Luke 13:10-17
As some of you may know, I am an avid reader of the Church Times, a wonderful newspaper. I leave my copy in the parish room when I've finished it each week, and you're very welcome to borrow it and have a look through. It's a great antidote to other newspapers that I could mention. There was an interesting article in it this week about a recent survey conducted by the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life. And in this survey, the Institute reported that there were higher levels of emotional well-being among people of faith.
The report argues that faith works because it is a way of life. People of faith can respond to life with more optimism and courage and find greater happiness and contentment, mainly because of the way they view the world. Life is always open to more, to something greater than personal fears and circumstances. I think our Gospel reading today has resonances of this message.
We hear of a woman afflicted by a spirit that had crippled her for 18 years. This woman had come, as usual, to the synagogue on the Sabbath, just like we've come to church today. And in our modern terminology, we might say that this woman had suffered from a debilitating mental health problem for 18 years. Jesus sees her. He calls her, and he cures her, and he does that with words and with touch.
And then she stands upright, and she joyfully praises God. But the synagogue leader complains, cures like this are work, and so should be done during the week and not on the Sabbath. As we heard from our Isaiah reading, you're not meant to do work on the Sabbath. Jesus counters that this is not work, but care. And not only that, it shows God's glory in the victory over Satan, who had bound the woman for those long 18 years.
So it's definitely appropriate for the Sabbath. I think we have here a first century prototype of the 21st century phenomenon suggested by the Church Times article. We can think of that woman who is bound by Satan, as being someone affected by anxiety and depression, perhaps over the state of their own lives or the state of the world. That person, a person of faith, as the article mentions, comes to their place of worship. In fact, the article mentions both Christians and Muslims when it talks about people of faith. This person is strengthened and restored through being seen by God and by our fellow church members, through hearing God's word in the scriptures, and for us Christians, through feeling Jesus' touch in the bread and wine of communion, or perhaps a blessing at the altar rail.
Our reading from Hebrews gives us a further picture of the reality behind God's word in the scriptures, which can transform, those of us who suffer from depression or anxiety, helping to lift us up to praise God joyfully, like that poor woman in our gospel story. The Hebrew's reading begins, You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire and darkness, a gloom and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg not another word be spoken to them. In this, the writer is referring to the scene at Mount Sinai, when Israel had left Egypt and met God in the desert. They meet God at Mount Sinai, and the mountain is like a volcano, shaking and violent. It embodies God's wrath at the terrible state of the world. From it, God gave Moses the strict rules on the stone.
tablets to try and restrain the awful behaviour of the people. of people. This is a picture of the world that can lead us into depression and anxiety. A common phrase is that the world has gone to hell in a canned cart. The tablets, the rules, are a sticking plaster, a temporary fix. But the reading goes on to refer to a different scene, which is where we are in Jesus. It says, but you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant. This is the world that Jesus brings us into. Zion, not Mount Sinai. It is a beautiful place. There's a festival with all the saints and the angels, and God, the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are there with us. This is where Jesus spoke of when he sent the disciples from town to town in Galilee to say, the kingdom of God has come near to you. The kingdom of God was near to them, but it was through Jesus's death and resurrection that he became the mediator, the path through which we are on the way to, and are already in - the kingdom of God.
We are in the heavenly Jerusalem through our faith in Jesus, that place which is now and which is yet to come, that place that is full of hope and joy. So our readings today, a background to the survey, the results reported in the article on emotional well-being among people of faith. As people of faith, we meet regularly to care for one another, to hear God's word and to receive God's touch. And God's word shows us the reality that a life of faith places us within. It is a life not bound in the anxious, depressing world that seems to be around us, but it's a life caught up in the eternal life of the heavenly Jerusalem. A life brought to us through God, sending his son Jesus to die for us, to be raised and to ascend to his right hand in that heavenly Jerusalem. As we go forward into the week, perhaps a little weighed down and bent over like that woman in our gospel story, let us carry with us that healing. from today, remembering the promises that we have through Jesus and looking forward to next Sunday again. I'll finish with a prayer.
Loving Father, we thank you for sending your Son to bring us to the heavenly Jerusalem and to release us, like the woman in the synagogue from bondage. We pray that you will strengthen our faith in you in the promise and reality of eternal life. We pray that in our joy we will praise you and care for each other and that we will carry that out with us as we go out into the week ahead. We ask all of this in the name of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
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