First Presbyterian Church
A Rule Made to Be Overridden
Sermon for August 27, 2007
by Pastor Susan Barnes

The Hebrew name for God is Yahweh; sometimes it's shortened to Yah. So whenever a word ends in ‘yah' it means God. Hallelujah means praise God, and the name Jeremiah means God exalts. Jeremiah exalted God by speaking out to the people and to their king about returning to God's ways. But Jeremiah was not always so bold. Our text is his account of God persuading him to become a prophet. Listen for the word of God as it is found in 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 ."

This ends our reading from Jeremiah. Jeremiah resisted God's call; he thought he was too young. The psalmist knew that no age can separate one from God's presence and promises. Even so, it's only natural to complain. Psalm 71 was written by someone old and gray, anxious for God's help, recalling how God was there even at birth.

Listen for the word of God as we read it together in Psalm 71:1-6.

1 In you, O LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame.

2 In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me.

3 Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.

4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel.

5 For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth.

6 Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother's womb. My praise is continually of you.

This ends our reading from the psalm.

Our pew Bibles have “it was you who took me from my mother's womb.” A more literal translation is “you cut me from my mother.” The psalmist was aware of God from birth, as God cradled the baby's wet head, welcoming the child into the world, then cutting the cord so the child could begin to breathe on its own, taking in the breath of life, with God right there.

When my son was four, his dad and I talked about what would happen when his sister was born. We tried to explain about cutting the umbilical cord. He wanted to know if it had skin on it. We were puzzled. I said, no, it doesn't have skin on it. Good, he said, then it won't hurt the baby. That was how he could tell if something could be hurt. We can cut our hair and fingernails, and it doesn't hurt, because there's no skin.

The psalmist was hoping God would rescue him from hurt. When we are hurting, it's easy to feel that we are being punished for something, that somehow we deserve to be hurt.

Just before our gospel reading, some people told Jesus about the Galileans who were killed and their bodies desecrated by Pilate. He said, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” He answered no. Then he told a brief parable about a fig tree having one more chance to bear fruit. And he began teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath, as traveling rabbis often did. This is the last time Jesus enters a synagogue in the gospel of Luke. We'll be reading from my translation.

Listen for the word of God as it is found in Luke 13:10-17.

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then a woman [appeared] with a spirit that had weakened her for 18 years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.

Seeing her, Jesus called her over and said, “Woman, you are released from your crippling disease.”

When he put his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leaders of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which doing work is appropriate; on those days come and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.”

But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Don't each of you on the Sabbath release his ox or his donkey from the stall, and lead it away to give it a drink? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for 18 long years, be released from this bondage on the Sabbath day?

When he said this all his opponents were put to shame; and all the crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

This ends our reading of the gospel.

Anthem

God said to Jeremiah, “Before you were born, I knew you.” That line always makes me think of predestination, fate, or destiny. Everything's laid out for us. We deserve everything we get. Everything happens the way it's supposed to. Are those statements true or false? I've determined they're false.

What is true is that God cares about everything God has created, and God has a purpose for each person. 1 “God has chosen for us a destiny greater than any we could have imagined for ourselves.” 2 Ephesians 1:4-5 says that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before God in love. God destined us for adoption as God's children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of God's will.

Our destiny is to be transformed into children of God. But on the way, there's trouble we need help with, as the psalmist declared.

April Coldsmith knows about trouble and God's help. She is a chaplain who works with families of children with life-threatening illnesses. Her daughter Blythe is 17 and entering her junior year. When April was in seminary, Blythe was four and had leukemia again. April wrote, “I watched her beautiful soft blonde hair fall out for a second time. Blythe is too young to wear a wig and most caps make her sweat so she pulls them off. I worried for weeks how kids and some adults might tease her. My worst fears were laid to rest a few months ago when my husband, daughter and I went out for breakfast to a local restaurant. Defined by its yuppy clientele, our beat-up Toyota looked like a white elephant parked in between a new shiny silver Mercedes and burgundy Volvo.

As all children seem to do, as soon as we to do our seats, Blythe loudly announced that she had to go to the bathroom. We walked to the rear of the restaurant, and I noticed that a woman from the table behind us had followed us. I didn't think anything about it until Blythe and I emerged from the stall and she was waiting.

“You have cancer, don't you?” the woman asked. Blythe answered yes.

“I do too. I like your bald head,” she said, “Would you like to see mine?” Blythe nodded an enthusiastic yes.

The woman removed her shoulder-length wig. underneath were a few tufts of hair along her hair line and a fine fuzz that looked as soft as down. She is on active chemo treatment, I thought. First, she let Blythe rub her head, then she let Blythe try on her wig. The reddish-brown hair fell below Blythe's shoulders and the bangs almost covered her eyes.

“Look, Mommy,” Blythe giggled. “I have hair.” She primped her new hair with a pat of her hand. After a few moments Blythe gave the wig back to the woman.

“See my spaghettis,” said Blythe pulling up her shirt to reveal two slender white tubes called a broviac-catheter, through which she received chemotherapy and blood products.

“Why, those are just like mine,” said the woman. We returned to our table.

Shortly thereafter, Blythe realized that the woman from the bathroom was sitting behind her. Before I could stop her, Blythe got up from her seat and touched the woman's wig—asking to see it again. In a panic, I stood up and warned Blythe to come back and sit down, but the woman calmly told me that it was all right.

