Are you a rule follower? Or a rule breaker?
I am a rule follower… for better, and for worse.
When I was a student, I never cut class. Even at General Assembly, I go to all the workshops.
I’ve never received a parking ticket—never even been pulled over.
I jaywalk sometimes—but then feel guilty about it. And I judge other people who jaywalk in places where I wouldn’t.
I always placed two spaces after a period, long after I was told that that rule was no longer necessary. I always use the Oxford comma. And I still try not to end a sentence with a preposition, even though that is also a rule that, I’ve been told, isn’t really a rule that needs to be followed.
I hate it when people use the word “normalcy,” because it’s not a real word. “Normalcy” is a word that Warren G. Harding made up when he ran for president in 1920, because he couldn’t think of the word “normality.” It’s like when Will Ferrell made fun of George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live years ago by using the word “strategery.” That was funny, because everyone knows that “strategery” isn’t a real word.
Neither was “normalcy,” until Warren G. Harding made it up.
Being a rule-follower can be exhausting. For the rule-follower, as well as for the rule-followers friends and family..
I do admire people who are comfortable breaking the rules. My friend Jonathan is the pastor at First Christian Church in North Hollywood, California, and he wears a suit on Sunday mornings, just like I do… but with his suit he wears Converse sneakers.
That’s so cool! A rule follower like me could never wear sneakers with a suit!
All this forces me to admit that, if I were one of the characters in today’s Bible story, I’d probably be the leader of the synagogue.
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The leader of the synagogue was a rule-follower.
Which I still think is a good thing.
Most of the time.
The rule about the Sabbath is a good rule. It’s a good command. It’s good that we take a day to honor God and ourselves by resting, to cease productivity, and just be.
The Sabbath, when properly observed, also honors our neighbors, because we don’t make them work on our behalf. They deserve a day to rest and just be as well.
It’s a good law… Except when it isn’t.
The woman in the synagogue had been crippled for 18 years. For 18 years, she had been unable to stand up straight. For 18 years, she had been coming to the synagogue, being careful to follow all the rules, hoping and praying that God would heal her of her affliction, and set her free.
It never happened. But still, she kept coming. But still, she kept her faith.
No one at the synagogue had been able to set her free from her affliction. Or, maybe they had been unwilling to set her free from her affliction.
As to why they were unable or unwilling to heal her, your guess is as good as mine.
I do know that many come to the church today for help, for healing; to be set free from the afflictions they face.
And many go to the welfare office, or the doctor’s office, or the therapist’s office, or the pharmacy…
Or they seek help from a bottle or a pill…
Seeking anything that can help them find healing and wholeness, and to be set free from their afflictions…
And they do not find the healing they need.
Jesus came into the synagogue. He came in to teach.
And while he was teaching, this woman appeared, bent over, afflicted.
Well, this was the Sabbath day, the day for teaching, not the day for healing.
Yet the Sabbath’s purpose was to show honor and love to God, and honor and love to oneself, and honor and love to one’s neighbor…
And love would certainly compel one to provide the healing that this woman so desperately needed.
Jesus knew that the rule about honoring the Sabbath was subservient to the rule to love. In fact, every rule was subservient to the rule to love.
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“Love God; love your neighbor.” Jesus said that every other law and command hangs from these commands to love…
And by “hang,” I think Jesus was picturing a door, and on that door was written all the commands, all the rules, that one had to follow…
but the command to love God, and the command to love one’s neighbor, were the two hinges that held up the door; the two hinges that held all the other commands; the two hinges from which all the other commands hung.
So, to insist that healing must not be done on the sabbath because of the command to keep the sabbath day holy would be to place the sabbath command at one of the hinges, and to move the command to love to some other, less important spot.
It gets things backwards.
And getting things backwards like this is, unfortunately, something the church has done way too often over the centuries.
We have talked about love, but we have said that love must be limited.
Love is limited by all these other commands, all these other rules.
Love is limited by what is deemed right and proper.
