A Fork in the Road

A sermon preached by the Rev. Scott D. Nowack on October 16, 2011

at the First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

“A Fork in the Road”

Luke 13:10-17

             Her anger and frustration turned into apathy and indifference.  For years, one doctor after another tried to diagnose her affliction.  Every doctor visit brought some hope that she would finally know what was going on, but what little hope she had quickly faded as each doctor would come back with no answers.  She was resigned to the fact that she could not be healed.

            She had been wrestling with this medical riddle for over eighteen years.  Walking around hunched over at the waist is painful and uncomfortable.  People avoided her and kept their distance.  She was kicked out, pushed out, locked out and kept out on the fringes of society.  Loneliness and sadness were her only companions.

            Yet even with her physical issues, she was faithful to her God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  It was the Sabbath.  She made her way to the synagogue for worship.  As she is quietly sneaking into the service that had already begun, the rabbi calls her out from the crowd to come over to him.  She’s thinking to herself, “What does he want with me?  Am I in trouble?  Am I behind on my stewardship commitment?  What does he want with me?”

Expecting the worst, she gets the surprise of her life when he says, “Woman, you are set free from your aliment” and places his hands on her hunched shoulders and crooked back and immediately she could stand up straight: chest out, stomach in and her head held high.  Her aliment is gone.  Her eighteen years of suffering, gone.  Her eighteen years of one disappointment after another, gone.  Her anger and frustration, gone. 

Her indifference and apathy are quickly transformed into excitement, joy, amazement and awe.  After eighteen years, imprisoned by her aliment, she is free.  Free from the evil spirit that bound her for far too long; free from Satan’s power, influence and control over her life.  Jesus takes the initiative and the healing becomes a sign of a larger truth.  She is a new creation by God’s transforming power; a power made accessible only through Jesus Christ.

            For Jesus has authority over the forces of Satan that left this woman badly crippled for so long.  This demonstrates something very important for us to see and know: it demonstrates the breaking-in of God’s rule in human life meeting us, you could say, at a fork in the road.  In other words, since Jesus is the son of God and God is not bound by the limits of time and space, God in Jesus Christ intersects linear, human time and enters our world fully human and fully God.  At one time, God’s power was inaccessible, kept at a distance, as illustrated in the Israelites journey from slavery in Egypt to forty years in the wilderness to their arrival in the Promise Land.  Now we have unlimited access to God’s transforming power through Jesus Christ.  The healing Jesus performs is a call to decision, a call to “repentance and changed lives”. 

            Of course with any change comes some resistance.  Throughout his ministry, people got mad and upset with Jesus because of the things he did and said, especially the religious leaders of his day.  When Jesus chooses to heal the crippled woman in the synagogue on the Sabbath, the leader of the synagogue was indignant.  He was consumed with rage and self-righteous anger over what he witnessed.  He was convinced that he was absolutely right and Jesus was absolutely wrong. His interpretation of the Law is strict and without compromise.  He follows the “letter” of the law: healing was considered work and work was prohibited on the Sabbath.

            Jesus interprets the law differently.  He knows the “letter” of the law, but he also knows the “spirit” of the law.  Jesus does not mince words when he confronts the leader directly.  The plural “hypocrites” is an indictment of the leader and all his colleagues in this conflict who are blind to the truth and evidence of the Kingdom of God.  Jesus’ argument is irrefutable.  If you are allowed to free an animal to lead it to water on the Sabbath, then why not this daughter of Abraham be freed and released from Satan’s grip on the Sabbath?  The leader has no response to Jesus.  The people at the synagogue rejoice.  He refutes the limited, human interpretation of the law with God’s unlimited interpretation. 

            This is a sign of the breaking-in of God’s rule, the Kingdom of God, into human life.  In Jesus Christ, we have access to God’s power.  The gates are open.  The User ID and password are removed and we have free, unlimited, Wi-Fi access to the God of the universe.  The peace of the way things have always been was shattered by Jesus.  As Pastor Fred Craddock puts it, “If helping a stooped woman creates a crisis, then a crisis it has to be.”

