From time to time I’ve been able to watch some of the TV coverage of the Olympic Games from Rio. We are doing well in the medals table. I love to watch the interviews with the athletes who have just won a gold, or silver or bronze. I also like to see the enthusiasm of the spectators too – family, friends, fellow countrymen and women, some with their children. With success comes the flag waving, and no doubts on the sands of Copocobana Beach in the late evenings there will be parties and celebrations. It all looks so full of joy and happiness – of course for many more there is disappointment after 4 years of hard training and national hopes and expectations. But let’s just rejoice in the success. It all looks so much as if there isn’t a care in the world, and even if we are watching from our sofas we can let go of our worries and be freed of concerns.
Of course the truth is that we are not all of free. Indeed the vast number of us are trapped and held hostage. Formany of us everyday life feels like some form of imprisonment, or like being in chains.
These chains might be in the form of depression, or some sort of mental illness; it may be an emotional illness, or an un-resolving bereavement; some of us are trapped by memories – distant hurts done to us, or by us to someone else; many go through life tortured by guilt – maybe I should have done more to look after my old mum or dad; there could be some sexual infidelity; we might be trapped by a substance dependency.
All of these examples, and many more gnaw away at us at our deepest sub-liminal levels, and they create us into the people we are becoming and have become. Religion, and the wrong approach to religion, can shackle us in chains also. Just as all these other situations can cripple us as human beings, so too can an unhealthy relationship with God – usually the God we have created in our own image. Whole churches, congregations, can absorb these shadows, and instead of being communities of light and life we can give priority to our flip side. Alone we can be shaped by the things that cripple us – together we can shape God into a distorted image that cripples others. We can kill, hurt, injure, exclude, dismiss, judge and condemn in the name of the idol we create, and call it God.
Jesus is all too aware of this. Today’s gospel is set in a section of St. Luke where Jesus has been talking about reading the signs of God, settling differences with accusers, the need for genuine repentance, and giving some patient time to allow new life to emerge, resurgent life, well nurtured life, as he illustrates from the barren fig tree.
He is presented by a woman who has been crippled by a spirit. I think I know what the scriptures mean here – it is quite subtle. I believe firmly that the things we carry in our souls as burdens can cripple our bodies. We can show physically the affects of those things that lie as deep spiritual cancers within our minds and hearts. This woman may be bent double, but her need is to be set free. Jesus gives her permission for just that.
This happens in the synagogue. The religious leaders are shocked that Jesus sets this woman free from her crippled spirit, her ailment, on the Sabbath. How dare someone be healed on the holiest day of the week!
It strikes me that they are in a worse state than the woman. They are imprisoned. They have distorted the image of God, and they force this distortion on to others so that they too become crippled in some spiritual way. Religion that should set people free cruelly mis-shapes the love of God for us, and the love we should have for our neighbours. Of all the days in the week, surely it is on the Sabbath that this woman hears the words that free her and liberate her from all that had shrivelled her life, her spirit, her hopes and most of all, her relationship with the living God.
Jesus Christ sets us free. He sets you free, he sets me free. It is a simple gospel message – be free from all that that we carry from the past into the present and which jeopardises our flourishing in the future.
As we listen to the scriptures, as we pray, as share the peace with each, as we come forward to receive Holy Communion; as we are sent out into the community be freed by the loving grace of God in Jesus Christ - be set free.
Flourish, grow, blossom into the wonderful people God has called us to become. He calls each of us to be Christ-like, to be set free by the truth with which he heals us. Together if we open our hearts and minds the barren places in our lives, the events and actions that pin us down in the dry places, the wilderness, then we will know that vision of Isaiah; ‘The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.’ (Is 58, 11).
Hold out your hands to receive in heart, mind, body, memory, relationships – Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.