A Revolution In Six Parts

August 26, 2007     Proper 16 C

Jeremiah 1:4-10             Psalm 71:1-6, 15-17

Hebrews 12:18-29         St. Luke 13:10-17

Walter Wink, in his book Engaging the Powers, suggests that Jesus' action represented a revolution happening in seven short verses. In this short story, Jesus tries to wake people up to the kind of life God wants for them. He often talks about theKingdom of God where people have equal worth and all of life has dignity. But in the latter part of his ministry, he begins to act this out. In the midst of a highly patriarchal culture Jesus breaks at least six strict cultural rules:

1. Jesus speaks to the woman. In civilized society, Jewish men did not speak to women. Remember the story in John 4 where Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. She was shocked because a Jew would speak to a Samaritan. But when the disciples returned, the Scripture records, "They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman" In speaking to her, Jesus jettisons the male restraints on women's freedom.

 2. He calls her to the center of the synagogue. By placing her in the geographic middle, he challenges the notion of a male monopoly on access to knowledge and to God.

 3. He touches her, which revokes the holiness code. That is the code that protected men from a woman's uncleanness and from her sinful seductiveness.

4. He calls her "daughter of Abraham," a term not found in any of the prior Jewish literature. This is revolutionary because it was believed that women were saved through a relationship with a man, usually the father or husband. To call her a daughter of Abraham is to make her a full-fledged member of the nation of Israel with equal standing before God.

 5. He heals on the Sabbath, the holy day. In doing this he demonstrates God's compassion for people over ceremony, and reclaims the Sabbath for the celebration of God's liberal goodness.

 6. Last, and not least, he challenges the ancient belief that her illness is a direct punishment from God for sin. He asserts that she is ill, not because God willed it, but because there is evil in the world. (In other words, bad things happen to good people.) And Jesus did all this in a few seconds.

This woman appeared with a spirit that had crippled her for 18 years. I wonder if the spirit's name was scoliosis. I imagine the woman bent forward with a large hump on one side of her back, struggling to breathe. He called her to him, invited her to choose to make her way close to him. He gently prepared her for the healing he offered by his announcement: "You are set free." Then when he saw that she was ready and that she wanted this freedom, he laid hands on her and allowed his power and his love to release her from suffering. She knew immediately that God welcomed her praise. But the leader of the synagogue was annoyed. This wasn't the sort of disorder he wanted in his synagogue. Jesus called him (and us) hypocrites for resenting the surprises of God's freedom. We are often tied to the safety of our manger, our food stores, our little boxes where we have found both nourishment and condemnation. Jesus sets us free to come to the water of life that flows from him in a limitless stream.

There was a certain man who went through the forest seeking any bird of interest he might find. He caught a young eagle, brought it home and put it among the fowls and ducks and turkeys, and gave it chicken food to eat even though it was the king of birds.

Five years later, a naturalist came to see him and, after passing through the garden, said ?That bird is an Eagle, not a chicken.'

?Yes' said the owner, ?but I have trained it to be a chicken. It is no longer an eagle.'

?No,' said the naturalist, ?it is an eagle still; it has the heart of an eagle, it has the wing span of an eagle, and I will help it soar high up in to the heavens.'

?No,' said the owner. ?it is a chicken and will never fly.'

They agreed to test it. The naturalist picked up the eagle, held it up and said with great intensity. ?Eagle you are an eagle; you belong to the sky and not to this earth; stretch forth your wings and fly.' The eagle turned this way and that, and then looking down, saw the chickens eating their food, and down he jumped.

The owner said; ?I told you it was a chicken.'

?No,' said the naturalist, ?it is an eagle. Give it another chance tomorrow.

So the next day he took it to the top of the house and said: ?Eagle, you are an eagle; stretch forth your wings and fly.' But again the eagle, seeing the chickens feeding, jumped down and fed with them.

Then the owner said: ?I told you it was a chicken.'

?No,' asserted the naturalist, ?it is an eagle, and it has the heart of an eagle; only give it one more chance, and I will make it fly tomorrow.'

The next morning he rose early and took the eagle outside the city and away from the houses, to the foot of a high mountain. The sun was just rising, gilding the top to the mountain with gold, and every crag was glistening in the joy of the beautiful morning.

He picked up the eagle and said to it: ?Eagle, you are an eagle; you belong to the sky and not to the earth; stretch forth your wings and fly.'

The eagle looked around and trembled as if new life were coming to it. But it did not fly. The naturalist then grabbed its head and made it look straight at the sun. Suddenly it stretched out its wings and, with the screech of an eagle, it flew out of his hands and mounted higher and higher and never returned. Though it had been kept and tamed as a chicken, it was an eagle.

 You see. You take us humans and put us among the ducks, and turkeys, and chickens in this world and give us rules to live by and tell us that we are moral people so long as we live by those rules, and we will contently live out our lives in meager existence. But you let someone like Christ come along, straighten our backs, and point our head toward the heavens, and then suddenly we realize we are sons and daughters of Abraham. We are God's chosen people. We are not chickens; we are eagles! We are children of Christ's revolution.