Sermon: Standing Tall

The Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)
August  26, 2007

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Standing Tall

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Luke 13:10-17

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

The tricky thing about reading these ancient texts from the Bible, as we do each week, is that we can so easily distance ourselves from them. If I mention a great biblical name from the pulpit - "Moses" or "Jeremiah"- I doubt you would picture in your mind a young man, full of self-doubt and insecurity. I think most of us would imagine some gray-bearded giant from a Bible story book, perhaps a man standing on a high place in long, flowing robes - preaching with tremendous force, and conviction. And yet, our text from Jeremiah today reveals a very stunned young Jeremiah - hearing for the very first time God's call to him to become a prophet. Who would expect such a message?

Knowing what we know about Jeremiah, we'd expect the great prophet to answer the Lord with something eloquent like, "I hear, Almighty God, and I obey. As my fathers trusted you, so shall I trust." But no. He sounds an awful lot like folks today when we call to ask for help on a job that needs to be done for Christ's church. He's quick to belittle his gifts; he's quick to excuse himself from duty, because he knows there must be someone else better qualified. "Ah, Lord God!" Jeremiah replies. "Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy." But the Lord isn't like a church nominating committee - Almighty God doesn't take "no" for answer, and the rest is history. What follows is another 52 chapters from the life and words of the great prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah is not the first to try to "duck" his call to ministry - we remember Moses first hid when the burning bush spoke, arguing with God all through Exodus 3 and 4. He says, "Who am I that I should go to Pharoah and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?" When God promises to be with him, Moses still complains, saying, "But, look, they won't believe me or listen to my voice…" So the Lord shows Moses how to perform a miracle, throwing his staff to the ground to turn into a snake. Even then, Moses still objects: "But Lord, I am not eloquent, either before or since you spoke to me; but I am slow of speech and tongue." Now the Lord starts to get angry, "Who has made your mouth? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you should speak." But Moses still fights back, saying, "Oh, my Lord send, I pray, some other person."

But God is never content to take "no" for an answer when he calls us. Remember how determined Jonah was to avoid his call to preach to the people of Ninevah? He actually took a ship and sailed in the opposite direction - for all the good it did him. I did the same thing when I first felt the call to ministry - when I first heard God's call to me, I was only 11, and like Jeremiah, I assumed it had to be a mistake, so I kept it to myself. When I first had a church leader suggest I try Duke Divinity School, I took the first available flight to the West Coast - to San Francisco and acting classes at the American Conservatory Theatre. I was sure God couldn't find me there! But my teachers there were determined to teach me to stand up tall and let my voice be heard. God's very sneaky about this "call" thing. Still, it's not just about me, or Jeremiah, or pastors called to ordained ministry - the truth is we are each called to preach the Good News of God's love. Our walk of discipleship with Christ includes a call to share our faith stories with the world. Jesus wants each of us to find our own unique voice to speak for him, wherever we find ourselves called to work in the world. Jesus wants us to stand tall and let our voices be heard - to proclaim his Gospel of love.

What did I tell you earlier this summer, in another sermon? "God doesn't sanctify the qualified; God qualifies the saints." The God who made us, made us each a unique creation, each with our own unique gifts for ministry. God made us to be a part of a holy priesthood of all believers. Our Creator doesn't want us to be burdened down and tied up by our lives - the Lord wants us to stand tall and accept our call to discipleship. God wants us to be whole and healthy and full of life - so that we can reach out to find and heal and equip more Saints for a ministry of love in Christ's name.

Now that may seem obvious, but the debate over what God wants, and what religion is all about, is still going on. These differences of opinion about what the life of faith is all about is not only what divides the world into various religions but what divides Christians into denominations and what divides denominations into sometimes bitter factions. But what if the point of the whole thing is to set souls free from their captivity - to get us to accept the freedom of new life in Christ? Brian Stoffregen, a Northern California pastor, shared these insights on CrossMarks.com: "[Jesus said] People in bondage should be set free on the Sabbath day. What if that were the guiding principle behind worship?" I'm persuaded that this was the fight that Jesus went to the synagogue to pick with the religious leaders of his day that Sabbath when the bent-over woman showed up for worship. He wanted to show that healing is what worship is FOR.

Robert Capon, in his book Between Noon and Three, makes the case that Jesus is deliberately and prophetically picking a fight with synagogue leaders, causing divisions. You see, no one was surprised that he healed her -they were surprised he healed her right then and there, on the Sabbath, in clear violation of Jewish law. In other words, if this woman has been bound by disability for 18 years, surely her release could wait a couple more hours until the end of the Sabbath - and Jesus could have avoided alienating important religious leaders who might have otherwise become valuable allies. But Capon argues that in order to put the "new wine" of the Gospel into "new wineskins" - a "frame" adequate to hold the new ideas - Jesus needed to completely explode the old wineskins. He needed to permanently eliminate the old framework of thinking to keep people from succumbing to the temptation to slip back into its familiar constraints.

You see, as the apostle Paul reminds us again and again in his letters, salvation by faith is a completely new thing. God's grace frees us; works righteousness keeps us in chains, and these were chains he knew quite well before his conversion. He would say we are all spiritually crippled when we are in bondage to the law - no matter how well some good and faithful people are able to follow it. Law binds us, and it bends us to its will - and ultimately, it makes us unable to stand up straight or find our voice to praise God. But Jesus, our Savior, comes to tell us this Good News - that release from bondage is what the Sabbath is for, what worship is for! This is what we hear in Jesus's "inaugural address" quoted in the 4th chapter of Luke's gospel. In the spirit of the prophets, Jesus says he has come to "proclaim release to the captives" and "set at liberty those who are oppressed."

I thought it was significant that in this passage in Luke's 13th chapter, it is only the leader of the synagogue who uses the Greek word for "healing" or "cure," therapeuo. The words Jesus uses are less medical. Jesus tells her she has been set free (apoluo) from her weakness or sickness (astheneia). Apoluo is NOT a word usually associated with healing, because its root (luo) is the same that is used when one unties an animal that is bound. Jesus did not so much heal her specific back problem - and as someone who's suffered crippling back pain, I don't mean to belittle that miracle - he set her free. And if we can claim that metaphor, we can also claim that promise for ourselves today. Jesus is here to free us all of us from the chains that bind us.

Has anyone here ever felt bent over by your life? Have you ever felt that you can no longer straighten yourself, like this woman that Jesus heals in Luke? Is anyone here burdened down or tied up in any other way? Are you burdened down by depression? By anger? By bad habits? Are you tied up by a vast tangle of life's demands? By old hurts and unhealed wounds? Well, the Good News for us today is that the Lord wants each of us to be healed - right here, right now, on this beautiful Sabbath day. God wants us to stand tall and raise our voices in praise!

By releasing this poor bent-over woman on the Sabbath from the spirit that crippled her, he broke everyone there, and even us today, out of the trap of rote religious obligation. He was inviting all of God's children to finally stand up straight and claim our voices. Together, we are called to be the living body of Christ, lifting the strong and prophetic Gospel the world needs to hear.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.