Throughout the gospels, there might be one common image of Jesus. That is, he is a troublemaker! It almost looks like he actively seeks for a trouble. He’s not afraid to do that. In today’s gospel story, he doesn’t disappoint us. He troubles the leaders of the synagogue. These are religious leaders of his time. In our time, they’re probably theologians, priests, and bishops. These are the people who have authority and knowledge about religious matters.
So how does he trouble these leaders? First of all, we can easily figure out he pisses them off by breaking the sabbath observance. He cures the crippled woman in the synagogue. At first we might assume these religious leaders are envious of Jesus’ healing ministry, but they are actually more upset and infuriated that Jesus doesn’t keep the Law seriously. Which also means he doesn’t take the religious authorities seriously! So, one of the religious leaders says to the crowd, NOT to Jesus, which I think is being passive-aggressive, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” But deep down, there's something else why Jesus’ healing of the woman on the sabbath day is such a big trouble to the religious authorities. There’s one thing that deeply bothers them. It’s how Jesus presents God’s healing mercy to the woman. It’s how Jesus reveals God’s love to the woman. It’s not done under the Law, or under any kind religious authority. This whole action of Jesus disrupts the religious authorities’ understanding of God. Here’s what happens: The crippled woman never asks Jesus to heal her. She doesn’t do anything. She does nothing to be healed or set free from Satan. Jesus simply looks at her, proclaims her liberation from Satan, and lays his hands on her. There’s nothing, literally nothing, she does. All she does is staying crippled as she has been for 18 years! This is God’s love. It is unconditional. No one needs to try anything to earn it. This is very different from the religious leaders’ understanding of God. It’s not their theology. For them, you gotta keep all the laws to save yourself from God’s wrath. Keep the law. Otherwise, there’s no salvation. Period. This theology, this way of understanding God is still prevalent. Ask yourselves. Do you believe you have to do something good to earn God’s favor? Most of us might believe this way. If something bad happens to us, we often try to find reasons to make sense of those bad situations. What we usually do is to see if we haven’t done anything wrong before. And consider any bad situation as God’s punishment that requires us to ask for forgiveness. But if that is how you deal with God, or even bargain with God, how can that be the Good News? It doesn’t set us free! Jesus is hated for his actions and messages of the gospel, the Good News. He is crucified for permitting God to work on the day of sabbath. He is killed for declaring the death sentence of all the small letter g-gods who never freely and unconditionally accept us and love us. Jesus proclaims that God’s love is for all. No exception. There’s no condition for God’s love. It’s completely free of charge. All we gotta do is to believe that. No need to feel guilty for not being good enough. Believe that God loves you and everyone else no matter what. Fr. Robert Farrar Capon says, “The guilt department is closed! You can’t spend a penny there!” Jesus is not in the sin-preventing business, but in the sin-forgiving business. Imagine how this Good News would destroy those who are in the sin-preventing business! Let’s not forget that all of us are the crippled woman. God came to us without any reasons, but love. We did nothing to make God come. God comes to us freely and unconditionally. It doesn’t matter who you are. God loves you, and accepts you. God dies for you even though you think you don’t deserve it. Jesus’ death and resurrection isn’t just for us Christians. He died for Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hitler, and those unforgivable ones. I know it’s hard to believe, but this is the truth that Jesus proclaimed. This is a holy trouble. It troubles our perception of what ought to be just and right, of what God ought to be like and do. We might think this kind of grace is too cheap. Well, it gets only cheap when we start doubting God’s unconditional love to us and everyone else. If we seriously believe that a person who doesn’t deserve anything from our perspective is also loved by God, our view on that person will change. So, this tells us not forget that we can always become like the religious leaders when we don't believe God’s love is available for all. That somehow we have to earn God’s love and salvation by doing something. That we trick ourselves and others that we can control and manipulate God by keeping all the rules. That we know a formula to decide who is in and who is out. This obsession with keeping the rules and otherizing will blind us from seeing what Jesus sees. The religious leaders can't see the crippled woman. They care more about our ox and donkey than God’s crippled ones. We can be just like them whenever we turn God into a god who has to make a deal with us. And this is not just a figure of speech. It’s still happening. Nicholas Kristof wrote an article on the New York Times this past Thursday. As he talks about Syrian refugees in Aleppo, he asks, “...what would happen if Aleppo were full of golden retrievers, if we could see barrel bombs maiming helpless, innocent puppies. Would we still harden our hearts and ‘otherize’ the victims? Would we still say ‘it's an Arab problem; let the Arabs solve it?” The gospel story still continues. The religious leaders care more about their ox and donkey than the crippled woman. And Jesus still lays his hands on the crippled. Where do we see ourselves in this? Let’s remember that all of us here are called to be Jesus’ hands. As baptized Christians, we are the ones who believe that God loves all, every single person. We are the ones who believe God in Christ has already set his mind that no matter how terrible a person can be, that person is forgiven. We are the ones who tell the world, “Look! God loves us no matter what! Believe this Good News!” We are to live out this Good News. At the Eucharist, Jesus still gives. We receive the Body and Blood of Christ. And the Letters to the Hebrews urge us, “Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe!” In the world, we go out as the Body and Blood of Christ to be broken and given to those who might not know this Good News. You are consecrated. You be the food for the world in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit! Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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