That Ruler of the Synagogue had every right to be indignant.
The crippled woman, the one bent double, who couldn't straighten up, had been like that for 18 years!
There had been plenty of weekday opportunities for Jesus to heal her.
For 6 days out of 7 healing was permissible.
And yet He chose to do it on, of all days, the Sabbath
- a Sabbath, God's day of rest, when the Law said you should do no work at all
- only essentials, like watering animals.
- In fact the Pharisees had a list of 39 things you must not do on the Sabbath.
Healing was one of them. Certainly not healing of a chronically disabled woman. That could wait.
And yet - Jesus went ahead and did it anyway. He healed her. He set her free. He defied convention. He ignored the rules.
And then, to add insult to injury, he called the indignant Synagogue Ruler a hypocrite! He asked him if the woman wasn't more important than a donkey? If healing a woman crippled for 18 years wasn't more important than the rule book? Time and again Jesus flouted convention. He broke the rules, And it all comes down to priorities.
Which is more important - people or programmes?
- people or projects?
- people or procedures?
Which is more important - real life situations or rules?
I guess that, in our hearts, we side with Jesus in this story. Of course He was right - He was always right.
It's a good story. And yet, so often, in our mindset, in our behaviour, we are just like the synagogue ruler.
There was a letter to the Times the other day. It was in response to a report that in some dioceses, as well as banning the chalice due to the swine flu epidemic, they have also suspended the sharing of the Peace during Communion services. And this man wrote to the paper and said: "What a good thing to ban the exchanging of the peace. Make the ban permanent and I will start coming to church again."
So here is a man who presumably calls himself a Christian, who presumably professes to follow Jesus Christ,
who has stopped going to church. Why? Because people shake hands and say "Peace be with you."
What an incredibly narrow-minded, legalistic, hypocritical reason for stopping going to church to worship Almighty God! I wonder just what his understanding of worship is. And yet I guess he is far from being the only such person.
A mind closed by pettiness. It's rather like saying, "I won't ever go to the G.P.'s surgery again unless the receptionist stops smiling at me!"
Priorities! Jesus had a habit of turning priorities on their head.
You must have seen these wrist bands that many young people wear. They have the initials "W.W.J.D." on them.
Standing for "What Would Jesus Do?" And that's a question we need to ask ourselves in any and every situation in which we find ourselves. "What would Jesus do?"
Jesus flouted convention. He broke "safe" boundaries, and took risks. He took a risk that Sabbath in the synagogue.
After all, where might this situation of healing the crippled woman lead? It could open a flood-gate.
All sorts of people might want to get healed on the Sabbath. It could set a precedent.
In fact v17 says that, whereas His opponents were humiliated, the people generally, the bulk of the congregation, were "delighted with all the wonderful things He was doing." Oh dear! Where was all this leading? You can't have delighted people in church - where might that lead? To exuberance even!
At the Worcester Diocesan Conference last year one of the speakers, Canon Susan Hope, talked very challengingly about what she called "radical hospitality". A couple in Sheffield had organised a dinner evening for folks from church, but nobody seemed able or to want to come. So, rather than cancel it, in the fashion of Jesus' parable they invited folks in off the street - homeless people sleeping rough; drug addicts; prostitutes - anyone who would come.
And they didn't give them bread and soup in the kitchen. They had a large house, and they laid up a long dining table with their best china and silver and cut glass. And they gave them a banquet. And they didn't do it just once. They did it regularly. And there were no strings attached. No pressure. They did it because they believed it was what Jesus would have done in their situation. Radical hospitality!
Jesus broke conventions. He flouted safe boundaries. He took risks. Are we prepared to do the same?
So often we have, deep down, prejudices and conventions and expectations which tie us down
- which cripple us as much as that woman was crippled.
- which bend us double.
Note, Jesus didn't say to her "You are healed!" He said "You are set free!" Do we need to be "set free"?
A friend of ours is John Robinson, who wrote the best-seller "Nobody's Child". John grew up in the back streets of Manchester as a reject. He never knew who his father was. His mother didn't want him, and put him in care.
Foster parents abused him - he used to get locked for hours in a cellar. He drifted in to gang violence and alcoholism, and sleeping rough. He went to borstal and prison. Until one day, through a street preacher - you know - a street preacher - one of those weirdoes who embarrass us, and who are not at all C of E. One day, through a street preacher, who not only told him about Jesus, but who also took him home and gave him a bed and food. One day through him, John gave his life to Christ, and everything changed.
After a while John came to be in demand by churches to tell his remarkable story. Invited by a vicar to speak to the Mid-week Fellowship at his church, John turned up on his motorbike, in his leathers, arms covered in rather risqué tattoos, scars from knife wounds on his neck. He was met at the door by a pillar of the Fellowship group.
"Can I help you?" she asked "Is this where the church Fellowship is meeting?" asked John, in his broad Manchester accent. The lady looked him up and down rather disdainfully, sniffed and said "Yes. But it's not really for people like you." John, rejected all his life, still hurting and struggling from his past, felt for a moment that nothing had changed.
