, you can’t rely on me?
Jesus in Luke’s story is advocating a
Reformed approach to scripture. He tells the people you can’t rely on the
priest to tell you the right thing to do. He tells the priests that it is not
the words of the Law that matter, it is the spirit of the Law written in one’s
heart that matters. He asks, “Is relief of human misery work or an act of
worship?” This is the connection to the Hebrews passage, our life should be an
experience of worship of God in verse 28: “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.”
In the early and mid 20th
Century Henry Richard Neibhur, the brother of the more famous Reinhold Neibhur,
surveyed
the wreckage of hope for the “Christian Century” after WWI, the threat to
Christianity and brutality of WWII, the evolution of industrial secular
society, and the growing denominationalism in America. (Denominationalism means
a preoccupation and worship of a particular dogma or creed, not of the
essential tenets of Christianity itself. It means one is more interested in
being identified as a Presbyterian, or Methodist, or Baptist, than as a
Christian. On page 15 of the
previous link, Neibhur calls denominationalism the greatest moral failure
of Christianity.) To him every change in the early Twentieth Century presented
a personal dilemma over “doing the right thing.”
He realized the contradiction of the
Reformation inspired a desire to be faithful but left finding a clear and clean
path to faithfulness to each of us. The Reformation freed us from human
spiritual leadership and united us in divine leadership guided by revelation of the Holy Spirit.
Henry
Neibhur poignantly described Reformed Christianity as a ship sailing on a storm-tossed
sea, imperiled at every turn by the winds of spiritual disaster, a storm-tossed
world of war, evil, injustice and threat to life and freedom. We sail this ship
from port to port in this storm looking for a safe harbor to drop anchor and do
the right thing. The tragedy of casting off reliance on other human authority
is that we are forever bound to sail upon the stormy sea seeking to find and
follow the right path knowing our conscience guided by scripture and the Holy
Spirit is the only solid ground. The penitent believer sails into a very
tortured, perfect storm where there are no easy answers. Every circumstance is
an opportunity to shine with careful thought and prayer.
In Luke’s story, let’s give the priest
the benefit of the doubt. Jesus knew that the religious leader of the synagogue
was trying to defend faith in the Law as he read it on the scroll, and
unfortunately that his fastidious approach to the letter of the Law blinded him
to the obvious reality of scripture and of Jesus.
Perhaps Jesus knew that the religious
leaders could not open their eyes to their preoccupation with the literal
status quo and see the grace and mercy found in the Law without Jesus pointing
out the hypocrisy in being willing to lead his animals to water on the Sabbath while
criticizing others for not having a worshipful focus on God.
Again, Jesus achieved quite the
reversal by telling this leader that the Law is supreme but it is not the words
that matter, it is the spirit that moves one to action. The law is not a
concrete and immutable object, rather it is a timeless, dynamic guidepost for
the discerning believer to do the right thing.
“We don’t do that
around here.” Can you see that Jesus has reversed this imperative back
upon the religious leader. “We don’t do that way anymore” now means “We don’t
rely on a rigid, literal interpretation of the Law.”
“We don’t do
that around here.” My friends I find it amazing that Jesus defined the
heart of Reformed Christianity right here in the Gospel in his last worship in
a synagogue. Doing the right thing depends upon personal discernment and the
Holy Spirit of the meaning of scripture.
Before we get too proud about that
affirmation, what about situations that are shades of grey and not so obvious?
Jesus says we walk a hard road and tells us to enter by the narrow gate. If
we embrace humility and listen to the Holy Spirit, we will find the path to
good decisions well marked. To lead we must serve. That means giving up pride
and embracing humility. If the good news tells us anything, it is that only our
humility to rely upon scripture and the Holy Spirit can guide our broken human
perceptions of the world towards doing the right thing.
We should heed Jesus’ lesson to the
religious leader, “We reveal the Law written in our heart.” Amen.
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