Sermon for St. Anne’s

Tenth Sunday after Trinity

Isaiah 58.9b-end Hebrews 12.18-end Luke 13.10-17

One of the rewards of following the Lectionary Sunday by Sunday is that sometimes passages of Scripture that we would never otherwise read side by side strike unexpected sparks off one another which shed fresh light on them all. Today’s readings, I think, do precisely that. Radically different in style and emphasis, they have a common theme – they seek to correct our distorted vision.

The anonymous author of the letter to the Hebrews is a great orator, as great perhaps as St Paul but with a very different character. Whereas Paul has the forensic gifts of a lawyer in the courtroom, the writer to the Hebrews reminds me of a storyteller I once saw in a London museum. He was retelling one of the Greek myths to a group of enraptured schoolchildren, making the characters come alive with his voice and his hands so that you could almost feel them in the room with you.  The author of Hebrews does the same thing with the great stories of the Jewish people, retelling them in such a way that they become living witnesses to Jesus.

Today’s passage follows on from the famous account of the adventure of faith in the Hebrew Scriptures, of all those great figures from Abraham onwards who left their security behind and followed the call of God into the unknown. But you, argues the author to his readers, are far better placed to take that leap of faith because you can see your destination, if you will only lift up your eyes.

To make this point, he has to tread on sensitive ground and revisit one of the pivotal events of Israel’s history, the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. He urges his readers not to let their vision be obscured by the image of God that this familiar story evokes so vividly – the darkness, the thunder, the noise, the sheer unendurable terror that even Moses experienced. No, he says, you have come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to innumerable angels in festal gathering - to a kingdom that cannot be shaken even though the world should be destroyed. So, if our vision is clear we will worship God with awe and reverence and wonder, but we need not fear.

In some ways the reading from Luke’s Gospel could not present a greater contrast. It’s the spare, simple, underwritten account of the healing of a crippled woman. Compared to the cosmic scale of the picture painted by the writer to the Hebrews, this is a miniature. But it carries tremendous power.

Jesus calls a woman who is literally overlooked, bent double with her eyes fixed permanently on the ground. He takes her from the margins to the centre of the synagogue, where she was not allowed to be, and he lays his hands on her, which under Jewish law was to risk ritual pollution. He raises her to her full height and dignity, and as she stands up straight the first thing she sees is the loving face of Christ. Again, how radically different from the Israelites at Sinai, forbidden to touch the holy mountain, petrified at the sound of God’s voice, unable to see him through the murky darkness. This is the heavenly kingdom brought down to earth, made real in a human life.

So if the writer to the Hebrews wants to sharpen our long distance vision, Luke wants to correct our short sightedness, the ways in which we let our concerns and fears blind us to God’s presence in our day to day lives. The leader of the synagogue was so preoccupied with keeping the law of Sabbath observance that he could not see that the very purpose of that law was to celebrate the flourishing and freedom that God offers. In fact, the healing of the crippled woman was an embodiment of Sabbath theology – which is where our reading from Isaiah comes in, speaking as it does of the Sabbath not as a joyless ritual observance, but as a delight, an opportunity for God’s priorities of healing and justice to flourish.

These readings are meant to challenge us, and they do. How sharp is our own vision? Can we see the presence of Christ in our own lives, and, more importantly, can we help others to stand up straight and be held in his loving gaze? Can we hold on to the promise that his kingdom of love and justice is where we belong, and that this kingdom is unshakeable? If we can, then, like the crowd in the synagogue and those Jewish Christians for whom the letter to the Hebrews was written, we will surely find ourselves filled with wonder, thanksgiving, and joy. Amen.