He felt slapped in the face. Putting his leathers back on he said to the lady "Right - well perhaps you would tell the vicar that his speaker has just left!" And he went.
We may feel some sympathy for the lady - but I hope she, and that church, learned a lesson from that.
(Incidentally, John got over it, and with his wife and children is about to go to Thailand, to work among street children and addicts and prostitutes.)
W.W.J.D.? What would Jesus do? I don't think He would have said what that lady said. But don't we all like our safe boundaries, our familiar routines? John didn't fit into the boundaries and routines of that particular group.
We live in a post-Christian society. If you look at conventional, traditional, hide-bound churches they are, for the most part, steadily emptying, up and down the land. Go into any average parish church, or, for that matter, non-conformist church. It will be half empty - or more so. But more than that - look at the number of grey heads. They won't be there in another 10 or 20 years. So who will be there? Anyone at all?
I recently preached at a church that can seat 600. It was billed as a Family Service. There were 30 in the congregation. 8,000 in the parish, 30 in the congregation. By my estimates of those 30 just 4 were under the age of 70. There was one child, aged 1.
So is the church in this country dying from terminal inertia? Yes - in places it is. But in many, many places it is very much alive and growing and impacting the community, filled with families and children and students, as well as with older folk. (You should have seen this church this morning - packed, including about 50 children) And such churches are, in just about every case I believe, churches where they are prepared to put people before convention
- practicality before rules and tradition.
Churches where they are prepared to take risks,
- and to meet people where they are, and not where they would like them to be.
I wonder how many of us went to some sort of Sunday School as children, and were taught Bible stories in school.
We live in a generation that is growing up with absolutely no experience of the Christian faith. They don't go to Sunday School. They are not taught Christianity or the Bible in school - just woolly comparative religion stuff, so as not to offend "political correctness" and "social cohesion". Young people today have often not even been inside a church. They have no background experience whatsoever of Christian worship.
How must such a person feel if by accident or invitation they drift into a church service? As a churchwarden sitting at the back you sometimes see reactions. "What's going on?" "What do I do?" "How do I find the place?" "What do all these words mean?" "How will I know when to stand or sit or turn?" "Will I make a fool of myself?"
One vicar I heard of wanted to bring home to his congregation what it must feel like for a person with no Christian background to come in to a church service. So he set the congregation a task. He told them to go that week in to a betting shop, and lay a bet on a horse, and see how they felt about it!
Would you feel comfortable doing that?
Would you feel confident?
Would you know what to do?
Would you understand the language of a betting shop?
I know I would rather run a mile. But that's how church can seem to an outsider. So, what can we do about it?
Well, we can make our services user-friendly - geared to the needs of others, rather than just reflecting our own preferences. We do try to do that in the Priory.
But more important than that I believe are 2 absolutely essential ingredients of worship and church:
1) Reality - our worship has got to be real, not pretending.
Not just going through the motions.
Not just observing a tradition.
Not mindlessly reciting familiar words.
But real. Us before God, in worship and praise.
People very, very quickly pick up on what is genuine, and what is sham. If they sense something false, they won't bother to come again. If they sense something real, even if they don't understand it all, they will respond to it.
Reality.
2) Love - genuine care, genuine welcome, genuine acceptance of people as they are.
I don't mean by that over-the-top, gushy welcome that smothers people. But a real, genuine feel of "Welcome! We're really glad you are here!"
People must be our priority. Always people were Jesus' priority. Not tradition. Not rules. Not convention. Not respectability. But people and their needs.
As we approach Back to Church Sunday on Sept 27th, and the Alpha course in the autumn, what are we going to do about it? Who are we going to invite? "What would Jesus do?"
If we are going to do absolutely nothing about Back to Church Sunday or Alpha, if we see no need to do anything,
if we are content with our private Christian routine, and will come to church only so long as the services suit me,
then we really do need to sit ourselves down, and seriously ask ourselves - "What would Jesus do/"
"How do His priorities compare with mine?"
That wonderful passage in Isaiah 61 (our first reading tonight), which Jesus claimed as referring to Himself, is all about people. It has nothing whatever to say about preserving tradition or keeping to rules, Or, in today's parlance, about setting targets or sitting SATS.
It is all about people - good news for the poor, binding up the broken hearted, setting free those imprisoned in some way (maybe in gaol or by addiction), comforting those who grieve, giving beauty for ashes. It's about people.
So, when we go home from this service tonight, let's not have a word said about - "if only it had been proper evensong" - or "I didn't like the choice of hymns" - or "I wish they'd use the good old AV".
Instead lets have lots of words said about: -"What can I do, in my life, that will impact the lives of others, that will bring God's love to others?" - "Who do I know who needs help, or comfort, or love. Who desperately needs beauty for ashes?" That's the priority as far as Jesus is concerned. Unless our worship translates into real life, and encompasses other people, then we, like the Ruler of the Synagogue, are hypocrites, with a Christianity that is distorted beyond recognition.
So there's the question to ask ourselves at every turn in life.
"What would Jesus do?" It's a question to make us sit up and think.
David Webster
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