The sermon below is based on Luke 13. 10-17 The transcript below is more or less the same as the recording (as I never read directly from it) so it's probably easier to either listen or read rather than do both.
By this point In Luke’s Gospel the religious leaders of Jesus’ day had already written him off, they weren’t interested anymore and were constantly looking for any excuse to catch him out or arrest Him. They ask difficult questions and try to hold him to every minutiae of their law, not just God’s laws but the stuff they have added over the top just to be sure.
So Jesus heals a woman who has been suffering for years and rather than celebrating like Luke tells us everyone else is, they condemn Him for the fact that He has ‘worked’ on the sabbath by healing her. They’re so determined to see the bad in Him that they can’t even see the good He is doing anymore, they see everything as negative. And in doing so they have missed the point of God’s law forbidding work on the Sabbath, as we read in Isaiah today, the keeping of the Sabbath was about keeping our eyes fixed on God and his priorities, of setting aside a day for Him. And what better way of keeping their eyes fixed on God than having mercy and healing those in need as Jesus rebukes them. But no, they just see the negative, Jesus has ‘worked’, although I think it could be debated whether healing is working or not, on the Sabbath and as such must be condemned. They have become thoroughly cynical of Jesus. We can so easily do the same about people and situations. Become so cynical that we can no longer see the good, and start to see everything in black and white. The current social and political climate makes this especially easy. We are practically encouraged to see those who don’t hold to the exact same beliefs or priorities as the enemy, as those who are stopping our ideals coming to fruition. We constantly have different groups writing each other off as wholly faulty and wrong, as the epitome of everything they stand against when in reality the differences are minor. Sometimes we can become so cynical that we start to actively look for faults, we don’t like this person or groups or this thing so this good thing they are doing can’t be that good. Just as the religious leaders did with Jesus. Cynicism is very much in vogue, all politicians are probably corrupt or selfish, those moving to this country are either going to bleed our resources dry or attack us and we’re still not sure we’ve forgiven the bankers for that crash a few years ago. Trump thrives off pitting groups off against each other and has played off this distrust of experts and the media by building more cynicism towards them so that only what he says is left as trustworthy. It’s so easy to be cynical because it makes our lives easier. If we write off people or groups as entirely a bad thing we can just ignore them and move on. If we don’t if we start to see them as having shades of grey, as having good things and good points amongst the things we disagree with, that’s a lot more work, we have to start untangling things and trying to understand them as people, and quite frankly who has the time? If everything is bad then we can complain about it, say it’s too big a problem to fix and move on with our day. If there’s some good there we aren’t quite so sure are we? Jesus see’s straight through the religious leaders hypocrisy and he challenges it, he doesn’t defend himself but rather puts them straight on why it’s good and right that this woman should be healed, even on the sabbath. Jesus isn’t cynical, he doesn’t write them off but rather seeks to correct them, it’s a firm rebuke but in doing so he gives them a chance to learn and grow. We aren’t to be cynical because God isn’t cynical. In Genesis where God looks down and sees how terrible humanity has become and how much evil is happening he doesn’t wipe them all out, he doesn’t say ‘everyone is awful, there is no good, let’s just start again’, he finds Noah, who is by no means perfect, and he sees the good and saves Him. Paul went around killing off Christians left right and centre. God could have written Him off, but instead He saw Paul’s zeal, how Paul thought he was defending God, how he thought he was putting down a new heretical sect. And instead of ignoring Him or writing Him off, God used Him. God came to Him and now Paul’s religious zeal was used to bring thousands of people to faith, to go out and share the good news with those outside of Israel. Each of us fails on a daily basis to live how God calls us to live, yet us still being here, us still coming before God each week is testament to God having never given up on us, never writing us off. Our God is ‘merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin’ -Exodus 34:6-7a. And as His children we are to be like Him. Just as God never writes anyone off, as His children, as His ambassadors here on earth, we aren’t to either. We are to be constantly looking for the good in people and situations, looking for those things which are redeemable. Nothing and no-one is so truly lost that God cannot rescue them, that there is no good left in them at all. We aren’t to be naïve, if we know that someone is weak or at fault in some area we aren’t to overlook it. If someone is prone to stealing for example we wouldn’t put them in charge of taking the collection. But we are to see the good, to see people through God’s eyes, always looking for where God is at work, where the glint of the good is. We are to be people of hope, and how much the world needs hope at the moment, when everyone declares that all hope is lost, that everything is going wrong, that all is lost. We proclaim that there is still hope, that there is still good in this world, that nothing and no-one is so lost that God cannot save them. That God has not abandoned us and will save us. We are not to be cynical, as God’s hands and feet on the earth we are to see with His eyes of hope.
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AuthorAn Anglican Curate in my 20's I was raised in an Anglican Church, went to a Youth Club run by an Evangelical Church, attended a Baptist Church while at Uni and was a member of a New Monastic Community after graduating. As such my faith has been influenced by these experiences and traditions into what I hope is a more rounded viewpoint. Archives
September 2022
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