            This is a crisis that raises a moral issue of how the law is to be interpreted.  The religious leaders are blind to the real meaning of things because they do not perceive the presence and influence of the Kingdom of God on earth.  They do not perceive that they are in a time of crisis, a time for repentance and changed lives.  The breaking-in of the Kingdom of God into human life is turning the world as they know it upside down. 

            The leader of the synagogue is “blind” to the remarkable restoration of a daughter of Abraham.  Crippled and destitute, the woman was a social outcast and excluded from the community.  With her healing restoration, she is reinstated into membership in the community of Israel. 

Imagine if our new member class turned people away because they were crippled in some way, or they were too old or too young or they didn’t make enough money or their skin was the wrong color or they have an unusual accent or the wrong sexual orientation or they were too tall or too short or they didn’t pray enough.  The leader of the synagogue and so many others fail to see the hand of God at work in the present.

            We today live in a time of crisis, a time for repentance and changed lives.  How are we to respond?  God took the first step to change the world by bringing us back to Him through his son Jesus Christ.  What is our plan of action?

            Have you noticed that when times are good, when life is humming along, that we stop adapting, growing and transforming ourselves?  But when times are tough, uncertain, and challenging, that’s when we grow as individuals, as a community and as a church.

            Pastor, author and radio host Leith Anderson describes it this way, “Adversity is often the window of opportunity for change.  Few people or organizations want to change when there is prosperity and peace.  Major changes are often precipitated by necessity.” 

We live in a time of crisis and adversity.  We took so many things for granted.  Things we thought would always be there have changed.  The use of e-books with a Kindle, a Nook or an iPad has increased dramatically in the last couple of years.  Some predict that e-books will have the same impact today as the printing press did when it was introduced in the early 1500s.  Barnes and Noble, who sells the Nook, have taken notice encouraging their customers to purchase the Nook and their e-books from them.  They see the end of the era of the printed page fast approaching.

            The unemployment rate is currently around 9.1%.  The debt crisis in Greece, the downgrade of our nation’s credit rating, the volatile stock market and our nation’s debt are taking a toll on us.  Businesses of all sizes are not hiring.  I’ve read that most businesses are living with a great deal of uncertainty an anxiety.  With so many people unemployed, the ripple effect extends into all segments of our economy with record house foreclosures, loan defaults, and reduced consumer spending for goods and services.  It is a crisis of not knowing what tomorrow will bring.  It’s a crisis of confidence.

            The good news is that it is in times of crisis and adversity that we as Christians have a prime opportunity to proclaim to the world the one who is stable, unchanging, eternal and a sure hope for tomorrow.  It is in times like these that we can influence and show the world that a life with Jesus is a sure bet, a worthy investment.  It is in times like these that we can proclaim and demonstrate that giving to the church is the answer to the idols of consumerism, materialism and acquisition that run rampant in our culture.  The challenge we face is not wealth itself.  Rather, it is the understanding that our self-worth is based on what we own, the home we live in, the car we drive, the clothes we wear and much more.  Our identity is grounded in knowing we are all children of God; this is where we find comfort, hope, meaning and generosity for our walk with Christ.  It is in times like these that we can turn the world upside down in the name of Jesus Christ, showing that life is not all about getting, but that true joy comes from joyful living; gracious living through gracious giving.  The offering we take every Sunday is not about the church’s need to receive, but about our need as disciples of Jesus Christ to give graciously of ourselves.  As Walt Whitman put it, “When I give, I give myself.” 

            The healing of the crippled woman in the synagogue broke the status quo of her day.  God stretched out to her, transforming her into a new creation of God in Christ Jesus.

            No matter where we find ourselves, God can take what appears to be our ruined, hopeless lives and turn it around upside down to do good in the world.

Eric Liddell, the famous Olympic athlete and Christian missionary from Britain of whom Chariots of Fire was made, said it best, “Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God’s plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins.  Our broken lives are not lost or useless.  God comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out his wonderful plan of love.”

As his disciples, we have access to God’s transforming power to bring healing and wholeness to one another and to the world as gracious givers rather than as rampant consumers; to declare to the whole world the saving power of Jesus Christ with our words and actions; our time, talents and treasures. 

With this as our goal, what will you do to make it a reality?