The woman with the crippled spirit
26 August 2013 | Proper 15
Luke 13:10-17
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing. (Luke 13:10-17)
This isn’t about Pharisees. And it isn’t about whether you are supposed to help a crippled woman. It is about something else – something far simpler and something far more elementary.
It is about God, and it is about us, and it is about the secret of the divine life.
It is about Healing, and it is about readiness, and it is about Christlike liveliness.
Healing is God’s normative action. Readiness is the state to which we are called. And Christlike liveliness is the quality of the kingdom of heaven.
1. Healing is God’s normative action
I want you to think with me about the stories of the New Testament as you remember them, and particularly those stories where Jesus gets in a fight with the Pharisees.
What is the primary occasion of his quarrels with the Pharisees? When does he go on and get in a full argument with them? I think you’ll find that it is usually over healing someone.
Tonight’s story is a classic example. This woman has, according to the story, been crippled in spirit for 18 years. She has been crippled in body as well – that is, her distress has had psychosomatic symptoms.
Maybe you know what was going on with her. Perhaps you have had a crippled spirit, or know someone who has. Perhaps it is one of the most common of human afflictions, whether or not it makes you bend over in pain.
Jesus sees her, and hears her cry, and is able to bring about her healing. She stands up. She is seen, and recognized, and freed. But it happens on the Sabbath, and it happens in the synagogue, and the religious people are offended.
How we can read the Gospels and think that Jesus spent his time deciding whether or not people were going be saved when they die is just beyond me. He spent his time recognizing the healing power of God and God’s holy spirit, — following the spirit around, jumping up into the joy of God’s love continually. Here it’s being described as being set free.
Freedom from crippling, freedom from oppression, freedom from self-hatred, freedom from disease, freedom from meaninglessness; freedom from obsession; freedom from guilt and shame – the healing power of God restores meaning to life and brings love and peace. That is the work of the kingdom; that is the sign of the holy spirit; that is what we proclaim.
If it is proper to use the word “fight,” it is healing that Jesus is fighting for day in and day out. It is healing that he is proclaiming. This is the kingdom of healing. Healing is God’s normative action. If healing is God’s normative action,
2. Readiness is the state to which we are called.
In these situations in the Gospels, what is remarkable is how unprepared anyone but Jesus is for what happens. There is no telling what the narrative would be if he had not been there. It would have been unremarkable – simply another day at the synagogue, as it were. Life drags on day after day in a sameness. Deadliness is institutionalized.
Note the quality of that sameness. It is a sameness which is based on people and things being crippled. The law that got people to respect the Sabbath – that wasn’t invented by God or kept by the Jews to keep ladies crippled for 18 years. It was invented to get crippled men and women to take one day’s rest each week, instead of driving themselves and others further into the ground, and it was invented to get them to reflect on God rather than just stew In their own ambitions and anxieties.
And it had to be a religious law, because that sense of taboo would keep it in place long before the people who needed to obey it would have the slightest clue why it was there.
So the law was for crippled men and women – but those crippled men and women, crippled as they were, had no real sense of why and how the law was there, and therefore they could not see that it was fulfilled in the healing of the crippled woman.
The crippled men and women had crippled minds and hearts. They did not – perhaps they could not – know that the Sabbath rest was not simply to deal with fatigue, but to enable them to be ready, ready at any time to move from sickness to healing, from death to life, from being crippled to being whole.
The law of the crippled is not an end in itself. Nor is it to be broken for the sake of anarchy or lawlessness. But the law of the crippled must always yield to the bright, sudden arrival of healing. And that is the mystery of Gospel.
At the mid-day daily office here at Richmond Hill, and all over the world where the liturgical hours are kept, there is this call and response: O God, come to our assistance; O Lord, make haste to help us.
That is the Catholic form of the call and response. The form of the English Church is this: O God, make speed to save us; O Lord make haste to help us.
Here, at the mid-day call to prayer is that sense of urgency, that sense that responding to God’s spirit in the moment is what life all about. Being crippled is not a permanent state. Rather, for those of us who live in hope, it is simply the opportunity for the healing power of God. And when that train of God comes through the station, we want to be on it – now, tonight, tomorrow, each day.
Life begins when we sense the power of God in the present moment and follow it – and then the story is new, not what we suspected or predicted. We are present to the moment through prayer and silence, and through whatever spiritual preparation we can make.
If healing is God’s normative action, and readiness is the state to which we are called, then
3. Christlike liveliness is the quality of the kingdom of heaven.
There is this fundamental currency, this fundamental discovery, to the kingdom of heaven. When we are living in it, all things are new. We cannot predict the future because God has so many cards on the table that we know nothing about.
When we come alive in the moment of healing, we begin a new day that would not have been written the same way, and we find ourselves alert to the power of God’s spirit in others. It helps to stop for prayer, for silence, for scripture – so that we can be alert and give up the cynicism and fatigue that builds so easily within.
Then what we find is that we are living some of what they talked about in Sunday School, some of what the scripture referred to, some of what the doctrines we were taught may have meant.
Only there is a big difference. Our focus is not on doctrine, not on church, but on life itself. We don’t care so much what people believe in their creed as what they are professing with their lives. We make common cause with anyone who seeks to do the will of the Jesus-like God whom we follow.
And life is alive. Many things are possible. There are new days, new moments, unexpected developments constantly. Each new steps leads to a new step. It is refreshing, not exhausting. It is light, not dark. It is affirming, not condemning. It is healing, not crippling.
Healing is God’s normative action.Readiness is the state to which we are called. Christlike liveliness is the quality of the kingdom of heaven.
AMEN.
The Rev. B. P. Campbell
Richmond Hill
Richmond, Virginia
