Eleventh Sunday after Trinity 2022

 

The Gospel set for this Sunday, Luke 14:1-14, is wonderful. Let’s take a closer look. (The Lectionary skips over verses 2-6, but I’m including them.)

It begins like this: Once, Jesus was invited to a sabbath meal at the home of a prominent local Pharisee, and those present were observing him scrupulously.

The Pharisees were a grass-roots movement, committed to working out what it looked like, in practice, in practical ways, to live according to God’s law in their day, many centuries after it was given to their nomadic ancestors. They were passionate about God’s law, and how it sustained a righteous life, a life that embodied the justice and mercy the Lord desired. They were committed to scrupulous observation, being careful not to cause offence to God, even unintentionally, in how they worked-out their faith. To this end, they had developed an Oral law of interpretation of the Written law.

And like everyone else, they were intrigued by Jesus. Like everyone else, they were trying to work out what to make of him; and as with the wider community, we see Pharisees who approve of Jesus and Pharisees who oppose him.

In this instance, there is no hint of opposition, only approval. Jesus is the most-honoured guest at the table on the most-honoured day, and they are observing him scrupulously: it is important to the host that no offence is caused his guest, even unintentionally. The Written law prohibited cooking on the sabbath, but the Oral law upheld the principle of sabbath meals as celebratory occasions and enabled the eating of hot food by determining that food should be cooked on the previous day and maintained over a steady low heat. Indeed, the Pharisees made a point of eating hot food on the sabbath, while the Sadducess—the ruling class who controlled the Temple, and who rejected the Oral law—made a point of only eating cold food. What would Jesus eat? Would serving him hot food offend him, or be acceptable to him? The host longs to share their celebration of God’s goodness with Jesus but has an underlying anxiety that the intention might be spoiled by unintended offence.

Just then, right in front of Jesus, there is a man who has swollen legs, who suffers from fluid retention that would make walking painful, be a cause of shame, and perhaps an indicator of a slow but ultimately fatal internal organ failure. And Jesus asks those present, who are passionate about living in harmony with God and neighbour, whether it is permissible to treat an invalid on the sabbath?

Last Sunday we saw Jesus heal a woman in the synagogue on the sabbath, and the leader of the synagogue, indignant, argues that the law prohibits attending to invalids on the sabbath. In fact the community had been debating whether it was permissible to treat an invalid—which, undoubtedly, might require the preparation of medicines (which, like food, might be prepared the day before)—for two hundred years before Jesus, and would continue doing so for two hundred years after Jesus, before settling on a definitive answer that the higher principle of saving life was an exception—indeed, a mandatory exception—to the prohibitions of the law. In Jesus’ day, several prominent rabbis had argued that it was permissible to extinguish a light on the sabbath—something prohibited—if that light were preventing an invalid from the sleep that sustains life.

In the synagogue, Jesus calls the view that adherence to the law overrules saving life, hypocritical. But what happens at the home of the leader of the Pharisees is the absolute opposite of what happened in the synagogue. Before he acts, Jesus asks, is it permissible to treat an invalid on the sabbath? We know that, strictly speaking, it is prohibited; but is it permissible? I am a guest in your house: do I have your permission?

My English translation tells me, ‘But they were silent.’ Which could suggest that they were put to shame or being defiant. But Jesus does not come to bring, or add to, shame. Rather, he comes to usher-in sabbath rest, and to still the storms. The Greek text conveys the sense that ‘they rested from work, ceased from altercation, lived quietly.’ In other words, they took sabbath seriously, setting aside the work of interpreting the law (winnowing, prohibited). That is to imply, they had come to a sense of completion on this issue. Their silence is not hostile, but an affirmative response: Great Physician, you are welcome to attend to any invalids present here.

So, Jesus heals the man with the physical condition, and, in contrast to the synagogue, no one disputes it. (Jesus articulates the principle that rescuing life is more essential than sabbath observance—given the context, I’d suggest that he is affirming the view of those present; in contrast, at the synagogue, Jesus had cited a milder example—basic care for life, rather than rescue—as an example of the hypocrisy of his critics.) And so, Jesus continues to attend to the infirm, bringing healing, first to the other guests, then to the host.

