Today's sermon was based on the healing of the bent over woman in Luke 13:10-17. I really enjoyed using this text with biblical storytelling. The hand actions and body positions that I was able to do both helped me remember the text better and I believe helped convey the meaning of the text to the congregation.
Enjoy the sermon!
Jesus heals a woman! How could anyone be upset that Jesus healed a woman who had been disabled for 18 years? But instead of joining in on her praises to God for the miracle that they just saw occurred, the leader of the synagogue and other witnesses to Jesus’ miracle start to grumble and complain. They are shocked!
But they aren’t shocked and filled with awe over how awesome God is, no they are shocked and appalled. They are shocked that Jesus did work on the Sabbath, God’s holy day. They are shocked that he touched a strange woman, something that just wasn’t done in polite society. And not only did he touch a strange woman, he touched a woman who had a spirit within her that crippled her. He could now be infected by that spirit, he could now carry with him whatever sin and evil that caused that woman to be so stooped over.
The witnesses to this miracle were so outraged by the taboos that Jesus broke that they were not able to see that God was standing there in front of them.
And aren’t we like that at times? We have our set ideas about what is proper, especially in a house of worship, especially on our day of worship that we are not able to see the needs of those people or that God is in them. Can you remember the first time you saw someone wear jeans to church? Or if someone wore flip-flops. We get caught up on these things and many others that they distract us from worship. Oh no, the pastor is not wearing vestments, or the communion bread was crumbly and pieces fell on the floor. Or the candles didn’t get lit, or worship started 2 minutes late. Or the kid in the back is crying.
I have to say overall, we at Bethlehem aren’t that bad at this. The organ has cut out, and we just keep singing. The wrong prayer gets read, oh well. And my personal favorite worship memory: Ellen has a spider crawling on her during communion, freaks out, nah we all laugh.
So maybe we aren’t caught up about how worship should be, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have our other hang ups about what is right and how things need to be done. Many of those are personal, and I can’t stand here and name them for you. But I can name mine: Parents who don’t watch their kids while at restaurants really frustrate me. Drivers who cut me off, especially when there is plenty of room to merge properly, make me want to either give driving lessons or be able to pull them over and give them a ticket. People in the self checkout lines at the grocery store who have no clue how to operate the machine make me roll my eyes and start eyeing the checkouts for shorter lines. Why can’t people recycle? Why do people insist on behaving such a way? Why can’t people just behave exactly like me?
We are in bondage to these things. We are in bondage to what we feel we ought to do and what we think other people ought to do. And when people do not do what they “ought to do” it annoys us, it upsets us, and it can ruin our day, drive, meal, trip, or worship. Just like when Jesus did not do what the synagogue leaders wanted him to do, he ruined worship for them.
But Jesus did not come to ruin worship for people, that was not his intent. He came to free that woman from her bondage. And in freeing the woman from her bondage, Jesus also freed the crowd from their bondage of Sabbath laws. He freed them from their preconceived idea of what ought to happen on the Sabbath, from their ideas about how one is to behave. He freed them from their restrictions on when God’s work ought to happen.
Jesus came to free that woman from her bondage, and Jesus came to free us from our bondage. Jesus came to free us from our preconceived notions. Jesus came to free us from our ideas of what is right. Jesus came to free us from the shoulds, oughts, have tos, musts and needs to.
The Sabbath is not about what we ought to do in order to appropriately worship God. Nor is it about what we should NOT do that would offend God on the holiest day of the week. Instead the Sabbath, and any day really, is about what God has done for us and by recognizing that we realize what we can do for others in God’s name.
Because of God and God setting us free from the things that bind us, we are able to see that people are still able to worship God in jeans and flip-flops, if that is what they choose to wear. Because of God setting us free from the things that bind us, we are able to love the children running around in a restaurant and enjoy the joy for life they bring to any situation. Because of God setting us free from the things that bind us, we are able to take a deep breath when someone cuts us off and drive a little safer so that we do not cut off another driver. Because of God setting us free from the things that bind us, we are able to offer to help the person in line in front of us and help them through a process that could be new or frustrating to them. Because of God setting us free from the things that bind us, we are able to see Jesus’ presence in the face of everyone we meet and show them God’s unconditional love and grace, just as others have shown us God’s love and grace.
Jesus came to set us free! Free from the bondage of this world, free from the bondage of sin, free from the bondage that we impose on ourselves.
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