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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2019-08-29, Page 8PAGE 8. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019. By Rev. JoAnn Todd Trinity Anglican, Byth St. John’s Anglican, Brussels This past Sunday, we heard the story from Luke’s gospel that has come to be known as “the healing of the bent-over woman”. Jesus healed this woman on the Jewish Sabbath, in the synagogue, which was a problem for the synagogue’s leader. He took issue with Jesus for ‘working’ on the Sabbath – a day when good and pious Jews limited their work to only the bare-bones minimum as defined by their laws, in response to the fourth commandment: “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy” (Exodus 20.8). By choosing to heal the bent over woman, Jesus was not only pushing the boundaries of the Sabbath law, he was out and out breaking them. Jesus knew what he was doing. From the viewpoint of adherence to the law, the synagogue leader had a point. The laws were made for good reason. God had ordered a day to keep the Sabbath as a day of holy rest since Genesis. Lines had to be drawn, it could be a slippery slope – I mean, the woman was in no acute distress, it was hardly a critical life or death issue. Was it really necessary for Jesus to heal this woman on a Sabbath day? She hadn’t asked Jesus to heal her, he called her over! It seems that Jesus sees the situation with different eyes than the synagogue leader. Jesus saw with eyes of compassion first, eyes not bound by strict adherence to man- made laws, regardless of the sincerity behind their making. He saw a woman walking by who was suffering, and probably had been for many years, and he had the ability to heal her, to release her from her affliction and so he did. But then, I suppose, when he called her over, he could have told her to come back the next day offering to heal her then, or even if he had waited until after sundown, when the Sabbath was officially over that would have been alright too. So, was it really necessary to break the law of the Sabbath? I mean, the law is the law, right? This is an interesting story Luke presents. It illustrates that the boundaries we put on ourselves, and each other, can bind us up too, hemming in our attitudes and responses – even when those boundaries may have come from the very best of intentions, or our own self-imposed boundaries resulting from our own personal experiences. Limitations, rules, laws that people create, even apparently religious ones, can cause us to limit our ability to see and respond to the world with compassionate eyes, the way Jesus would see it – and how Jesus would have us see it. We can be blinded to the needs, the pain of others – while we’re convinced we’re doing the right thing! That’s what Jesus takes umbrage with: the inflexibility, the keeping of the law for the sake of the law, at the cost of compassion towards people. In fact, just to further emphasize his point, he actually laid his hands upon her, which also went against all their laws. Men did not touch women who were strangers to them! He makes himself ceremoniously unclean by doing so too. And then he quotes their own law right back at them, “… But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don’t you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? 16 This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years. Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?” Luke 13: 14, 15 (NLT). There were provisions within the laws to care for one’s livestock on a Sabbath. It was alright to set their animals free from their tethers to lead them to get a drink, yet it was not alright to heal a good Jewish woman; to free her from the ailment that tethered her to a most uncomfortable and restrictive way of life. And that was the issue for Jesus – not so much the law itself, but the thinking that put the adherence to law before the needs of people. The laws were supposed to outline the ways for following a life that was righteous to God. But how was this interpretation of the Sabbath law actually doing God’s will? Well, when you put it this way, when you look at it like that, this was not God’s way, and we read that the people who were there agreed with Jesus. I had to feel just little bit for the leader, being called out in public like that. I’m sure he felt he was just doing his job as a leader, pointing out infractions to the law. But, you know, it was as though he was just as stuck in his thinking as the woman was stuck in her bent-over position. He was totally unaware of how his desire to live by the law, so ruled his thinking that it closed off his mind and his heart to the point that he was unable to see anything else outside of those imposed boundaries. He had lost touch with what God truly wants from God’s people. His attitude needed an adjustment, and Jesus most