The guests are anxious, lest, in determining the order they reclined at the table, they should cause offence, should unintentionally rupture relationship. In an honour-shame society, everyone needs to know their place—who I ought to defer to, and who ought to defer to me—and, unless you lack any self-awareness and other-awareness, can cause considerable awkwardness. Again, there is no confrontation here. This story is not like Jesus rebuking his disciples for each arguing that they are the greatest. Rather, he seems to be observing a group tying themselves in knots in their desire to get it right. And Jesus unties the knots. (Both tying knots and untying knots are prohibited on the sabbath.) Assume the lowest place, Jesus says, and let the host decide. Moreover, Jesus reveals a fundamental principle of the heavenly banquet that the sabbath meal anticipates: God, the host, longs to honour you. So many of us have been raised, often subconsciously, to believe that we can unintentionally offend God, a God who is watching closely for this very thing to happen; whereas Jesus, the healer, says, God is longing to honour you, to exalt you, to delight in you in the presence of others.

Having healed the man who was retaining fluid, and the guests paralysed by anxiety, Jesus at last attends to his host. Again, the issue at hand is anxiety, around social standing; and, underlying this, just as internal organ failure can underly presenting dropsy, anxiety about our standing before God. When you host a meal, Jesus says, don’t do so on a reciprocal basis, inviting those who can invite you to be the guest of honour at their table in return. Instead, throw banquets for those who cannot reciprocate, the poor, the crippled who have no social standing. For you will know happiness in this present time, and you will be recompensed at the resurrection of the righteous—that is, when Israel is restored, and those who lived unjustly will be humbled, and those who lived justly will be raised up.

Again, this is not a rebuke, but an affirmation. For Jesus’ host is already living this way. He has invited as guests to his sabbath meal a man afflicted by dropsy, and an itinerant rabbi who, if he carries on like this, is going to get himself killed. Jesus is affirming his host and ministering to his anxiety that his desire to please God, costly as it is likely to be, will turn out to be for nothing. No, says Jesus, you are on the right track; you are modelling the table of the life to come. May your determination be renewed and restored. May you always have at your disposal the resources of the kingdom of God.

May you, also, know the presence of Jesus in our midst, untying your burden and setting you free.

 

Tenth Sunday after Trinity 2022

 

Lectionary readings: Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Hebrews 12:18-29 and Luke 13:10-17

One sabbath, when the community were gathered at the synagogue, Jesus was opening the scriptures so that they came alive for people, when a woman came in, late.

‘Excuse me…Excuse me…I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to tread on your toes…Oh, hello, I didn’t see you there. Are you keeping well?’

‘Be quiet! I’m trying to listen. To Jesus.’

‘Do you mind? You’re blocking my view. Would you just sit down!?’

Except that Jesus doesn’t let her just sit down, because there are now two people preaching in the synagogue, and, right at this moment, Jesus discerns, the sermon being proclaimed by the woman is the one that the Holy Spirit wants heard. So, Jesus stops delivering the sermon he had planned, and calls her over to him—which takes several moments, and feels even longer, because she is bent double and can only shuffle very slowly—and proclaims freedom. And in that moment, she is set free, from whatever the weakness was that had been constraining her for the past eighteen years. She stood up, straighter and taller than she had been for years: one vertebra stacked upon another; back muscles working in ways that have become unfamiliar. Healing and wholeness flowing through Jesus’ hands to her. And right there, in front of everyone, she starts praising God!

But the ruler of the synagogue, the person who liked to exercise power over the proceedings, was indignant. This is not how we do things around here. This is not the right way to worship. Therapy is work, and there are six days for that: but not the sabbath. Let another time be found. This disruption is unseemly.

Jesus replies, you hypocrites! Play-actors, putting on a religious performance, going through the motions, wearing your sabbath-best masks so no-one sees what is really going on, so that no-one is made to feel uncomfortable by your pain.

Jesus says, you untie your ox and your donkey on the sabbath and lead them outside and make sure they have water to drink. They have been tied up overnight. This woman has been bound for eighteen years, bound by the satan, the Accuser. Bound by accusing words, such as have just been spoken by the ruler of the synagogue, who, in seeking to exercise power has taken on the voice of the satan. For eighteen years, your weekly religious performance has done nothing to bring freedom to this woman from the thing that restrains her and weighs her down. You’ve given her nothing to praise God for. This is what God wants. It isn’t hard labour to release praise: praise, offered up to God, is the very thing the sabbath is supposed to gather, as we come, from our scattered lives, to celebrate God’s goodness.

In the Old Testament reading set for today, the Lord appoints Jeremiah to the prophetic task ‘to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’ And in the New Testament reading, from the Letter to the Hebrews, we are told that God is shaking everything that has been created, so that only that which is unshakeable—the unshakeable kingdom of God—will remain: ‘Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe’.

