One Sabbath Jesus was teaching in a synagogue. A woman there had an evil spirit that had kept her sick for eighteen years; she was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called out to her, “Woman, you are free from your sickness!” He placed his hands on her, and at once she straightened herself up and praised God. The official of the synagogue was angry that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, so he spoke up and said to the people, “There are six days in which we should work; so come during those days and be healed, but not on the Sabbath!” The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Any one of you would untie your ox or your donkey from the stall and take it out to give it water on the Sabbath. Now here is this descendant of Abraham whom Satan has kept in bonds for eighteen years; should she not be released on the Sabbath?” His answer made his enemies ashamed of themselves, while the people rejoiced over all the wonderful things that he did.
(Luke 13: 10-17)
Without wanting to distract from the serious nature of the Gospel narratives, I must say that some of them do read like episodes from a weekly TV sitcom!
They follow a familiar format, with the lead figure, Jesus, teaching, preaching, cleansing and healing, while in the background various familiar semi-comedic characters move about, and almost always there is a foil (an anti-hero, a character we love to hate).
No episode of Scrubs is complete without the jibes of the caustic and misanthropic Dr Cox, just as Seinfeld’s success depends upon the neurotic and self-loathing character of George Costanza. Spongebob would not be Spongebob if it were not for his painful friend, Squidworth (for those young enough to appreciate that particular sitcom par excellence). And for those at the other end of the age spectrum, where would the crew of ‘Lost in Space’ have been without the exasperating character of Dr Zachary Smith?!
And so our Gospel story opens in a familiar way. Jesus is teaching in a synagogue on a sunny Sabbath morning when a crippled woman enters the scene – a woman whom we are told had been walking bent over (no doubt with the aid of a stick) for some eighteen years! Jesus takes the initiative, not waiting to see if she is going to appeal to Him for help and not waiting to witness any display of faith on her part. He simply calls her over and says, ‘be free!’ And He lays hands on her and she straightens up and she starts dancing around, singing praises to God.
But we know the story has not finished yet! And we know the villain is there somewhere, lurking in the background – the foil, the anti-hero, the Squidworth (or Dr Smith) of the Gospel narrative, the Pharisee. And sure enough, as if on cue he emerges from the shadows, ready as ever to rain on everybody’s parade: “There are six days in which we should work; so come along during those days and be healed, but not on the Sabbath!”
He’s a ‘Wowser’ – that’s how we’d describe the Pharisee in this country. ‘Wowserism’ is that distinct ability to dampen the spirits of celebration and give people good reasons for not rejoicing, despite the fact that something wonderful seems to have happened.
Religious people in this country have a long-standing tradition of ‘wowserism’, with a proud history of opposing drinking and gambling and all forms of carousing, such that people have come to expect that when someone comes up with a new way of having fun in our society, there’s a good chance that the church is going to oppose them!
Of course we don’t normally equate wowserism and Phariseeism, and yet ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’, and a wowser by any other name will still smell like a wowser, and as I look around my world and my church today I pick up the scent of Pharisaical wowserism everywhere!
I was at first excited to receive an email from the Diocese last week recommending a website put together by a group who call themselves the ‘Australian Christian Lobby’ as the site, I was told, aimed to inform the Christian public of the positions held by all the major parties on issues that concern church-goers in particular.
I was going to pass around the URL to this site and its accompanying PDF publication as broadly as possible until a closer reading of the site revealed that while the ‘lobby’ did not tell you who you should vote for, it most definitely did tell you who you should not be voting for – ie. The Greens, as, according to the site, they opposed basic Christian values at almost every point!
One article on the site made this point particularly clearly by stating that the Greens oppose ‘man-woman marriage’, which to my understanding is simply untrue, unless you think supporting gay marriage means that you are necessarily opposed to men and women marrying (which I would have thought were two very different things).
And it reminded me of how, when two Gay people find love and happiness in each other and form a committed relationship that is mutually enriching and life-giving, so many of us religious people just can’t enter into the joy of that relationship with them at all, but feel we have to frown on their happiness because such people have to be seen as law-breakers of some sort.
