The Outlaw Jesus Christ

Pentecost 13 (C)
Luke 13:10-17
Now he 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.

Sermon
Former heavy weight boxer James “the Quick” Tillis tells about how he moved from the flat dry plains of Oklahoma to Chicago, Illinois to make his mark in professional boxing. He got off the bus downtown and he walked over to the Sears Tower, with a cardboard “suitcase” under each arm. After he set his suitcases down he looked up at the tower, took a deep breath, and said to himself “I’m gonna conquer this town.” After this brief moment, he said when he looked down to pick up his suitcases, they were gone!

Isn’t it amazing how often in life things don’t always turn out how you expect? Doesn’t it just blow your mind how often everything you’ve come to expect turns out wrong? When that happens, we are left with basically two options. We can either reject it or we can embrace it.

In Jesus’ day, the religious leaders chose to reject it. That couldn’t be any clearer than in today’s gospel from Luke chapter 13. It is the Sabbath. And Jesus is doing what religious people do on the sabbath. He goes to church, only they didn’t call it church then. He went to the synagogue. And at the synagogue, they did the very things that you and I do week in and week out. They sang. They prayed. They listened to scripture. And then they heard someone teach or speak on the scripture. This particular day Jesus was the one doing the teaching. As the Sabbath rolls along just fine when a woman with a chronic back problem shows up. When Jesus spots her he heals her, tells her she is free, puts his hands on her and sets her up straight.

When the leader of the synagogue sees this he loses it. Rather than giving Jesus a tongue-lashing he gives the people one, telling them not to seek his healing on the sabbath, telling them not to tempt him, not to encourage him. It is disruptive. It’s distracting. It’s just plain wrong . . . what Jesus is doing. He is breaking the law. He is crossing the line. Not just any law and not just and line, but God’s law and God’s line. For the leader of the synagogue, this was no small matter. It’s not like they just make the rules up as they go along. But observing Sabbath has been at the heart of who they are as a people going back to Moses. In fact, that was the very reason God freed them from captivity, so that they could go and worship God. It was on Mt. Sinai where God placed in Moses’ own hands the ten commandments, the covenant. It was there written in stone that God said in the fourth commandment “Remember the sabbath and keep it holy.” If there was a more open and shut case, what could it be?

The Bible says it plain and simple, don’t work on the Sabbath. God rested after he created all that is. The Jewish leaders didn’t just disagree with Jesus in principle. The Bible says that they were indignant. They were hostile. Jesus was calling into question the very laws of God. He is not at all what they expected in a messiah. His conduct is not very becoming to a savior of the world. His demeanor doesn’t fit the code of conduct they had in mind for the chosen one of God. It didn’t stop there either. Not only did Jesus break the sabbath law, but he also palled-around with known sinners: tax collectors and prostitutes. He had no decorum, no sense of decency. How many times did he speak to strange women in public? For any Jew worth his salt, that was just unexpected and unacceptable. There was no doubt about it, Jesus was an outlaw. All he lacked was a six shooter and holster to complete the picture.

And what do you do with outlaws? You arrest them. Lock ‘em up. And hang ‘em high. And that’s what they did . . . to Jesus, when he didn’t meet their expectations.


But local lawmen weren’t the only ones on the scene. There was a woman there. And she, too, had expectations. I have no doubt that this woman expected to return home pretty much the way she left home – a hunchback. That is how she had been for eighteen years, hunched over. Whatever caused her back condition, whether the result of a fall, a degenerative disc, scoliosis, spinal bifida, or she just tweaked it and it never got better, one thing is clear . . . she had learned to live with chronic pain. Eighteen years of back pain. There are few pains quite as unbearable as back pain. Or as frightful. How many times have you been messing around the house and tweak your back. Maybe you were just making your bed, cleaning the toilet, or loading your car when you feel something twitch. If you are like me sometimes you’ll grab your back and ask yourself “Is this the big one?”

That’s what happened to me a couple of days ago. I was at Home Depot, making a purchase, and when I leaned over to put it in the backseat of my Honda, I felt it . . . the twitch. Of course I reached back to support myself and said “O Lord, help me Jesus!” Then I spent the day walking around like a pregnant woman with one hand on my back trying to get up and down.

Many of you who have had back pain know the special agony that comes with it. It goes to the very core of who you are. Your spinal column, central nervous system, affecting everything else. If you have ever lived with long-lasting pain, you know how easy it is to give up hope that things will ever be different. You know how easy it is tell yourself that this is just your lot in life and you better learn to tough it out.

And that’s just what so many people do today . . . live their lives from day to day expecting that today will be pretty much like the one before that and the one before that, and most days after this one will be pretty much the same.

Of course, chronic conditions aren’t always found in the body. How many times have you felt that your marriage has been stuck in the same rut for years? No change. No improvement. You deal with the same problems, have the same discussions, loop around to the same misunderstandings day after day. Or, how many of you have ever looked at your job and concluded that this is about as good as it’s going to get? And you go to work, day after day, never expecting any real change for the better, gutting it out. Or how many times have you looked at one the relationship with your brother or sister or mother or father or aunt or uncle and just decided not to expect anything more?

Surely, the woman wasn’t expecting any more when she walked near Jesus on that sabbath. But like so others who come near, Jesus doesn’t give her what she expects. She expects to return pretty much the same as she came. But Jesus said “nothing doing.” Not gonna happen. He breaks the law of the land to love her. He rides roughshod over the rules to care for her.

If the truth be known, when it comes to Jesus love for you, there is no binding him. You can’t restrain him or contain him. Not any religious law, no command, no expectations. There isn’t a pair of handcuffs strong enough and there are no shackles hard enough to hold him back from loving you. There is no law he won’t break. There is no power he won’t take down to speak to you, to touch you, and to free you from pains you to the core.

Now I don’t know what you have been expecting from your life with God. I don’t know what you expect from yourself. But there is one thing you should know today and that is you cannot come to Jesus and walk away the same.