Things That Don’t Work: Jeremiah 1: 4-10; Luke 13: 10-17
How many of us have been caught, simply and plainly, caught, but we tried to make our best excuse and come up with a good reason only to hear this: “That’s not gonna work with me.” My guess is that’s happened more times than we want to think about this morning. I read a story online the other day that went a bit like this. A woman who looked out of her window to her neighbor’s yard always noticed her neighbor’s laundry hanging out to dry. It bothered and upset the woman because her neighbor’s laundry always looked dingy and stained even after being washed. She very desperately wanted to tell her neighbor how dirty her clothes looked and to do better with them.
One day, however, she decided to clean her windows in the house. When she did, she looked out her window to the neighbor’s yard only to find that her neighbor’s laundry was crisp and clean, but it was her own windows in her house that were so dirty and unclean. In life, it is so easy to find the faults in others, and yet be blinded to our own sins. That concept of self-examination is noted in several places and considered very important in the Bible. We read in I Corinthians that as we prepare for Communion we are to “examine ourselves” (I Cor. 11:28). Likewise, in Psalm 139, we hear the words, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.”
I think part of the problem goes back to an old saying in most of our denominational backgrounds, “Love the sinner; hate the sin.” I’m going to confess that I dislike and do not agree with this phrase for a couple of reasons. First, it’s not found in the Bible—it’s a quote loosely attributed to St. Augustine, but said actually in that well-known form by Mahatma Gandhi. You may find allusions in the Bible to hating evil things, but you won’t find that. phrase. Secondly it calls us to be of a dual mindset, and that is something humans do not do easily.
The Bible tells us dual mindsets are a problem: you cannot serve two masters, for eventually, eventually, we will be forced to make a choice which one wins out. If we try to practice this concept of love the sinner, hate the sin, we will eventually slide down the slippery slope of a choice. We will either start to hate the sinner if the sin doesn’t resolve, or we will become accustomed to the sin. The first comes out as anger and bitterness, the second comes out as excuses for bad behavior. That doesn’t work.
Look at the gospel lesson for today. Let’s get straight to the point: Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and to the religious leaders that was sinful. But Jesus had a new way of doing things. It was about the relationship and not the rules. They tried to shame Jesus by calling out his supposed wrong of working on the Sabbath. But Jesus stood firm: everybody does some sort of work on the Sabbath—might as well be good work. They tried to shame Jesus, but that didn’t work. Jesus chose the relationship of healer to this faithful woman over the rules of the temple.
In fact, the Bible tells us over and over the importance of faith being a relationship. In Jeremiah, we read where God tells the prophet, “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet.” Even from the very beginning, God focuses on the power of knowing us, of living in relationship to us. I can imagine the interaction as Jeremiah says to God, “I’m too young! I can’t do this! I can’t speak!” God sort of laughs and says, “Yeah, I knew you’d say that…you know, the whole knew you before you were born thing.” But, I digress. The important part is that in living in a relationship with God, Jeremiah was able to get all the support and strength he needed to live his calling.
So, if these concepts don’t work, what, exactly, does work? Well, first we must love—equally and unconditionally. Folks tend to gasp and look wild-eyed when you pull back the rules and restrictions, but there’s ample scripture to support. Here are a few snippets: for God so loved the world (that being the whole world); love thy neighbor as thyself (with no phrases, extras, or addendums); he or she who does not know love does not know God, for God is love (perhaps the bluntest way this is stated in the Bible).
I heard an older, tough lady say once to a pastor, “Ok, let’s go with this idea of just loving folks, now, how you gonna stop them from doing all that bad stuff?” I remember sitting at the organ, waiting with bated breath for the response, while flicking the same button up and down on the organ to look like I wasn’t actually listening. He replied something to the effect—that’s easy, instead of hating and attacking what is wrong, empower what is right. Help that person deepen their relationship to God, who, as the author and finisher of faith, can fix all things.
Pray for one another’s relationships with God, that they would be deep and meaningful. Encourage one another in faith to be strong, to pray, to follow God’s good pathways in life. I’ve seen too many times where someone does wrong, and the first thing their church members do is come bounding down the warpath, “That’s sinful; God’s gonna hate that; you need to fix your self right now!” You can instantly see the target of that bow up defensively, ready to strike back. And I have learned, no one ever finds the love of Christ in their pride and anger.
And yet, we can pray and encourage, heal and help. Look again at Jesus in our gospel. What would it have served for him to have looked at the broken and bound woman only to say, “How in heaven’s name could you have let an evil spirit get ahold of you. Shame on you!” Instead, in love and mercy, he healed her, then he defended her being healed and made whole. Look at the result in verse 13: “How she praised God!”
Sometimes in life, we can look out the window, glance at the world around us, and find ourselves simply appalled by the fact that everybody is airing their dirty laundry. It can tempt us to even say, “What is the matter with you people! Look at your dirty laundry everywhere.” But maybe in those instances we should also stop to clean our own windows and examine ourselves. In the gospel for today, the broken woman praised God and renewed her faith because Christ showed love and mercy to her. We can never fix the world by judging it accordingly. Perhaps, though, we can take up our cross to love as Christ love, to heal, and, by prayer and example, to lead those around us to deeper, and more powerful relationships with Christ, who can heal and save the whole world.