Last Sunday we heard Jesus telling us that he’s come, not to bring peace, but division, and I suggested in my sermon that this shocking proclamation from the One we know as the Prince of Peace, should be understood as descriptive, rather than prescriptive – that Jesus was warning us that, for those who follow his radical way of dying to self and living for the sake of those the world calls “other,” division is inevitable and unavoidable. And so we come to today’s Gospel, found just a handful of verses further into Luke’s Gospel, and we see another example of what he was telling us.

 

Jesus is in the synagogue, on the Sabbath day, gathered with the faithful and with the religious leaders of the town, and in comes a woman, bent over, completely unable to straighten up.

 

Imagine her torment for 18 long years, as Jesus says.

 

Now, I don’t know what she was expecting to happen on this day, if anything. I don’t know that she thought this day would be any different than the others. I also don’t know what messages she had heard, what the religious leaders had told her, what the community had communicated to her, what she thought God was communicating to her through these long years of suffering and torment, but Luke says something so simple and yet so profound. He writes: Jesus saw her.

 

Had she become invisible to her neighbors? It happens, you know. People who are different are easily overlooked. Had she heard the prevalent teaching, the so-called wisdom that contends that, if you’re sick or suffering, then, more than likely, you’ve done something to deserve it, because God gives good things to good people – so if you’re not experiencing good things, then you’re obviously not a good person?

 

I’d bet my life that she had heard that message numerous times. But on this day, everything changed, because on this day, she had a direct encounter with God in Christ, and experienced the deliverance that only an encounter with God can bring. Only, her blessing, her healing, her deliverance becomes a cause for division. And why? Because these religious leaders, who ought to know better, have convinced themselves that to deliver a fellow human being from suffering on the Sabbath is dishonoring to God! That healing someone on the Sabbath breaks the third commandment!

 

It’s absolutely astonishing to consider just how far from God’s heart God’s people can drift, while all the while thinking we’re standing firm for the truth. I mean, there’s absolutely no way one can read the Scriptures and come away thinking: What God really wants from us is to allow people to suffer, to continue marginalizing people who are different, and to put our understanding of religiosity over and above the good of our neighbor. But we do it. We argue about who is worthy of help, and who’s not, because they fail to meet some benchmark or another. We put our human laws above the law of God. We put our religious rules above the clear teaching of the word of God…

 

This weekend marks an important and devastating anniversary.

 

It was in late August, 1619, that the first enslaved Africans were brought ashore, 20 of them, in Jamestown, Virginia, and for 400 years our nation has been shaped and misshaped, formed and deformed, by the devastating ramifications of chattel slavery.

 

The ELCA in Churchwide Assembly a couple weeks ago adopted a formal statement of apology to people of African Descent for the many ways we have knowingly, and unknowingly, participated in and supported the oppression of people of African descent. Here are some facts with which we ought to wrestle on this anniversary:

 

Our nation and its wealth were built on the backs of children of God who were stolen from their homes, separated from their families, imprisoned, starved, sold, beaten and forced to work in the fields and homes that are the bedrock of our wealth. 

 

While enslaved people were granted freedom, self governance and land at the end of the Civil War, the US government backed out of this out of this promise. 

during reconstruction the United States enacted laws that enshrined structural inequality

out of this promise.

 

During reconstructionthe United States enacted laws that enshrined structural inequality for people who had been enslaved, their descendants, and all who looked like them.

We are still enacting laws to disenfranchise and disempower black Americans.

 

We continue to work to suppress the black vote.

Separate but equal was never equal. 

Separation, and continued inequality, was the intent and outcome of Jim Crow laws. 

Our nation did not want to integrate schools, cafes or communities, and we still fear integration.

The GI bill was written to exclude black Americans. 

Our criminal justice system primarily exists to oppress black bodies. 

Welfare reform is an effort to starve the black community of resources.

Our political, economic, and educational systems are built in ways that continue the oppressive legacy of slavery. 

We live in a nation that prioritizes the lives, the bodies, the families, the careers and the feelings of people of European descent over those of African descent. 

We benefit from these systems and defend them to maintain our own power.

These systems keep us from living in full and loving relationship with our neighbors of African descent.

Thinking about the legacy of slavery makes us uncomfortable. 

