I have sketchy memories of being a child of about
four or five and going to church. I had
to dress up in a nice button-up shirt, nice socks, shiny black shoes, and a clip-on
tie. Sometimes, I got my hair slicked
back. I can remember being outside the
church and mom spit-shining me. Y’all
know how that works. Mom looks. Mom frowns.
Mom digs Kleenex out of Juicy-Fruit smelling purse. She moistens that Juicy-Fruit smelling
Kleenex by dabbing it to her tongue.
Then, she rather aggressively scrubbed away whatever residual food or
dirt was on my face. After the
spit-shining, Mom dropped me at my Sunday School class with a nickel or dime to
put in the little white church bank. There
I would hear a story about Jesus or King David or Samson or Jonah, cut and
paste and colour a picture, and it was time to wait to get picked up to go up
to the worship service. Time flies when
your having fun.
The worship service sometimes involved getting
spit-shined again. We had to sit-up
straight and be still on those hard pews, feet dangling. We had to stand up straight during the
hymns. We had to endure squirminess
during the sermon. If my brother was
there, we were likely to do something you weren’t supposed to do in church like
make faces at each other and try not to get caught. If it was a hot day, the blessed gift of nodding
off was inevitable.
Well, that was going to church nearly fifty years
ago. It was something everybody had to
do. It was a duty, a duty of gratitude
maybe, to God who provides for us and keep us safe. It was something you had to do to be a good
person or at least be seen as one. As I
child I can’t say I understood all that or anything other than at church you
had to be on your best and hopefully that would spill over into the rest of
life…oh, and Jesus loves me—but his dad will get me, if I’m not good.
The title of this pontification is “Stand up Straight
and Praise God”. It is an intentionally
misleading title about what I would like to think that coming to church is
about. At first glance “Stand up
Straight and Praise God” sounds like a command.
As child I would have heard it as “Stand up straight and show respect to
God.” I wouldn’t have understood what
“Praising God” was about other than it was the rote act of the things we did at
church. We stood up straight and sang
hymns and we sat up straight as the minister said prayers, read from the Bible,
and preached. Participating in the
praise of God required being “upright”.
But, I don’t mean for “Stand up Straight and Praise
God” to be heard as a commandment. I’ll
admit that fifty years ago it would have been entirely likely that message of
this sermon would have been that we are commanded by God to live upright lives
that bring him glory so that we can enjoy his blessing…or else! Consequently, we
have all noticed that such a sermon doesn’t go over very well and the
judgemental attitude and bad theology behind it is one of the major
contributing reasons as to why hardly anybody comes to church any more. As a nation we are starting on a third
generation now of children who have no idea at all what a church is or even who
Jesus is or even that there is a God. “Stand
up straight and praise God because you’re supposed to or else” hasn’t panned
out over time. So, please don’t hear “Stand
up Straight and Praise God” as a commandment but yet still think of it as
holding the reason for why church and congregational worship is a good place to
come.
The title comes from our reading here in Luke in
which a woman actually did stand up straight and praise God because Jesus
healed her. She had what Luke call’s “a
spirit of weakness” from whom which Jesus set her free. This spirit had her bent over so that she
couldn’t stand up straight. This woman
was bent over. Imagine never being able
to look up or people always looking down at you. She must have been in
considerable pain and that pain affects your outlook. Chronic pain is debilitating in every way –
emotionally, psychologically, even spiritually.
It takes your joy away. It can
even turn you from God.
I imagine this woman’s story as being a bit like the
story of Job. She was faithful, so Satan
decided to send a crippling spirit to cripple her in spirit. But, it didn’t work. After eighteen long years she was still
coming to synagogue on the Sabbath. That
particular Sabbath she didn’t come to synagogue because she knew Jesus was
there and she believed he could heal her.
Rather, I believe she was there because faith in God was a core
component to how she lived with the pain.
That particular Sabbath she didn’t come looking for Jesus to heal
her. Rather, it’s Jesus who saw her and
took the initiative and healed her. She
stood up straight for the first time in eighteen years, pain free for the first
time in eighteen years. She began to
praise God so exuberantly that it was a disturbance.
Eventually, her praising infected the whole
congregation. Luke said they were
rejoicing because of “all the wonderful things that Jesus was doing”. Our English translations just do not do that
phrase justice. In the Greek it says that they were praising because of “all
the glory-things that Jesus was birthing.”
Here was Jesus, the Lord God incarnate, doing glorious New
Creation-things on the Sabbath the day of the week on which the Lord God was
supposed to be resting, reposing and enjoying the beauty of the works of his
hands and praise from his people. To the
Synagogue leader it probably seemed that by this healing Jesus had made God
work on the Sabbath and that troubled him greatly.
Jesus redefined Sabbath with this healing. Sabbath isn’t simply to be a day where God
and everybody lazes about and eats leftovers…or else. Sabbath is the day we enjoy the works of
God’s hands and praise God. Yet, for
many, to most, to all of us we are burdened, worried, and even suffering. We are weak in spirit and unable to stand up
straight and praise God. We need to come
to the gathering of God’s people and experience God’s uplifting presence so
that we can stand upright and from deep within ourselves praise God. God can’t and won’t rest when things are such
that his people have reason not to worship him.
We come to worship God on Sunday not because it’s a
duty, but because God is with us and faithfully helps us deal with everything
life throws at us. It is here in worship
on Sunday morning that we grab a sense of the glory-thing of new birth in Jesus
that God is doing by the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. It is when people are gathered in Jesus name
for worship that Jesus calls us to himself and sets us free from the things
that bind us so that can’t help but stand up straight and from deep within
ourselves praise God. God doesn’t rest
until we are healed and whole and can sing his praise.
Congregational worship—no matter when it happens,
whether it’s a Sunday morning, Friday night, or Wednesday lunch—is time for
Jesus to birth glory things in our midst that cause us to praise God. Spiritual and physical healing is why we are gathered
here. If we are of the mindset that
worship is the duty of upright people, then we run the risk of the hypocrisy of
that congregational leader in this story.
Worship is when God births the glory things of new life in Christ. He is a loving God who will not rest while
his people are suffering. Amen.
