Luke 10:13-19: Being Set Free. Aug 26, 2007

Being Set Free
Luke 13:10-19
(Read the text first.)
Jesus was teaching in a synagogue. A synagogue is kind of like a Jewish church, a place for the reading of scripture, teaching, and community events. One day when he was teaching, he saw something that made him stop speaking. Maybe she had come in late. Maybe she was sitting in the back in a corner. Wherever she was, and however she got there, Jesus saw her, and he stopped speaking. He could see Satan’s chains wrapped around her. He could see the weight of depression and darkness pressing down on her back.
Many Jewish men prayed every day, “Blessed be God that he did not make me a Gentile outsider. Blessed be God that he did not make me an ignorant slave. Blessed be God that he did not make me a woman.”1 She was doubly cursed. She was a woman, and she was crippled, on the same level as a slave or an outsider. Most people only knew her as “the bent woman.” She was an outcast, an unworthy, a defective, an error, or maybe even a living curse.
But Jesus saw her. Jesus saw her, and he called her to him. He called out of the shadows, out of the outside edges of the community, into the center, into the heart of the community. He healed her, and he gave her a new name: “Dear woman, daughter of Abraham.”
Abraham was the great-great-great...great-grandfather of the nation of Israel. He was the one to whom God gave the double promise: “I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you … and you will be a blessing to others. … All the families on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3).
This woman, this bent over, outcast woman was a “daughter of Abraham.” She was a Child of Promise, a child of the double promise. She will be blessed, and she will be a blessing to others. Jesus set her free.
Everybody celebrated, right?!
Not exactly. See there was one little problem with this miracle. It was on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was deeply important to Jews. “Keeping the Sabbath” was one of the 10 Commandments: “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the LORD your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work” (Exodus 20:8-10).
Keeping the Sabbath was so important to the Jews of Jesus’ time that they had a wide range of prohibited (not allowed) activities on the Sabbath. For a good Jew on the Sabbath there could be no planting, no plowing, no cooking, no washing, no weaving, no tying, no untying, no starting fires, no putting out fires, no writing more than two letters, no erasing more than two letters, and no healing people unless their lives were in danger.2
Now, this all sounds a little funny to us. It’s easy for us to look at all of those old rules and say, “Oh, man you’ve got to be kidding me. Those are so silly. Those are so legalistic. That is so meaningless.”
But the Sabbath was a deeply important spiritual practice for the Jews. Sabbath became part of their identity. Sabbath became a key part of their experience of God. The point of all of these rules was to protect the spiritual meaning of the Sabbath: resting from our labor, remembering God’s saving activity in our lives, and being restored by God’s grace.
The intent of the rules was good, very good. Unfortunately, the rules began to function in a way opposite of their intent. Basically, Jesus says, “These religious rules are binding you up, chaining you down, holding you back from God’s life. God wants to set you free, not chain you down.”
In fact, “binding” and “freeing” are very important ideas for this story. The woman was held in bondage by Satan through sickness, so much so that she seems to wear her chains. Jesus says to her, “Woman, you are set free!” Then Jesus says to the people, “Every day you set free your animal that is bound in the barn, so it can drink. Satan has bound this woman for 18 long years. Shouldn’t she be set free, too?”
Jesus came to set us free. At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, he said he fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come” (Isaiah 61:1-2; Luke 4:18-19).
Jesus came to set us free. Satan and this world can bind us up in chains, too. Like Matt was talking about last week, the world gives out labels: geek, fatty, nerd, jock, pretty girl, alcoholic, poor, failure, hopeless sinner, doubter, crippled, depressed. We can get caught up and chained up in those labels, those addictions, those thought processes, so that we can’t be free. We can even get all caught up in our religious stuff. We can try to define freedom so much that our rules and guidelines take away freedom for us and for others.
Jesus came to set us free. Jesus has a new name for us: “Child of Promise.” Jesus says to us, “You are a child of the double promise. I will bless you, and you will be a blessing to the world. You are a Child of Promise. Be free.”
Fred Craddock is one of America’s most famous preachers. One day he was sitting a restaurant, and an older man came up to his table and said, “You a preacher?”
Fred was a little embarrassed. He didn’t quite know what to say to this stranger. “Uh, yes.”
The man pulled up a chair and sat down at Fred’s table. Fred said, “Uh, why don’t you join us?”
