Tenth Sunday after Trinity – morning
Sunday 25th August 2019
Trinity 10 – Proper 16 – morning
Jeremiah 1. 4-10
Luke 13. 10-17
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
What is real, and what is just religion?
There’s a great story about a games afternoon at a secondary school. The rugby dropouts – you know, those kids who never get picked for one of the main teams – are lurking down on the bottom field, trying to keep out of everyone’s way. They are doing nothing… lounging around, chatting, maybe even sneaking an illicit cigarette – watched over by a bored prefect called Tompkins. Suddenly the Games Master appears from the top field and it is all action – practising line outs, scrums, mauls – looking very busy. The master stands there watching all this apparent busyness going on and then turns to the prefect…. “Tompkins, where’s the ball?”
In other words, what is this game all about? Is there any purpose to it? It is the kind of question Jesus puts to the leader of the synagogue one Sabbath morning: “Do you know what it’s all for, this religion you are going on about? Or have you missed the point?
The Jewish Laws – the 10 Commandments – were incredibly important to the Jewish people. They were what marked them out as different from their Gentile neighbours. They were what defined them as being special to God and the rule about not working on the Sabbath was doubly important. For not only did it ensure that people had a proper balance of work and leisure in their lives, but it reminded every Jew of the time when their people had been enslaved in Egypt. Forced to work unreasonable hours and in poor conditions until God – their own special God, had led them to liberty and a new home through the agency of first Moses and then Joshua. And it reminded them that even in the midst of Creation, God himself had needed to rest. So not working, not labouring on the Sabbath was really, really important.
And here was Jesus, apparently setting all that tradition and history at naught. Being disrespectful of God’s own commandments – you can see why the leader of the Synagogue saw his action as a threat and pretty much as blasphemy.
And what was he doing it for? An old woman – long past her usefulness in the community as either a wife or mother. She had waited 18 years in her crippled state… surely another day would not make that much difference!
He’s missed the point completely!
And Jesus explodes with righteous anger because an educated man – who’s study of scripture should have taught him the principles by which God operates, has failed to spot the inconsistency in his own arguments. You hypocrites! Jesus shouts. “You are quite happy to set your animals free on the Sabbath so they can drink, but you won’t let an old lady, made in the image of God, a daughter of Abraham, have the same freedom you allow your animals! Shame on you!” In modern parlance we could imagine him saying “Get real!” It is certainly a challenge for the authorities of Jesus’ day. This is real religion – not just some formulaic exercise!
And that challenge is as real for us here today. Have we got things straight? What is it all for? Have we somehow lost the pristine clarity of the glorious Christian faith and smothered it with elaborate ritual? Have we taken a gospel that gives a crippled woman a straight back and made it into an intricate system of dogmas and doctrine?
It is probably true that we all have a Pharisee in us just waiting to pop out. We can all play a religious game with our faith, admiring the aesthetics of it, but missing the blazing reality of it.
One of the joys of taking part in Holiday Club each year is seeing the Christian message through the eyes of young children. They have such energy…. such energy! Such joy and such an immediate response to the things they like and the things they don’t. They are not afraid or embarrassed to enjoy themselves! They know instinctively what is fair and just and what is not. Rules have their place – of course they do and they are always introduced for very good reasons. To keep us safe; to make groups and society at large function well – but they always have to be interpreted with compassion so that we do not miss the heart of it, the glorious gift of wholeness and life. Religion as a dull habit is not that for which Christ died!
So not only are we in danger of behaving a bit like the leader of the Synagogue, protecting our own little religious system as we like it and want it; we are also the woman with the crippled back. We are bent and distorted images of the God we want to love and who wants nothing more than to set us free. We all need a touch of Christ, the healing word that burns into our soul and makes us un-bend.
Jesus keeps coming to us – not just in here on a Sunday, but in every moment of the day – offering release and straightening. A clear set of values, an understanding of ourselves and of God, a straight path through the distractions of good and evil. And the chance to stretch our backs and look God in the eye – not just to grovel on the ground, only conscious of our many burdens and shortcomings.
And he gives us the chance to join him in offering that healing to others too. To notice when people we come across are bent and burdened when we meet them; to get stuck into causes and charities that are designed to straighten out the world’s crooked places. And to enjoy ourselves in the process! Not to claim – like Jeremiah, that we are not up to the task – but to trust God when he says he has given us all we need to join him in his mission to liberate.
And as we let Jesus make our bent backs straight, so we become an Easter people, with an ascended Lord, in a Pentecost church, sharing the glorious, liberating love of God. And that is what it is all about! I’ll take real faith over dull religion any day! What about you?