A Time for Liberation, a Space for Worship
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Hearing this story as a child I had a harder time understanding the indignation of the leader of the synagogue than I did believing the possibility of Jesus curing the crippled woman. I could wrap my head around an all-powerful and all-loving God wanting to bring healing. I could not understand how a worshiper of such a God could be so upset when such a healing took place.
But the older I got, the more I witnessed people in positions of power and authority become agitated and disgruntled when some other entity made a decision or exercised authority. When we look at the political landscape today, it does not matter if we look at the right-leaning conservative or the left-leaning liberal, the only good decision is the decision that their side makes. And every decision the other side makes is to be contested and resisted at all costs.
Unfortunately, religious institutions are no exception to this struggle for control. The will to power and dominance can find its way into our most sacred spaces and gatherings. However, in our Gospel text for this Sunday the contest for authority plays out in a radically different way than it does in our present-day corridors of power. Here we see an interesting dynamic of power playing out between Jesus, the crippled woman, and the synagogue leader. Jesus not only graciously encounters the woman and confronts the religious authorities in this text; Jesus also continues to encounter us and challenge our institutional dynamics. I would like to highlight two questions that we can draw from this text and pose to our current worshiping communities.
1. Do our worshiping communities perpetuate “spirits” of oppression, or do they liberate people from these powers?
To begin, the woman was not barred from the synagogue even though she had “a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.” While the synagogue was not responsible for bending her back towards the ground, its leaders were actively guarding against her liberation. “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” In other words, the synagogue leader believed that the oppressing forces of this world are not to be confronted or challenged within their religious gatherings. But Jesus seems to be at ease within this socially awkward confrontation. Jesus utilizes power and authority, but he employs them in three unique ways. First he sees her. Jesus beholds the woman whose gaze is perpetually bent towards the dust. She does not see her redeemer, but her redeemer sees her. Second, he pronounces her free with the authority of his word. Third, he lays his hand on her with the compassion of his humanity.
As the body of Christ, the Holy Spirit also empowers us to extend liberation — first to see the oppressed as well as the power structures that oppress them, then to utter words of liberation as well as words of confrontation, and then to embody grace with our physical actions. Are our worshiping communities liberating people in these ways, or are they allowing the “spirits” of oppression to exercise dominion over people? Do we see the people who are oppressed as well as the ones who are oppressing them? Are we speaking words of liberation or prohibition? Are we extending our hand to these people in tangible ways, embodying the reality that we see and proclaim?
2. Do our gatherings as a church help restore people to a renewed sense of health (bodily, mentally, and spiritually), which then increases their capacity to give glory to God?
What is the immediate response to Jesus’s deed of power? The woman is not only healed, but she immediately begins praising God. Her life was not only the site of God’s power (passive), but that divine activity in her life gave her a greater capacity to give glory to God (active). For Jesus, the place of worship was not a space to be guarded by a wall of prohibitions, but the liberating grounds for restoration and worship. The language that Luke uses here is not the language of healing but the language of being set free or untied. This is why Jesus references sections of the Torah that have to do with releasing or untying animals to lead them to water.
As the body of Christ, the Holy Spirit empowers our gatherings to be the space not only for worship, but also for various kinds of liberation. How often do our communities use prohibitions to mark out the boundaries of our space, rather than characterize our space as the place where true restoration and liberation can occur? There is no amount of prohibition that will stir the human soul to give glory to God. Are we seeing liberation within our communities? Do these liberations lead to greater expressions of worship and glory to God?
The work of the gospel, and the activity of Christ is not a one-and-done reality, but an on-going reality. God continues to do this kind of work today and we can only extend what we have experienced. Do we experience Christ like the synagogue leader or the crippled woman?