Love is limited by so many other rules that have become more important to us, to Christians, than love.
The command to honor the Sabbath is a good command… except when love commands us to break the law about the Sabbath.
Love always trumps any other law.
Martin Luther King, Jr., when asked about why he engaged in civil disobedience, and why he was willing to break laws, said that sometimes love and justice demand that we break some laws.
He said we find it acceptable that an ambulance, rushing to the hospital with its lights on and sirens blaring, is allowed to break some laws. It is allowed to break the speed limit. It is allowed to go through red lights. Because this is an emergency. Because someone’s life depends on it.
And we accept that. As a society, we accept that those traffic laws can be broken when the situation demands it. Because something more important is at play.
This woman in the synagogue, she had been suffering for far too long! And Jesus knew that love demanded that he break the law regarding the sabbath, in order to show compassion, in order to provide healing, in order to set her free from her affliction.
Maybe that’s why my friend Jonathan wears converse sneakers when he preaches… I’ll have to ask him someday. Maybe it’s to remind himself and his congregation that, sometimes, the church needs to be willing to break some laws, to go against the customs and traditions that guide us, in order to show love. In order to show compassion. In order to implement justice._______________
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I know a lot of people today are fed up with religion. They are fed up with religion that puts other laws and rules ahead of love, and ahead of compassion (which is a form of love), and ahead of justice (which is what love looks like in public, according to Cornel West.)
Jesus was committed to the way of love. Jesus’ way of being in the world is the way of love.
But we—according to Terri Hord Owens—are often more committed to the traditions of institutions “than we are to the way of Jesus.”
The prophet Amos observed how the religious institutions in his own time placed more importance on traditions and rules than on love. Through Amos, God says “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals, I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.”
Everything being described here is a part of worship. Worship, like the sabbath, like all the other rules and traditions, is good… until it becomes more important than the command to love one’s neighbor, and to demonstrate that love through acts of justice.
When rituals and rules and traditions take the place of love, then they become offensive to God. Instead, God says: “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”___________
This story we heard today isn’t the only time Jesus got fed up with religious leaders who considered other things more important than the command to love.
In Luke 5, Luke 7, Luke 13, Luke 14, Luke 15, 16, 18, 19, & 20… In all these chapters of Luke’s gospel, there are stories where Jesus gets in trouble, because he puts love first, and breaks some rule or tradition in order to exercise love.
And then, each time, Jesus turns it around, and criticizes the religious leaders, because they have placed more importance on other rules and traditions than on the command to love.
Each time, a religious leader says to Jesus, “you can’t do that, it’s against our laws.” And each time, Jesus does it anyway, and then chastises the religious leaders, calling them hypocrites, and warning the people about leaders who care more about rules and their own honor than they do about showing love and compassion to those who are vulnerable.
Stop prioritizing other, less-important commands, over the command to love. That’s what Jesus is saying. Over and over. And it’s what many leaders in the church still need to hear today.
Because just as Jesus was fed up with leaders who failed to love, so are many fed up today with a church that has failed to love. The reason that many people have left the church is the same reason that Jesus himself was so critical of the religious leaders in his own time.
Too many churches today would have that woman remain in her crippled, bent-over state, because helping her find healing and wholeness didn’t fit into their theology or doctrine.
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If we can learn to love limitlessly as Jesus loved, and if we can understand that all other laws and rules, no matter how good, must fall under the command to love, then we can change the world.
And if some of those other rules, in certain situations, conflict with the command to love, then we might even have to break those rules.
I know! That’s a shocking thing for a ruler-follower like myself to be saying!
But with all my heart, I want to be someone who places following Jesus at the top of my priority list. With all my heart, I want to be someone who has learned how to love.
And I want a church that has learned how to love, so that when a person who is suffering from some sort of an affliction—a person who is bent over in pain or in shame or because of some heavy burden they are carrying—when that person comes into the place of worship, I want a church that can help them stand tall, strong and well. Even if we have to break some rules to do it.
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