Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Most Important Thing*

Psalm 103: 1-8;  Luke 13:  10-17

 

*/So -- what was the most important thing that Jesus did for this woman?/*

In order for you to understand why I’m starting off today asking that question, I need to tell you about a person I knew -- sort of peripherally-- when I was growing up.*

We all know that children can be cruel in what nicknames that they give to someone who is a little bit different.

*Well, this person fit into that category.

I don’t remember his name... his real name, I mean.

But I vividly remember his face -- and his “nickname.”

*/“Sleepy” we called him.

“Sleepy Townsend.”

/*Everyone knew who he was, but no one was his friend.

Sleepy Townsend was always alone, and if you wanted a glimpse of him, you could usually catch him wandering around -- milling through the streets of town during his spare time.

I don’t’ know how old he was...  a little older than I.

I never saw him around school.

Although I /assume/ he was there- somewhere.

*Where I /did/ see him was downtown... *And it was about all I could do to keep from staring at him when he passed me on the street.

... */Why?/* * Because when “Sleepy” Townsend walked he always had his nose up in the air like this (show them).

*It was* *as if he had on invisible trifocals and needed to see through the bottom section only.

Sometimes I do that when I’m talking with people up close and I can’t see clearly.

But “Sleepy” didn’t wear glasses.

He just held his nose up in the air like that because his eyelids were almost totally closed.

He walked like that ALL the time... and as kids often do– we all just HAD to make fun of him.

I have often wondered about Sleepy... */Did it bother him that he was the brunt of so many jokes?

Was there some deep, secret place inside where he winced every time someone called him what we thought was an innocent nickname?

/*I don’t know.

And now, I probably cannot know.

Because, as someone from home told me recently, he was wounded and died in Vietnam several years ago.

Still I wonder; /“Did it bother him?

/

 

*Does it matter what we call someone?*

I ask this question because I was wondering, what was the most important thing that Jesus did for this woman that he encountered as he taught in the synagogue.

Some who comment on this story call her the “Stooped Woman” or the “Crippled Woman” or the “Woman who was bent.”

In identifying her that way, they acknowledge that her physical condition was the 1st  thing people thought about when they saw her.

Her physical condition defined who she was.

*And so,/ if we identify her this way – by her physical condition -/ we might want to say, the most important thing that Jesus did for her was to heal her of this infirmity, this physical ailment that so profoundly affected her life.

*Today we would probably call her condition scoliosis, a congenital curving of the spine that becomes more pronounced in adulthood and leaves the person bent or stooped.

My Aunt, “Tay” we called her, had a severe case of it.

In our own time, at least in parts of the world where there’s adequate medical care, the condition is usually diagnosed at an early age, treated by wearing a brace or in some cases by a surgical procedure.

My girls were tested for it repeatedly.

*This woman, of course, didn’t have such an advantage, and simply got progressively worse.

*How old was she, I wonder,  when the symptoms were 1st noticed?

How did it limit her mobility, her ability to carry things, like water from a well?

Did it cause her pain?

Could she sleep comfortably at night?

Did she marry, have a family?

How did her condition affect their lives?

Life wasn’t easy for the young and the strong in Jesus’ time, much less for the woman whose spine was curved.

*/What was the most important thing that Jesus did for this woman?

/*He healed her.

He straightened her, enabled her to stand up, unbent, unbowed.

Which is pretty significant.

You know that if you’ve ever been “down in your back!”

But notice please that Luke doesn’t seem just to be telling this simply as a healing story.

This woman’s healing provokes a controversy – and that controversy leads us to be the real point to which Luke is trying to point.

*Jesus heals this woman on the Sabbath and the president of the synagogue objects.

*/Now to put that in perspective, that would be like me doing something on Sunday and Dennis, the Pres of First church publicly chastising me for it.../) The law of Moses is clear, he says.

It’s one of the 10 commandments: Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

You have six days to labor and do all your work.

But the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God, that day you must not do any work.

The woman /could/ have come on any of those days and be healed.

But she didn’t...

And that’s the point.

*The ruler of the synagogue objects to the healing because he believes it’s work and therefore violates the Sabbath law.*

So this particular healing sets the stage for the BIG controversy --* what is permissible on the Sabbath and what is not...Of course, * Jesus denounces the ruler of the synagogue, pointing out that people take care of their animals on the Sabbath, implying people  as at least as important.

*Now, I don’t often hear heated discussions about what we ought to do and what we should not do on Sunday, the Sabbath anymore.

*But I have at different times and places in my life.

·        *As a child,* my Jewish grandmother wouldn’t drive or even ride in a car on Saturday – her Sabbath...

She WALKED to Shul ( that’s what  they called the Jewish  worship  center near them.)

* *

 

·        And *a number of years ago in a church I served in Cincinnati,* there was a person who was really worried over whether or not it was OK to mow his grass on Sunday...

It worried me that he was so worried over such a thing.

I /think/ I eventually persuaded him not to be too concerned over it, that God would want him to care for his yard, if it was the only time he had.

I suggested to him that maybe instead of stewing over what is and what is not acceptable to do on the Sabbath that the better thing would be to consider doing something good for someone – besides ourselves -- on that day.

*And that seemed to work.

After all, it se3emsto be Jesus’ opinion on the matter.*

But there is a larger principle at work here.

*It’s a fundamental question of how we practice our faith.*

Now -- Let me preface what I am about to say by noting that I do not often use a pulpit to critique or condemn the doctrines or practices of other communities of faith.

No church, no Christian tradition is perfect.

*We do not believe that we, in the UCC- nor  do you in the Presbyterian Church believe  we are THE ONE TRUE CHURCH – you know, the only Christians who live out the faith in the way that God intends it  to be lived.*

Not at all.

*We do not make a practice of trying to build ourselves up by criticizing others.*

But I think that we must be able, in the Body of Christ to be open and honest when we believe that some of our brothers and sisters have missed the point.

*I say this to point out that a Sabbath healing kind of controversy can still make the news.

*A few years ago I remember reading about a young girl in NJ who could not receive communion in her church because she was allergic to wheat.

Apparently her church believed that the communion wafer, for some reason unbeknownst to me, had to contain some wheat.

That was the doctrine of the church.

Because of that her church would not permit her to take communion that was made only from rice flour.

And so this girl could not come to the table and be a part of her own community of faith.

*I.E.

Because of her medical condition, her physical condition, she was excluded.

*Frankly, I think that her church missed the point  --  the point which is made by Luke’s story today about this stooped woman whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath.

And the point is this: *Any time the church puts it purity of its doctrine over compassion for a human being, it commits the greatest heresy.*

But that’s a digression.

Let me ask you one more time about this woman whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath:*/ What was the most important thing that Jesus did for this woman?

/*I cannot argue if you want to say the most important thing that he did was heal her body, cure her physical condition that bent her down, stooped her over, and diminished her life.

– especially this week  after I’ve had  back problems myself...

But Jesus did something else for her in the midst of that sharp and acrimonious conversation with the ruler of the synagogue.

*He called her something new, something different.

*Did you hear it?

*He called her the daughter of Abraham.

--*Abraham, who along with his wife Sarah were the first ancestors, the first to receive the promise of God, the first to hear God say: “Your offspring will be my people, my servant people, a light of the nations.”*