Well, I am into hour 34 of my second 40 hr famine. Once again, it has been a really freeing experience for me – I suspect we undersell the value of depriving ourselves of the privileges we have in our society – at our own loss and cost – I suspect that we are caged or bound by the privileged position we have society. I know better than I did last year what to expect, the headaches and the grumpiness my wife has had to put up with, but it also means that you won’t get a long sermon from me this morning – so it’s not all bad I suppose! I will however state that my fundraising target of $1000 has a long way to go, so if you would like to sponsor me with a tax deductable donation, please come and see me after church.
I appreciate those of you who might sponsor me – because my little sacrifice is nothing without yours, so thank you. Interestingly, today’s reading holds great insights into the notions of freedom and bondage...notions which I hope you’ll appreciate exploring with me.
In an essay titled: "He Put His Hands on Her": The Compassion of Jesus Meets the Hypocrisy of Religion, Dan Clendenin recalls this story:
“Back in 2005 when I was in Ethiopia, I took a day trip to the mountains that surround the capital city of Addis Ababa. At the summit our group prayed over the city, enjoyed the panoramic views, identified buildings in the distance below, and gasped for breath after walking uphill in the alpine air. That was the fun part.
The disturbing part was our climb from the city center at 7,000 feet to the summit at 11,000 feet. As our mini-van belched clouds of light blue exhaust, the higher we went the more women and girls we passed carrying loads of firewood back down the mountain.
Barefoot and bent over at the waist, these women carried 35 kilo bundles of eucalyptus saplings, seven feet wide, down to the city center about ten miles away, all for a few pennies. The firewood carriers in Addis Ababa are a common sight, so much so that you can read about them in guidebooks like the Lonely Planet.”
I wonder which bound these women more – their constant crippling pain because of the manual labour they were bound to do, or the fact that if she stopped, she and her family would not survive. This woman was truly in bondage: Her bars were her birthright.
This story from our modern age causes me to wonder how the woman in Jesus’ time had been a cripple 18 long years. Certainly the miracle straightened her back, but I wonder if she returned to a back breaking labour of some kind...or maybe not...
The 40 hr famine causes me to ask this question of us: If, on the news tonight, we saw an image of, in our case, an Australian girl, 10 or 11, walking through the streets of, say, Southport back hunched over from her 12 hours of work she is forced to do every day to support her family, there would be an outcry. What would we do to aid that girl? [PAUSE] I daren’t say, that school’s like that I work for would put together a bursary pack to assist her education. Big name organisations would get on board with housing and care for her family - let alone the government departments who would step in to ensure that the best interests of the child were kept at heart. The scenario is shocking: A girl, a daughter, perhaps a mother unable to do any more than she can just to get by. There is no farming, no food, no nothing if she doesn’t continue back hunched over. Shockingly and unfortunately, very real.
On a more prolific scale, we are facing a global food-shortage. This is affecting hundreds of millions of people in our world, and draws to our attention to the struggle faced by Jesus. More children are being sold into slavery; more families being destroyed and more and more lives, young and old, dying without a crumb in their hands. The images available on YouTube and online are heartbreaking, and I urge you all to expose yourselves to the offensiveness of the situation. Because it is very easy to become blasé about the suffering of others. The religious authorities at the time of Jesus had. By healing the woman, he proved their rules to be were utterly offensive to both humanity and God.
It is in the face of offensiveness, I think, that we make our hardest choices – or maybe, it is in the face of offensiveness that our hardest choices seem easiest. For Jesus it was simple – heal the woman – the notion of a day of rest is lost if one amongst us is suffering. For his followers, it was not quite as simple as that; He was from God? How could that be?!?! How could He, Jesus – not a Pharisee, not a man of temple but a man of a carpenter be of God be healing people – and on the day of rest of all things!!!??? In the face of offensiveness, many chose to walk away from His invitation to follow. So to, do we have that choice: we are here at an invitation...
Jesus in this very Gospel reading makes it clear. There is work to do and we are invited to play a role in it. There is no room for institutionalised religion if it holds people back from coming to God – which it was. We are invited to play a wonderful role in that. So thank you, thank you for coming here today. Worship is an integral part of responding to this invitation. Of course it doesn’t stop here. We must be do’ers of faith – we must take our eternal statements and prayers and reflections into the world – because the world is empty without it; just look at it, the yawning chasms in many lives we encounter that could in some way be bridged by allowing faith to play a larger role; or a role at all!
How different would our society look if the faithful went to work in it in a way that offended secularism – in a way that caused our unfaithful brothers and sisters to reach for their rules shove them in our faces; saying the needy are not as important as you think. The crippled are not as important as you think; in the attempt to protect the rights of those with much; our world is forgetting those with nothing. Our society is merely masking an eternity of problems by holding up the disposable features of life in front of our eyes. And when generations tire of holding this up, it will fall – and we will see then what state of religion or faith rushes in to fill vacuum. [ because it is a vacuumous state without faith - The great apologist Ravi Zacharias said “nature abhors a vacuum!” and he is right – faith or something will rush to fill the void...let us hope that our actions ensure that it is the Christian faith that succeeds in breaking through this mask.
Our actions can cause this disposable existence to waver.
Our behaviours and prayers will cause this disposable existence to shudder and weaken.
Our faith CAN break down this new vogue existence which is consuming our society and cause it to lift its head, and look beyond – as to what the world we are creating might look like...if only we allow God into it.
But, how dare we think that we can improve the world without first improving ourselves. How righteous could we be in our belief, if we are not willing to be zealous in actions and words? This is the trap which the leaders of the synagogues and temple had fallen into.
The words of St Paul ring in my ears “ 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. "
We would be fools to think that we are not worshipping and taking part in something that could be incredible, and astounding for us; but will be utterly offensive to the world.
Maybe, like a meal for just 40 hours, maybe there is something that we can deprive ourselves of so that we can look at our world with new and fresh eyes?
Maybe we can be the instigators of a miracle – one that will see the desperately poor and the desperately hungry restored into their humanity, to share in Christ’s divinity...and maybe in doing so, we might have some chance of restoring our own. Amen.
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