Sermon for the 10th Sundy after Terinity – 21st August 2022:Is 58, 9-end; Hebrews 12, 18-end; Luke 13, 10-17
Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
One of the responsibilities set before a preacher is that of enlightening the hearers: this may be done in a number of ways, and sometimes in more than one way within the same sermon. There is the expository sermon – one in which the preacher looks carefully at the text of one of the scripture readings. There is the exhortatory sermon – one in which the texts or the common theme is crafted to encourage people in their faith and daily life; the sermon might be entirely or partly didactic – that is a focus on straightforward teaching, about the church’s history or dogmatics.
Other styles of preaching exist, of course, and all sermons can use illustrations from literature, humour, or human examples of goodness or indeed of sadness. Preaching is a rich environment for enabling the flourishing of themes, subjects, and styles. Normally though the preacher will feel the need to leave some questions answered, and a congregation will so often want to be more certain after hearing a sermon preached.
Well that’s all very fine and dandy. However, I ask the question, is there some room in the preacher’s annual schedule simply to place before a congregation some dilemmas, antitheses, opposites – simply naming them but without the contortions of supplying a solution?
If this is one of the legitimate purposes of a preacher, then we can approach today’s scripture readings, observing the dilemmas they provide us with – and not seek to give an answer.
I will identify three dilemmas that we can be left thinking about – to which I will not give three answers!
The first is the story of the crippled woman, and the response of the Leader of the synagogue. He is deeply offended by the healing of this woman because it was done on the Sabbath. This is the day of rest, when nothing should in theory be undertaken that changes the inherent nature of anything. If you have the opportunity to experience a hotel in Jewish West Jerusalem, there are some very simple examples of how this Sabbath regulation applies.
First of all the lift will not be operating. The food on the buffet table will have been set out before the beginning of Sabbath; the tea and coffee will be already prepared and available in vacuum flasks; the boiled eggs will be cold, because they have been boiled the day before. These may seem like small things, but it gives the flavour of how Sabbath affects observant Jewish life.
Go back 2000 years and the Leader of the Synagogue witnesses a healing of a crippled woman, and his first reaction is not wonder at Jesus performing such a miracle, but horror that this breach of Sabbath regulation has happened. Do your healing on the other six days. I suppose as enlightened 21st century Christians we are shocked at his response and would condemn his lack of insight and amazement.
Go back 800 years before him in his synagogue and we find the reason why the Jewish Leader is so shocked. He hasn’t made up some silly regulation for himself – it has divine authority.
We read from the Prophecy of Isaiah the repetition of the divine law about the Sabbath observance. Here the Lord himself, as through the prophet, we are told that the Sabbath should not be trampled, nor that self-interest should be pursued, and if there is observance of Holy Day then it will delight the Lord God himself. Who in his right mind would not wish to delight the Lord God. So the Sabbath is to be kept, honoured revered, just as the Lord God rested on the 7th day.
The challenge for any of us is this – if we believe something deeply, and especially if we believe that belief to be divinely inspired, and passed on in sacred tradition – how do we reconcile that conviction with something that comes from God and deeply challenges it.
The second dilemma, slightly more briefly, is to be found in the second reading, the Letter to the Hebrews.
The letter is deeply influenced by temple practice, and the liturgical realities of the Jewish faith. Hence it is a letter to the Hebrew people, it is the Jewish people who will know all the Temple and cultic practices inside out and back to front – literally as they would have leant it through Hebrew, written right to left (in our arrogant response, back to front). The message of the author of this letter is what we call an apologist, namely he takes what is known to the readers and he shows how it relates in some way to Jesus. So he takes the familiar, and by doing so he proves his argument that Jesus fulfils all the temple worship, and that he is the ultimate sacrifice, after so many centuries of sacrifices in the temple by the priests. Jesus had died, once for all, so no further sacrifices are needed.
Jesus is also in this letter compared to Moses who went to the top of Mt Sinai to receive the Commandments – the Law that regulated the lives of the faithful. The author comments on how Moses had to cover his face to be in the Lord’s terrorizing presence, so fierce was it – and he contrasts with this a different picture; that of Jesus in whose face we gaze upon God, for Jesus is God’s image. We have a God who encounters us not through terror, but face to face.
Today’s reading from Hebrews, however, presents a God whose picture is once again is a ‘scary’ God; ‘for indeed our God is a consuming fire’. (Heb 12)
We are inclined not to want to scare people into belief in a God who is vengeful and punishing, but rather to encourage them to indulge in God’s gracious love, and to bask in the reconciliation with God that has been won through the Cross. Here is our second dilemma – to which I am offering no answer today.
The third takes us back to the gospel reading, and the healing of the crippled woman. It is not just a parable to scandalize the rigid views of the synagogue leader. It leaves us with a very basic question about what we refer to as disability.
I want to share a rather irreverent observation. I was in the presence of a very sincere priest who was sharing with others an experience of healing, one that he had personally witnessed. He told of a man who had one leg shorter than the other. While being prayed for the man’s shorter leg grew to be the same length as the other one. Maybe this happened – maybe this happens all the time as any shrines of saints will testify with the crutches, walking sticks, wheel chairs etc that get left there in thanksgiving for miracles – but I found myself wondering what if the man’s longer leg had to shrink to the length of the shorter one, and not the other way round. I was left pondering about what we expect from healing and how our expectations of healing impact those on whom we stick the label ‘disabled’. It betrays a lot about what we think ‘perfection’ is in a human being, what they should look like, sound like, move like. Can God’s glory not simply be found in who that person is? What is it we truly need to love and be loved by God?
Jesus healed the crippled woman – of course this healing is to God’s glory, and we cannot deny this – but with what fixed views does it leave in relation to what we so glibly refer to as ‘disability’. Does it leave us with rather fixed views, just like the Leader of the Synagogue?
Friends, I leave you just to ponder these things during this coming week.
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