“Preacher, I’m going to tell you a story. There was once a little boy who grew up sad. Life was tough because my mama had me but she had never been married. Do you know how a small Tennessee town treats people like that? Do you know the words they use to name kids that don’t have no father? They call them all kinds of bad names! Every where he went, people would ask him “Who’s your daddy?” But he didn’t have no answer. The question kind of weighed on him, so he just started avoiding people, at recess, at lunch time, at school, in stores. The question just bent him over with shame. You could see it weighing on his back like a thousand pound weight.
“Well, we never went to church; nobody asked us. But for some reason or other, we went to church one night when they was having a revival. They had a big, tall preacher, visiting to do to the revival, and he was all dressed in black. He had a thunderous voice that shook the little church.
“We sat toward the back, Mama and me. Well, that preacher got to preaching, about what I don’t know, stalking up and down the aisle of that little church preaching. It was something.
“After the service, we were slipping out the back door when I felt that big preacher’s hand on my shoulder. I was scared. He looked way down at me, looked me in the eye and says, ‘Boy, who’s your Daddy?’
“I didn’t have no Daddy. That’s what I told him in trembling voice, ‘I ain’t got no Daddy.’
“‘Oh yes you do,’ boomed that big preacher. ‘You’re a child of the Kingdom. You have been bought with a price. You are a child of the King!’
Then, this old, interrupting stranger looked Fred Craddock in the eyes, and he said, “I was never the same after that. Preacher, for God’s sake, preach that.”
As he was leaving, the man’s name finally registered in Fred’s mind. That man was Ben Hooper, the former governor of Tennessee.3
Jesus came to set us free.
But that’s not the end of this story. After Jesus heals the woman and talks about the Sabbath, he tells a little story of his own. “What is the Kingdom of God like? How can illustrate it? It is like a tiny mustard seed that a man planted in a garden; it grows and becomes a tree, and the birds make nests in its branches” (Luke 13:18-19). This short, little, one sentence story is packed with meaning. It seems to me that it tells us several different things about the Kingdom of God.
1. The Kingdom of God starts small. A mustard seed is teeny, tiny. (You might have seen it in some fancy Dijon mustard like Grey Poupon. Those little black specks are the whole seed.) The Kingdom of God comes near and gets started with every individual, no matter how small, who is set free from Satan’s bondage.
2. The Kingdom of God grows. No one really knows how a mustard seed or any other seed grows, yet it does. We plant it and water it, and it grows. That is how it works with Kingdom acts. We can’t control the outcome. We don’t really understand how it all works. But we live the Kingdom way. We do Kingdom things, like Isaiah talked about: “Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, give shelter to the homeless, give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help” (Isaiah 58:6-7). We live this way, and the Kingdom grows. We can’t always see how it grows, but it grows.
3. The Kingdom of God becomes a shelter for the needy. The tiny mustard seed grows into a tree, and the birds find shelter and food in that tree. One of my favorite songs is, “Make Us a City of Refuge.” It goes like this:
Make us a city of refuge
A place where the wounded are healed
Make us a place of compassion
A home where the hungry are filled
Make us a people of mercy
Who give what we’ve freely received
Make us a city of refuge
A people of faith who believe
Let us bind the broken-hearted
And heal the wounded soul
Let us bring them close to Jesus
So He can make them whole
Let us liberate the captives
Who are bound and chained by sin
Let us be the hands of Jesus
To bring new life again
What is the Kingdom of God like? How can I illustrate it? It is like a tiny community planted in Cheonan. It grows and becomes a faithful church, and people in need come and make their homes in its branches. We become a place where the wounded are healed, where the hungry are fed, where the captives are set free. We become a place where we all together are set free. That is the Kingdom of God!
I need to tell one more story. When I was in Houston this summer, I visited a church called “Mercy Street.” This church blew me away! I was amazed. It was like I had this dream of the best that church could possibly be, and then I saw it in real life, right before my eyes. Mercy Street’s mission is “to create a safe harbor for the hurt, the lost, the seeking so that they might experience the radical grace of God.” On their website they say they are full of people who are “recovering from addictions or bad church experiences.” They meet on Saturday nights, and every Saturday night they have a celebration time, when people can stand up and share something they want to celebrate. That was the coolest part of the night. I sat their in awe, almost with tears in my eyes, as one person after another stood and told how God is radically changing their lives.
“I’ve been free from alcohol for 90 days today.”
“I’ve been free from crack cocaine for 10 years this week.”
“I’ve been clean and sober for 17 days.”
“I haven’t taken drugs for 1 year.”
“Today is my wife’s birthday. Last year on this day, I almost killed myself. Today, thanks to God and Mercy Street, I’m free from drugs, and I’m still here.”
They were real. They were honest. They were set free. And more and more people are coming there to find refuge and to be set free.
