Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday August 27, 2023
Scripture Reading: Luke 13:10-17
Oh. Hi.
You don’t know me. In fact, before today, you probably didn’t think about me very much. You don’t even know my name.
I used to be even more bent over than this. I don’t know why it happened. I don’t know how it happened. But 18 years ago, my back started to ache some bad like you wouldn’t believe, and I just couldn’t straighten up. It got worse and worse, and more and more painful.
Eventually it got so bad that I couldn’t look people in the face. I couldn’t see the sky. I couldn’t cook to feed myself. I couldn’t wash myself. I could barely hobble around with my stick.
People told me that evil spirits had taken over my body. That evil spirits were making my spine bend like that. People started to be afraid of me. They called me unclean. If they touched me, they risked becoming unclean too.
Nobody had touched me in 18 years, afraid of becoming unclean. Do you know what it is like, not to be touched by another human for 18 years?
Some people offered to heal me. There are so many people out there, peddling miracles, willing to take my money in exchange for the promise of a cure. And I went to all of them. Some of them gave me a cream to rub on my back. Some of them told me that I needed to pray special prayers. Some of them told me to travel to a distant land to bathe in the holy waters there. They all had two things in common: they were willing to take my money, and none of their cures worked.
Every day I would drag my body outside, and sit with my begging bowl by the gates to the town. Some days I would set up beside the place to worship. I usually got more money sitting by the town gates. The holy people going to pray were usually in too much of a hurry to stop to give me a few coins.
People would drop a coin in my bowl and rush onwards. Nobody would look me in the eye. Nobody would stop to talk to me. Eighteen years without being touched. Eighteen years without speaking with anyone. Eighteen years without being seen. Eighteen years with no name.
Sometimes on a Sabbath I would drag my poor body into the synagogue to listen to the prayers and the teaching. I would sit in the corner thinking that maybe, just maybe, even though the people around me couldn’t see me, maybe God could see me. Maybe God knew how much I was suffering.
Really, this wasn’t living. This was merely existing. I wasn’t able to take care of myself. Nobody cared for me. I couldn’t understand why God didn’t take the rest of my life too. Maybe God couldn’t see me either. I was angry with this God who would let me suffer so much.
One Sabbath I went to the synagogue and there was a huge crowd there – so many people I had never seen there before. I heard a whisper that the one who was teaching that day was the son of a carpenter up in Galilee. He was on his way to Jerusalem, and he had such a crowd of people following him – women and men from all sorts of different backgrounds. The whispers said that not only was he a good teacher, but that he was also doing miracles along the way as he was travelling.
Well, I’d had it up to here with so-called miracles. The ones who claimed to do miracles usually just performed the miracle of making my money disappear. So I didn’t hold out any great hopes for this miracle-worker. I just settled into my usual back corner of the synagogue to listen to the teaching and pray that God might hear me today.
But no sooner had I settled in then this teacher glanced at me. And then he stopped and looked me in the eye. And he called me over to the place he was teaching from. I struggled to get up from the floor, grumbling a little bit. Why couldn’t he come over to me? Couldn’t he see how much of a struggle it was for me to get up? But because he had looked at me, because he had seen me, because he had spoken to me, I went over to where he was.
And when I had made my way to the front, this teacher, he reached out and he touched me. For the first time in eighteen years, I felt the touch of another human. He put his hand on my shoulder, and he told me that I was set free from my bondage.
And when he had done that, I was slowly able to straighten out, and look him in the eye. And I turned, and I was able to see the faces of all of the other people in the synagogue. And I rushed over to the door and looked up, and I saw the blue sky above me for the first time in 18 years. And I threw my arms up in the air and started to sing praises to God. For God had seen me in my suffering, and had healed me. How could I keep from singing?!
Now the leaders of the synagogue weren’t too impressed. They told this Jesus that he shouldn’t have been doing the work of healing on the Sabbath. He should have waited until the next day to heal me. Then they chastised me They told me that I shouldn’t have asked for healing on the Sabbath. I should have come on another day of the week to look for healing instead.
What hypocrites. I had been living in this place for my whole life. I had known these people since they were born. They knew that I was crippled, even if they chose not to see me. And for 18 years, they hadn’t glanced my way, let alone offered to heal me.
But this Jesus, he knew the law so well that he could out-argue all of them. He knew that Sabbath was more than just a rest from work. He also knew that the scroll of Deuteronomy also says that Sabbath is in remembrance of our delivery from slavery in Egypt. And if Sabbath honours our people’s deliverance from slavery, then it is right that I should be delivered from my bondage of illness.
And he also knew that the law allows for people to untie their animals on the Sabbath in order to give them life-giving water. And he argued that I was more valuable than any farm animal, and therefore could be untied from my illness in order to be given life-giving healing.
Can you imagine it? Someone saying that I was valuable! Someone affirming that I am a daughter of Sarah and Abraham. Someone affirming that I am a beloved child of God. For so many years, I was a nobody. Unseen, untouched, unacknowledged. And yet here I was, in front of the synagogue, valuable in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the people.
And all of the people in the synagogue that day were rejoicing. Rejoicing that I had been healed. Rejoicing at the wisdom of Jesus. Rejoicing that God was even more powerful than they had ever imagined.
Something has changed in me since I was healed. I think that before I became sick, I was like all of the other people in this town. If I had seen someone bent over like me, I wouldn’t have given them a second glance. I would have brushed right on past them.
But now that I have been in their shoes, my eyes have been opened. Now, when I pass through the town, I notice all sorts of people that the rest of society doesn’t see. Those who are bent over like I used to be. Those who don’t have a home to go to. Those who sit with their begging bowls every day. Those who have been abandoned by their families and sit alone in empty houses. Those who have moved here from other lands and don’t speak our language yet. Nobody sees them. But I do.
And so I beg you. As you go about your busy life this week, think of me. Remember me. And when you remember me, look around you for the unseen people in your world. Open your eyes and notice them, in the same way that Jesus, this man that you follow, had his eyes open; so that you can see the people like me that Jesus saw. And like this man that you follow, find a way to give them back their humanity. Remind them that they are beloved child of God. Remind them that they are precious in God’s sight, and in your sight too.
Remember me. And look for other people
like me. Open your eyes and see the people like me who are unseen. And then
love them into wholeness.
“Old Woman Dancing”
Ernst Barlach (1920)
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