14th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 16C

14th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 16C August 25, 2013 There was a crooked man who walked a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, And they all lived together in a little crooked house. I had the good fortune this week of getting to discuss today’s gospel reading with some of my colleagues here at St. Peter’s as we met for the Coast Clericus clergy gathering. One of our retired priests mentioned how today’s gospel reminds him of this little nursery rhyme from his childhood. I’ve been thinking about that all week, and I’ll speak more about that momentarily. In our gospel reading for today from Luke’s gospel, we see Jesus teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath. While there he encounters a “crooked woman” one who has been bent over for 18 years. Jesus calls out to her, without her asking him for anything, and he tells her that she is healed from her crookedness. But then the leader of the synagogue starts up a fracas, about how Jesus has broken the commandment of not doing work on the Sabbath, and Jesus affirms the value of the woman and her need and right to be healed, despite how other people might interpret the law. Today’s story is interestingly situated. It falls in between the parable of the fig tree whose focus is on repentance, and the parable of the mustard seed and the leaven which are about the Kingdom of God and how to address discouragement or fear about what we feel we have when we believe we have failed. So what exactly is the word that is being spoken by this particular story that is situated between a call for repentance and an insight into the Kingdom of God? Another colleague talked about how we always have the temptation of reading the gospel stories and imagining that we are right there on Jesus’s side. But in this story, it is important for us to imaging ourselves on the side of the leader of the synagogue. The story of the crooked woman’s healing is an invitation to re-imagine and revision all the rules that we cling so tightly to through the light of Jesus’s compassion. “There was a crooked man who walked a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, And they all lived together in a little crooked house.” One of the truths that Jesus proclaims that has the capability of unbinding us all, is that each and every one of us lives with our own crookedness. As the nursery rhyme puts it, we are often drawn to be with and live with and worship with those whose crookedness matches our own, and we all live together in our little crooked house and are completely content. But then we encounter someone who is crooked in a different way than us—maybe she is a crooked woman in the synagogue, maybe it is someone who comes to church who doesn’t act how we think they should act…then we get all upset about their crookedness, paying absolutely no mind to our own. My friends, the good news is this. The light of Jesus’s compassionate judgment shines on each and every one us, and if we will pay attention, he will show us the ways in which we are crooked. Just like the woman in the synagogue, Jesus calls out to us and heals us of our crookedness before we even ask. And that healing often occurs when we bump up against someone else’s crookedness that is different from our own. It is why we, in the church, so desperately need each other, and especially need people who are different from us. Jesus uses each of us in the healing and the transformation of each other, if we but open our hearts up to it. So today, we are going to have extra time of silence after this sermon, in which I invite you to pray and ask Jesus to shine his compassionate judgment upon your own crookedness. When we get to the confession of sins in just a few moments, we will also have more time for you to prayerfully lay that crookedness down at Jesus’s feet. And when you think to judge someone else for their crookedness, remember that each of us lives quite happily in our own crooked house, and God loves each and every one of us too much …to let us stay there.