Having a church full of drunks, crack addicts, church dropouts, and people who are committed to the church but not committed to Christ creates some problems for all of our nice church rules though. Transformation is happening. People are being set free, but there are still the rules.
One of the rules that Mercy Street had to deal with was church membership. For several years, this wasn’t such a big deal until Jerry wanted to become a member. Jerry was a recovering alcoholic. He had been sober for 15 years. He was a congregant that any pastor would love to have – consistent, eager to serve, gave money and brought a slew of friends with him each week. He participated in a small group and even drove a van to pick up people from halfway houses to come to church. And Jerry wanted to become a member.
There was just one problem. Jerry was Jewish. He joyfully and faithfully went to a local synagogue every Sabbath. Jerry planned to stay Jewish, but he wanted to join this Christian church.
When Jerry told Matt, the pastor, that he wanted to become a member, Matt not so politely said, “But Jerry, you’re a Jew!”
Jerry laughed a big belly laugh: “Nice observation preacher-boy, but I want to join this place. I’ve … never been a part of a community that brings my spirit alive like this one, and I want to join.”
In the conversation that followed, Matt explained that when people join the church they are committing to follow Jesus as the Messiah, the savior of the world. And Jerry said, “Matt, I’ve got a lot of questions about Jesus – but I’m open and committed to working those out at Mercy Street.”
Jerry became a catalyst, a change agent, for Mercy Street. They changed their membership process. Mercy Street decided not to let the traditional rules of the Methodist Church become one more chain that binds people up instead of helping Jesus set people free. Now at Mercy Street anyone can become a member as long as they commit their prayers, presence, gifts and service to the church in the process of seeking Christ. They become members, and then they become Christians. They commit themselves to this community that is seeking Christ together. Becoming a member of this seeking community is part of their journey toward becoming a Christ follower.4 Radical! Beautiful!
Jesus came to set us free.
We need to ask ourselves some questions. Take a few minutes of silence and think about these questions.
How are you bound?
What kind of chains or burdens or labels are holding you down?
Are you ready for Christ to set you free?
And what about our church? How can we become a place where God sets people free?
How can we become a place of refuge where the wounded are healed?
Are we ready for Christ to set us free?

August 19- Matt Banner: Love and Community

Love and Communit

Have you ever had one of those experiences that you can¡¯t quite believe actually happened. You just sit there in stunned silence, wondering if you just imagined the whole thing. Well, that happened to me one week just before the start of my last year of high school. I was 17 years old and loving life. I was in the school marching band, so every summer we went to band camp to practice our music and formations, etc. Well, I was really excited that summer because I had just been through a great revival at church and I was ready to tell someone about Jesus and help get them saved. So, the day we were signing up for roommates for camp, I was talking to one of my good friends about my church and this knew guy, John, overheard us, and he was like, ¡°What, you don¡¯t actually believe that stuff, do you?¡± I replied that I did believe it, and at that point I knew, this was my guy. So I asked him if he wanted to room together at camp and he said yes. We went to camp, and after the first practice, I sat down with John and shared with him what Jesus had done in my life. He was very receptive and afterwards, he thanked me, told me that he had been going to church for years, but no one had ever told him about Jesus actually loving him, and that we would have to talk more about it later. Well, I was excited to say the least.
So, we went to our next long practice and afterwards, I came back to the room. John was visibly upset. He was pounding his fist onto the dresser. ¡°what¡¯s the matter, John?¡± I asked. ¡°I just found out that my grandfather died.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry, is there anything I can do?¡± I replied. ¡°Yeah, I need to tell you something. Let¡¯s sit down.¡± So we sat down on the bed and he began to speak. ¡°My grandfather was in WW 1, and while he was there he was attacked and possessed by a demon. By the end of his life, his skin was hanging from his bones. You see, no one told me that my grandfather has died, but I can just tell. Because now that my grandfather is dead, this demon is going to come here tonight to get me. And it will kill every person here, unless I meet it and kill it first.¡± Well, I didn¡¯t know what to say. I thought his story sounded a little far-fetched, but I didn¡¯t see any gain from calling him a liar. He was staring out the window, looking at the trees. ¡°See those trees. They are all going to die someday soon. And that grass, it already looks withered. Life is so short.¡± Now I was getting worried. ¡°Are you talking about suicide?¡± I asked. ¡°You don¡¯t understand, I¡¯m already dead!¡± And with that, he walked out of the room.