definitely takes the opportunity to do so. So this, in a way, was an opportunity for a two- fold healing, the healing of woman’s body, and an opportunity to heal the hurtful attitude held by the misguided leader. Yet, the synagogue leader felt he was really doing the right thing, telling Jesus that he was breaking the Sabbath laws. We all have these attitudes; ways of thinking and interpreting and convictions or “those notions” as my mother-in-law would call them. Sometimes we don’t even realize we carry them; prejudices or preconceptions that blind us or harden us to the hurts and needs of others. They can be so subtle that we’re not always aware of it ourselves. It’s not always as blatant as our Bible example, and sometimes we need to be called out on it too, before we can see it in ourselves, like Jesus did with the synagogue leader. This got me thinking about the mindsets and attitudes, even the prejudices that we to hold onto, that prevent us from seeing the world as Jesus might and prevent us from seeing the pain in the lives of others; attitudes that harden our hearts, as well as our minds, and so they hurt us as well. In this day and age, fundamentalist beliefs come immediately to mind – whether Christian fundamentalism or Muslim extremism and, more of late, white nationalism. But truly, those are extremes, and anything taken to the extreme can be deadly. The ones most of us see and hold are much more subtle. What “notions” do you hold that harden your heart towards someone, or some group of people? Some of our attitudes, our inflexibilities, are long held, maybe even given to us by our parents, often reinforced by the people with whom we socialize. We all tend to have something, even inadvertently, that we pass judgment on, or tend to pass condemnation on, and some people even use scripture to back up the justification. For example, I’ve been subjected to some not always positive attitudes about female members of the clergy, and there are other attitudes we hold that close our eyes to the pain and situations of others, for example the down and out drug-addicted, those with mental illness, street people, or ex-cons, gays and transgendered folk, immigrants with different clothing or skin colour, the unemployed and the poor on welfare and Indigneous peoples. When you hear or talk about people different from you, your social circle, what comes to mind? Where do your thoughts go? Where does your heart lead you? What do you see first, the label and attitudes we’ve affixed to them or the person and their needs? This is the point of our story about Jesus calling out the synagogue leader. He saw the law before he huronchapel.com huronchapelkids.com huronchapelyouth.com 519-526-1131 ~ 119 John’s Ave., Auburn Evangelical Missionary Church Sat. Sept. 7, 7:30 a.m. - Men’s Breakfast Sun. Sept. 15, 9:30 a.m. - SUNDAY SCHOOL resumes! 10:30 a.m. Worship Pastor Phil Delsaut - “Jesus. Who is Your Pathfinder?” (Jn.14) Sunday, September 1 Office Hours: Thursday ~ 9:30 am - 2:00 pm blythunited@tcc.on.ca Guest Speaker: David Kai Accessible Sunday, September 1 Blyth United Church Facebook: Blyth and Brussels United Churches OFFICE: 519-523-4224 Worship Service at 9:30 am Serving lunch & supper upstairs at Blyth Arena & Sunday booth at Threshers ~ Sept. 6, 7 & 8 Youre Invited to come worship with us Sunday, September 1 at 10:30 a.m. 650 Alexander St. (former Brussels Public School) Sunday School for children 4 to 12 years of age at 9:30 a.m. Childcare provided for infants and preschoolers during the sermon. Coffee & cookies after the morning service. Summer evening service 6:00 p.m. at various homes. For additional details please contact Steve Klumpenhower 519.292.0965 Rick Packer 519.527.0173 MELVILLE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH BRUSSELS SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 Nursery care available 519-887-6687 Fridays 11:30 am - 1:00 pm ~ Soup & More 2 - a free community meal held in Melville’s basement, and made possible by the Brussels churches working together. Worship & Sunday School - 11:00 am Coffee & Snacks following the service We invite you to join our church family in: BRUSSELS United Church No service Sunday, September 1 Join us for worship at Brussels United September 8 at 11 a.m. Hwy. 4, Blyth www.blythcrc.ca 519-523-4743 Minister: Pastor Gary van Leeuwen BLYTH CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH SUNDAYS Morning Service 10:00 am Evening Service 7:30 pm You’re Invited To Join Us In Worship The Regional Ministry of Hope BLYTH BRUSSELS Trinity St. John’s 9:15 am 11:15 am COME WORSHIP WITH US! Rev. JoAnn Todd, Rector 519-357-7781 email: revjoann@hurontel.on.ca The‐Regional‐Ministry‐of‐ Hope St. Paul’s Trinity WINGHAM 11:15 am These Anglican Churches Welcome You From the Minister’s Study Learning from the healing of the bent-over woman Continued on page 13