Did you see the article in Friday's paper headlined "Wheat
Intolerance Invalidates Girl's First Communion?"(1) Dateline,
Brielle, N.J. -- "An 8-year-old girl who suffers from a rare
digestive disorder and cannot eat wheat has had her first Holy
Communion declared invalid because the wafer contained no wheat,
violating Roman Catholic doctrine. Now, Haley Waldman's mother
is pushing the Diocese of Trenton and the Vatican to make an
exception, saying the girl's condition should not exclude her
from the sacrament, which commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus
Christ before his crucifixion. The mother believes a rice
Communion wafer would suffice...Church doctrine holds that
Communion wafers, like the bread served at the Last Supper, must
have at least some unleavened wheat. Church leaders are
reluctant to change anything about the sacrament." Are you
kidding me?
Here is another story. "A spokesman for Afghanistan's
Taliban guerrillas told Reuters that they had slit the throat of
Muslim cleric Maulawi Assadullah on June 30 because he was
propagating Christianity in the remote Awdand district of Ghazni
province. Speaking about the convert from Islam, Taliban
spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said, 'A group of Taliban dragged
out Maulawi Assadullah and slit his throat with a knife because
he was propagating Christianity. We have enough evidence and
local accounts to prove that he was involved in the conversions
of Muslims to Christianity.' Hakimi also warned that any foreign
aid workers found to be involved in spreading Christianity in
Afghanistan would face a similar fate.(2)
If you wondered about the sermon title this morning, there
are two stories that are positively painful in demonstrating how
repressive religion can sometimes be. Indeed, our lesson
reflects the same thing. It opens with Jesus teaching in a
synagogue where services were normally rather informal: primarily
prayers, reading of scripture, comments, and offerings for the
poor. Any man in attendance could read from scripture and then
teach or preach if he were so inclined, and on this day
apparently, Jesus was. He notices a woman, identified in
scripture as only "crippled" and "bent over" - some disease that
deteriorated the spine, maybe osteoporosis or scoliosis - a
condition she has suffered for eighteen years. Jesus calls to
her to come forward. "Woman, you are set free from your
infirmity." Jesus touches her and, voilá, immediately she
straightens up and praises God. Ta-da!
Of course, we know there is more to the story. Enter the
rabbi in charge. He thunders to the people, "There are six days
for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the
Sabbath."
One of my friends has noted that the rabbi's complaint, even
though it had to do with what Jesus did, was directed to the
people. He says it's the same in churches today as well -
somebody gets mad with the minister and instead of coming to him
or her about the problem, they pick up the phone and call all
their friends. "Did you hear what the preacher did?" Uh huh.
Truth be told, what Jesus did was bound to cause a stir. He
had healed this woman on the Sabbath. That was a clear violation
of God's commandment: "Observe the Sabbath day to keep it
holy...Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the
seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall
not do any work..."(3) Healing is work; ask any doctor or nurse.
Good Jews to this day are scrupulous about what may and may
not be done on the Sabbath. Some of the rules may sound nit-picky, but the tradition goes back to the days when the nation
was in exile. Sabbath-keeping was the way Jews then and Jews now
assured themselves a unique identity. Through the centuries, the
rabbis had set up all sorts of "fences" around the Sabbath to
assure it's special place. By the time of Christ, there were
1,521 things one could not do on the Sabbath.(4)
For example, they said bearing a burden was work. Then as a
corollary of that general rule, they said that while a woman
could have a ribbon sewn onto her dress, it must not be merely
pinned on. If it were only pinned, it was not secure enough to
be considered a part of the dress, and in wearing the ribbon with
a pin, she was BEARING A BURDEN. Under the same heading, it was
solemnly set down that false teeth were not to be worn on the
Sabbath...they were a burden (and some of you who wear them might
agree). I am afraid some Jewish brothers and sisters looked less
than their best on synagogue days.
In Mark's gospel, there is an account of some Pharisees
complaining to Jesus that his disciples were gathering corn on
the Sabbath...reaping.(5) That was work. But consider this: a
woman was not allowed to use a mirror on the Sabbath to prevent
exactly the same sin. You see, they were concerned that she
would see a gray hair and pull it out, and pulling out gray hairs
was REAPING. OK.
Now Jesus does this healing. Work. And not even an
emergency healing. In fact, the woman had not even asked to be
healed. But Jesus did it anyway.
It is not much of a stretch to conclude that he did it on
purpose. He knew the rules. And it is not that the rules were
designed to be repressive. On the contrary. It was this
commitment to the Sabbath that reminded the Jewish people who
they were and whose they were. Why would Jesus deliberately
tweak their ecclesiastical nose? And while he is at it, call
them a nasty name?
"You hypocrites! Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath untie
his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water?
Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has
kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath
day from what bound her?"
There was not much the local synagogue leaders could say.
In fact, the gospel writer sums the story up with, "...all his
opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all
the wonderful things he was doing."
