Scripture text: Luke 13:10-17
Last Sunday was my last day as the youth pastor of St. John church in New Freedom. My final duty was to conduct their third and final summer evening worship service. We did a skit. We had a good time and I preached on 1 John chapter 4, one of the many passages of Scripture I regard as a favorite.
For those of you who’ve come to know me, it’s no surprise as to why. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God...God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them....There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” All verses from 1 John 4. All about love.
Because ultimately (and this was the theme of my preaching last Sunday at SJNF), it is all about love. Time and time and time again we see this in the stories we read from throughout the Scriptures: God’s love for Israel and his intent to make of them a blessing for all the Earth, God’s love for individuals like David and Samson and Paul, the great paragons of the faith (all of whom were far from perfect people), and (of course) God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.
Today’s Gospel is no exception. Jesus is in the synagogue, as worship on the Sabbath. Also present is a woman with some manner of musculoskeletal disease, something like osteoporosis or scoliosis. Regardless, it has her nearly bent double, unable to stand up straight and causing her great suffering for many many years. Jesus, filled with compassion, goes to her and heals her. This makes the leader of the synagogue indignant. How dare he break the Sabbath law by healing this woman!
People of faith have a lot of rules. It doesn’t really matter what faith. Every religion carries with it a moral code. Muslims are to pray facing Mecca. Jews do not eat certain foods. Hindus elevate cows as sacred. Some of these rules seem silly to outsiders. We Christians have them too. Try explaining why we eat a tiny piece of bread and drink a sip of wine at every worship service. It matters to us. It’s huge to us, but to an outsider it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The Sabbath rule is one of the most important in Jewish practice. One is not meant to work on the day of worship. But there is a rule, that for Jesus, trumps all other rules and that is the rule of love. The Sabbath day is important, but (as Jesus notes) it is not the end all and be all of one’s devotion to God nor is it always practical to obey. He uses the example of one rescuing their animal from falling in a hole as “work” that is both understandable and permissible during the Sabbath. And if one can rescue a beast of burden from dire peril, why can he not rescue this woman from her dire peril of this disease?
Luke does not record the thoughts of the leader that lead to his objection, but he does give us a hint by highlighting what Jesus says about her. This “daughter of Abraham” he calls her. She is your sister in the faith, Jesus says to the leader, and of far greater importance than your horse or ox or donkey. Would you truly rescue them but not her?
Luke records that the objectors are “put to shame,” as they should be. Treating a woman as less than a farm animal. But before we claim some moral high ground here, let us remember how well we’ve been doing as individuals and society at how we treat our neighbors.
Gay people are predators. Trans people are weirdos. Immigrants are rapists and job thieves. Blacks are thugs. Cops are racist. Time and time again we poison our discourse with these claims about the nature of people who are different from us. We treat our animals better than many of our fellow human beings. Should we not be put to shame as well?
One might argue that those stereotypes have their basis in fact and that’s true. Some cops are racist. Some gays are predators. Some have broken the rules of decency and propriety in our society. But to judge the whole by the actions of a scant few only widens the gap between us and our neighbors.
But which is more important? Those rules? Or love? That’s not always an easy question to answer. Some people are dangerous; yes, but are we willing to take that risk in order to love someone who is different? Are we going to bridge that gap between us because that’s what Jesus showed us how to do? Are we willing to embrace our brothers and sisters and recognize that, for whatever differences we may have, they are also still human like us; fearfully and wonderfully made by our creator?
It is a risk. It is a gamble. It will feel uncomfortable, at least at first. I can speak from experience. I’ve had gay friends. I’ve had black friends. Asians, Latinos, men, women, young, old, people of every religion you can think of (or none at all). I’ve gotten around a bit in my short life. And I’ll admit there have been moments when I’m like “My goodness, we have nothing in common. My experiences are so different from yours. How are we even here? How did we end up friends?”
From SUNY.edu
I’ll tell you how. We loved each other. We cared about each other. We mattered to one another. But none of that could have happened if we hadn’t taken the chance on each other and found even the smallest of things that could bind us together.
Jesus took that chance with us. We humans have never been very good at keeping God’s rules, even the important ones. Why would he bother with us? But he did. He came to Earth to live, to show us his love, and then to die and rise again because of that love. All that effort because he believed that you and me and everyone else was worth the risk. Was worth the chance. Was worth loving.
I want to end with one verse from 1 John 4 that I neglected to list among the others in my quick summary at the beginning of this sermon. It’s one we’ve all heard and more than a few of us have sung in our Sunday School days. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he (first) loved us.” That’s where it begins, with God’s love for us, the gift of his son. It ends with our salvation. What happens in between, that’s up to us. Amen.
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