Talking about white supremacy makes us angry. 

We are afraid of losing the power and privilege that white supremacy provides. 

We must repent of our knowing and unknowing consent and complicity in this nation’s systems of oppression. 

We must ask for forgiveness from our Holy God, and for God’s spirit to work within us that we might have the power, strength and grace to change. 

(Disruptworship.com – confession and repentance on the 400^th anniversary of slavery in the United States – edited for this use)

Remember, two things –

In his first sermon in Luke’s Gospel Jesus reads a jubilee text from the Prophets, proclaiming good news to the poor, sight to the blind, liberty for captives and the oppressed, and the year of God’s gracious favor.

And, at this point in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, and there’s just no time left to mess around. There’s no time to play nice, to worry about bringing people along slowly. He’s going to be dead soon, condemned and put to death by the very same sort of religious leaders who become offended by the healing of this poor woman who had suffered for 18 long years, offended that Jesus would dare to end the suffering of a fellow human being, because they believe healing constitutes doing work on the Sabbath.

 

Well, Jesus doesn’t have time to play these religious games! Jesus sees this woman, I mean, really sees her, as a daughter of Abraham and a child of God. Jesus sees her and sets her free, though doing so breaks quite a few rules

• A man was not to touch a woman who was not his wife or family, but he lays his hands on her.
• One was not to do work on the Sabbath, but he does a work of healing.
• Luke tells us that, according to the understanding of the day, it was a demonic spirit that was the cause of her ailment, which would make her unclean. But Jesus touches her anyway, even though touching the untouchable, touching the unclean, made the toucher unclean as well.
• And perhaps worst of all, at least in the eyes of those who decide not long from this day that Jesus deserves to die, because he’s a blasphemer, he prioritizes the need of this demon possessed unclean woman over the very word and law of God!…

 

And with all of this in mind, I’m left wondering what this means for us? How might we form our lives, and our beliefs, and our actions, in order to more closely conform to the image of this one we call Lord?

 

Well, for starters, we might, like Jesus, move toward a new understanding of Sabbath. Rather than seeing it as a Law, as a religious rule that must be observed and fulfilled on a particular day each week, perhaps we could begin to understand Sabbath as a way of life. In welcoming and healing this woman, Jesus is setting a pattern for us – he’s enacting that jubilee teaching he first proclaimed in his hometown, and he continues to do so here and now as we gather on this day.

 

No one is considered unclean, or unwelcome here.

 

God in Christ meets us here with words of healing and acceptance.

 

Having received God’s forgiveness, love, and grace through word and Sacrament, we leave here unburdened of whatever burden has bent us over – whatever has made us unable to stand up straight – and having been freed and straightened up by the forgiveness that Jesus proclaims to us, we are called to enact that freedom by how we live in the world, including in how we address the continuing ramifications of chattel slavery in our lives and in our society at large.

 

In this place, welcome and inclusion take precedence over religious rules and legalism.

 

But none of this is meant to pretend that we’ve got this all down pat as a faith community, or that everything is always good and easy in our individual lives or in our life together as a congregation, but, rather, that we remember who has gathered us here together and why, recalling with the Psalmist all of God’s benefits:

• The forgiveness of sins
• Healing of whatever causes us disease
• Redemption from sin and death
• Steadfast love and mercy
• The giving of good things to satisfy our desires
• Vindication and justice for the oppressed
• Compassion and mercy and steadfast love

These are the gifts of God for all of God’s people clearly offered here through word and sacrament, given to us that we might be sustained from Sabbath to Sabbath, and empowered to love the world the way our God in Christ loves it –

• Empowered to advocate for justice, and an end to systems that oppress
• Empowered to speak up and to speak out against those who demonize others, against those who point the accusatory finger and consider others as less than themselves
• Empowered to feed the hungry and to satisfy the needs of the afflicted

 

This, dear people of God in Christ, is how we keep the Sabbath, in the way that Jesus kept the Sabbath. This is how we bless the Lord and forget not all of God’s benefits – by offering them to others as freely as they have been offered to us, that all people might stand up straight together, having been touched by God’s healing hands, restored by God’s gift of grace, and sent out in faith to proclaim God’s saving love for all the world!

 

Amen!