Someone has said, "It is the nature of all human
institutions, whether they are churches, schools or governments,
to start to make a shift. A subtle shift is made, where the
original purpose of the institution was to serve people, and
instead, the people start to serve the institution. It happens
again and again and again. The legal needs of the institution
become greater than the real needs of the people. A shift occurs
and the needs and regulations of the institution become greater
than the needs of the people."(6) How true!
Walter Wink, in his book Engaging the Powers,(7) suggests that
Jesus' action represented a revolution happening in seven short
verses. In this short story, Jesus tries to wake people up to
the kind of life God wants for them. He often talks about the
Kingdom of God where people have equal worth and all of life has
dignity. But in the latter part of his ministry, he begins to
act this out. In the midst of a highly patriarchal culture Jesus
breaks at least six strict cultural rules:
- Jesus speaks to the woman. In civilized Jewish society, men
did not speak to women in public, even their wives.
Remember the story in John 4 where Jesus spoke to the
Samaritan woman at the well? She was shocked because a Jew
would speak to a Samaritan. But when the disciples
returned, the scripture records, "They were astonished that
he was speaking with a woman." In speaking to her, Jesus
jettisons the male restraints on women's freedom.
- He calls her forward to the center of the synagogue. By
placing her there, he challenges the notion of a male
monopoly on access to knowledge and to God.
- He touches her, which revokes the holiness code. That is
the code which "protected" men from a woman's uncleanness
and from her sinful seductiveness.
- He calls her "daughter of Abraham," a term not found in any
of the prior Jewish literature. This is revolutionary
because it was believed that women were saved through their
men. To call her a daughter of Abraham is to make her a
full-fledged member of the nation of Israel with equal
standing before God.
- He heals on the Sabbath, the holy day. In doing this he
demonstrates God's compassion for people over ceremony, and
reclaims the Sabbath for the celebration of God's liberal
goodness.
- Last, and not least, he challenges the ancient belief that
her illness is a direct punishment from God for sin. He
asserts that she is ill, not because God willed it, but
because there is evil in the world. In other words, bad
things happen to good people.
And Jesus did all this in a just few seconds.(8)
Generally, when people are stuck in a system or a particular
way of understanding, they need to be SHOCKED out of the old and
into the new. Logic and reason usually does not work. Jesus
could have spent all day arguing with the synagogue leader about
whether or not it was legal to heal this woman on the Sabbath...
while she remained ill. (How many church meetings are
discussions about what should be done, rather than actually
getting things done?) The healing took place before the
discussion about whether or not it was the right thing to do. It
is similar to so many situations that arise where it is easier to
ask forgiveness than permission. It is such a shame that
something that can do so much good - religion - can be made to do
so much that is so bad.
Why is there ANY repressive religion in the world? Part of
the answer is that folks take religion seriously. This morning
there are millions and millions and millions of people gathering
for worship all around the globe. FAR more people are related to
churches on Sunday or synagogues on Saturday or mosques on Friday
than are involved in ANY other voluntary activity. Gallup polls
in this country consistently find that more than 95% of the
population professes belief in a God; 85% believe that the Ten
Commandments are God's law and should be obeyed; almost 70% of
the adult population claims a personal relationship with the
Lord. As much as we hear of the decline of religion and the rise
of secularism, the doomsayers have a long way to go before they
would ever see their prophecies fulfilled.
Move that a step further. Why are the controversies over
school prayer or abortion or stem-cell research so pervasive and
heated? Not simply because they are caught in the partisan mud
of an election year, but because, at their heart, they are
religious questions, and people take religion seriously. Ask
Haley Waldman and her mom in New Jersey or that Taliban murderer
in Afghanistan.
Is concern for a suffering woman what Jesus wanted to convey
that day in the synagogue? Not really. The word we are to hear
is about religion, or better, about religiosity...and how
seriously we are to take it. The point is that there is such a
thing as too much. Mae West, in her inimitable style, once said,
"Too much of a good thing is...WONDERFUL." But most of us know
that anything good can be pushed beyond its appropriate limits.
Be careful.
Eighteen years. Can you imagine seeing nothing but dirt and
other people's feet for 18 years? Jesus offered this woman not
just physical healing, but a whole new way to see the world...
literally. He offers the same to you and me.
Amen.
1. Warren Times-Observer, 8/20/04, p. A-5
2. http://www.religionjournal.com/showarticle.asp?id=1588
3. Deuteronomy 5:12-14
4. Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain, (Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1954), p. 53
5. Mark 2:23-28
6. E. F. Marquardt,
http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/series_c_freedom_from_religious_rules.htm
7. Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 1992
8. Quoted in Suzanne Luper's sermon, Can Jesus Be Redeemed?, September 17, 2000,
North Raleigh United Church, http://www.northraleighunited.org/Sermons/CanJesusBeRedeemed.htm
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