I am your interim
pastor and as such I am new to this church and to this community. I
am learning about you. You should know something about me. Sally and
I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary this past June.
We have three children and 11 grandchildren. We both grew up in
pretty traditional, middle-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestant
families. So it is kind of a surprise to us that our own family is so
different from the one we knew as children. Our oldest daughter
Allison is married to Mustafa and they have four children and they
are Muslim. Our adopted son, Alexander, is bi-racial, which means
black or African-American, and he has 5 children. Our youngest
daughter, Elizabeth, is married to a Frenchman and they have two
children. So one-third of our family is Muslim, one-third is black,
and two-thirds are first generation in this country and hold dual
citizenship. Now when we got married 50 years ago we did not set out
to create this kind of family, but here we are. In this time when
people are understandably concerned about immigration and racial
tensions in this country are high, here we are. Our family is not
unique. There are lots of families like ours—interracial,
interfaith, and international. It is an interesting time to be alive.
And, it is a great time to be the church. And we would not change our
family for anything.
Now all this
preamble does not have anything to do with the text today, but I
thought you ought to know more about who I am and who we are. So now
let’s turn to the text.
The story of this
woman—this bent-over woman—became one of the most challenging and
life changing stories for me many years ago when I had the good
fortune to participate in an exchange program with a partner church
in Germany. There I met a woman who introduced herself to me as a
Christian educator. I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I asked her
what a Christian educator did.
She told me that
she went out into the community to conduct Christian education
programs. As I recall, she told me that she was working with a group
of low-wage workers in the evening and with a group of single mothers
who lived in public housing and with community immigrants in the
afternoons. Three different groups, but they were all studying the
story that we heard today about this bent-over woman.
Then she showed
me what she did when she met with these groups. She opened a
traveling kit and took out a mat, maybe a square yard, laid it on the
floor. On each side of the mat she placed a wooden block. On each
block was a word. The blocks were labeled: politics, economics,
social, religion. Then in the middle of the mat she placed a doll
that stood maybe two feet tall. The doll was a woman and she was
flexible, so when the teacher put the doll on the mat the doll was
bent over, like the woman in Luke’s account.
Then she read the
story and asked, “How do you think this woman feels?” I am asking
you this question now. How do you think she feels? What do you
imagine it is like to be this woman? Can you think of reasons why she
was bent over? Perhaps she suffered from a medical condition and
could not afford a doctor. Maybe she has arthritis. Maybe she was in
prayer. Maybe she had worked in a job where she had to do a lot of
heavy lifting, and her body was just worn out. Maybe her bent over
condition symbolized her social status, her poverty, or her inability
to access health care. The conversation explored possible political,
social and economic conditions that might have contributed to this
woman’s situation.
Then the teacher
said that one of the conditions that kept this woman weighed down was
religion. She was unclean in a culture that valued purity. She was a
sinner. In the Bible that is not a moral category but a religious
one. Her physical condition made her unclean. People did not want to
see her, or touch her, or even be near her. Then the teacher would
ask, “Have you ever felt like this woman?”
The woman did not
stay bent over. Do you remember what happened? Jesus came to her. He
talked to her. He touched this untouchable unclean woman. He
recognized her as a child of God, and she stood up.
I have been
thinking about this gospel story as I watched the news this week.
Sally and I both grew up in Wisconsin. I served a church in a
Milwaukee suburb. So I have been watching the civil unrest there with
more than a little interest. I know the Black Lives Matter movement
and the uprising in Milwaukee have lots of variables. It is a
complicated situation and everyone has a point of view. Almost 20
years ago, in 1998, two scholars, Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton,
wrote a book entitled American Apartheid (Harvard University
Press). They concluded that Milwaukee is the most racially segregated
city in the United States. There is a long history there. But there
is also great hope. The Chief of Police in Milwaukee has issued a
call for clergy and people of faith to come together and start
working with one another to create a better, healthier community. I
remember in the 1960s there was a national movement called “Living
Room Dialogues.” Reuel Howe wrote about it in a book, The
Miracle of Dialogue (1963). Caring enough to listen to each
other’s stories is where healing begins.
I have been
thinking about Milwaukee this week. I have been thinking about 23
Christian ministers in Missouri who were in court this past week.
They went to the state capital to call upon the legislature to expand
Medicaid and were arrested for the crime of trespassing on government
property. Even though they were in the public gallery, they were
arrested for trespassing, tried in court, and convicted. I am glad
they were there and are standing up for the rights of people who bear
the heavy burden of injustice.
There are stories
like this in the news every day of the week. I am convinced that we
need to look with unflinching focus at the oppressive events that
seem to pile up each day, and weigh us down, and threaten to bend us
and break our spirit. We need to lament and weep for this world that
God loves. And then we need to stand up and look each other in the
face and say, God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit
of courage. Let us rise up. There is a balm in Gilead. There is
healing that is sure to come.
The Book of
Genesis tells us that there is Spirit that hovers over the darkness
and moves across the chaos. This Spirit is at work in the hearts of
women and men and children who are committed to overcoming the world.
This Spirit is loose upon the world. You cannot hold it back. As
people born of the Spirit you and I can live effectively in the chaos
of the present with the high destiny of children of God.
Rev. David Hansen
No comments:
Post a Comment