And it reminded me of those people who have emailed me and written to me and phoned me with condemnatory messages because I have helped build relationships of friendship and mutual respect between the Christian and Muslim communities. Such persons just don’t seem to understand why I get excited when I see Christian and Muslim and Jewish people (and people of other faiths and no faiths) listening to each other and respecting each other and dialoguing with each other in an open and genuine way, because these people are the unsaved or the unwashed who are disobedient to God’s law, and so we can’t break bread with them and celebrate with them as equals.
Yes, the spirit of Pharisaical wowserism is alive and well in our community today, such that even when there are undeniably good and wholesome reasons to celebrate – love is breaking out, healings are taking place, prejudices are breaking down, trust is building up, friendships are growing, demons are being cast out and the poor are having Good News preached to them – we just can’t join the party because it doesn’t fit in with our theological framework!
I read one commentator on this passage who said that while Jesus appeared to be breaking the Sabbath, which was indeed ordained as a day of rest, He was in fact giving rest to the woman who could otherwise never be fully at rest because of her condition, and who therefore could never truly celebrate the Sabbath prior to being healed. Hence, the commentator points out, Jesus was, in a deeper sense, fulfilling the law rather than violating it.
And I think this guy misses the whole point! For the key difference between Jesus and the Pharisee in this story is that whereas the Pharisee is focused on making sure nobody breaks the law, Jesus’ focus is not on the law at all but on the woman and her need! He is not driven by a desire to be law-abiding but is driven by compassion.
Granted, Jesus gives a little speech about how it’s ok to give your donkey a drink on the Sabbath but don’t make the mistake of thinking that he is citing some special clause in the law regarding thirsty donkeys that should thereby be extended to crippled women. He is rather illustrating very simply what everybody already knows – that obedience to the law is no excuse for hardness of heart!
As I say, Jesus’ focus here is not on the law and whether there are special circumstances that override a literal obedience to the law in certain situations. Jesus’ focus is on the woman – her needs, her pain, her crippling illness and her healing and restoration. She is, after all, a daughter of Abraham – a woman of dignity, and someone who deserves to walk around with her head held high, instead of crawling round like an animal, stooped to the ground!
There is a vast gulf between Jesus and the Pharisee and it’s not just an issue of difference in interpretation of the divine law. It’s an entirely different understanding of religion – the religion of the Pharisee which attempts to achieve obedience to God through rigid obedience to the commandments, and the religion of Jesus which is all about loving God and loving other people and loving God through loving other people!
This vast gulf between Jesus and the Pharisee is the same gulf, I would suggest, that continues to exist today, between those who live their lives in the Spirit of God in Jesus and all modern-day forms of fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism, as I understand it, is a life lived according to a rigid written code that tells you exactly what you can think and what you can say and what you can do, and at that level I do believe that all forms of fundamentalism are fundamentally the same – be they Christian or Muslim or Hindu or whatever!
Fundamentalism attempts to serve God through obedience to the code, often at the expense of the needs of other people What Jesus calls us to is a life lived in the Spirit of God – a life of love, where sacrificial service to God and sacrificial service to our sisters and brothers blend into one seamless whole, where God is glorified acts of compassion and justice that lift up the poor and the week, and where Christ’s needs are met when we meet the needs of the least of His brethren!
The Pharisee is alive and well in today’s world and it is tempting not to take him too seriously – to see him as the bumbling but slightly lovable anti-hero whose well-intentioned, if misguided, wowserism provides the foil for so much of Jesus’ wisdom and insight. And yet it was these people who were most directly responsible for the crucifixion of our Lord!
For in the end this sort of well-intentioned, legalistic religiosity kills people, however sincere. It not only fails to rejoice in the breadth of the work of the Spirit of God, but it also inevitably moves to silence and to crush everything that falls outside of its narrow vision.
And so we must resist the temptation of Phariseeism, however tempting it may be to live a life in blacks and whites. For in the end life is more complex than an episode of Spongebob, and obedience to God requires more than living according to any simple set of rules. It’s about living life in the Spirit of God and allowing the Spirit of Christ to live and love through us. Amen.
First Preached by Father Dave at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill,
August 22, 2010.
Rev. David B. Smith
Parish priest, community worker,
martial arts master, pro boxer,
author, father of four.
