Remember the old phonograph records?
Sometimes there would be a scratch on the record
and the needle would get stuck in a groove
and we would hear the same bit of music over and over and over.
When we examine our lives we can also find scratches
where the movement of life gets stuck,
and over and over again we find ourselves stuck
in life-inhibiting patterns, such as:
our spouse laughs or sniffs in a particular way we find annoying, and we react;
at times we drink too much,
or stay angry for three days,
or yell because someone is making us be angry,
or victimizing us in some other way.
We want desperately for something to work for our advantage
and we try to manage the situation each time,
and it never works.
We are stuck in grooves that keep us repeating old patterns
of being and doing and relating
that close us down,
and we can’t move on.
Someone has to come and lift the needle over the scratch into the next groove
so that the music can flow along in its freedom and beauty.
The old cycle of bondage in frustration and suffering is ended.
Jesus was in a synagogue teaching the crowd there,
and among those there
was a woman bent over and unable to stand up straight.
It was the Sabbath, a day of rest, sacred in its observance,
and Jesus sees her there in the crowd,
and knows she has suffered for 18 years
–a long time to suffer such a debilitating condition.
Yes, there is the commandment:
“You shall remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.”
How is it to be kept holy? by rest,
ceasing from work
Why? so that attention can be given to praising God.
The woman had not asked Jesus to heal her.
He called her to him,
brought her up in front of everyone there in the synagogue.
And he freed her, liberated her, loosed her bonds,
by the touch of his hands on her.
And suddenly she was standing up straight.
And what was her response? She glorified God; she praised God,
God the Creator who made the heavens and the earth in 6 days.
Jesus had created a new back for her, an straight spine,
a complete spine that was now capable
of allowing the woman’s head to be held high –
the act of healing is an act of creation.
Now the ruler of the synagogue, the leader,
the source person as the voice of authority in the synagogue,
has a problem.
This act of creation and healing and liberation happened on the Sabbath,
the no work day.
Yes, the woman was healed, but it’s the principle of the matter.
It’s a slippery slop.
An exception for a good dead today,
and tomorrow an exception to fit someone’s convenience,
and before you know it, no one’s keeping the Sabbath.
Washington State used to have a lot of “blue” laws when I was growing up.
They’re gone.
And there are soccer games scheduled for Sunday mornings,
and no more observance of the Sabbath.
Commandment # 4 made obsolete.
The man’s got a point,
but it just pales in comparison with what had happened
when the hands of Jesus touched this woman’s back.
There’s a connection that can be made between healing and repentance.
The literal meaning of the word, repentance, in its biblical sense is
turning around.
The woman in the synagogue was bound for 18 years with her face to the earth.
She cannot turn up.
Her world was empty of the source of light.
She had no power to help herself.
Then Jesus lays his hands upon her, and immediately she is made straight
and she praises God.
The text does not record her saying,
“Free at last! Now I can again look up at the sky and the sun.”
There is a turning that has taken place in her
that is more than the turn from facing downward.
She has been taken beyond herself and her self-concern to praising God.
Jesus turned her full around
and the Spirit of the living God poured into her.
It is the giving by the hand of Jesus of freedom from her bondage,
and the blossoming of the praise of God in her.
This is a biblical example of repentance as turning,
and its fruit, which is glorifying God.
The repentance, the turning, is an act of empowerment by God,
as it states in Acts 11:18.
And it is God’s kindness that leads to repentance,
as it says in Romans 2:4.
So repentance is not just for those who are bad, who have done wrong.
Repentance, we see, may work with power even in the not so bad,
those who are passably good,
all those trying to lead decent lives
who faithfully drag themselves to church on Sunday mornings.
But the power of repentance is blocked in those who attach to
external rules to define and achieve righteousness of their own effort.
There is the full repentance, the full turning about,
of God’s powerful action in our lives
that literally turns us around in our tracks.
And there is the self-generated repentance which is self-absorbed,
that says, I repent of what violates who I want to be,
whom I want others to think I am,
the regret and chagrin we feel in the failure to meet ego standards.
This is more like self-conflict arising from a fear of vulnerability
or from a sense of a depleted self-worth,
and the desire to be the creator of one’s self.
The ruler of the synagogue in this story believed that
repentance was within the scope of self-management.
The rules are to be kept.
Such thinking would keep us unaware of
the constant and all inclusive creativity of God
at work outside of our rules.
The ruler of the synagogue, and those of us like him, get hung up on the rules.
But the ruler of the synagogue had no spiritual power to liberate others from the physical, mental and spiritual bondage they suffer.
Such hypocrites are good at taking care of their own
- and here I implicate all us clergy -
good at taking care of their temples, their vestments, their salaries,
their presumptions of legal, moral and institutional righteousness all in the Name of God.
What shall we say? How about this:
We are good enough.
We know the rules well enough.
We avoid harm and evil rightly enough.
We take care of ourselves pretty well, well enough.
We do NOT like to hear it said that, as we are, is NOT good enough.
Good enough, but we are not THIRSTY enough
thirsty for the fullness of life, for complete healing and liberation.
We may not understand why, at times we drink too much,
or stay angry for three days,
or yell because someone is making us be angry,
or victimizing us in some other way.
We may not know why it is that we trivialize the Love of God
to feel good about ourselves,
and so overlook the terrible freedom and the transforming intimacy
that God constantly reveals even in our suffering,
precisely in our suffering.
We are stuck in grooves of life-inhibiting patterns of suffering.
And so we turn half way;
our repentance is incomplete because of our own self-management of it.
And we resist, in fear and self-idolatry
being turned all the way around by the Holy Spirit.
We are not thirsty enough.
BUT will you let the hands of Jesus touch you and turn you
so that you can look into the source of your light?
Will you let him lay his hands upon you,
even though the rules say it is the wrong day or the wrong way
to repent and be empowered for a holy life?
Will we, who have been baptized by Jesus for initiation into his life,
turn by his turning all the way around and drink?
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