March 5: Housecleaning

by Rob Martin

The Gospel of Luke 13: 10-17

Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “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 the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

A Reflection on “Housecleaning” 

As our story from Luke today highlights, the leader of the synagogue—and those like him—loved systems more than people.  The religious leaders of Jesus day were focused on rigid policies and fixated on right practices rather than focused on caring for the broken, and the burdened and the bound in their very midst!  And as the author of Luke points out with stark clarity, these leaders were more concerned that their little laws should be observed and upheld than they were with helping a troubled and twisted woman in need of healing and restoration.

But let’s not stay in Luke’s story-world any longer.  For throughout my own ministry, I have seen the worship of systems and policies and the adoration of “business as usual” alive and well and stringently protected by present-day leaders of the church while the broken and the bound are ignored and pushed aside.  These leaders wrangle over writing laws to make it clear who should be in or who should be out rather than being about the faithful task of freeing folk unjustly oppressed and ostracized, bound and broken.  And more troubling still for me is that in church after church, the dominant consciousness of conventional religious wisdom refuses to embody the radical teachings of the very one it claims to follow—this one who said “love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you” . . .this one who said “Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you” . . this one who said, “Do not judge, do not condemn, forgive and you will be forgiven!” . . .this one who said “Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and bring the homeless poor into your midst. . and this one said “Do to others as you would have them do to you by loving your neighbor as you love yourself!”  What is needed, I dare say, in the church today is a “shaking”, a thorough housecleaning so as to get rid of all the historical and religious junk so that these unshakable essentials can stand clear and uncluttered before us!  Maybe we need a little pulling up and tearing down so that these radical teachings can become the tap-root of our actions in, and reactions to, the world around us—as people and as communities of faith.

But I also realize that if I am going to point a finger at others, then I also need to point a finger at myself as a pastor—and at us as a church.  Very often I do not like the words the Spirit puts in my mouth—but I ,we, need to listen diligently to Jesus’ change of fraudulence in the midst of our own practices of faith.  Do we love our systems, our way of doing things, more than people?  Do our  “business as usual” practices blind us to those in our very midst who are bound by fear or pain, stigma or sickness?  Do we understand the difference between being truly inclusive and subtly exclusive, between worshiping God and worshiping our own progressive ideologies?  Do we need a through housecleaning to get rid of some of the historical and religious junk that holds us back and weighs us down as a community of faith?

If these Lenten questions make us uncomfortable then maybe, just maybe, you and I can begin to understand why Jesus was such a threat to the religious practices of his generation—and why he is still a threat to our own religious practices today!  Yet even in the midst of such a threat we must not forget that Jesus continually calls us to a new way of life, a new way of being, a new way of relating joy-fully one-to-another—a way that is not bound by the practices of ‘business as usual’ or burdened by the platitudes of the ‘conventional religious wisdom’ of our day!