Is Love Enough?

Is Love Enough?

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, O.A., Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

August 21, 2016;  Proper 16, Year C, Track 2

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 13:10-17)  Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

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[If you were here last week, you know I recycled a sermon from 15 years ago. Now, I promise I'll write a new sermon one of these days. But I had another hard week, and I had to go to Little Rock for a meeting Friday and Saturday. I just didn't have time. So, back to the barrel. This one's only 12 years old; from 2004.]

That bent-over woman. I wonder what it was -- the Aspirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.@ My intuition is that it didn't have it=s origin in something physical. But it was crippling, nonetheless.

Like the woman who grew up in the home of an angry father and a compliant mother. Everyone walked on eggshells trying to avoid setting him off. She learned that when she was a good girl, a very, very good girl, he wouldn't lash out at her with his bitter tongue and his biting sarcasm. But something in him was so angry that she never felt really safe. She tried to please him, to make him happy, to make him love her. But he was unhappy and angry. So she grew up feeling vulnerable and insecure. Now a mother and grandmother herself, she=s never really felt safe in a relationship. She kept the peace by taking care of others. But with the divorce and all the kids grown up, now there=s no one to take care of but herself. And she doesn't really know how. She wishes someone would rescue her; she=s willing to do anything to make someone happy, if they would only love her; accept her. But she needs people so desperately that she scares them off or wears them out. Though her father has been dead for years, she is still bent over, carrying the shadow of his ghost, a spirit that has crippled her for so many years.

Or the moody teenager who doesn't know what=s wrong with him, but there=s nobody to talk to. His father=s preoccupied with business and his mother just preaches at him. What they are trying to teach him at school is stupid and worthless. Who cares that the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, my God! He=s not about to let somebody see him walking out of the counselor=s office or some shrink=s place. So he hangs out with some other kids who are as moody as he is, and that feels better. Alcohol or drugs help him not feel like he feels. When he=s picked up trying to use a fake ID his mother tells the officer he=s been nothing but trouble since the day he was born, and something inside of him hardens. So, she thinks I=m trouble. I'll show her trouble. And he walks out slumping over with a sullen cold rage that he carries like a sack across his back. AYou=d better straighten up,@ his mother shakes her finger at him. AYeah. Right.@ He can feel the spirit that is crippling him just before his eighteenth year.

Henry David Thoreau hit a communal chord with his words Athe mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.@ The external circumstances of so many lives are threatening and transitory. How many people are just one pay check from quiet financial desperation? How many are going as hard as they can and never catching up? But it is the internal baggage that is so quietly and desperately crippling. No one is immune from hurts, misunderstanding, and love with bitter hooks and strings attached. No one=s spirit reaches eighteen years without feeling attacked and crippled.

We are not told anything about the woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years; she just appears. But she appears in the synagogue on the Sabbath. We know she lives in a patriarchal world where the women who attend the synagogue are set apart in their own room, apart from the men whose daily prayers in that synagogue include the prayer of blessing and thanks to God for not making them women. We know that she lives in a world where the men of authority and power will react to her healing with criticism because it is done on the Sabbath, caring more for the rules and traditions than for her liberation. 

In his wonderful and challenging novel The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakais imagines a conversation between Jesus and John the Baptist. They are sitting in the hollow of a rock, high above the Jordan, arguing all night long about what to do with this world. It is sunrise. John=s face is hard and decisive; from time to time his arms go up and down as though he were chopping something apart. Jesus= face is tame and hesitant. His eyes are full of compassion.

AIsn't love enough?@ Jesus asks John.

ANo,@ John answers angrily. AThe tree is rotten. God called me and gave me the ax, which I then placed at the roots of the tree. I did my duty. Now you do yours: Take the ax and strike!@

AIf I were fire, I would burn,@ Jesus says. AIf I were a woodcutter, I would strike; but I am a heart, and I love.@ [1]

For so many people the tree of life is rotten. The weight of the world is heavy and tiring. It feels like things will go on like this and just keep going on like this. It=s easy to understand the desire to strike out. It=s easy to feel disillusioned. We want a Messiah who will do something to set things right. We want a God who will bring some relief and justice, who will rescue the innocent and punish the abusive. We want a Messiah who will fix us, and make us so that we won=t keep walking into the same blind alleys over and over again. And we spin in the vortex of our own vicious circles, weighed down and crippled. 

Eighteen years! Eighteen years she was bent over and unable to stand up straight. When you've been bent over that long, people get used to it. They don=t really notice. It's like you've always been that way. It's like it's always been that way. 

But Jesus noticed her. Three wonderful words in this story, AJesus saw her.@ I think there is a lot underneath those words. He really saw her. He saw her suffering. He cared. His look was not one of curiosity, or judgment, or aversion. His look was one of compassion. He called her over and let her know she could be free. She could be liberated from this spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. He touched her. AIf I were fire, I would burn; If I were a woodcutter, I would strike; but I am a heart, and I love.@ And love was enough. Whatever trauma had crippled her and bent her low was melted by a knowing, compassionate love that gave her the freedom to stand up straight again, free of her bondage on this Sabbath day.

Is love enough? Is God=s divine, unqualified love enough to fill the emptiness left by an angry and neglectful father? Can a heavenly Father's abundant acceptance and delight heal the hurt and restore our dignity? Is love enough? Can the love of a Messiah who was despised and rejected reach out to touch the alienation and loneliness that leads us to self-destruction? Can the compassion of a Messiah who really sees break through the walls of hostility to touch our sensitivity and hunger for true love and understanding?

Yes. A thousand times yes. Love will break any rules and suffer any cross to manifest itself. Not only is love enough, it is the only thing powerful enough to free us.

When all human love has failed us, especially our love for ourselves... When our spirits are crippled... God sees and cares. God touches us with gentle compassion. God frees us from the stuff that weighs us down and convicts us. Any time; any place. Right here; right now. 

Be free of whatever burdens you. Be free of whatever weighs you down. Stand up straight and proud. AYou are set free,@ says Jesus on this Sabbath. Stand up straight immediately and begin praising God saying, AWe believe in One God, the father the almighty...@

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^[1]Quoted by Barbara Brown Taylor, AGod In Pain,@ p. 19

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