Jesus and Justice: Gracious Interruption

8-25-19

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Every three years, almost a thousand delegates from across the country attend the Church Wide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran church in America, or just Churchwide assembly for short.  Two weeks ago, I traveled with over a dozen other voting members from our synod to spend 5 days freezing in air-conditioning doing the important business of the church.

Just for starters, that week we reelected Presiding Bishop Eaton, and elected a new secretary of the ECLA, Deacon Sue Rothermyer. We voted to support the World Council of Churches’ movement “Thursdays in Black” and approved the new social statement “Faith, Sexism, and Justice.” We issued a public apology to the African descent Lutherans and approved the commemoration June 17^th as a day of repentance and remembrance of the Emanuel 9. We committed to standing with refugees and immigrants, to affirming our ecumenical and interfaith partnerships. And this is not even half of what the ELCA accomplished that week.

It was such an intense week, that it was a very good thing that afterward I took some vacation to honor the 3^rd commandment.  How many of you remember what the third commandment is? Hint – it’s not a “Shall Not!” “Remember the …. Sabbath day, and keep it holy.” According to our small Catechism, Martin Luther explains, “We are to fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching or God’s word, but instead keep that word holy and gladly learn from it.”

Just as God rested on the 7^th day of creation, we as God’s people need a day of rest. All in God’s creation were commanded to embrace our limitation and be reminded that God created us for life, not for exhaustion. The Sabbath day is a gift, freely and lovingly given for our benefit.

But, what do we humans too often do with things that are free gifts from God? We try to control them, regulate them, create a lot of rules around how to properly exercise this gift. The Sabbath day was no expectation. Enter Jesus, teacher, preacher, and gracious interrupter.

You may remember Jesus’s controversial first sermon, where he proclaimed that through him, God would release the captives, give sight to the blind, and let the oppressed go free. That one was not exactly well received, but here Jesus is again, teaching in the synagogue. We will never know what Jesus was preaching on this particular day, because he stops, mid sermon, for someone in immediate need of that freedom and release.

That woman was literally invisible. Bent over double for as many years as it takes a kindergartner to graduate from high school. She was unable to stand up straight, unable to see and participate in the world around her, in a world where she was already mostly invisible for being a woman.

Perhaps you too have walked into worship feeling much like this woman – feeling physically or emotionally bound and bent over by things in your lives that are heavy and hard to bear. Perhaps you too, have felt unseen and invisible to those around you

When Jesus sees this woman, he stops everything. Her healing cannot even wait until the end of the sabbath day, or even till the end of his sermon! He has to heal her RIGHT NOW….and in doing so, Jesus broke the rules.

The leader of the synagogue was understandably upset that the worship service was being disrupted. These religious leaders were doing their very best to preserve these expressions of their faith in a world that worked against them at every turn, trying to be faithful to the ways that their ancestors worshiped God in the past during a time they were under heavy oppression themselves.

So when the bent over woman became UN-bent, this synagogue leader became BENT out of SHAPE. He could not see that when one of us is bent over, we all are. None of us is free until we all are.

 

Today is an anniversary that we would all much rather forget. Four hundred years ago, in late August, 1619, the first slaves were brought to the shores of what would become the United States of America, Twenty people, stolen from their families and homes from what is modern Angola, arrived to be the first sold into chattel slavery.

Though the emancipation proclamation was signed in 1863, the legacy of slavery is still with us today. From the racial wealth gap to arrest and sentencing disparities, from discrimination in housing, job searches, red-lining, the criminal justice system, banking, and education, African Americans face structural and personal obstacles that I as someone of European Descent do not face. Even if my European ancestors never owned slaves, I still benefit from the system and legacy of slavery…. Including in our own religion and denomination. This year, the ELCA issued a public apology to Lutherans of African descent, which was read during the most recent churchwide assembly. While it is incomplete and imperfect, it is a first step in recognizing the complex relationship between structural racism and the ELCA. It is the first step toward honesty and freedom for all Lutherans, white and persons of color.

One of the many books I picked up at the Churchwide assembly is “Luther’s Small Catechism with African Descent Reflections." After Luther’s explanation of the 3^rd commandment, we read that the sabbath “is the first fair labor law” and “is a day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money….”  Keeping the sabbath “is about lives that are captured by a God who keeps faith with us and who keeps on intruding graciously into our lives.” (p. 17)

That gracious intruder is of course Jesus. If you recall, Jesus graciously intrudes from birth…. Truly from BEFORE birth, when an angel intrudes on Mary to tell her she would bear a son. And again, AT his birth, when the heavenly host interrupted some shepherds on the night shift. And all during his life, Jesus graciously intrudes, again and again, shaking up our rules and assumptions about God. Until the rule-makers decided they had had enough with this rule breaker troublemaker.

But Jesus wasn’t done graciously intruding. Jesus interrupted death. He intruded on the funeral preparations of the women at the tomb. He appeared incognito and joined the two travelers walking to Emmaus, and interrupted their dinner as he revealed himself in the breaking of the bread.

And his followers have continued to graciously intrude on Jesus’ behalf, because we are called follow Jesus’ example, to raise up the bent over, see the unseen. To break the rules that need to be broken…  and then to rejoice, like the bent over woman, when together we have been set free.

“Ought not this woman, “Jesus asks, “a beloved Child of God, bound for 18 long years, be set free from this bondage on this sabbath day?”

Yes, Lord, yes! Justice can’t wait any more. 18 years is too long. 400 years is too long. Now is the time. Freedom happens now.

We – as Jesus followers, and co-workers in the kingdom - are called to graciously intrude on the processes of evil, sin, and death at work in the world. Sometimes we are just too polite for our own good, and too worried that this intruding grace will be seen as a disrupting disturbance. And you are right… it IS! It is as disrupting as looking up the first time in 18 years. 

It is as disrupting as an apology 400 years in the making. It is as disrupting as hundreds of women clergy from age 24 to 104 processing into worship to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of women’s ordination, the 40^th anniversary of the ordination of the first woman of color in the ELCA, and the 10^th anniversary of the ordination of LGBTQIA+ clergy with no restrictions. It is as disruption as a thousand Lutherans march to local ICE headquarters, or a thousand Lutherans wearing black to stand in solidarity with victims and survivors of gender-based violence, a thousand Lutheran lighting a candle to mourn the senseless gun violence run rampant in this country. It is as disruptive as a “bold little nobody monk” in Germany nailing some theses to a church door. It is as graciously disruptive as a Sunday morning, as an empty tomb, as water, bread, and wine.

It is as disruptive as freedom itself.

Justice can’t wait any more. Now is the time. This is the day to be set free – that YOU are set free - from bondage. YOU are set free... and you can free others. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Processing into worship on Friday of the ELCA Churchwide assembly