Disruptive Dreams - Marie Alford-Harkey
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Sermon Proper 16C (Luke 13:10-17)
Marie Alford-Harkey, M.Div.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
August 25, 2013
Let’s be honest about this. If someone got up right now and started to perform a miracle in our midst, standing at the rail, calling up those among us who are sick or infirm to lay hands on them, I don’t think we’d all be just hunky dory with that, would we? Tell the truth. Before we figured out what was going on, we’d squirm in our chairs. We’d wonder why “someone” didn’t do “something” about this disruption in our liturgy. Because what we do here on Sunday mornings is important to us. Our rituals matter to us. They remind us that we are God’s people and send us out to do God’s work in the world.
I imagine the leader of the synagogue must have felt the just like that. We’re supposed to see this leader as the embodiment of missing the point. But he was charged with safeguarding something precious and important to the synagogue community. And although we realize right away that the synagogue leader is over-zealous in his enforcement of the rule, that might not have been so easily apparent in the moment. This leader was doing his job. He was attending to something that was important to him and to his community. And if this woman had been showing up at the synagogue for 18 years, the leader was probably right. Jesus probably could have picked some other day to free her and heal her. But he didn’t.
Because sometimes, just like in the synagogue, and maybe just like here, sometimes our rituals and our institutions need to be disrupted so that we can remember what’s important.
And what is important, of course, is healing, freedom, and wholeness for all God’s people. Imagine – can you, someone so stooped that she can only see the ground? So bent, that she has to turn her head to see anything around her? Imagine her body, captive in this position for 18 years. She comes to the synagogue, as she usually does on the Sabbath, and Jesus notices her.
I bet she had been coming to the synagogue for most of the 18 years that she’d suffered. People had probably gotten used to her shape. They most likely leaned down to talk to her, and, according to Jewish custom, she was probably well taken care of by the community. But on that Sabbath, Jesus notices her. And he decides that this is the day when she’ll be released from the bondage of her bent body.
He sees her, he goes to her, he touches her, and he tells her – woman you are free! I have had those moments, and I hope you have too, that wonderful moment of freedom when we realize that, thanks to the loving touch of Jesus, we are free from whatever burdens of sadness or shame or guilt or anger or hurt that we are carrying. We are free to put those burdens down and to stand up straight and praise the God who made us. That’s what this woman does, and the whole community rejoices with her.
But the rejoicing only happens after Jesus shames his opponents. The leader of the synagogue and, we assume, the others in charge of the community, protest that her healing has disrupted their religious observance. And Jesus puts them to shame.
Jesus reminded them that this woman was part of their own (and his community). She’s a daughter of Abraham and Sarah – she’s Jewish – and if it’s okay to give our oxen water on the Sabbath then surely it is ok to heal one of our own on the Sabbath.
I like to believe that Jesus’ shaming of them actually spurred them to action. I like to believe that his opponents were able to see Jesus’ point, to change their hearts and their minds and rejoice with the rest of the congregation.
I like to think that because generally, I am more like the synagogue leader in the story than I am like Jesus. I’d be the first person squirming in my seat if some crazy teacher started calling people up to be healed on a Sunday morning. I hope that eventually I would figure it out, and join in the rejoicing.
This insistence that people and their needs trump the needs of our institutions and observances and rituals is the beginning of Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God. Jesus’ very next words are “What is the kingdom of God like?”
That’s a great question to ponder, isn’t it? Think about it. What is the kingdom of God like for you?
Fifty years ago this weekend, the country first heard the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s answer to the question, “What is the kingdom of God like?” He knew that his answer to the question was shaking the country to its core. He intended to disrupt our institutions until something changed.
Listen to his words,
Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
Dr. King knew the power of disruption. He led a movement that intended to use it. And he told us what the kingdom of God is like.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
Amen!
Did we get there? Did we arrive at King’s dream? The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. And I can tell you this. We weren’t there some 10 years later, in the red hills of Georgia where I lived in 1973, when I learned that, “Little white girls don’t invite little black girls to their birthday parties.” I only realized in reading Dr. King’s speech years later what an eerie echo those words were.
So are we there now, 50 years later? Have arrived at Dr. King’s dream?
We’ve made progress, certainly. In current society overt racism isn’t as tolerated as it was in 1963 or in 1973. If I were 7 years old today in Georgia, I’d probably get to invite my whole first grade class to my birthday party.
But covert racism can be much harder to eradicate. Racism is still alive and well among us. But we want to pretend that it isn’t. We are tired of talking about it. So we don’t talk about it. We hope that if we don’t talk about it, we might not disrupt our institutions and our rituals. But we can’t change what we don’t talk about. Recent events – like the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, or the killing of Trayvon Martin and the trial of George Zimmerman – have forced us to talk about racism.
There’s a group of pastors in Sanford, Florida, where Martin and Zimmerman are from. They are white and African American and they came together during the Zimmerman trial to try to help heal their community. They worked hard not to take sides. One of the white pastors describes it like this,
This particular shooting, it happens everywhere in this country, but for some reason this one was highlighted, and I believe it was by the hand of the Lord…We saw pastors come out of the woodwork who normally would never get together, and … in some respects, we were almost shamed into action.
What is the kingdom of God like? I think it’s like this. One of the black pastors said,
Pastors, both black and white, have said, you know what, forget about our denominational differences, forget about our racial differences, forget about even some of the things that we were born into. How about we develop relationship? You learn more about me, I learn more about you, and we can develop a relationship over the long haul.
What is the kingdom of God like? I think it’s like this. From a white pastor,
And as you get them into the same room, people hear the hearts of others and as they hear their heart, then we’re able to then talk about those things, then we’re able to discuss those things, and we really see, and it opens the door for healing to take place.
Oh yes! Oh let’s disrupt the polite agreement to not talk about it. Let’s hear each other’s pain. Let’s hear each other’s hearts. Let’s bring some healing into this painful place!
What is the kingdom of God like? It’s like a woman being freed of her bondage standing up straight and praising God. It’s like freedom.
It’s like this, says Dr. King,
When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Quotes from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech are from this source.
Quotes from the pastors in Sanford, FL are from PBS' Religion and Ethics Newsweekly transcript here.