14 Pentecost/Lectionary 21 August 25, 2013
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson
Isaiah 58: 6-12 + Psalm 103: 1-8 + Luke 13: 10-17
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
As students of all ages prepare to go back to school, we are preparing, at our house, to send the youngest child off to college. She is knee deep in preparations for this now less than one month away occasion, and included in those preparations has been the task of purchasing her textbooks for her first quarter classes.
This exercise in strengthening the economy by spending copious amounts of money on text books (thankfully she managed to buy them online for a fraction of the retail cost) reminded me of my first quarter at seminary. Armed with our book lists, we incoming students went down to the seminary bookstore. I will never forget the title of the first book I bought in the course of my seminary education – in fact, it still occupies a space on the bookshelves in my office here at Luther Memorial. Ironically enough, as we embarked on our first day of seminary, the title of the book was “Why Are We Here?” It was the question we were all, perhaps, asking ourselves.
The second day of my seminary career found that question taking on new and more significant meaning. You see, the first day of my seminary education was September 10, 2001.
After the events of September 11th, understanding why we were here, both at seminary and in life and in light of the countless lives lost, the question gained urgency.
It’s a good question to ask ourselves, both in broad, general ways and in specific ways…..it’s a good question to ask ourselves as families and as individuals and as couples and as communities of faith.
Why Are We Here?
The book itself is a compilation of essays by theologians from different denominations in the Christian faith. They are all graduates of Yale and they decided to write about those things that they think help answer the overarching question Why Are We Here. It’s a fine book. And it was a good place to begin in my seminary studies.
This coming week marks the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. I was only three years old at the time and don’t remember anything at all about it. But a colleague of mine remembers it well. She recalls the ways that she was shaped by the news reports of what was happening as various civil rights leaders, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gathered in Washington D.C. to lead a march that would remind the nation of the important work of the Civil Rights movement.
It seems to me that Dr. King and those gathered in Washington fifty years ago had a clear sense of why they were there. They were there to help bring a peaceful end to the injustice of racial discrimination. They were there to do what the prophet Isaiah identifies as the work of justice making: “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. To share bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into this house,, offer your food to the hungry, satisfy the needs of the afflicted.”
The easy thing for us to do as we hold our history in one hand and this passage from Isaiah in the other is to affirm the work of Dr. King and those gathered fifty years ago. And we ought to affirm it. But we cannot and must not stop there. The words of the prophet Isaiah are for all of us. And the bonds of injustice are still in place.
In the Gospel reading for today Jesus is in the synagogue, teaching on the Sabbath day and the text says “just then there appeared a woman.” What we need to remember is that this woman would not have been allowed into the area of the synagogue where Jesus was teaching. But there she is bent over, unable to stand straight, bound by what is ailing her. And Jesus calls her over to him. He does not hesitate. He did not wait for her to take action or speak to him. And then he did another unspeakable thing, he spoke directly to her. Jewish law would have him speak to her husband or other male relative. And then he sets her free. He sets her free with a word – with “a thundering sentence of liberation”.
Against all of the religious and societal norms of his day, Jesus chooses to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free.
The Gospel is, at its very basis, truth telling. It is freedom for the oppressed. And we have misused it and mis-construed it into some kind of morality code to allow those with power to remain in control of the institution that bears its name.
Our new Presiding Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, tells the story of her college age nephew. He told her that he did not believe in God. She asked him to describe the God he didn’t believe in. After listening to his description of a wrathful, anti-science, anti-intellectual deity, she told him, ” ‘I don’t believe in that God either.’
The task ahead of us as a Church, and as this congregation, is to tell the story of the God who loosens what binds us and what binds our sisters and brothers. It is to stop pointing our fingers and speaking ill of others, because at the very least those activities are a waste of time and at the most they are sinful. They separate us from God. But what God calls us to are the tasks of justice making.
Now, we can’t all go march on Washington….although some of us can. Or we can do something like it. We can march in the Pride Parade. We can hold our elected leaders accountable when they support legislation that does not respect the dignity of every human being. Every one. We can support the missions and ministries of our congregation that advocate for justice and peace. We can contribute to the ministries that share our bread with the hungry and that literally bring the homeless poor into this house.
And every day….we can keep our eyes open for that person who is bent over under the weight of life. Because they are all around us…they are where we work and where we walk and where we eat and they are where we worship. Bent over by the demands of life. Beaten down by the way life goes. They are the stranger and the friend. They are the person closest to us. They are us.
And what we need in those days and in those times and in those moments…..is to speak a word of freedom to one another and to receive it from one another. You are free from what ails you, said Jesus to the woman in the synagogue.
Because the truth of the Gospel has liberated us for this. The truth of the Gospel has called us to be those people who work for justice and freedom.
Oh, we might say….I can’t do that. Even if you think you can’t…we can. And God promises to enable and empower us for the task. Isaiah says that when we do these things “….then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 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.”
This is why we are here. Because of the freedom of the Gospel, and the opportunity to serve on its behalf.
Thanks be to God. Amen.