Standing Up Bent?
13th Sunday after Pentecost, August 22, 2010
Luke 13:10-17 with Hebrews 12:18-29 in the b.g.
Grace, mercy and peace, be with you all.
(I begin by walking around quite severely bent over) Are you ever bent over, crippled by a spirit of some kind?
My mother is, bent over. Her present "stature" is the result of undergoing 3 spinal fusions. These became necessary because she spent some 20 years lifting people she simply shouldn't have been lifting in hospitals and nursing homes.
So, I ask again, are you ever bent over – crippled by a spirit of some kind?
I have a friend Conrad, who for a number of years was bent over. I first learned observed this years ago. Con was studying for his grade 12 finals. His performance in school that year had been more than passable. But Math 12 was a problem for him. Now he had hired a tutor to help him. The tutor demanded that Con show his work as he tried to plough through the various problems. Time and again, the tutor saw that Con did everything quite well. That is everything except the things he should have learned from Grades two through four – things like adding and subtracting, multiplying and dividing. When the tutor pointed this out and asked Con why at the age of 18 he still had problems with these basic mathematical functions, Con had to think for a while. He realized it probably came down to a teacher he had in his small town school many years ago – from Grades 3 – 4. That teacher didn't like Con. Often then when Con made an inaccurate response to a problem the teacher referred to him as being big and giving a "dumb" answer. At the age of 8 or 9 Con had taken those comments into his being believing that he was big and dumb. Some 8 years later Con was still making mistakes when it came to the rudimentary tasks of grade 3 and 4. To be sure, Con was also bent over.
So, I ask, are you ever bent over – crippled by a spirit of some kind?
Sheila was tall. The mother of 3 kids all under 7, she had a lot on her plate. Sheila also was married to a man who repetitively told her that she wasn't pretty, that she was a lousy mom, that on so many levels she just didn't measure up. On more than few occasions when he had been excessively drinking this man would threaten Sheila with his raised hand. And on at least one occasion he pointed a hand gun at her. She wasn't sure if it was loaded or not, until once he pulled the trigger and then laughed when the gun didn't fire. Sheila cried a lot. She worried constantly about her kids. Sometimes she took more than the prescribed amount of valium. Sheila was definitely bent over for years.
Institutions can also be bent over. They may be operating from fear. Then they just try to survive. But operating with such fear they are truly paralyzed, unable to do what they initially were created for. Indeed the people within such institutions may be so afraid that they are convinced that if they do what they are called to do, or respond to the change that is all around them, their funding may be removed, or their sources of funding cut.
Sometimes I feel that this is true of much of the Church in North America. Are we willing to proclaim in word and deed the love of Jesus Christ for all people and all creation? To be sure this isn't easy. There is always a price to pay on many levels. Or, will we take the easier road, of settling for so much less and allow ourselves to be an organization of "volunteers" where people who have a similar mind set at least about some things gather for friendship and support, but not necessarily to praise and worship God, and certainly not to follow Jesus whatever the cost? This easier, so tempting way, is akin to being bent over, to only being able to see what is immediately around us, which is so much less than the whole. As we are marked by fear, we may not even notice that God is drawing near to us, that God is actually with us!
This is not to deny that there is incredible ongoing change. I am in my 50's. I can remember when Sunday was a day off for everyone in my hometown except 2 workers at a local drug store, some nurses and doctors at the local hospital and 1 restaurant in a town of 20,000 people. I can remember when church buildings were relatively full every Sunday even in the summer. Then neighbors knew enough about each other to invite themselves over for coffee. They even mowed each other's lawns and shoveled each other's sidewalks when the other was away. My goodness they were even willing to care for each other's kids. I can even remember when most people wanted to get married, when having 1 car and a small home was seen as more than enough. I also can remember when I didn't know very much about other Christians or certainly people of other religions: Jews and Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists. And I can remember when poverty was somewhat hidden because of pride, when what went on the rest of the world didn't' seem to matter to us in North America. Obviously not all of the status quo then was good. But things CERTAINLY ARE CHANGING.
And these rapid changes lead us to a point where we aren't sure who to trust. In fact, can we trust anyone else? If ever there were foundations to society, to the world, they are all being shaken at once! It's like we are all on a suspension bridge over a deep chasm. That bridge is swaying mightily under the weight of creation, being moved by the winds of change. Perhaps, just perhaps, on that bridge we are all BENT OVER!
Did you notice that Jesus comes to the synagogue on the Sabbath? That was his usual practice, no matter what was happening in his life. He comes to rest, to worship. On this particular Sabbath he is teaching, from the first five books of Moses or the prophets. A bent over woman also comes to that synagogue on that Sabbath. She has been bent over FOR 18 YEARS: not 18 days or 18 months but 18 years! Jesus actually sees her. He calls her over. Then He tells her, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment". He proceeds to break many of the taboos of his religion. He reaches out and actually touches her. For the first time in 18 years SHE STANDS UP STRAIGHT. Immediately she praises God!
Do you need someone to listen to you, to see you, to actually hear your life? Are you in need of someone to give you not a damaging word with little hope, but a personal word of encouragement, acceptance, filled with new possibilities? What would it be like for someone to actually touch you with compassion and sensitivity? We need to know and experience that there can be new beginnings, new life for us!
Many don't believe any of this. The dominant current mantra not always spoken but certainly implied is this: "You are born. You live. Then you die! So hurry up, get all you can - NOW! It will soon be over or there won't be anything left for you"
But all who buy into or give up to such thinking, don't know God, don't experience Jesus, or haven't yet been opened to the ongoing breath of God's Spirit.
God through Jesus and the Spirit, through people that God is directing, even through agencies and organizations that may or may not "know" God wills to make the entire creation new, filled with life and healing. This includes you and me and everyone we know.
Even now God through Jesus calls us, and our organizations bent over as they may be to come near. We can be freed from the power of our ailments. Are we coming? Will we come? Do we trust that Jesus can lead us to new life? We might be chaired, but not yet floored. Some may think of us or even name us as dumb, too big or too small. But that is not God's word for us. God is still working!
Today is the Sabbath. We may have come to this place forgetting that God. Or we may be reading this so consumed with our own reality that our sight is limited to the ground beneath our feet. But God does not give up on us! Jesus is present: in with and under the bread and wine, in the words spoken, the hymns sung, the community gathered in His name. He loves us so. He works to bring us new life reaching out to touch us so that we and others too, may be freed and enabled to praise God.
Now is the time to move forward regardless of the resistance within or around us. Hans Kung is correct when he says that the reign of God is "God's creation healed".
For certain the powers of evil around and within us continue to resist God's healing work. It is no wonder that we are often bent over. But Jesus comes to lead us beyond and through our bentness to new life. May we be open to hearing His word to us and so rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter – but beautiful struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the children of God, bent over as we often are. Even now Jesus reaches out to us, pleading with us to come closer to him, children of Abraham. Will you? Amen