I didn¡¯t know what to make of the whole situation, so I decided I would just let it be; and for the rest of the day, he seemed pretty normal. Then, that night, we were going to bed. ¡°Night john. Night Matt.¡± I laid down and closed my eyes and started to drift off when suddenly I hear, ¡°Psst¡¦.hey Matt.¡± ¡°Go to sleep John.¡± ¡°This isn¡¯t John, this is the Demon.¡± ¡°Go to sleep John.¡± ¡°I told you, this isn¡¯t John.¡± ¡°OK, Demon, what do you want.¡± And we started to talk. ¡°The demon¡± asked why it was that nobody seemed to like John. I replied that maybe John scared people and should try top be a little more laid back. Eventually, the demon went to sleep, and I did as well. The next day John asked if anything strange had happened last night. I told him that the demon had come, but it was no big deal.
The rest of the day passed normally enough, and I began to believe that the strangeness had passed. Oh, how wrong I was. That night, we were once again going to bed. ¡°Good night John.¡± ¡°Good night Matt.¡± ¡°Hey, Matt?¡± ¡°(sigh) What is it John?¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to kill you in your sleep tonight.¡± Alright, that¡¯s it, I¡¯m going to find a new place to sleep. But just as I was to the door, John stopped me. ¡°Wait Matt, I was just scaring you. I do that sometimes, see how far I can push people, but I didn¡¯t mean it, I¡¯m not going to do anything.¡± So, I agreed to stay in the room. Then, a few minute later I hear some muttering, ¡°out the window, thrown right out the window.¡± We were on the fifth floor. ¡°What was that John?¡± ¡°Nothing, nothing.¡± A few more minutes and ¡°3 o¡¯clock, I¡¯m gonna do it at 3 o¡¯clock.¡± ¡°What John?¡± ¡°Nothing, nothing.¡± Well, somehow, I fell asleep; I guess because I was young and stupid. And¡¦¡¦nothing happened.
The next day, I talked to the leaders of the camp and switched to a different room. And after that, I avoided John. I avoided for the rest of the camp, and I avoided him throughout the whole school year. And I began to grow bitter. Not bitter at John, he was just some crazy guy, but bitter at God. Here I was, a great guy, a dedicated Christian, trying to help others, and it blows up in my face. It was obvious that God was playing some sort of practical joke on me, and I wasn¡¯t laughing. ¡°You think you can help people? You think you can share my love with people? Well, good luck, it will be the worst experience of your life.¡±
Somehow, that didn¡¯t seem quite right either. I mean, in my heart, I knew God is loving, and that God only wants what is best for his people. Maybe the problem was that I had reached to far. John was just too far away. I should concentrate on people who are more like me. People I can relate to. People who like me and I like them. Maybe I should share God¡¯s word with some pretty girls, that sounded good, not share it with some psycho crazy person who is going to threaten to kill me. In the end, I thought, John is just defective. And for a while, that¡¯s what I believed. I mean, it seemed pretty obvious to me.
Then, as usual, God had to whack me upside the head to get my attention. And as usual, it wasn¡¯t some huge event, it was just me sitting back one day and reading my Bible, still thinking about John and still a little bit angry. I turn to
Luke 12:54-56 ¡°You see a cloud rising and say rain and yes. South wind=hot. Hypocrite, you understand the earth and sky, but you can¡¯t interpret this present time.¡±
We think we can interpret what is going on around us. We see the storm clouds and we know it¡¯s going to rain. We see a person who is drinking way too much soju and we know he is going to be puking in the bushes. We walk into a restaurant and know they are going to serve kimchi. We look at the world around us and think we have it all figured out. We sometimes get to the point where we think we understand people.
We look at a person in a nice suit or dress and we think that they are rich. We look at a person wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket and we think they are cool. We see people with glasses on and books in their hand and we think intelligent. People look at me all the time and just think ¡°handsome¡±. And then we go deeper. We start judging people, thinking that this person is a geek, and this person is lazy and this person is stupid. And from our perspective, we start labeling and grouping people. We do this even when we don¡¯t want to, when we don¡¯t mean to. And we start to spend time only with people who are like us. We don¡¯t want to labeled as lazy or mean or stupid, so we don¡¯t spend time with people who carry those labels. And for our world, that seems to work. I mean, who cares if we divide people into groups? Who cares if we spend time only with people who make us comfortable? In the end, WHO CARES?
God does. God cares. God talks about the difference between what¡¯s on the inside of a person and what¡¯s on the outside. We look at things from a human perspective, but God wants us to look at the world from a heavenly perspective. God doesn¡¯t look at us based on who we are, but based on who we can become. And God calls us to try and look at things from the same perspective. We are supposed to try and see others as people who are loved by God.
