Sermon by Susan N. Eaves for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost August 22 2010

It's been a summer of contrasts. Summer has been as full of life as the program year; the volunteer choir has sung, voice class has run its course, the youth have served in Appalachia, the food pantry has fed and Second Saturday Program sustained, the altar guild has prepared for worship, planning for the third service has continued, new windows have been fitted, Vacation Bible school overflowed and worship has been packed - and that's just to name a few of the things that have gone on around here in the short weeks since June.

So you might think it has all "been just lovely" - but no, life has gone on in its normal way.

In late July we received an invitation. Dove World (nice image don't you think?) Outreach Center, in Gainesville Florida, has invited us all to the burning of the Koran on September 11.  Their minister, Pastor Terry Jones explains that they believe that "Islam is of the devil, that it's causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times." A woman interviewed said Moslems should not be allowed in this country and that mosques should be forbidden - that "they" should all go home because "they" killed thousands of people. As there are about six million Islamic peoples in this country (more than Episcopalians and Presbyterians combined) and most of them are perfectly God-fearing respectable citizens of this country which prides itself on religious freedom this was not a very workable suggestion.

Further, an analyst (and this was the thing that made me very sad) reported that, in the light of the state of the media, public and mature discussion of religious differences was not possible at this time.

All this about a religion, along with Judaism and Christianity, that all affirm the first tenet of the Nicene Creed:

    We believe in one God  the Father, the Almighty,

     the maker of heaven and earth,

     of all that is, seen and unseen."

Against this public backdrop of hate, fear, prejudice, ignorance, and self-absorption daily life continues in its shadow - summer school, marriages, broken romances, illness, births, deaths, lost jobs and found ones, vacations and oil spills, hopes fulfilled, dreams disappointed.

What are we to make of it all? Shall we just give up, put on blinders and hope all the conflict and trouble and problems will go away? What does it mean to claim to be a Christian in the current environment anyway?

Why is that? Why haven't we just folded in on our anger or sorrow or sadness? Surely that would be more logical. Why are we still getting out of bed in morning given the uncertainties of our lives and of the future?

It has something to do with the man in the story this morning - the man we know as Jesus. If it hadn't been for him who knows what our faith might look, like. Who knows what this congregation might have become? Faith is always about resisting, about insisting on freedom in all its forms and especially at the hands of those religious people who would take it away.

In some respects things haven't changed much. Jesus is in conflict with the religious leaders of the synagogue (the equivalent of our priests and vestries and committees) who just can't see the wood for the trees and don't really want to.

We are very familiar with the kind of folk of the gospel story this morning. These are the people who are so certain they are right that everybody else is expected to do it their way. The law says to rest on the Sabbath. How nice. God provides a planned day of relaxation for everyone. Then religious people like the ones in the story turn it into a religious nightmare of rules and regulations designed to take the fun out of rest from labor. The spirit of the law turned into rules to keep everybody in their place. The kind of folk who know how people should behave, how church should be, which fork to use, and are quick to inform everyone else that they know.

Into this mix comes the figure of the man Jesus who has a loving heart and a kind spirit. That's all it is really. It's a case of this man Jesus taking a good look at what is going on around him, taking a good look with the eyes of the heart, and seeing just so much struggle. And what does he see? To the religious authorities and to most people present the woman would have been a sign of sin in the community - a person who must have done something wrong to be so punished by illness. The congregation present would have viewed her (as we often view those who are different from ourselves) with disdain, fear, prejudice, ignorance, and self-righteousness.

 Jesus, on the other hand, sees a poor crippled woman bent over for eighteen years - eighteen long years and who knows what kind of pain she's been in. And Jesus steps up to take away her pain, to take away disfigurement and limitation, to take away sorrow and gift her with freedom and joy.

She immediately began to praise God. She knew herself as lost and now she was found, invisible and yet she has been seen, broken and yet now whole. That's enough to make me praise God too.

And what happens when this great blessing is bestowed upon the woman? The religious people moan about it. Why? Because Jesus has moved beyond "ought" and "should" and "must" and "don't" to taking a good look at what is needed to restore life and well-being to this woman and to Israel. He must have been furious with those religious folk. He even goes so far as to call them hypocrites. He exposed their blindness, their pettiness. He pointed out that "technically" they had also broken the so-called rules and, to give the religious people their due, it says they were ashamed. Perhaps they had learned something after all.

The crowd, of course, was ecstatic! The crowd; the pushed about people of God seeking the God of love and justice. The crowd; ground down by the religious power mongers. That crowd was thrilled. Jesus had not only set the woman free but he had exposed the ridiculousness of it all. They saw what he did and they knew it was simply wonderful.

So where do we stand in this story? We are the church after all. What do we think is going on here in this place of healing and blessing? Are we with the crowd? Perhaps we are with the woman who was crippled and found herself to be healed? Are we agreeing with the religious leaders who wanted to maintain order? Are we with Jesus? Will we accept the invitation to Dove Church on September 11 and burn a Koran? Will we insist that Muslims are of the devil and a people consumed with violence who we should hate?

We are called to be like the man - like the man Jesus. We are commanded to see with the eyes of the heart; to be concerned about our love for God and our love for our neighbor - to love and not to judge, to reach out to the least among us, to be light to the world.

Or, as the author of Hebrews writes, "You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. ........ But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel."

This congregation, my friends, is as near to Zion as we are likely to get this side of heaven. We are to turn our back on the rigidity of rules that overbear human need, on practices that shrink lives and hearts reaching out to God for aid, on attitudes that engender fear or sort people according to some preconceived notion of their importance to the community.

For we have come to be in Zion; to be light in darkness. We have come to the heavenly Jerusalem where to be embraced by God in all our human messiness and muddle. We have come to Zion so that, on behalf of Jesus, we may embrace all those who seek God at any age, state of mind, health, or social or political, or economic, religious, or spiritual well-being. The very fact that we have come and that others come to this great city of God is because this is the place where the real stuff can happen. And it is our job not to get in the way. It's our job to show the world what love looks like.

It is our job to be rejoicing at all the wonderful things Jesus is doing. Amen. (and Alleluia.)