| August 26, 2007 - 13th Sunday
after Pentecost First
Reading: Isaiah 58:9b-14 Gospel: Luke 13:10-17 Sermon by Pastor Katherine Douglass Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Being good and doing good - the Bible has a lot to say about both of those actions - being good and doing good. And our life as disciples of Jesus is to include both - both being good - striving, trying, to do God's will, to live out the Ten Commandments in all their possibilities; to live lives as God would have us live them and doing good - doing justice to those who are in need and oppressed, doing the right thing, as the saying goes. After all, righteousness - being good - and justice - doing good are words that describe what God loves - and what God desires to be our way of life and how Christ, God in the flesh, lives. And so, if we are to follow Christ, righteousness and justice are to be the pattern of our lives, as well. Not one or the other - not being good or doing good, but both. Living out God's will for us and at the same time doing justice to our neighbor. That’s the disciple's life. These days, we hear voices that would have us turn our backs on one or the other of these twin principles of our life as Christ's disciples. On the one hand, you hear people ask - well, what do need God for, what do I need church for - as long as I try to do the right thing? As long as I help out people who are in need, give to charity, volunteer my time to help the hungry, the ill, the homeless - isn't that all I need to do? Isn’t volunteering at Habitat on Saturday the same as going to church on Sunday? If I do the right things to the right people, what more is there? And then there are the voices on the other side, which say - If you worship God and go to church, and read your Bible each day, what more is there to being a good person? As long as I'm faithful in my worship life, why do I need to bother with other people, or with the problems of the world? Aren't we supposed to cut ourselves off from the world's problems, after all? Aren't we supposed to live as if the world didn't exist? The answer, which comes through in Scripture today, is that neither one of these voices is right - both have only half of the picture - only half of the coin of discipleship. Because being a faithful disciple means both loving God and our neighbor - being a faithful disciple means both doing good and being good - it means living the good life. Living the good life is not living high on the hog, as some might say, living large – it is living a life of love of God and service to the neighbor, It means doing justice, yes, but more than just removing social injustice, feeding the hungry and caring for the sick. It’s also honoring the Sabbath, that is, worshipping the Lord on the Lord's day, Isaiah, the prophet, tells us that worship is just as important as doing good. Refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day. Call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable. Don't serve your own interests or pursue your own affairs on the Sabbath, Isaiah says, but keep it holy. Use it to honor God by worshipping God. Doing good and just things is not enough - we must also set aside a part of our lives for worshipping God, and for honoring God and hearing God's word. When we honor the Sabbath by worshiping God, we say to the world who it is that is really important. After all, if we just did good works and did not take time to honor and worship God, people just might think we were doing those good things for our own self-interest, or because we were such nice people. And we might even come to believe that, too, and forget all about God. This combination of doing good and being good is a delicate balance, as we learn in our gospel lesson. Jesus, we learn, was observing the Sabbath by teaching in the Synagogue. He was in God's house proclaiming God's word on the Sabbath - When along came a situation that challenged both him and the leaders of the synagogue - and what Jesus does in this situation shows us how being good and doing good can live together. It seems that a woman appeared in the synagogue, a woman who had suffered for eighteen years, Suffered with a spine that was bent over and made her unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are free from your ailment" and when he laid his hands on her, she immediately stood up and began praising God. This woman who had been crippled for eighteen years was in the synagogue one Sabbath - we might imagine her in our minds eye - maybe you know an older woman with a back that seems permanently bent over. How that woman must have suffered - she most likely could not have done the things she needed to do for her family - if she even had a family to care for. She might have been homeless, with no one to care for her and no way to care for herself. You can imagine that she really was be captive, a prisoner to her ailment - it dictated her every move - what she could do and where she could go and how she was treated. She could do almost nothing without taking her ailment into consideration. It ruled her life. She was its captive, its prisoner. And so imagine what she experienced when Jesus saw her and called her over. He said to her, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." And when he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. Imagine that release that she must have felt as if chains had been taken off her, as if prison doors had been opened wide. Wow - in the middle of worship, Jesus reaches out to heal a woman, literally to set the captive free - some might say - that's the most appropriate and right thing that could happen - that someone would be touched by the Word of God and healed as they were worshipping. But, the leaders of the synagogue didn't see it that way - they saw Jesus healing the woman as something that was out of place on the Sabbath. They did not see that being good - worshipping and doing good – healing - should be connected with each other. They believed that the Sabbath was a time when no work was to be done - not even good work - not even helping someone who was suffering - not even satisfying the needs of the afflicted, to use the prophet Isaiah's words. But Christ teaches them - and us - that being good and doing good do live together - one with out the other is not the way God wants us to live. He says, even on the Sabbath, you make sure your animals have water to drink. So, isn't this woman, a daughter of Abraham, entitled to be freed from her affliction on the Sabbath? Isn't a woman entitled to basic justice? Jesus asks, especially one who has been oppressed - literally bent over - for eighteen years? Doesn't the Father desire that this woman be set free from her bondage to this illness? Of course the Father does. Doing Justice to those who are in need goes along with loving God in worship. The two can't be separated from one another - because both are part of God's plan for our lives. We can't neglect doing justice - doing the right thing - for others and for our society. And neither can we neglect praising and thanking God in our worship. Because without justice, the world is held captive, in the dark about God's love in Christ. And without worship, we walk like prisoners, in darkness, without the light of Christ. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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