"Compassion or Fundamentalism?"

Luke 13:10-17; Hebrews 12:18-29; Jeremiah 1:4-10

Jeremiah 1:4-10

{4} Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, {5} ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’
{6} Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’ {7} But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say, “I am only a boy”; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. {8} Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.’

{9} Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. {10} See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’

Hebrews 12:18-29

{12:18} You have not come to something ^* that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, ¹⁹ and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. ²⁰ (For they could not endure the order that was given, ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.’ ²¹ Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’) ²² But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, ²³ and to the assembly ^* of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, ²⁴ and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

²⁵ See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking; for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven! ²⁶ At that time his voice shook the earth; but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.’ ²⁷ This phrase ‘Yet once more’ indicates the removal of what is shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. ²⁸ Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; ²⁹ for indeed our God is a consuming fire.

Luke 13:10-17

¹⁰ Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. ¹¹ 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. ¹² When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” ¹³ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

{14} 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.” {15} 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? {16} 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?” {17} 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.

The Sermon

How long is 18 years?

Long enough to be the length of time between the day someone is born and the day she graduates from high school.

Some people in that time will learn all the math from “1 + 1” to advanced calculus. In that time you can learn to walk, learn to run, learn to drive; you could even get your pilot's license. You can go from your first word to a valedictorian speech.

How long is 18 years? Well just think: there’s a lot of life to be lived between 22 and 40. There’s a lot that happens between 32 and 50, between 55 and 73, between 75 and 93.

For 18 years, she had been coming to this synagogue, week after week, hunched over, not even able to stand up straight. She gave God her faithfulness; and she received God’s faithfulness; and I would imagine she trusted that if anyone could have done anything for her, they would have done it. But they couldn’t.

There are people dragging the disfiguring heaviness of their conditions into worship every week; they may not look hunched over, but those of us who know what it’s like to carry those kinds of burdens can recognize it in an instant.

We carry the hidden agonies that cripple our bodies and our minds and our spirits—the back pains, the toothaches, the migraines; the endless, magnetic tug of thoughts of hatred and revenge and evil mistrust; the cacophony of self-doubt that drowns out our silent prayers.

And we carry the tattered strands of our lives into worship, looking for healing, or hope, or maybe just enough strength to get us through one more week, hoping that maybe someday, like the people around us who seem to have it all so together, we too can stand up straight at last.

And then one day, she hit the jackpot.

As always, Jesus was in the synagogue on the sabbath, and this day, he was in her synagogue.

When 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.”

Forget that she had been in that condition for 18 years and no one in the house of worship had succeeded in healing her—let alone the question of whether anyone had either tried or offered.

And forget that they don’t seem to mind too much taking care of their own business on a Sabbath.

And let’s even forget about the pain she must have been in, the hopelessness, the endless frustrated nights when she couldn’t sleep from the discomfort and the long, tedious days of people pulling back from her in revulsion, whispering behind her, “What do you think is wrong with her? What do you think she did?”

Forget all that, because it’s not about compassion, it’s about the observance of the law of tradition. And the law says: you must not do any work on a sabbath. But there’s a lady right in front of you who can’t even stand up straight.

But it’s not about compassion! “Oh, listen, we feel sorry for her.” But it’s not about compassion. It’s about the observance of the law.

On this day, in the public house of worship, Jesus committed an act of healing, and in response, they gave him—and the lady who dared to be healed—a kind of fundamentalism.

On that day, the priests drew a line in the sand that said healing, hope, strength, peace, and love are not as important as following the letter of the law and the rules of tradition.

And they are still saying it today. And I am not talking about the Jews; I am talking about every kind of fundamentalism, every place where the good of God’s children is regarded as less relevant than the strict observance of the law of tradition.

They say, “Look at all those booming churches out there, and listen to their message: they lay down the law about who’s in and who’s out.”

And the implication or sometimes what people will just come out and say is, if only we would be firmer about who’s out, maybe we would be growing just like them.

Ann Weems wrote,

We in the church are in danger

of becoming a tearless people,

unable to rage even in a starless abyss.

We have imitated a smiling society,

glossing over the hurt, the oppression, the peacelessness on earth,

or we become caustic

and cynical and despairing,

insisting on looking the other way

as our church members crawl to the altar,

the scraps of their lives in their arms.

We were created for covenant keeping

and yet, we are in danger

of becoming a blindhearted people,

buying into the system,

placing our hope with kings and corporations.

Have we not seen?

Have we not heard?

…We are programming and papering ourselves

into perpetuity,

and rationalizing and excusing our immorality…

Perhaps it’s time for remembering

that Jesus stood in the Jordan

to be baptized with the others,

long ago casting his lot,

not with the good church people,

but with the poor

wherever that poverty might emerge… [1]

She was bent over, unable to stand up straight; and when Jesus saw her, he said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.

But the leader of the synagogue 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! Doesn’t each of you on the sabbath feed and water your own donkey? And are you going to tell me that this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, shouldn’t be set free from this bondage because it’s the sabbath day?”

They said, she and her health and her well-being and her presence here in this temple are not as important as maintaining the code.

And Jesus said: humanity is more important than orthodoxy;

care is better than apathy;

healing is better than pontificating;

compassion is better than fundamentalism.

The whole view of who God is and how we ought to respond is different now. It’s so much greater than any law or any tradition or any rule or any boundary that anyone would dare try to set for who, and where, and when God can bring healing and make people whole.

“You have not come to something that can be touched,” said the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, “a blazing fire, and darkness, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them.

“But you have come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

Ted Loder wrote a prayer in which he asks God to move him gently “into an unclenched moment, a deep breath, a letting go of heavy experiences, of shriveling anxieties, of dead certainties, that, softened by the silence, surrounded by the light, and open to the mystery, I may be found by wholeness, upheld by the unfathomable, entranced by the simple and filled with the joy that is You.”

“Do not be afraid,” says the Lord; “for I am with you to deliver you.”

Keith Grogg

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach, NC

August 29, 2007

[1] Ann Weems, “In Search of New Resurrections.” From Kneeling in Jerusalem. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992; pp. 91-92.