A Sermon from First Church, Scarborough… 

A sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship of the First Congregational Church of Scarborough, Maine on Sunday, August 26, 2007.  The principal reading was Luke 13:10-17. 

“Woman, you are set free from your infirmity” (13:12). 

“Our Tragic Fact” 

Today, we have a Gospel lesson about healing.  It is a wonder working story, if you will; a miracle story and something of a medical mystery.  “Tell me, how did Jesus do what he just did?”  My honest answer is “I don’t know,” but I suggest that with the possible exception of the Raising of Lazarus from the Dead, this story is as important and intriguing as any, and certainly worthy of our consideration.  I suggest to you that this story has more to say about human limitations and challenges than it reveals about divine healing.  I am always amazed when human beings place additional limitations on the already limited and struggling. 

We have often listened to a reading of Jesus’ opening manifesto (his mission statement, if you will) in the synagogue at Nazareth, at the beginning of his public ministry (Luke 4:18-19, quoting Isaiah 61:1): 

      “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

Today’s reading is the last account we have of Jesus preaching and teaching in a synagogue.  Jesus was committed to a life, not of words alone, but of actions.  No one can read the Gospels without being brought face to face with the actions, including the miracles, of Jesus.  The miracles may not be passed over or deleted from the story.  Remove the miracles and the Gospel story falls to pieces. 

I wish to take nothing away from this story of the power of healing; but I want re-direct it.  This story has more to say about human limitations and challenges than it reveals about divine healing.  I am always amazed when human beings place additional burdens on the already burdened and struggling. 

“Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, ‘There are six days for work.  So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath’” (13:14). 

With vulnerable bodies, minds and souls, and in the midst of people and situations that offer great resistance to our purposes and efforts, human limitations are inevitable.  They are to be expected and will be discovered in each and every one of us. 

Our highest aims and fondest hopes are thwarted by the fact that we are temporary, tentative, inadequate, and impatient. Our knowledge is fractional, our victories conditional, our health fragile, and our happiness fleeting.  In short, we are human beings and not gods.  And, oh, the relief that comes with saying it and knowing it. 

But, here is an important fact.  We are the much loved children of God, and that is our consolation for never being total winners in life.  The truth is we can never be total losers.  We have our limitations and challenges.  Some have more burdens than others and still others are quick to judge who has the most.   

Each of us should, as Howard Thurman once phrased it, “sit down with our tragic fact, and make friends with it.” Howard’s words are an acceptable benediction to our limitations, and each of us can breathe a sigh of relief.  It’s okay to be imperfect and it’s very natural. 

Here is another important fact of life.  Our limitations should make us especially sensitive to those whose burdens are more obvious and more severe.   

See Jesus, healing physical and mental and spiritual afflictions.   Then he turns his attention to the limitations of the group who gather round the miracle.  It is compassion not anger that drives Jesus’ question: “Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”  The leader of synagogue saw a breaking of the Sabbath law, Jesus saw a woman with a broken back.  In the world and in the church we are constantly in danger of loving rules and systems more than we love God and more than we love God’s children. 

The miracle stories talk about human lives being changed even though the prospects for change seem hopeless.  The New Testament is an unashamedly impudent book.  Nothing stays the way it is: the lame do not remain lame, lepers do not remain unclean, the poor will have enough for their lives, the mighty do not stay mighty, and tyrants are overthrown.  Life is possible for everyone, even when everything seems to deny it. 

The miracle stories are stories of divine revolt against human resignation and against the destruction of life.  God says, “Enough, I will have none of it.  Things are going to change around here, and it starts with you.”  These are stories that teach people not call it quits, not to satisfy themselves with mediocre and empty lives.  You have a right to life in all its wholeness. 

The miracle stories teach us that every last person is a son or a daughter of God, deserving of dignity and opportunity and that all that destroys dignity and denies opportunity must be and will be opposed by the Disciples of Jesus Christ.  The miracle stories teach us that God takes the talent and character, the drive and ability, of the strong and uses them to care for the weak. 

While admitting how easily the love of neighbor is sacrificed, how easily the best intentions are subdued by the lust for power, position and possessions, the miracle stories teach us that the love of neighbor is to know all this, and, inspired by our insights, to let the love of God work in us and through us for the good of all. 

You are a lover not because you are good or perfect or imperfect, but because you are transparent for something that is more than you are.  God’s love in Christ shines through you.  You yourself are healed in an oft-repeated yet miraculous way to witness to Jesus Christ so that and thereby give something that the world needs: the power and the love of the risen Savior.  That is the miracle of ordinary people, and it happens to limited people just like you and me. 

You are never too old, never too young, never too dull, never too clever, and never too limited to be reminded of this astonishing fact. 

All who know their limitations may well stand in debt, and all who are limited may yet rise up, for we too have something to give to the world around us and that something is our selves. 

In the miracle stories we see the power and the compassion of God exercised in love for human beings, and we are intended to see the record not of an ancient act of Jesus, but the sign of the continuing action of Christ, not the record of an event to be read about, but the record of an experience offered still to be lived out in the here and now. 

True, if Jesus had postponed the healing of the woman until the next day no one could have criticized him; but he insisted that suffering must not be allowed to continue until tomorrow if it could be helped today.  Over and over again in life some good person and kindly scheme is held up until this or that regulation or “system” is satisfied, or this or that detail is worked out. Remember, he (she) gives twice who gives quickly, as an old Latin proverb states it.  No helpful deed that we can do today, individually or collectively, should be postponed until tomorrow. Amen.