On Letting Go and Standing Up

These past few weeks have brought important -- perhaps traumatic -- changes for some of us. Last Monday some in our church family started preschool or moved up from one class to another. Some are going to "big school," that is, elementary school. Last Monday you climbed onto that enormous yellow school bus and waved good-bye to your parents. After a week of practice, you’re getting good at this. And your parents? Well, by Friday they had managed to wave back without melting into a puddle on the sidewalk.

And, if this year follows the pattern of previous years, there are some university students in the congregation today. Your parents might even be sitting with you, having made sure you do know the way to church. Perhaps you will be here next week, and the next, and the next – at least until the morning after the first home football game.

Andra and I will be saying goodbye to our own college sophomore this week. The nest, temporarily occupied for a few days this summer, will be empty again. You just can’t imagine how silent a house without clarinet music can be.

We give our children to God in the sacrament of baptism, but something in us wants to hang on just a little longer, until we’re certain that they know what the world out there is like, how to take care of themselves, how to make good choices, how to iron a shirt and balance a checkbook. We don’t want to let go until we’re sure they’ll be OK, which, of course, is not within our power to secure.

And so we pack their lunches and send them off to kindergarten, or their suitcases and send them off to college, recalling the water in this font, which is the sign that our children never really belonged to us in the first place. They belong to God. When we remember that, we are given the strength to let go.

There are lots of ways to hang on, however – not only to our children, but also to certain notions about God. The yearning to control, to manipulate, to possess what is not ours, is as old as that first bite from the apple, and as new as this morning’s headlines. According to the Bible, God has spent a lot of time and effort showing us a better way of living, but we are notoriously slow to catch on.

Take, for instance, the notion of "law" or "Torah" in what we Christians call the Old Testament. The law was meant to be a gift to God’s people, a way of showing the world how a Covenant People can live -- loving God, loving one another, welcoming strangers, honoring commitments. The law was not intended to be a burden to bear, but a gift to enjoy.

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night. (Psalm1:1)

God’s law, John Calvin taught, can be used to show us what terrible sinners we are, and to bludgeon us into conformity against our prideful wills. It works fairly well for those purposes, but there is a third use of the law, Calvin said. It can be a guide to living in thanksgiving for the wondrous grace of God.

If you’re going to read the law out loud in church, Calvin said, don’t read it before the prayer of confession. Read it after the assurance of forgiveness. That’s the place where it’s likely to do Christians the most good.

The law was meant as a sign of God’s presence amongst God’s people. Like the sabbath, it was meant to be a gift. But something in us doesn’t like to accept gifts from God. We’d rather have God give us prizes for righteous living. That way, we can turn God into a kind of divine game show host who rewards us for right answers. It looks as though God is in control, but we’re the ones who really call the shots.

Every form of religion, whether its Judaism, or Islam, or various varieties of Christianity, can become a form of distorted Torah -- a subtle and sophisticated way of manipulating God. Gift becomes law. Law becomes religion. Religion becomes magic. Or if not magic, then a straightjacket that prevents us from reaching out to accept God’s gift.

This, I think, is what it is happening in today’s Gospel Lesson. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, when he spots a woman bent like a pretzel by what Luke calls a "spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years."

We might disagree with Luke’s diagnosis. Today we might say "rickets" or "scoliosis" or use some other medical term, but it wouldn’t change the fact that this woman can’t stand up straight in God’s house. She can’t claim her place amongst God’s children. She can’t throw her shoulders back and sing God’s praise. She’s a crooked, shriveled shell of God’s intentions for her, and when Jesus sees her, he does something about that.

He calls her over, and says "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." Then, without saying another word, he puts both hands on her head. Immediately she stands up straight and starts praising God.

It’s such a dramatic and obviously joyful moment that we can hardly believe what happens next. The leader of the synagogue lodges a complaint. Jesus has broken the rules. The law says, "No work on the sabbath," but Jesus has done of job of work. He has set this woman free.

By this stage of his ministry, Jesus has had it up to here with folks who think like this synagogue leader. "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey . . . and lead it to water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" (Luke 13:15-16)

Such a phony! Such a pompous windbag! Aren’t you glad Jesus let him have it? We love nothing better than pointing out the hypocrisy of others. Especially preachers. It’s the national pastime.

But how do you suppose that synagogue leader got that way? I don’t think he set out to become a person so blind to God’s activity in the world that he couldn’t rejoice in a miracle of grace happening in front of his own eyes. I think he got that way over time, by hanging on to a religious system that, ever so slowly, blinded him to God.

It’s like having cataracts growing over your eyes. The change is so gradual that you don’t notice what’s happening, until you can’t see the small print or the large print anymore. Or, it’s a bit like living in a house that never gets its windows cleaned. Gradually, year after year, the windows get dirtier and dirtier, until you can’t see outside at all, and your whole world becomes what’s inside your own house.

Christians can become like that synagogue leader – so fixed on the system that we can’t see God’s grace, even when it’s staring us straight in the face, not only in the form of a daughter of Abraham rising to her full height in the presence of God, but also in the form of Jesus himself. We can take even the free grace of God made flesh in Jesus Christ, and turn that into a system, a formula, straightjacket.

Look again at this story. According to some Christians’ formula for salvation, this woman isn’t saved. She doesn’t ask for forgiveness. She doesn’t call Jesus "Lord." She doesn’t say she’s sorry for her sins and invite Jesus into her heart. She doesn’t even thank Jesus for making her able to stand up tall and straight again. Instead she immediately starts praising God. Not Jesus, but God.

This doesn’t seem to bother Jesus at all. What bothers him is the folks who, instead of joining in that praise, complain that nobody’s following the formula. Jesus gets out a cloth and polishes up a pane in their dirty window, but they won’t look through it. It’s a window into God’s own kingdom, but they won’t look. To look through that window would require them to let go, and that was for them too terrifying for words. They are in bondage, you see, and they don’t even know it.

I’m coming to realize that it’s possible for Christians to call Jesus "Lord," and still live in bondage. It’s possible to profess that God is sovereign over all of life, but then to insist that God behave only in certain ways, showing love and grace only to certain people. It’s possible even to say that "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son . . ." and then impose a formula on how God can use the gift of Jesus Christ to lead the world from darkness into light, from bondage into freedom, from death to life.

People who limit God’s grace like that make me mad, but mostly they make me very, very sad. There are times when all of us are like that. It feels terrible, doesn’t it -- like being all shriveled and bent and unable to lift our faces to the light?

I started off this sermon by saying that our children don’t belong to us. They belong to God. Therefore we must let them go. The grace of God doesn’t belong to us, either. It’s God’s to give away. We can welcome it, but we cannot control it.

Blessed are those who do not object to this arrangement, but instead let go to stand tall and straight in praise of the living God.