13th
Sunday after Pentecost
August
26, 2007
Rev.
Elizabeth Macaulay
Luke 13: 10-17
Jeremiah
1: 4-10
The View from Here
There are so many times
in scripture where there is a tussle about Sabbath. Jesus violates it, in the
opinion of the church elders, and they take him to task for it.
And it is well that
they do. When we caricature them in their insistence upon keeping Sabbath, we
run the risk of losing sight of one of the most precious gifts of our faith
heritage.
Sabbath.
Sabbath was created by
God as a day of rest. For all people. And the people
it was created for, the Hebrews who were making the bricks for Pharaoh and the
people who work at the Mall of America so we can shop on Sunday, the people it
was created for had for so very long labored under the cultural assumption that
their labor was to be exploited and used without regard for their need for
rest.
In creating the
Sabbath, God instructed God’s people to be aware that ALL people deserve and
need rest. Wealthy and poor alike. All people need a
time when work is not required of them.
What is required on the
Sabbath is an attitude of savoring. Worship of God and appreciation of creation
and an awareness that running pell-mell through life leaves precious little
time for gratitude.
So the Sabbath that is
being so firmly protected is gift. And Jesus knows this.
So too does he know the
gift of freedom and healing and the gift of being able to reach into places of
pain and provide comfort. So he acts in a way that honors the Sabbath and keeps
it holy. He sees a woman bound, and he sets her free.
(Read text)
So I have been thinking
this week about what the life of the bent-over woman would have been like.
Scripture tells us that a spirit had crippled her for eighteen years. She was
quite unable to stand up straight.
What was the scope of
her vision for those eighteen years? Her world would have become a place made
smaller and smaller by her inability to stand fully and see. There are so many
things that she would have missed, and so much discomfort she would have
experienced physically and socially.
Eighteen years she
lived that way. Because she put herself in the hands of Jesus and saw the sweep
and wonder and possibility of her life in the free, open chested
and hearted way that is his gift to creation.
On Friday I got a phone
call from one of our beloved congregants, the Rev. Jim Dodge. He and his wife
Marilyn were on their way to a gathering of friends for the weekend, but he
wanted to ask that we hold him in prayer on Monday and the days that follow.
Having been on this journey with him, as so many of you have been, I asked if I
could share his story on this day, and he agreed.
Jim grew up and lived
his days much as you and I do - he studied, married, and was about to commence
building family and life when he was diagnosed with cancer. The treatment for that
cancer damaged his body in such a way that he has been bound to a wheelchair
for much of his adult life. But in so many ways bound he is not. Jim pastored, golfed, loved, lived, and tooled around the lakes
in a specially formulated chair. He has begun non profits such as Life House,
an organization that seeks to provide spiritual direction for those of limited
means and difficult life situations. He provides free tax help to the working
poor. He is a spiritual director in retirement among other things. He is a
lavishly generous man.
And over a year ago, he
developed a pressure sore that went unnoticed until it was so deep that it
required surgery. Deep surgery which left a very large wound.
So now
a man who found such life in moving around in the summer and in being active
was placed in a position, literally, where he could not apply pressure to the
very part of his body that was necessary for him to be mobile.
And he was devastated.
He worked so hard to find any reason to anything other than shake his very
heart at God. It was too much. After so much it was too much.
But it was.
Jim and Marilyn’s
living room turned into his recovery unit. His life was frozen in the seemingly
endless time of healing.
But over time something
happened to the pain and fury in his soul. He consciously turned it over to
God. He made the decision (and this wasn’t a pretty and saintly process. It was
rough and messy and mucky) to allow God to work in whatever ways God needed to
in the midst of this wretched time.
Over
time, Jim came to call his living room his cell. Not in the term used for
prison rooms. A “cell” in monastic life, is the space where a monk lives and
breathes and prays and dedicates to the sniffing out of God in all that is.
And so it became for
our brother Jim as he began to pray deeply and think much on the ways and
workings of God.
