Trinity 10
Sermon preached by Gavin Koh
Isaiah 58.9b–14
Luke 13.10–17
Is it possible to follow the law and be in the wrong?
How about the other way around?
Is it possible to break the law and be in the right?
Let me introduce myself. My name is Gavin. I am not a priest and I am not training to be a priest; I am a fellow member of this congregation sharing notes with you. One Christian to another.
I am a medical doctor and I spent many years in the NHS working in hospital on a Sunday; and today’s gospel resonates with me. Let me tell you that my life would indeed have been more pleasant if patients chose not to fall ill on a Sunday.
Is it possible to follow the law and be in the wrong?
Is it possible to break the law and be in the right?
Imagine you are lying in an ambulance having a heart attack, how much sympathy would you have for the driver refusing to give way, because he thinks ambulances really ought to stick to the speed limit and stay on their side of the road?
In today’s gospel, Jesus heals a woman whose back is bent over double. I don't know what disease she has. I might speculate that she had tuberculosis of the spine and that infection had eaten away at her spine and caused it to collapse. I don't know.
I do know that she is called the crippled woman. The bent woman. we don’t even know her name. She was someone who makes no contribution to her community, but is instead dependent on others.
The ruler of the synagogue makes clear by his words, that he sees her as a nuisance, a bother, a parasite, something not even deserving of a name.
To help interpret today's gospel, I think it is helpful to read what Jesus says in Mark 2. 27,
‘The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath’.
The sabbath is the day of rest. We work for six days and rest for one day. If we try to work continuously without rest, we burn out, we fail. We become tired, we make poor judgements. Leisure is not just something for the rich.
The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
The Sabbath was made for man that man might benefit from it, both physically and spiritually. If you work continuously without rest, you will come to physical and spiritual harm. The Sabbath was not created in order to multiply the burdensome rules that God’s people have to follow.
‘The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath’.
I think that Luke chapter 13 is a great example of what this means. If the laws dehumanise us. If you take a verse from the Bible and wring every drop of human blood from it, it is possible to turn any verse of the Bible into something hard. Something cruel.
In today’s gospel, the Sabbath law is dry, something dispassionately applied, something inhumanly applied; with no consideration for the woman, the human being, to whom this is applied.
On 13 June, all 25 bishops of the Church of England who sit in the House of Lords, who sit as the conscience of this nation, wrote an open letter criticising the government’s decision to deport refugees to Rwanda.
The question is not whether or not the government's policy on refugees is legal. The question is whether it is the right thing to do, and the considered opinion of all 25 bishops is that it is not. And in calling this out,
The 25 most senior Diocesan Bishops of the church set us an example.
Refugees are not things. People do not choose to become refugees. No-one leaves the security of their own home without reason. Refugees are called refugees, because they flee danger. They are seeking refuge and protection from whatever terror or suffering they are running away. They deserve to be treated as human beings, not rubbish to be disposed of.
The crippled woman stood in the synagogue, bent over double and unable to look up at Jesus. Jesus looked at her and was filled with love and compassion for her.
He did not know her name, but he called her "Daughter of Abraham", and in doing so, calls out the hypocrisy of the Ruler of the Synagogue.
She was not just a cripple. A disfigured thing with no name. Jesus called out her full humanity,
Daughter of Abraham.
And in doing so, he points out that just as everyone in that synagogue is a descendant of Abraham, she is also a sister to everyone in that Synagogue, she too is a descendent of Abraham and a full member of that family.
Up to that point, they had seen her only as a thing, as something less than human.
Jesus shouts at them, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?’
You do not even have the same regard for her as you do for an ox or a donkey.
Jesus says, She is your sister. She deserves the same care and regard as everyone else in the synagogue. And it is that lack of regard, which allows you to claim that the Sabbath observance has a higher status than healing this woman. You do not even give her the respect you give to an animal.
The message of today’s gospel is simple:–
Let none of us ever treat a fellow human being as being anything less than human; for down that road, we find ourselves holding laws in higher regard than simple human dignity.