Stand Up and See!

I love it when we get these gospel stories of Jesus in church. In case we forget just how upsetting it could be to be around Jesus, these Jesus-in-the-synagogue stories set the action right in our own context, a worship service. Just imagine it happening here. Here we are, and everything is in order. We know pretty much how the service will unfold today and what it will be like, and just about how long it will take, and when worship is done, off we will go about our day. But what if right in the middle of the prayers of the people the litanist called one of you up and healed you, right in front of everybody? Or what if in the middle of my sermon, one of you jumped up and started cursing, and the usher performed an exorcism on you? Or what if I finished reading the gospel aloud and then said, actually, folks, that scripture is really about me? You’d find all that a little unsettling, wouldn’t you? I sure would. It’s hard enough to keep the service going on these summer Sundays when everyone is staring out the window, watching the birds and thinking about other things. How do you keep it going after a miracle?

So I can feel the pain of the synagogue leader in today's gospel reading. Right in the middle of worship, Jesus restores good posture to a woman who had been bent over for eighteen years. She doesn’t ask for this healing; she has lived with this for so long that probably everyone else has stopped noticing her, the way we tend to overlook people who are stooped over or marginal in some way. But Jesus sees her there in the congregation and calls her forward, and performs a miracle on her. Really, the synagogue leader must be thinking. Couldn’t you at least wait until coffee hour? Does this have to happen today in front of everyone? We have rules and customs about how to behave on the Sabbath, I have a hard enough time getting people to observe them, do you have to just throw it all out the window for no good reason?

But apparently, Jesus can’t wait. He thinks this healing is something that has to happen right now – right here, on the Sabbath. And so he does it.

There's another story of Jesus healing in a synagogue on the Sabbath, when he cures a man with a withered hand. That one is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all three. But this story about the woman standing up straight is only in Luke. The fact that it’s about a woman is a clue that it’s not just a story about physical healing. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is often turning the status quo on its head, bringing people from the margins into the center around Jesus. And a woman like this, old and alone, was definitely on the margins. But Jesus calls her over and lays hands on her, saying, ‘You are set free,’ and she stands up straight. Now she can see the world at last. And the first thing she does is praise God. Right there in the synagogue in the middle of worship, this woman raises her voice and speaks – something women weren’t supposed to do, no matter how spiritually moved they might be. But she is set free from her crippled posture; she is set free from all that has kept her silent and outcast; she can’t keep it inside. This is a big deal. So why isn’t everybody cheering for her? No one seems happy with what has happened. Jesus isn’t happy with them at all. You hypocrites, he says. This is what the sabbath is all about!

This is one of those stories where it’s easy to side with Jesus against his opponents. Yeah, Jesus! You tell ‘em! Stick it to the man! Jesus as the anti-establishment rebel, the American hero. We like that Jesus. But as we’ve noted before, all too often we read these stories of Jesus arguing with the Jewish authorities through Protestant eyes, the eyes of Martin Luther, law vs. gospel – Jesus is here to liberate us from the enslaving rule-based tradition of Judaism. But Jesus was a Jew, worshiping and teaching within a thoroughly Jewish context. And this is an argument between Jews.

So yes, this is an argument about the Sabbath, one of the core practices of the faith. But while Jesus does seem to be arguing about how to observe Sabbath properly, he’s not arguing against Sabbath itself. The Jewish observance of the Sabbath is one of the defining features of what it means to be a Jew – where we live in San Diego, we’re right close to an Orthodox synagogue, and every Saturday, families walk down the hill past our house on their way to services, while their neighbors are out doing yard work or driving off to soccer games. The Sabbath is important, it’s a day of rest, the one day out of seven that God claims for our attention. It is God’s day, a day when we clear away the clutter enough to spend time with God, and see the world through God’s eyes – a practice worth our spending some time thinking about, and definitely something I’ll bring up again, because there’s so much power and meaning in that practice and it deserves more reflection another time. But for today, suffice it to say that Jesus is reminding the congregation in the synagogue on that Sabbath day that this day is God’s, not man’s – and so they should look and see God at work. God’s freedom is bursting through, just as it should.

The story is a healing story. But it’s more than that. The woman is healed, and is able to stand and see and praise God. And that healing is offered to the whole congregation of people, all at once: stand up and see God’s power at work! But the leader of the synagogue, and all those around him who protest this action, are not healed. They are still crippled and bent, still unable to stand up and see.

It’s not too hard to imagine why. The leader of the synagogue has a job to do. Perhaps he’s hobbled by issues of purity, of needing to keep things decent and in good order. He’s the establishment, it’s his job to keep the system running. The rules clearly state that work should be done on the other six days. Please follow the rules.

The other opponents of Jesus are crippled too. Maybe they’re the scribes and the Pharisees, although the story doesn’t say specifically who they are this time. Maybe they’re tied up in their power and social position, unable to see why this old nobody of a woman is being put at the center of the gathering. They like the world as it is. They don’t welcome the in-breaking of the world as it could be, when those on the margins are brought in and God’s people are made whole. In such a world they believe they would lose, and so they resist it.

And the others there in the synagogue that day seem to have trouble seeing as well. For a whole host of reasons, probably. Reasons that might be familiar to some of us also.

·      Maybe it might be their desire for comfort, to go along and get along without too much fuss and drama. The world isn’t perfect, they think, but it would be so much easier if you just leave me alone, over here keeping to myself, staring at my shoes. Standing upright and changing my perspective just sounds too hard.

·      Or maybe they’re bent over by self-doubt, a belief that they aren’t worth any better than this, they’ll always live this bent-over way. Too much tragedy and heartbreak to believe it can ever change. That’s for other people, not for me.

·      Or maybe the combined forces of class and gender and age and all the other categories we live with have us bent and twisted, unable to even imagine seeing things any other way. The world is the way it is, no use getting pie-in-the-sky about it.

So many things can cripple us. So many things can bind us and keep us from real life.

And yet, Jesus is showing so clearly, God is up to something. God is at work in the world. God intends freedom. In every way, over and over, God is lifting us up and straightening our spines and showing us the world as it should be. Here in worship on the Lord’s day, and on every day of the week, God is breaking in. Our rules and restrictions and doubt and fear do not need to keep us captive.  We can stand, on Christ the solid rock, with our eyes and hearts open to see.

Imagine Jesus calling you forward, and laying his hands on you, and saying, dear one, you are set free. Stand up. Wouldn’t you want to say yes? I think it’s what he’s saying now – and always. Perhaps we can all stand up together – and together affirm our faith.