He came to call the
opening in his flesh that needed such tending and had provoked such agony his
“sacred wound”. It was a portal, of sorts, into the pain of Jesus and the
constancy of Jesus’ presence and prompting in Jim’s life.
It has been over a
year. And he has found a new doctor who has a new technique to offer and Jim
will submit himself yet again to the terror of seeking healing - terror,
because it is frightening to hope so much and to put oneself in the hands of
yet another healer.
Monday at noon he
begins this process all over again. Would you pray for he and for Marilyn and
for his doctors? It matters.
While on vacation last
week, I turned fifty. Now, to many of you listening
that number will seem so far away in either the young or old direction that it
makes me ancient or juvenile.
But to me, it was
significant. And I had time to mark it well and think about it some. As I do
always, I hauled with me on vacation a stack of books. One of them was one I
have long wanted to read. It is a book written by a woman who has gone through
and lived the 12 step program that has led to healing and life for so many. Her
name is Melody Beattie, and the book I read is called “Co Dependent No More”.
I recommend so highly
to you each. Given that one in six Americans deals with the abuse of alcohol in
their own person at some point in their lives. Given that those who deal with
addictions also live in families who are affected. Given that patterns of
relationships and alcohol abuse play out from generation to generation. Given
that we each know people who have lived either addiction or the impact of it,
and given that we aren’t so very good in this culture at taking good emotional
care of ourselves, I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t benefit from a read.
Anyway, to explain some
of the power of this wisdom, I share with you a definition of codependency
given by Robert Subby:
Codependency is “an
emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as a result of
an individual’s prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of oppressive
rules - rules which prevent the open expression of feeling as well as the direct
discussion of personal and interpersonal problems.”
Living
in such a way that we cannot express our feelings without feeling shame and
guilt. Living in such a way that we feel responsible for the
happiness of everyone else and selfish if we tend to our own needs and
happiness. Living in such a way that we feel anxious if we cannot control
things because we have been in out of control situations so very long so we
have figured out how to clutch but not how to give it all that over to God.
Living with oppressive rules like: men don’t cry and women don’t ask for what
they want and children should be seen and not heard and nice girls don’t and
real men don’t and all of the other passel of rules we have taken into our
sweet hearts in ways that scar -
The very hearts that God has written
words of love upon - did you hear that in the words of Jeremiah? - those hearts
become bound and they lose their ability to see fully and take in the world
with compassion and we become bound - no less than the woman with the bent-over
body, no less than our brother Jim in his time of despair, no less than all the
other crippled souls who feel so miserable and lost and have forgotten as we so
often do that:
Jesus reaches to us with healing.
So open up! Open up and
expose your heart and relax into the love God has for you and know that you
were created to be free and fabulous. As Marinanne
Williamson says: why wouldn’t you be? Living small and bent over doesn’t serve
the
In your membership vows
to join this church you are asked “will you accept the freedom and power God
gives you to resist evil and oppression in whatever forms they present
themselves” and you said you would -
So will you fight that
oppression when it presents itself in rules for being in relationship that seek
to steal the freedom you have to live as a greatly beloved and claimed and
chosen partner in ministry with Jesus who is healer and gentler of all your pain?
Shame and guilt will
not set you free.
Becoming bitter toward
God will not set you free.
Protecting your heart
so it won’t hurt so much will not set you free.
Turning your anger upon
others or yourself will not set you free.
What will set you free
is giving your pain and your sense of wretchedness over to the power of Jesus
Christ in your life. Do your honest open work of
owning places in you where growth and healing and learning need to happen. Find
people to be real with. Open up your heart and trust it.
And open up and trust
that radical grace given the bent over woman and given Jim Dodge and given me
and given you. Because life is too too
too precious to wait for the soul and body healing
possible for us each. The power of God’s love that surpasses all
understanding reaches toward us each.
We, who once were bound. We are set free.
Amen.