Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Scripture: Luke 13:10-17
She stood up straight. Like a green sprout unfurling in a time-lapse video, an unnamed woman straightened her spine, vertebra by vertebra, raised her head, took a full-bodied breath and filled her lungs with air (all the way to the top!) for the first time in 18 years… like a fledgling breaking out of the shell and extending its still-damp wings, or maybe more like a prisoner stepping out of her too-small cell and into broad daylight, eyes blinking, face upturned… She stood up straight.
This is a text I can feel in my body. Maybe you can, too. I read it, and instinctively roll back my shoulders, raise my chin, breathe more deeply… It makes me feel a little more brave, like every movie I’ve watched in which the hero, utterly beaten, finds the strength to plant her feet in the dust and rise up one more time to face down the enemy, whether that enemy is a fierce opponent, or her own inner demons, or both.
We don’t know what kind of ‘spirit’ crippled that woman, not really. Whether her bondage was physical, psychological or social…All we know is that Jesus saw her, the way he saw so many of those who lived on the margins, the ones who were overlooked by everyone else. He saw her, and without hesitation, interrupting his own teaching, he summoned her to his side, commanded her to stand up, and laid his hands on her.
Imagine how it must have felt for her to be touched, this woman whose affliction would have made her untouchable according to Jewish law; she who had lived a life disregarded. To feel the warmth of another person’s skin on her face or on her arms – dry, firm, tender – must have been a singular experience, (so that) maybe, without even thinking, she raised her head to meet the gaze of this person rash enough to make physical contact with a strange, crippled woman on the Sabbath. Just that touch may have felt as miraculous to her as her body’s sudden ability to stand erect…
Maybe the details of this episode feel so visceral, because we all know what it’s like to be bound in one way or another, and what it means to long to be set free.
We may feel trapped inside a body that restricts our movements; or trapped inside a system that restricts our freedom. We may be crippled by fear or shame or systemic oppression. What is it, in your life, that has the power to leave you perpetually bent over? What keeps you from standing tall?
One of my early mentors in ministry was the Rev. Susan Lyons, a brilliant, funny, joy-filled woman who lived with rheumatoid arthritis. The disease crippled her joints, so that her neck and wrists curled in on themselves. By the time I met her, she had also lost her sight, the result of a bad prescription, so she could not have seen me, even if she could have looked up.
But though her body was constrained, though she stood bent over and shuffled when she walked, her imagination soared, her mind explored and her speech took flight. She preached freely and often about God’s liberating purpose, and about the Christian imperative to set free those who have been bound by our culture: women, people of color, those who are differently abled. Repeatedly, she called out the systems that keep people in chains, including the systems that govern the Church. When do our laws (written or implied), our language or practices favor men over women, white over brown and black, temporarily abled-bodied over those who are differently abled? (she asked).
Susan couldn’t open a door because it had been designed for hands that can grab and turn a door knob; women have struggled for leadership in church and society because God and leaders are so often portrayed as male; African-Americans continue to grapple with the vagaries of racism because our culture assumes that whiteness is the norm.
I only knew Susan for a short time before her untimely death (the year I entered seminary), but I learned this from her: Crippling spirits take many forms. And sometimes, it is the system itselfthat is crippled. When it is designed to accommodate some but not others; when it denies the full power and dignity of all God’s people, when it fails to take account of the full range of humanity, then the system itself is a distortion of the life that God intends for God’s beloved community.
This month marks the 400th anniversary of what many have argued is the true birth of the United States – not the declaration of independence, but an event that preceded that occasion by over 150 years. In the year 1619, sometime in August, the first ship carrying a human cargo docked near Jamestown, Virginia, where English colonists had settled just 12 years prior. Colonists purchased 20-30 enslaved Africans, kidnapped from lands that are part of modern day Angola. That purchase marks the beginning of a slave trade that fundamentally shaped this nation. Free, forced labor by hundreds of thousands of enslaved women, men and children allowed the colonies to accumulate wealth that made independence conceivable. Our country was quite literally built on the backs of brown and black Americans, its basic economic and political structure designed to preserve and defend slavery – for 250 years.
If you’ve not already done so, I urge you to read the articles published as part of the 1619 Project, launched this week by the New York Times.[1] You’ll find a special insert on the history of slavery and several pieces in the August 18 issue of New York times Magazine (in print and on line). The content is rich, expansive, devastating, truth-telling. It exposes parts of our history that have too long been omitted from the picture we tell ourselves about this freedom-loving nation.
I would argue that it is also essential reading for any community devoted to a God who promises to set the captives free. Though the chains of literal, legal slavery may have been broken, the legacy of slavery remains with us; it continues to shape our culture and cripple countless lives and spirits in more ways than we can name.
Surely, there is no more devastating example of bondage, than chattel slavery. Surely, there are none more in need to be set free, than those who continue to suffer the vagaries of racism. These are shackles that need to be loosed. People who deserve to be seen. But when I re-visit the history of slavery and confront its continuing impact, when I hear Susan’s voice, behind Jesus’ voice, when I hear his command to stand up straight, I am reminded that dismantling racism is not about sorting out who among us is racist. It’s the system – a system in which we all participate, by which we are all impacted – that is most profoundly crippled, a system that needs straightening out, so that all of us can finally stand tall.
In that scene in Luke, the synagogue official scolded Jesus for breaking the law of the Sabbath, but it seems to me that Jesus’ act fulfilled Sabbath law. The book of Deuteronomy advises the people to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
The Sabbath was designed to honor a God of liberation. A God determined to see all God’s people standing tall and breathing free. Jesus found the one act that could make the day most holy: found a woman weighed down by affliction and set her free. This is what it means to honor the Sabbath, he declared. It means unbinding the afflicted and setting the captives free.
The synagogue was busy doing what it had always done, so when Jesus entered the scene, the leader’s response was predictable: “Stop that. That’s not how we honor the Sabbath. We’ve never done it that way before…”
“But you could.” Jesus said. “You could. Church, you could free yourself from the bonds you have forged; you could be a church committed – not to preservation, but to liberation, transformation…”
We could be a people concerned with the physical and spiritual well-being of all those who have suffered the crippling effects of racism, sexism, ableism… which is all of us. We could be a church both liberated and liberating. We could be a people with imaginations that soar, minds that explore, speech and actions that take flight… We could empower one another to stand up straight.
It’s a grand image, and one that may seem utterly out of reach. Who but Jesus can command that we stand tall? Who but Jesus can lay hands on a crippled person or a crippled system and call forth new breath, new life? And yet: we call ourselves followers of that one. It is the breath of Christ that animates our own bodies, and the love of Christ that promises to free every one of us from whatever binds us.
Beloved, this is the Good News. it is news that I need to hear! There are days when the thing that binds me is my own fear – fear that I will get it wrong, fear of being scolded by some official somewhere, fear that my actions might put me at odds with the community I love, fear that I won’t be good enough, brave enough…
If you know that fear, or if you can name the shackles that keep you from participating in the liberation of all God’s people (including yourself!), then perhaps it’s time to put yourself in the shoes of the unnamed woman: imagine the touch of Jesus – warm, firm, tender; hear his command; then stand up straight, vertebra by vertebra, until you can breathe deeply and look that fear, those systems, that crippling spirit right in the eye…
And then praise the liberating God with your whole body, your
whole heart.
May it be so. Amen.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html