Then, in a restaurant full of well-dressed, beautiful people, the woman took off her wig and let Blythe play with it. At first, everyone stopped eating and stared at the woman and child with naked heads. Then they nervously looked away so as not to gawk. From time to time, they peered back. These people are witnessing real power, I thought, giving of yourself to another person when you are most vulnerable.”

We read this story about Jesus, and we are ready to condemn the synagogue leaders, for being so hard-hearted. It's difficult for us to understand ancient Jewish laws.

We don't know the rules of the Sabbath. It's easy for us to hear this story of Jesus healing the bent-over woman as an example of those bad rule-bound Pharisees. But Jesus was arguing within the rules. He was debating with the synagogue ruler. That's how rabbis determined what how to obey God's law, the Torah.

The Mishnah is a book full of interpretation of the Torah. It says how different rabbis interpreted which law and under what circumstances. What is forbidden? What is permitted? Who says so? One rabbi says that even on the day of Atonement, when adults are supposed to be fasting, if a pregnant woman smells food cooking and craves it, she is permitted to eat until “she recovers herself.” Rabbi Mattithiah says that if, on the Sabbath, a man has a pain in his throat, and it may be a life-threatening condition, medicine can be dropped in his mouth. If there is doubt that life is in danger, “this overrides the Sabbath” 3. That's the Jewish tradition Jesus was using.

Some religious leaders argued differently. It doesn't mean they were bad, or that we should condemn the Jews for being narrow-minded and uncaring. Everyone in this story is a Jew. The leaders were just trying to help people follow the rules, and protect the holiness of the Sabbath. Their jobs were to protect the holiness of the people, too, by deciding what was unclean and what wasn't. Most of the time, we Christians just can't appreciate the distinction.

But we can appreciate what is appropriate and what is not. For example, parents teach their children not to do any personal grooming at the dinner table – no flossing, brushing, fingernail clipping, especially not in company, or out in public.

That idea would probably include never taking your wig off in an upscale restaurant full of beautiful people to reveal an ugly bald head.

The woman in the restaurant could have told Blythe “No, not here. Too many people are looking,” or “Let's go back to the bathroom and I'll show you.” But she recognized the gift she could give that little girl and took off her wig. The maître d' could have said to all the patrons, “No one else remove your wigs, toupees, or hair pieces, please. This is a restaurant.”

Something like that happened in the synagogue. The other leaders told the crowds “Come and be cured on the other six days, not on this one.” But Jesus disagreed. He called them hypocrites. Apparently, in Greek debates, opponents commonly called each other names like “blind guides” and “white-washed tombs.” 4 I think “hypocrites” fits right in to that name calling. I mention this because often we think of this story as evidence that Jews are mean and Jesus condemned them. But this anti-semitic interpretation distracts us from understanding the story.

Perhaps Jesus thought her weakness endangered her life. Or perhaps she could have waited. But Jesus' couldn't. He didn't have too many Sabbaths left when he could bring God's message of good news. The message was urgent, the healing was urgent. The Roman occupation of Israel was pressing on the people; their lives were endangered; they were bent over. Jesus came to release them from their bondage, to heal them.

He made the woman stand up straight. He called her a daughter of Abraham. That's the only time this title is ever used in the Bible. Usually the phrase is ‘a son of Abraham,' which means someone who holds the covenant that God made with Abraham, the covenant for Abraham's descendants to be God's people, and for Yahweh to be their God always. But here, the title is ‘daughter of Abraham.' This title reassured those in the synagogue that even during the brutality of the Roman occupation, the people could rely on God. God's desire is for healing, for wholeness, and for release.

Some of us need to be released. We want to be healed in body, so we can do the work we feel God calls us to do. Others don't let aches and pains, or even disabilities prevent their serving God – they continue despite arthritis, bad backs, trick knees, asthma. Sometimes our disabilities make us compassionate, and let us help others, like the woman with the wig.

Many of us need to be healed in spirit. We carry with us memories of past mistakes, remembering when we were yelled at, holding onto grudges toward those who harmed us. We are burdened with our lives now, unable to remove ourselves from immoral situations, or toxic relationships. We are afraid what the future might bring, unwilling to celebrate God's gifts of life and love. And so we turn to God, hoping that God can release us.

When Blythe was undergoing chemotherapy her mother wrote “I hold her delicate features in my heart, and I still pray with a fervent desire that God might allow she and [me] to trade places. God doesn't make those kinds of deals. But God was there for both of us when we tired of our fight with death. God moves and brings comfort in unexpected places. God is the ultimate caregiver.” 5

1 Douglass, Jane Dempsey, “Predestination,” Presbyterian Survey, September 1985.

2 www.pcusa.org/today/archive/q/q9812.html.

3Mishnah, ed. Danby, p. 172, Yoma 8:6.

4 Salmon, Marilyn, Preaching without Contempt, p. 88.

5 Coldsmith, April. “Caring for Blythe,” Windows, March 1995, Austin Seminary, also reprinted in the Other Side, May-June 2003, p. 43-45. Reprinted with permission of the author, (Woo-hoo!) personal communication August 24, 2007 .