And that isn¡¯t easy. People sometimes bug us, annoy us, drive us crazy. And those are the people we are supposed to love. The undesirables. The passage teaches us that wise people are concerned about the soul of a person more than the outward appearance. Peace with God does not come from trying to make everyone behave correctly, but it comes from accepting people for who they are and where they are at.
Even those who are defective. In the greek, the word hypocrite carries with it the connotation of wearing a mask. A hypocrite is a person who masks themselves in order to be something they are not. They say one thing but, in truth, they are something different. It is only a hypocrite that doesn¡¯t understand that we are nothing without God. That without God, we are all defective. I wear my Christianity sometimes like a mask. I walk around and look at people who don¡¯t act as responsible as I do, and I look down my nose at them. I don¡¯t do it on purpose, and I would never say it out loud, but sometimes, subconscientiously, when I am completely honest, I know that I am being a hypocrite. Because I have done bad things and thought bad things, and that I¡¯m no better than anyone else. So, we are all, in some way, defective.
So, where is the hope? I mean, so far, this story seems very depressing. What¡¯s the good news? Here it is: God always works with defective people. Look throughout the Bible. Abraham lied about his wife and said she was his sister. Jacob stole his brother¡¯s birthright. Joseph got thrown into a pit by his brothers and later went to prison for many years. David, probably, who is described as a man after God¡¯s own heart, raped Baethsheeba and had her husband purposely killed. And these are the heroes of the Bible. Not exactly the best people in the world. But God loved them and God used them. God takes little people and does huge things with them. That¡¯s what the Kingdom of God is all about. People like you and I are given the opportunity to see the world through God¡¯s eyes.
Luke 13:18-20 ¡°Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in a garden. It became a tree, and birds came to rest on it. It is like yeast that a woman takes and mixes into large amount of flour until it works its way through all the dough.¡±
What is the big deal about a mustard seed? Well, it¡¯s one of the smallest seeds that there is. When you see it in your hand, it looks so small and insignificant. It looks like it¡¯s worthless and should be chucked into the nearest trashcan. But, if you plant it; if you care for it, and if you have the patience to wait for it, it will become the largest plant in the field. It takes a lot of time, but, in the end, it is worth it.
That shows outward growth. The other story, about the yeast, talks about inward growth. Yeast seems like nothing as well. It is hardly noticeable. But if you work it through the dough, and then spend the time waiting and baking it, it causes the whole dough to rise up. It works it¡¯s way throughout all of the dough, throughout all of the person. It is inward. God began his kingdom with small things, including with people in small ways.
Suddenly, I start looking at people completely differently. Suddenly people no longer fit into categories. People were no longer nerds or geeks or losers. Every person represents hope. Every person represents a promise of God. From God¡¯s eyes, every person has the chance to be a vital part of God¡¯s plan. It¡¯s ok to be defective. But, do you know what, those people who used to annoy me and drive me crazy; well, they still annoy me and they still drive me crazy. That hasn¡¯t changed. But, now I seek to overlook my personal discomfort, and I try to reach out to them.
So, what happened with John? Like I said, I avoided him for the entire school year. I saw him from time to time and at those moments, I tried to not talk to him and pretend that he didn¡¯t exist. So, the end of the school year comes and I¡¯m getting ready to graduate. Maybe a week before graduation, I¡¯m sitting on my porch swing and enjoying the weather, when who comes walking down the street; John. I tried to hide, but it was too late, he had already seen me. So he asks me how I¡¯m doing and whether I¡¯m ready for graduation. I said I was excited but I would miss my friends. ¡°I¡¯ll bet a lot of people will miss you when you go.¡± ¡°Well, you know, some will and some won¡¯t.¡± I replied. He looked thoughtful for a moment and then replied, ¡°Well, I¡¯m going to miss you. I was going through a tough time in my life and you were a good person to me, even when I didn¡¯t deserve it. I think I¡¯m getting my life on track and part of it is because of you reaching out to me. You¡¯re a good Christian.¡± Well, I felt about this small. This guy is praising me and I had been trying to avoid him with all my being. He needed someone to reach out to him, and all I could think about was myself. Now, I¡¯m not excusing or forgetting the fact that this guy said he was going to kill me, but I do think that this guy wasn¡¯t really any more defective than I am, he was just lost. But, I think there is hope for guys like John.
I haven¡¯t seen John since then, but I hope he¡¯s doing ok. I know that he helped teach me that God does not call us to judge people based on our own standards, but to look at people through God¡¯s eyes. That¡¯s what we are all called to.