In the synagogue, Jesus shakes things up. He is met with a power-struggle, by the vested-interest to do things the way we like it. God, on our terms.

But the sermon that the woman and Jesus tell together isn’t just something Jesus did, once. It was a demonstration of what Jesus wanted to do for all God’s people. To set them free from the things that bound them. Free to praise God, from the heart. To set us free from the things that bind us, from the scripts and roles we are afraid to depart from and improvise under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

Come, Lord Jesus! Set your people free to worship you without fear. Amen.

 

Ninth Sunday after Trinity 2022

 

Gospel reading: Luke 12:49-56

I have the Met Office weather app on my phone, and I check it, religiously, every morning. If it forecasts rain, I don’t go out without a waterproof layer, and if it forecasts heat, I leave my jumper at home. But that isn’t what Jesus is talking about. He spoke into an agrarian society, where longed-for rain might soften the ground for ploughing, or activate seed in the soil, but where you would push to bring in the harvest before it was ruined by rain. Or where a hot wind could wither shoots before they were established, and a prolonged hot spell could devastate that year’s harvest. Our own farmers have been hit, first by a lack of rain and then by heat waves. The UK harvests will be greatly reduced this year, at the same time the war in Ukraine is cutting grain off from the global market. Our farmers are already eating into food set aside for their animals for this coming winter. And when the rains do come, on hard-baked ground, there will be flooding and soil erosion to contend with.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, we are in the tightening grip of global climate change provoked by human (in)action, and we need to read the signs of the times and know how to respond. But Jesus calls the crowd play-actors (hypocrites, theatre mask-wearers) who act as if the material world was all that exists, and not as a people dependent on the loving-kindness of a faithful covenant-making God.

Longed-for rain in a dry land, and wind that blows wherever it will, are both ways of speaking of the activity of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, they should be understood as metaphors for the lives of Spirit-filled women and men, of the Spirit-filled community. We are called to bless our communities, in Jesus’ name, as life-giving rain falls on a dry land causing crops to bear fruit, resulting in economic stability and in joy. We are called to live lives that are as free and as note-worthy as the wind. We live this way when we are led by the Spirit, who enables us to hear Jesus’ voice, to discern what the Father is doing, and who empowers us to respond with all we are.

We learn to hear the voice of Jesus through the discipline of prayer, rooted in Scripture. All those who are baptized into Jesus’ baptism have the incredible privilege of hearing his voice; but the process is fascinating. Jesus says he has come to bring division within the family, the Church, three against two and two against three. What ought we make of this?

I want to suggest that the division Jesus brings is intentional, between people who are committed to one another and to Jesus himself, and that it is this messy, and at times painful, tension that creates the necessary environment, or conditions, for the life-giving creativity of the Holy Spirit. This is not the radical individualism of five against five, a familiar malaise in our culture, which leads to paralysis. But neither is the goal unity based on all thinking the same thing: that describes a cult. Our unity is in Jesus, alone, and he has come to bring division.

In recent days, Anglican bishops and archbishops from all around the world have gathered for the Lambeth Conference. Almost all the commentary has focused on matters on which they disagree. The Communion is undoubtedly stretched, to what feels like the very limits, and to some extent already broken. And yet it is over this unpromising face of the waters that the Spirit hovers, calling out all manner of life.

Some identify as progressive Christians. Progressive Christianity can be nothing more than the latest iteration of Gnosticism, the heretical belief of possessing a superior faith to the majority. Or it can be the Spirit blowing where the Spirit will; and filling our sails. Others identify as traditional or orthodox Christians. Traditional Christianity can be nothing more than legalism, possessing a form of godliness but denying the presence, and therefore the power, of God. Or it can be faithful countercultural witness in a hostile or indifferent world. Neither camp is right or good by its own virtue, but only in as much as we hear and respond to the voice of Jesus, who calls three against two and two against three, thus opening-up creative space. Moreover, it is possible to set out in step with the Spirit, but to go off track; and it is possible to wander, lost, but be led back into the Way. There is, therefore, no place for confidence in our own wisdom, but, on the other hand, no need for despair. In the tension of three against two and two against three, while remaining members of the family, committed to one another, we may be used by the grace of God to save one another from our own hubris.

In this process, fire, yet another image of the Holy Spirit as witnessed on the day of Pentecost, is kindled on the earth. Fire, by which those who are cold may be warmed, and over which those who are hungry may be fed. We live in days of great turmoil, and in it all, our churches may look to be disappearing. What if, in fact, these are days in which Jesus is renewing our churches in preparation for a great harvest?